《Mirage 》作者：- Clifford D Simak【EPUB】

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MIRAGE CLIFFORD D. SIMAK THEY came out of the Martian night, six pitiful little creatures looking for a seventh. They stopped at the edge of the campfire's lighted circle and stood there, staring with their owlish eyes at the three Earthmen. The Earthmen froze at whatever they were doing. "Quiet," said Wampus Smith, talking out of the corner of his bearded lips. "They'll come in if we don't make a move." From far away came a faint, low moaning, floating in across the wilderness of sand and jagged pinnacles of rock and the great stone buttes. The six stood just at the firelight's edge. The reflection of the flames touched their fur with highlights of red and blue and their bodies seemed to shimmer against the backdrop of the darkness on the desert. "Venerables," Nelson said to Richard Webb across the fire. Webb's breath caught in his throat. Here was a thing he had never hoped to see. A thing that no human being could ever hope to see—six of the Venerables of Mars walking in out of the desert and the darkness, standing in the firelight. There were many men, he knew, who would claim that the race was now extinct, hunted down, trapped out, hounded