"Philip Jose Farmer - Jesus on Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

On the screen was the exposed tunnel that the satellite had photographed five
years ago. Its roof, once a thin shell of rock, had fallen in. A passage ten feet
wide, twenty feet tall, and eighty feet long was revealed.
Though the dust storm looked solid from the ports of the ship, the pictures
transmitted by the robot rover, which had landed two years ago, were fairly clear
within fifty feet. Beyond was a reddish haze.
The tunnel's floor was slowly being covered by dust. At one end it
disappeared into the darkness of the part of the roof that had not collapsed. At
the other end, vaguely discernible through the dust, was a door. It was of some
dark material that could be metal or stone. Its smoothness showed that it had
been machine-made.
On the black surface of the door were two large orange characters: Greek
letters, capital tau and capital omega. Danton's oval face was expressionless.
Shirazi's hawkish features showed an intensity reminding Orme of a bird of prey
that has just spotted a rabbit. Bronski's dark handsome face held a smirk.
His own black features, he supposed, looked slightly ecstatic.
Orme's heart was thudding, and its sudden increase in rate would have
been monitored about 11.5 minutes from now by Houston if the sensors had
been attached to him. But he was dressed in a jump suit. Launch time was two
hours away. By then the lower wind should have subsided to a gentle breeze.
'Let's see the ship,' Orme said.
Danton punched in the orders on the tiny console before her. The view
lifted up, showing a vague dark mass through the dust, the walls of the mile-deep
rift, and then a huge mass; no, only its intimations, a ghost.
The rover was crawling towards it now. Minutes passed while the curving
outlines of the mass became clearer. Danton gave a verbal order to the robot to
stop. Now they could see the great curving thing that had first attracted the
survey satellite six years ago, shocking and exciting all of Earth and resulting in
the first manned expedition to the red planet.
'I've seen it a hundred times on Earth,' Orme said. 'And I still don't believe
it. A spaceship!'
Nobody answered. They understood that he was just talking to relieve
tension.
How long ago was it that the vessel had landed or crashed? A hundred
years ago? A thousand? How long had it been before a landslide of rotten stone
had covered it? And how many years had passed before some of the rock
covering had slid off to expose a small part of the colossus? Or had it been
deliberately concealed, the stones piled on it by its crew?
If it hadn't been for the curiosity of an Australian scientist, his 'hunch' that
the shadowy thing in the photographs looked unnatural and his persistence, the
vessel still might not be noticed. It might have been undiscovered forever. Then
the open tunnel had been found, and after three years, a robot had been landed
to make a closer inspection. And the whole world was agog.
Richard Orme, born in Toronto, Canada in 1979, had been thirty years old
when the IASA had reluctantly announced that the curving mass was indeed
artificial. He had anticipated the events that would follow, and he had worked and
schemed and fought to be a member of this expedition. A toss of a coin had
decided whether he or an Australian astronaut would be the captain and the
fourth crewperson of the Aries. The loser had smiled and congratulated him, but
that night he'd got drunk and been badly crippled in an automobile accident.