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

 "We reached our site, set up a base camp, and started in. I had the north complexтАФsix
drill sites stretched out over forty miles of glare ice. Things went pretty well. We were
sinking our shafts at the rate of about two hundred feet a day. Couldn't go faster because
of melt disposal. On the thirty-first day, I had a hurry-up call from Station Four. I went
out on a snowcat. TrenchтАФhe was in command thereтАФwas excited. They'd spotted dark
shapes down in the ice, lying off some yards from the shaft. Bad visibility, he said; the
ice was as clear as water, but light did strange tricks down there. I went down to see for
myself.
"It was a regulation-type mine lift, open-work sides. I watched the ice slide up past
meтАФlots of dirt in it at places, strata two and three inches thick as black as your hat. We
reached bottom. Trench had widened out a chamber down there, thirty feet wide, walls
like black glass, damp, cold. Water dripping from the shaft above, puddling up underfoot,
pumps whining, the stink of decay. He took me over to where they'd smoothed off a flat
place, like a picture window. It was opaqueтАФlike polished marbleтАФuntil we put the big
lights on it. Then I saw what the excitement was all about.
"Rocks, bits of broken stone, tufts of grass, twigs. Looked as if they were floating in
water, frozen. Swirls of mud here and there, all petrified in the ice. And way backтАФ
maybe fifty yardsтАФyou could see other thingsтАФbigger things."
"What kind of things?" I asked him, but he did not see me any longer.
"I told Trench to go ahead," the whispering voice went on. "Cut a side tunnel back.
Sent word to the admiral to come down. By the time he got there we were sixty feet into
the side wall. I'd had them steer for the nearest big object. He came down that tunnel
swearing, wanting to know who the damned sightseers were who were diverting our
resources into jaunts off into the countryside. I didn't answer himтАФjust pointed.
"There, about forty feet away, a creature slumped a little sideways as though he'd
leaned against a wall for a rest. His trunk was curled back against his chest and his tusks
sort of glowed in the searchlight. Looked just like the old elephant they had in the zoo at
home, when I was a kid, except he had a coat of two-foot-long hair, reddish-black,
plastered to his body as if he was wet.
"Hayle damn near fell down. He stood there and gaped, then yelled at the crew to
work in closer. We cleared the way, and they went at it. Water was sloshing around our
feet, ankle deep; the pumps weren't keeping up. Air smelled bad. Lots of small items
melting out; small animals, vegetation, black mud. He called a halt at ten feet. You could
see old Jumbo now as if you were standing just beyond a glass cage. There was dirt caked
on his flanks, and you could see mud still adhering to his feet. His eyes were open, and
they caught the light and threw it back. His mouth was half open and the inside was dull
red, and his tongue poked out at one corner. One of his tusks had the tip broken and
splintered. They were yellower than elephant ivory, long and thin, and they curved out. . .
."
"I know what a mammoth looks like," I said. "So you found one frozen; it's happened
before. What makes it important?"
He moved his eyes to look at me. "Not like this one, they haven't. It wasn't a
mammoth! It was a mastodon. And he was buckled into a harness like a circus pony."
 Chapter Two
"A mastodon in harness," I snorted, I was humoring him. "I suppose that implies that
Antarctica was warmer once than it is now, that it was inhabited, and that the natives had
tamed elephants. If the world weren't in the process of shaking itself to pieces, I'd find
that pretty interesting, I guessтАФbut still nothing to do murder over."
He lay there, his eyes shut, his chest rising and falling unevenly. His wrist was like a
dry stick when I checked it; the pulse was fast and light. I did not know whether he was