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

"I imagine so. The team has just uncovered something which looks like the entrance to a mine of some
sort. Per-haps you'd like to look it over."
"We'll be there first thing," said Fritz.
"What's up?" asked Jacko.

"Nevill's team have discovered what he thinks may be the entrance to a mine."
"In the centre of a city?"
"The same question occurred to me," said Fritz. "I don't think that a mine is particularly probable,
though it might just be connected with our lost energy sourceтАФor he may have stumbled on something
I've been looking for myself."
"What's that?"
"Jacko, in a city as large and as complex as this one appears to be, where's the logical place to put the
bulk passenger transport system?"
"Underground," said Jacko, "same as always."
"Precisely, and that's what I'm hoping Nevill's hit upon."
"God!" said Jacko. "An alien subway scarcely bears think-ing about."

Further in from the door they had to use flashlights. Here the sand had not penetrated
so deeply, and by the time they had reached the head of the shaft only a brief dusting covered the
floor.
The shaft was equipped with the normal Tazoon-type stair-wayтАФa central pole with round horizontal
bars set in a helix, but on a broader pattern than they had encountered hitherto and with a deeper pitch.
Such a stairway was not adapted to human physiology, but it was traversableтАФjustтАФ by those with
climbing experience or suicidal tendencies. Jacko had neither.
"Down?" he enquired, his flashlight failing to probe the darkness of the alien depths.
"Down," said Fritz. "Where's your sense of adventure?"
"It remained firmly embedded in my childhood," said Jacko, "along with the sense necessary not to get
into situa-tions like this."
"Down!" said Fritz firmly, and suited actions to his words.
Together they climbed down perhaps one hundred metres. Since it was impossible both to climb and
hold a flashlight, this was accomplished in total darkness, and the steady rhythm of the climb from
bar to bar exercised its own almost hypnotic fascination. Both had to stand for many seconds at the
bottom to re-orientate their senses.
The preservation of the passageways at that level was re-markable and probably complete, and the air
was cooler and less aggressive than above. Remarkable also was the dryness of the connecting tunnels
which had lain for so long at such a depth, indicating the complete lack of a water table above the level
of the deep-welled seas of Tazoo. The walls here were of metal, curiously wrought in a manner which
might have been functional or might have been sym-bolic; and the alien strangeness of a completely
artificial Tazoon environment gripped at their hearts with a half fear which had nothing to do with
self-preservation. For the first time they felt the full impact of standing in the presence of the logical but
inimaginable achievements of a culture which had no common roots with their own. They could vaguely
comprehend but never predict the unfolding of the unearthly technology which surrounded them.
Machine or effigies, they had no means of knowing which, stood like dark, mute sentries in the
uncertain, shifting shadows of the flashlamp's beam: the tortuous walls and fluted ceilings were channelled
and moulded with a thousand metal mouths connected to unguessable throats for unfath-omable
reasonsтАФonly the floor approximated its Terran counterpart, having a common engineering function of
pro-viding an unimpeded pedestrian passageway.
They turned another corner and stopped abruptly when the flashlamps' beams soared into empty
darkness and en-countered nothing. Their consternation was relieved by the realization that they were
now looking along the length of a vastly greater tunnel than any they had so far traversed. Vaguely they