"Keith Laumer & Eric Flint - Future Imperfect" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

enough. The batteries were good for another couple of hundred hours. I headed for
Station Four. Half a mile out from it I found a motor sledge, loaded and fueled and
footprints leading off to a ridge of ice, blood on the snow. I followed. It was Hansen,
dead.
"I took the sledge, went on in. It was the sameтАФjust a stretch of ice. No trace of the
huts, the equipmentтАФor the men. The shaft was closed, obliterated. I used the radio on
the sledge to try to raise Base Camp. No answer.
"It took me four days to check out the camps and get back to the coast. We'd left the
squadron at anchor, sub-surface. I made it out to a tenderтАФit was the closest to shore, and
in shallow water. I got in and found her flooded. We'd left a skeleton complement behind.
Three of them were there, dead, no marks on their bodies. I could have pumped her out,
but I couldn't handle a two-thousand-tonner alone. I took a motorized lifeboat, stocked it
with canned goods, and headed north.
"Seven days at sea; then I made port at a small Argentine town that had been a
plantation village halfway up a mountain. It was a port now; a couple of hundred boats
tied up to makeshift wharves, refugees everywhere. I tried to find a doctor for my hand
and faceтАФfrostbite. There weren't any. No communications, either. I tried to pull rank on
an Argentine gunboat skipper and nearly got myself shot.
"That night I went down to my boat with an armful of fresh fruit I'd gotten for my
wristwatch. They jumped me as I was untying the dinghy to row out to her. I was lucky.
The light was bad and the first one missed with his knife and I nailed him with a
boathook. I shot the other one, and pushed off. Lots of lights on the beach by the time I
headed out of the harbor, but nobody chased me.
"I made landfall south of Baton Rouge in four days. Played it cagey, brought her into
a bayou mouth at night, kept out of sight behind flooded-out houses. Left the boat hidden
and got into town. Tried to get a message off to a contact in Washington, but no luck.
Chaos in the town. Famine was beginning to pinch then. All the refugees from the coast
and from the fault areas farther west. Air like a foundry, soot everywhere, and more
tremors every day.
"I took a car and headed east. Near Vicksburg a car tried to force me off the road. I
fooled 'em; they hit instead. I went back and looked them over. Two men, dressed in
plain suits, no identification. Looked about forty, fifty, might have been Americans,
maybe not.
"Reached here on the third dayтАФmaybe a week ago. Saw food in here; then a quake
caught me. Thought it was them, at firstтАФlike the ice shaft." He twitched his face in a
ghastly grin.
"You think the polar expedition was wiped out byтАФwhoever is chasing you?"
"You can stake your life on it!" His whisper was fierce. "And they're in town now.
They're out thereтАФlooking for me. I was shrewd. I parked the car blocks away, meant to
walk back. . . ."
"They're not there now," I reminded him, trying to speak gently.
"Searching the town," he said. "Won't give up. Find me in the end. And I'll be ready. .
. ." He lifted his hand an inch, looked puzzled. "Where's my gun?"
"You won't need it," I started. "I'm going to take youтАФ"
"They got it," he said. A tear leaked from the corner of his eye, ran down his scarred
face. "Must have. . . . gone to sleep. . . ."
I got to my feet, fitted my mask back on. "Come on," I said. "Time to go." I got an
arm under his back, started to lift him. He gave a thin cry like a stepped-on kitten. His
eyes blinked, settled on my face.
"You take it," he said. "Show it. . . . them. Make. . . . listen. . . ."