"Myst - 02 - The Book Of Ti'ana" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Rand)

Aitrus looked to Telanis, hoping his Master would somehow get him off the hook,
but Telanis was staring at the multilayered chart Geran had given him, flipping
from page to page and frowning.

Aitrus met Kedri's eyes again, noting how keenly the other watched him. "As you
wish, Guild Master."

* * *

The cavern in which they rested was a perfect sphere, or would have been but for
the platform on which the two excavators lay. The craft were long and sinuous,
like huge, segmented worms, their tough exteriors kept buffed and polished when
they were not burrowing in the rock.

Metal ladders went down beneath the gridwork platform to a second, smaller
platform to which the junior members of the expedition had had their quarters
temporarily removed to make way for their guests. It was to here, after a long,
exhausting day of explanations, that Aitrus returned, long after most of his
colleagues had retired.

There were thirty-six of them in all, none older than thirty_all of them
graduates of the Academy; young guilds-men who had volunteered for this
expedition Some had given up and been replaced along the way, but more than two
-thirds of the original crews remained

Two years, four months, Aitrus thought as he sat on the edge of his bedroll and
began to pull off his boots. It was a long time to be away from home He could
have gone home, of course-Master Telanis would have given him leave if he had
asked-but that would have seemed like cheating, somehow. No, an expedition was
not really an expedition if one could go home whenever one wished

Even as he kicked his other boot off, he felt the sudden telltale vibration in
the platform, followed an instant or two later by a low, almost inaudible
rumble. A Messenger was coming'

The expedition had cut its way through several miles of rock, up from one of the
smaller, outermost caverns of D'ni. They could, of course, have gone up
vertically, like a mine shaft, but so direct a route into D'ni was thought not
merely inadvisable but dangerous The preferred scheme-the scheme the Council had
eventually agreed upon-was a far more indirect route, cut at a maximum of 3825
torans-22032 degrees-from the horizontal One that could be walked

One that could also be sealed oi-fwith gates and defended.

The rumbling grew, slowly but steadily. You could hear the sound of the turbine
engines now.

Slowly but surely they had burrowed through the rock, surveying each one
-hundred-span section carefully before they drilled, coating the surfaces with a