"Baxter, Stephen - Huddle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baxter Stephen)

It was a giant rock ripple, just as he had sketched in the ice. Perhaps this was
the center, the very heart of the great systems of mountain rings and circular
seas he had penetrated.

An ocean lapped around the base of the mountain. He could see that glaciers
flowed down its heroic base, rivers of ice dwarfed by the mountain's immensity.
There was ice in the ocean too -- pack ice, and icebergs like great eroded
islands, white, carved. Some manner of creatures were visible on the bergs,
black and gray dots against the pristine white of the ice, too distant for him
to make out. But this sea was mostly melted, a band of blue-black.

The slope of black rock continued below him-- far, far onward, until it all but
disappeared into the misty air at the base of this bowl of land. But he could
see that it reached a beach of some sort, of shattered, eroded rock sprinkled
with snow, against which waves sluggishly lapped.

There was a belt of land around the sea, cradled by the ring mountains, fringed
by the sea. And it was covered by life, great furry sheets of it. From this
height it looked like an encrustation of algae. But he knew there must be living
things there much greater in scale than any he had seen before.

"...It is a bowl," Frazil breathed.

"What?"

"Look down there. This is a great bowl, of clouds and water and light, on whose
lip we stand. We will be safe down there, away from the rock and ice."

He saw she was right. This was indeed a bowl -- presumably the great scar left
where one or other of the Moons had tom itself loose of the Earth, just as the
stories said. And these rings of mountains were ripples in the rock, frozen as
if ice.

He forgot his hunger, his thirst, even the lack of air here; eagerly they began
to hurry down the slope.

The air rapidly thickened.

But his breathing did not become any easier, for it grew warm, warmer than he
had ever known it. Steam began to rise from his thick, heavy fur. He opened his
mouth and raised his nostril flaps wide, sucking in the air. It was as if the
heat of this giant sheltering bowl was now, at the last, driving them back.

But they did not give up their relentless descent, and he gathered the last of
his strength.

The air beneath them cleared further.

Overwhelmed, Night-Dawn stopped.