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

the hole. But Orme, expecting this, was standing to one side. Even so, the drill
was almost jerked out of his hand.
He set to work at once to drill five more holes, all in a circle with a
diameter of three feet. He could have connected the holes with the laser and cut
a complete section to drop down into the tunnel. But he had to conserve power,
so he planted gelignite charges in the holes and touched off the explosive at a
distance with a battery. The circular section went up in smoke and larger
fragments of rock. They rose higher than they would have on the home planet,
the smoke disappeared more quickly, and the dust settled more swiftly.
'If there's an automatic sealing system, and it's still working, then the end
of that tunnel will be shut off,' Orme said. 'And we'll have to open a door. But that
will mean that the next section will seal. We don't have the materials to go
through many doors.'
The tunnel, if it continued in a straight line, would go into the canyon wall.
By now the shadow of the western wall was over them, and it was getting colder.
They were comfortable in their suits, bulky though they were and with much
equipment strapped onto them. Inside each was a flask of water which they could
suck up through a tube by bending their heads inside the helmet down and to
one side. They still had half a flask left, and they could urinate into a bladder
attached to the front of one leg.
Nevertheless, John Carter ordered them to quit for the night after they'd
taken a reading to determine if the tunnel did enter the cliff.
'You can conserve the power in your lights if you work in daylight. And we
can observe you better.'
 Orme didn't want to agree, but he had to. After validating that the tunnel
did go beneath the cliff, he told Bronski they had to get back.
'Tomorrow we'll put in a full day. We'll be refreshed. It was the landing that
took everything out of us. Even though we exercised on the Aries during the trip,
we aren't in tiptop shape. Null gravity is insidious; it weakens you after a long
time.'
Bronski said, 'Yes.' His tone indicated that he knew this and Orme knew
that he knew it. But it was better to talk repetitions and banalities than to listen to
the silence. The stars were out now, shining more brightly than in Earth's thick
atmosphere. Being at the bottom of the canyon was like standing at the bottom of
a well. The stars they could see looked baleful, as if they didn't like the presence
of these two aliens.
Orme knew that his reaction was due to his fatigue, the feeling of
insignificance in relation to the towering wall, the eeriness of the entire situation,
the feeling that somewhere down there were beings who could be menacing.
Just how, he didn't know, since Earth people represented no danger to Martians -
if they existed - and there was no reason he could think of why they should
believe two aliens to be dangerous.
But the buried spaceship indicated a very advanced technology, and the
tunnel seemed to mean that the people who had landed had dug into Mars. If
they had managed to survive underground, and they must have been there a
long time, why hadn't they emerged to repair the ship? If, that is, the ship had
been wrecked?
There was no use worrying about such things. Tomorrow or the day after
or a week or two from now would bring the answers.
Nevertheless, he was glad to get back to the lander. Though it wasn't the