"Colin Kapp - The Subways of Tazoo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kapp Colin)

"Bad?" he asked.
"Not good," said Fritz. "We've got three months to crack the transport problem or get kicked out as a
bunch of no-good layabouts. The honourтАФeven the continuance of U.E. тАФis very much at stake.
Somehow we've got to contrive some sort of vehicle, and this in the face of the fact that we have no
source of constructional material capable of withstanding the Tazoon environment."
"So where do we go from here, Fritz?"
"Damned if I know. You go and check the arrangements for the big move. I'm going over to the
site to see how friend Nevill is doing. He may have dug up a little inspira-tion out thereтАФand Heaven
knows I could use a little right now."
Nevill saw the cat drawing across the rouge desert, and came to the edge of the workings to await
Fritz's arrival.
"How're things going, Philip?"
"Wonderful, my boy. We knew we had a major find, but thisтАФthis is paradise! We're going straight
down on a major city by the look of it, and the stuff on the lower levels where the sand is dry is
in a perfect state of preservation. Some of the three-storied buildings are so sound that we'll be able to
use them for our own purposes. I tell you, Fritz, the Tazoon enterprise looks like paying off about two
million per cent interest. The complete analysis of the stuff found here will occupy generations."
Fritz gazed down into the broad quarry which was the site of the workings. On every hand the feverish
activity of the archaeological teams pointed a measure of the excite-ment and enthusiasm which infected
everyone concerned. The shifts had been voluntarily lengthened, but even so, the end of the shirt
period had to be declared a compulsory cessation of work lest those on the trail of such
immeasurable archaeological delights should endanger their health by con-tinuing until they dropped from
exhaustion.
Here and there alien towers were already exposed above the sand, unimaginable obelisks of
incomprehensible archi-tecture, curiously distorted and decayed by time and the ravages of
wind and sand. Some, the sand shored back to greater depths, were firmer on the lower levels, and the
architecture was even more marvellously and more incon-ceivably wrought. Occasionally, vertical pits
descended at points where logic had decreed there lay something more Intriguing or exciting or
yielding greater bounty for the effort it entailed.
Fritz was fascinated beyond measure. The clawing other-worldliness drew his imagination on with an
inescapable lure. As an engineer he fought to tame the logic of the structures which were being
uncovered before him, but something in his soul, poesy perhaps, denied him an identification of parts and
trapped him in the wonder of the whole. He was the tech-nologist who came for a dispassionate analysis
and stayed to worship.
With great resolve he wrenched his mind from its jour-neyings and looked at Nevill appealingly. The
latter patted him on the shoulder sympathetically. "I know, my boy," he said. "It takes us all
like that. It's both wonderful and sad to be uncovering the remains of so great a culture:
wonderful because the culture was so great, and sad be- cause we find their city empty of the
creatures who created it."
"Why the hell did they have to go?" asked Fritz. "After they'd got all this way? They had
mastered their environ-ment to a degree comparable to ourselves, then in the space of a few short
centuries they faded and died away and the sand moved in and covered all then" marvels.
But for what reason did they go? It's something we must dis- cover lest it also comes upon us."


four

By sundown the last hut had been transferred to its new position near the workings. The day
had been one of great activity intermixed with frustration. As Fritz had foreseen the huts had
proved themselves capable of being moved bodily across the sand, but the condition of the cats and