Earth's Last Fortress by A E van Vogt

Author:A E van Vogt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-21T16:00:00+00:00

9

Norma began to notice the difference, a strange, vibrant, quality within herself. She felt warmly alive, a new kind of aliveness added now to the life that had always existed within her.

Physically, she was still crouching there, her legs twisted under her, vision still blinded; and the hard pain of the metal beneath her was an unchanged pressure against the bone and muscle of her knees. But along every nerve crept that wonderful sense of well-being, of buoyant power. It yielded abruptly to the violence of the thought that flashed into her mind: Where was she? What had happened? What—

The thought ended as an alienness intruded into it, another thought, not out of her own mind, not even directed at her, not human!

Tentacle 2731 reporting to the Observer. A warning light has flashed on the…{meaningless)…time machine. Action!

The answer came instantly, coldly: An intruder—on top of the primary time machine. Warning from, and to, Dr. Lett’s section. Tentacle 2731, go at once—destroy intruder. Action!

There was stunning significance in those hard wisps of message and answering message, that echoed back along the corridors of her mind. The stupefying fact that she had effortlessly intercepted thought waves momentarily blotted out the immediacy of the danger. The impact of the death threat struck her suddenly.

Before that menace, even the knowledge of where she was came with a quiet unobtrusiveness, like a minor harmony in a clash of major discord. Her present location was only too obvious. By twisting the key, she had been hurtled through time to the age of the Glorious, to the primary time machine, where fantastic things called tentacles and observers were ceaselessly on guard.

If only she could see! She must see, or she was lost before she could begin to hope. Frantically, she strained against the blackness that lay so tight against her eyes.

She saw!

It was as simple as that. One instant, blindness. The next, the urge to see. And then, complete sight, without preliminary blue, like opening her eyes after a quiet sleep.

The simplicity of it was crowded out of her mind by a swirling confusion of impression. There were two swift thoughts that clung—a brief wonder at the way sight had come back to her, merely from that wish that it would, and a flashing memory of the face that had floated at her out of the blackness of time: With this great moment you enter upon your power and your purpose!

The picture, all connecting thoughts, fled. She saw that she was in a vast, domed room, and that she was on top of a gigantic machine. There were transparent walls. Through them, she saw a shimmering roseate fire, like a greater dome that covered the near sky and hid the night universe beyond.

The effort of staring tired her. Her gaze came down out of the sky; and back in the room, she saw that all the transparent wall that faced her was broken into a senseless pattern of small balconies, each mounting glittering, strangely menacing machinery: weapons! So many weapons, for what?

With a jar that shocked her brain, the thought disintegrated.

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