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

tunnel door. Danton had directed it to approach the Barsoom closely and transmit
pictures of the Marsnauts as they left the lander and worked around the Aries.
These pictures would be transmitted to the Aries, which would relay them to the
satellite and thence to Earth.
Eight hundred feet behind the explorer, invisible even from its height, was
the tunnel. Orme and Bronski got to work. After donning their suits and helmets
and checking them, they entered the cramped room of the decompression
chamber and closed the port leading to the interior of the lander. Orme set a
gauge and pressed a button. Within three minutes the pressure in the chamber
had been reduced to that of the atmosphere outside. Orme opened the hatch and
unrolled a metal ladder. Though he could easily have jumped down to the ground
fourteen feet below, he was forbidden to do so. The two were to take no
chances.
He clambered down the ladder and stepped backward on to the rock and
turned. He felt a headiness which was not caused by the lighter gravity. He,
Richard Orme, a black Canadian, was the first human being to step upon the
surface of the red planet. Whatever happened from this second on, he would be
recorded in history as the first man on Mars. The rover, that metallic insect-like
machine, was transmitting pictures of the unique event right now. Of him, Richard
Orme, the first Earthman to step upon the ancient rock of another planet.
'Columbus, you should be here!' he said, acutely conscious that 11.5
minutes from now, billions would hear this statement. He did not utter his
succeeding thought. And you'd crap in your pants! The old navigator could never
even have dreamed of this.
'Five hundred and twenty-three years have brought us a long way!тАЩ he
said. He didn't elaborate. There would be enough people on earth who'd
understand what he meant and explain it to the viewers.
Bronski came down the ladder then, looked around for a minute, and at a
signal from Orme joined him in the work. From a compartment at the bottom of
the lander they unloaded a cable, a driller, and a sonar. The latter determined
that the landing place was solid rock and thick enough for the anchor. Bronski
drilled into the basalt and then disengaged the drill from the power unit. One end
of the cable was secured to the part of the drill sticking up from the surface.
Orme prepared a cement mixture and poured it down between the drill and the
hole.
While waiting for the quick-drying material to harden, they walked to the
silvery metal curve protruding from the masses of rock. Standing under the great
arc and looking up at it, Orme felt awed. If this was a vessel, and it surely was,
then it would be the size of an old passenger liner, say the Queen Mary, or as
large as the Zeppelin Hindenburg. Whoever had built it had had an energy
source that Earth lacked. To lift this monster from a planet into space, to drive it
through interstellar space and to land here required a power staggering to think
about.
How long had it lain here at the bottom of this colossal canyon? Long
enough, certainly, for the wall to weather and for chunks of rock to fall down and
bury it. And then long enough for some force, perhaps the effect of very strong
winds over a long time, to remove the rocks that had covered this part of the
vessel.
But it was possible that this exposed section had never been' covered.
The survey satellite had photographed it many times, but no areographer had