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

semitransparent, rose at a right angle to the ground and did not drift with the wind. He
counted them and got to forty-nine when they ceased appearing.
He waited for fifteen minutes. When it looked as if nothing more would
happen, he decided that he must investigate the spot where the globes seemed to have
popped out of the ground. Taking a deep breath, he bent his knees and jumped out
into the garden. He landed lightly about twelve feet out from the edge of the tube and
between two rows of plants.
For a second he did not know what was happening, though he realized that
something was wrong. Then he whirled around. Or tried to do so. One foot came up,
but the other sank deeper.
He took one step forward, and the forward foot also disappeared into the thin
stuff beneath the red-yellow dust. By now the other foot was too deep in to be pulled
out.
Then he was hip-deep and grabbing at the stems of the plants to both sides of
him. They uprooted easily, coming out of the soil, one clenched in each hand.
He dropped them and threw himself backward in the hope he could free his
legs and lie stretched out on the jellylike stuff. Perhaps, if his body presented enough
of an area, he could keep from sinking. And, after a while, he might be able to work
his way to the ground near the tube. There, he hoped, it would be firm.
His violent effort succeeded. His legs came up out of the sticky semiliquid. He
lay spread-eagled on his back and looked up at the sky through the transparent dome
of his helmet. The sun was to his left; when he turned his head inside the helmet he
could see the sun sliding down the arc from the zenith. It was descending at a slightly
slower pace than on Earth, for Mars's day was about forty minutes longer. He hoped
that, if he couldn't regain solid ground, he could remain suspended until evening fell.
By then this quagmire would be frozen enough for him to rise and walk up on it.
Provided that he got up before he himself was frozen fast.
Meanwhile, he would follow the approved method of saving oneself when
trapped in quicksand. He would roll over quickly, once, and then spread-eagle himself
again. By repeating this maneuver, he might eventually reach that bare strip of soil at
the tube.
The pack on his back prevented him from rolling. The straps around his
shoulders would have to be loosened.
He did so, and at the same time felt his legs sinking. Their weight was pulling
them under, whereas the air tanks in the pack, the air tanks strapped to his chest, and
the bubble of his helmet gave buoyancy to the upper part of his body.
He turned over on his side, grabbed the pack, and pulled himself up on it. The
pack, of course, went under. But his legs were free, though slimy with liquid and
caked with dust. And he was standing on top of the narrow island of the pack.
The thick jelly rose up to his ankles while he considered two courses of action.
He could squat on the pack and hope that it would not sink too far before it
was stopped by the permanently frozen layer that must exist --
How far? He had gone down hip-deep and felt nothing firm beneath his feet.
And. . . He groaned. The tractors! Now he knew what had happened to them. They
had gone over the tube and down into the garden, never suspecting that the solid-
seeming surface covered this quagmire. And down they had plunged, and it had been
Greenberg's horrified realization of what lay beneath the dust that had made him cry
out, and then the stuff had closed over the tank and its antenna, and the transmitter, of
course, had been cut off.
He must give up his second choice because it did not exist. To get to the bare