"Michael Moorcock - Sexton Blake - Caribbean Crisis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

Linwood muttered: "Sorry. It's just a feeling - a kind of premonition. Nobody's ever been
this deep before, have they?"
Harben's voice was barely audible. "For God's sake man get in! You wanted to have a l
down there and you're in no danger!"
Linwood, with an apologetic whimper, eased himself through the open hatch of the
bathysphere. His head was visible for a few seconds as he hung there. Then it disappeared
voice came hollowly from inside the metal globe: "All right, I'm in."
Harben's face hardened. He looked like a bird of prey, poised there with his beak of a n
and his hair ruffled by the gentle breeze. The disquieting calmness had returned to his eyes.
He looked around him. Up at the sun -- down into the water. Nothing could go wrong, he
told himself.
He cursed Linwood. The man's fear was infectious.
Harben swore viciously at the crew on the deck:
"Don't stand there gaping! Swing her out!"
The crew scurried to obey his orders.
Electric winches began to hiss and hum.
Harben clambered hurriedly down into the sphere, closing the heavy hatch behind him.
On board the Gorgon the mate of the research ship stood by the radiophone. Soon Harbe
voice came barking out of the receiver. "All right, Vasquez! Let her go! Slowly for the first
fifty feet -- then increase speed."
Ramon Vasquez let a grim expression of resentment spread over his face in the privacy o
the control cabin.
He didn't like Harben. He didn't like taking orders from him. And he didn't like what Ha
was doing. It was against the instruction of the project chief -- Professor Hoddard Curtis.
Curtis had forbidden anyone to use the bathysphere without his permission. And Harben
no permission -- but the crew had to obey him because Harben was second in command and
Curtis was miles away, trying to get money out of Marine Institute in Florida.
"Very good, sir," Vasquez replied with a hard edge on his voice. "Slowly for the first fif
feet."
He reached across the bank of metres to the electric winch regulator and switched on the
down-drive.
Once more Harben's voice rasped harshly over the line. "I'm breaking contact for a shor
while. I'll call you again in a minute."
"Roger," the mate acknowledged. He flicked the switch to 'recieve' and let it stay there.
Then he watched from the control cabin window, as slowly and with delicate and precise
grace, the hugh sphere began to sway downwards.
It touched the surface of the water and the sea heaved up as if to reject it. But an instant
the great globe was plunging down, breaking through the translucent blue waves to be slow
swallowed in the darkness beneath.
The sea eddied round the cables supporting the twelve ton globe -- the fine, woven cord
steel which looked too slender to support such a colossal weight.
Ramon Vasquez, the mate, kept his dark eyes on the pressure metres.
An indicator needle crept slowly round a large dial marked in tens feet, then in hundreds
then in thousands.
Ten feet ... twenty ... fifty ...
The needle began to climb faster.
Seventy ... ninety ... a hundred ... two hundred ...
The mate licked his thin lips as the needle climbed steadily to five hundred.
A cold feeling moved deep in his stomach as the metres told of the fantastic pressures no
coming to bear on the sphere. Two hundred pounds on the square inch!