"Evans,.Linda.-.Sleipnir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

rippling across the walls. Odd kind of rock in this part of the cave.
Stranger yet, hadn't I just been thinking that when Bjornssen
disappeared? My brows puckered and I chewed at my upper lip,
moving my head to play the light across the opposite wall.

The surface was jagged, and unused to light. Even the shadows it
cast were wrong. Nothing I could put my finger on, exactly . . .

I got to thinking about the marks Bjornssen had made with his
surveyor's tape, and a feeling I didn't stop to analyze hauled me to
my feet. I piled my gear in a heap and went back to verify the last
marker, which my guide had made about ten feet the other side of
the chimney.

Jumping over the gaping hole gave me a case of serious
sweatsЧwhich was stupid. I was too smartЧor too well trained,
anywayЧto let fear get the best of me like some half-brained
Stone Age savage. So I worked harder at reminding myself that I
was a modern, civilized, highly trained combat soldier on a very
simple recon mission. ChristЧit was only a ten-foot recon at that.
In a totally empty cave. No problem.

After two full minutes of steady hiking, I still hadn't found it. I looked
back the way I'd come, and absently scratched my elbow. Odd, I
didn't think I'd walked that far from the spot where we'd spent the
night. I went back to the chimney and started again, watching both
walls this time and paying closer attention.

It still wasn't there.

Just when and where had Bjornssen made that last mark? I knew
he'd put a marker along the straight stretch here, and Bjornssen
always plastered a bit of tape at every turn. I'd watched the "mark-
the-trail ritual" too many times to doubt that. We'd come through a
whole series of turns and side tunnels fifty feet back, or so. I'd
miscalculated, was all.

I started from the chimney again. Sixty-five feet of carefully
measured steps later, I stopped. Nothing. Not a trace of where
we'd spent the "night." Not even a hint of old adhesive on the walls.
And while I never actually saw them change, the shadows looked
different every time I glanced away and back.

Worse, the side tunnels were missing. As far as I could see,
ahead and behind, there was nothing but unbroken grey rock wall.

At one hundred twenty feet I stopped again, breathing hard. My
shirt was soaked and sweat trickled down my skivvies (I hoped it
was sweat) to run past my knees and into the tops of my socks. It
tickled like blazesЧand I was too worried to scratch.