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

"Ice everywhere; a two-hundred-mile field of bergs broken loose from the cap. Looked like a
lot of ice, but it was just crumbs. I saw those blue ice cliffs, rising two miles sheer out of the sea,
peaks covered with black dust. That's a sight, mister. . . ." His voice trailed off; his eyes wandered
from me, staring into the pastтАФor into a pipedream.
"The man with the gun," I brought him back. "Where does he come in?"
"We made our landfall; lost our first men scaling the ice cliffs. Never even found the bodies.
Treacherous footing. Used the new model laser-type handguns to melt a path up, then blasted. Took
two weeks to get our gear ashore. Funny, wasn't too cold. Big yellow sun shining down on the ice,
balmy breeze blowing. Gorgeous sunsets, but not much dust that far south. Ice looked fairly clean.
We started inland in heavy assault and landing craft. Made two hundred miles a day. Our target was
a spot Hayle had picked in Queen Maud LandтАФthe Pensacola Mountains, under the ice. The plan
was to cut the glacier at the ridge and free a couple of hundred square miles of it to move off toward
the sea, with a little help from us. We were to bore sinks to the rock, and pump hot air down.
Theory was we'd create a lubricating fluid layer at the interface.
"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 backтАФmaybe fifty yardsтАФ
you 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.