"Stanislaw Lem - Eden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

required electricity to be started. So they would have to make do with primitive tools: shovels and
pickaxes. This, too, presented problems. After several hours of toil, the crew went back and got three
hoes, flattened and curved at the end, two steel poles, and large sheets of metal -- to reinforce the walls
of the tunnel. They carried the earth in buckets as well as in large plastic boxes supported litter-fashion by
short aluminum tubing.
Approximately eighteen hours had passed since the crash, and the men were exhausted. The
Doctor felt that they should have at least a few hours' sleep. But first they needed to improvise beds of
some sort, since the bunks in their sleeping quarters, bolted to the floor, were now vertical. It would have
taken too much effort to detach them, so the men lugged air mattresses to the library (now almost half
empty) and lay down side by side.
But, except for the Chemist and the Engineer, no one could sleep. So the Doctor got up again,
took his flashlight, and went in search of sleeping pills. For almost an hour he cleared a path to the
first-aid room through a hallway filled with broken equipment and instruments that had tumbled from the
wall compartments. At last -- his watch showed four in the morning, ship time -- the pills were dispensed,
the light was extinguished, and fitful breathing soon filled the dark room.
They awoke unexpectedly quickly -- all except the Cyberneticist, who had taken too large a
dose and was like one drunk. The Engineer complained of a sharp pain in the back of his neck. The
Doctor discovered a swelling there: the Engineer had probably got a sprain when they were grappling
with the hatch wheels.
Spirits were low. Even the Doctor was not talkative. The food supplies in the air lock were
inaccessible now, buried beneath a heap of dirt, so once again the Physicist and the Chemist trudged off
to the storeroom for cans of food. It was nine when work resumed on the tunnel.
They went at a snail's pace. There was little room to move about in the oval opening. The men in
front broke the packed earth with their hoes, and those behind them removed it to the corridor. Then it
was decided to pile the earth in the navigation room, which was closer and contained nothing that might
be needed in the immediate future.
Four hours later, the soil in the cabin was knee-high but the tunnel was only six feet long. Though
the marl, compact, was not that hard, the poles and hoe blades kept getting stuck in it, and the iron
handles bent as the men labored frantically. The steel hoe that the Captain used worked the best. The
Engineer, afraid that the ceiling might cave in on them, took care that it was always well propped. By
nightfall, when, smeared with clay, they sat down to supper, the tunnel, which led up from the hatch at a
steep, almost seventy-degree angle, extended no more than twenty feet.
The Engineer looked into the shaft that led to the lower level, where the loading-bay hatch,
steel-plated, lay a hundred feet astern of the main hatch, but all he could see was black water. The level
was higher than on the previous day; one of the tanks must still be leaking. The water was contaminated,
radioactive. He verified this with his small Geiger counter, closed the shaft, and returned to his comrades
without mentioning his discovery.
"If all goes well, we'll be out tomorrow. If not, it'll take us two days," the Cyberneticist declared,
drinking his third mug of coffee from the thermos. They were all drinking coffee.
"How do you know?" the Engineer asked with surprise.
"Just a feeling."
"He has the intuition his robots lack," said the Doctor, laughing. As the day progressed, the
Doctor was in increasingly good humor. When relieved of the digging, he would run back to the ship's
quarters, scavenging. He added two magneto lanterns, a portable shaver, vitamin-enriched chocolate,
and a stack of towels to their supplies. The men were filthy, their suits were covered with stains. No one
had shaved, of course, given the lack of electricity.
The whole of the following day was spent digging the tunnel. The navigation room was now so
full, it became difficult to dump the soil through the door. Next they used the library. The Doctor had
misgivings here, but the Chemist, with whom he was carrying the improvised handbarrow, tipped a heap
of marl onto the books without hesitation.