Planet Stories Super Pack #2. Ray Bradbury, Nelson S. Bond, Leigh Brackett

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СКАЧАТЬ was no time for further thought. The door was closed; through the thick pane Morris saw Garroway nod, saw a soldier close the switch on the instrument’s control-board.

      For an instant the thin hum of current filled Dirk’s ears; a terrific impact of pure electrical energy pierced his every nerve and fiber with flaming hammers of agony. He felt his knees buckle beneath him, was vainly aware that his mouth opened to cry aloud noiselessly.

      A strange, twisting vibration wrenched and tore him; the solid walls about him seemed to melt and writhe at angles the eyes ached to follow. All this he saw as in the throes of wild delirium. Then, unable to longer bear the fearful pain, every sinew of his being tensed for an intolerable instant…then darkness, blessed darkness, rushed in to claim Dirk Morris. He sank, weak and senseless, into its enfolding arms.

      *

      Silence.

      Silence and darkness.

      Then, out of the silence, sound. Out of the infinite darkness, light. Light, and warmth, and comfort.

      Dirk Morris opened his eyes.

      He opened his eyes…then closed them again, shaking his head to rid his fancy of its weird hallucination. Beside him a voice spoke soft, rippling syllables that held no meaning. Another voice replied; a masculine voice, equally soft, but elderly and grave.

      The possessor of the first voice, pressed a cup to Morris’ lips. An unknown liquor tingled Dirk’s palate and swept the lethargy from his veins. He stirred and lifted himself to one elbow, stared about him incredulously.

      "Where—?" he began—"where on earth—?" Then he stopped, seeing the sky above him, the ground supporting him, those who were his Samaritans. A poignant regret seized him. He whispered, "Not on Earth. Then the ancient religions were true? There is an afterlife…a Heaven peopled with angels."

      The girl kneeling beside him laughed, her voice like the music of rill waters. She turned to her elder companion, said in strange, accented English, "See, I was right, father! He is from over There. I recognized the garments; severe and ugly. Not at all like ours —"

      She touched the flowing hem of her own brief, silken kirtle with fingers equally soft and white. Both she and the graybeard were dressed in clothing of classic simplicity. No stiff military harness like that worn by earthlings of Dirk’s era, but something resembling the chiton of ancient Greece.

      Dirk said wonderingly, "You…you’re human!"

      "But, of course, stranger."

      "This…this isn’t Earth, though. Nor any planet of the System!"

      Dirk gestured toward the landscape, smooth and gaily gardened, stretching from horizon to horizon with no ornament save the natural adornments of Nature. Here were no grim and ugly buildings towering to the skies, blocking the sun’s warm rays from view; no shining mansions flanked by filthy hovels; none of the cheek-and-jowl splendor and squalor of the world whence he had come. Here was only gentle, untrammeled beauty in a quiet, pastoral existence.

      No planet of the Solar System was so organized, Dirk knew. But were a second, convincing proof needed, he had but to glance at the sky. There shone not the lone, familiar Sun of Earth…but two suns! A binary system. One golden-yellow like Sol, the other a bluish-white globe of radiance.

      "No," answered the elderly man, "this is neither the Earth from which you came nor any planet of its system. This is the planet Nadron, satellite of the twin suns, Kraagol and Thuumion, in the fourth galactic level."

      Triumph was a bursting bomb in Morris’ heart.

      "Then it was a success, after all!" he cried. "Then Townsend was right! If only he had lived to see this day! A success…and all because Garroway’s scientists, playing with an instrument they did not understand, succeeded where we had failed for years!

      "But…but your planet is unfamiliar to me; I do not know your suns by the names you have given them. Your system lies just where in relation to the galactic center? How many miles…or light years…are we from my native Earth?"

      The old man looked at him oddly for a moment, then:

      "We are no miles from your Earth, my friend," he announced quietly, "and the distance may be measured in seconds... not light-years."

      Dirk stared, bewilderment in his eyes.

      "I…I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir. I hope you will forgive me. Perhaps you are joking—?"

      "It is no jest, my boy, but the simple truth. Earth and Nadron are…but, stay! Let me prove my point otherwise. Has it not occurred to you to wonder that we, the people of a foreign world, know your language?"

      Dirk said wonderingly, "Why…why, that’s right; you do! But how—?"

      "Because," explained the elder, "we have listened to it being spoken for many, many years. Over our visors we have both heard and watched you on your neighboring world."

      "Neighboring world?"

      "How came you here?" asked the old man. "What means of propulsion brought you hither?"

      That, at least, Dirk knew. He answered eagerly.

      "I came here through the medium of the greatest discovery ever made by man. The teleport, a machine invented by Robert Townsend. A perfect solution to the long puzzling problem of material transport through Space. It disassembles the atoms of any body placed in its transmitting chamber, and reconstructs that body at a destination selected by a setting of its dials.

      "Through circumstances not of my own choosing, I was a subject of that machine. I was forced into the transmitter by…well, it does not matter whom…and my body broadcast to this spot. Though I do not yet, sir, understand just where I am, or exactly how I reached here—"

      The old man shook his head regretfully.

      "I am sorry, my boy, to tell you the machine did not work as was planned. Its theory was sound; in one respect it performed as expected. It did disassemble your atomic components, did reconstruct your body elsewhere. But it was to no far bourne your journey carried you.

      "Your body still stands in exactly the spot it stood before the machine operated! "

      *

      For a long, uncomprehending moment Dirk Morris gaped at his informant. At last his bedazement found words.

      "Oh, now, surely you can’t expect me to believe—"

      "No," interrupted the graybeard gently, "not without visual evidence. Rima, my dear—?"

      He turned to the girl, who nodded and from the folds of her garment produced a shimmering crystal object; a mirror of some sort, or a lens. This she handed to Dirk.

      "If you will look through this—?" she suggested.

      Morris lifted the crystal to his eyes wonderingly…then almost dropped it in his excitement!

      Beneath his feet still lay the lush greensward of an alien world, but through the curious crystal he gazed upon no panorama of soft, rolling hills and pleasant valleys. Before СКАЧАТЬ