《Enchantress Of Venus 》作者：- Leigh Brackett【EPUB】

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Enchantress of Venus Leigh Brackett Planet Stories Fall 1949 I The ship moved slowly across the Red Sea through the shrouding veils of mist her sail barelyfilled by the languid thrust of the wind. Her hull of a thin light metal floated withoutsound the surface of the strange ocean parting before her prow in silent rippling streamers offlame. Night deepened toward the ship a river of indigo flowing out of the west. The man knownas Stark stood alone by the after rail and watched its coming. He was full of impatience and agathering sense of danger so that it seemed to him that even the hot wind smelled of it. The steersman lay drowsily over his sweep. He was a big man with skin and hair the color ofmilk. He did not speak but Stark felt that now and again the mans eyes turned toward himpale and calculating under half-closed lids with a secret avarice. The captain and the two other members of the little coasting vessels crew were forward attheir evening meal. Once or twice Stark heard a burst of laughter half-whispered and furtive.It was as though all four shared in some private joke from which he was rigidly excluded. The heat was oppressive. Sweat gathered on Starks dark face. His shirt stuck to his back. Theair was heavy with moisture tainted with the muddy fecundity of the land that brooded westwardbehind the eternal fog. There was something ominous about the sea itself. Even on its ownworld the Red Sea is hardly more than legend. It lies behind the Mountains of White Cloud thegreat barrier wall that hides away half a planet. Few men have gone beyond that barrier intothe vast mystery of Inner Venus. Fewer still have come back. Stark was one of that handful. Three times before he had crossed the mountains and once he hadstayed for nearly a year. But he had never quite grown used to the Red Sea. It was not water. It was gaseous dense enough to float the buoy