"Philip Jose Farmer - The Book of Philip Jose Farmer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

environment.
Possibly some natural condition might have caused the seeming artificiality of
this garden. He would have to investigate.
Always with caution, though. So much depended on him: the lives of the four
men, the success of the expedition. If this one failed, it might be the last. Many people
on Earth were groaning loudly because of the cost of Space Arm and crying wildly
for results that would mean money and power.
The field, or garden, extended for about three hundred yards. At its far end
there was another tube at right angles to the two parallel ones. And at this point the
giant umbrella plants regained their living and shining blue-green color.
The whole setup looked to Lane very much like a sunken garden. The square
formation of the high tubes kept out the wind and most of the felsite flakes. The walls
held the heat within the square.
Lane searched the top of the tube for bare spots where the metal plates of the
caterpillar tractors' treads would have scraped off the lichenoids. He found none but
was not surprised. The lichenoids grew phenomenally fast under the summertime sun.
He looked down at the ground on the garden side of the tube, where the
tractors had presumably descended. Here there were no signs of the tractors' passage,
for the little umbrellas grew up to within two feet of the edge of the tube, and they
were uncrushed. Nor did he find any tracks at the ends of the tube where it joined the
parallel rows.
He paused to think about his next step and was surprised to find himself
breathing hard. A quick check of his air gauge showed him that the trouble wasn't an
almost empty tank. No, it was the apprehension, the feeling of eeriness, of something
wrong, that was causing his heart to beat so fast, to demand more oxygen.
Where could two tractors and four men have gone? And what could have
caused them to disappear?
Could they have been attacked by some form of intelligent life? If that had
happened, the unknown creatures had either carried off the six-ton tanks, or driven
them away, or else forced the men to drive them off.
Where? How? By whom?
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
"Here is where it must have happened," he muttered to himself. "The first tank
reported seeing this tube barring its way and said it would report again in another ten
minutes. That was the last I heard from it. The second was cut off just as it was on top
of the tube. Now, what happened? There are no cities on the surface of Mars, and no
indications of underground civilization. The orbital ship would have seen openings to
such a place through its telescope --"
He yelled so loudly that he was deafened as his voice bounced off the confines
of his helmet. Then he fell silent, watching the line of basketball-size blue globes rise
from the soil at the far end of the garden and swiftly soar into the sky.
He threw back his head until the back of it was stopped by the helmet and
watched the rising globes as they left the ground, swelling until they seemed to be
hundreds of feet across. Suddenly, like a soap bubble, the topmost one disappeared.
The second in line, having reached the height of the first, also popped. And the others
followed.
They were transparent. He could see some white cirrus clouds through the
blue of the bubbles.
Lane did not move but watched the steady string of globes spurt from the soil.
Though startled, he did not forget his training. He noted that the globes, besides being