" Perry Rhodan 0047 - (39) The Silence of Gom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Rhodan)

A few seconds later the flounder lodged inside the wall began to move. Scraping softly it retreated
deeper into the wall. Bell tried to hold it back but the object smooth as varnish, slipped through his
coarse gloves. A few moments later the mysterious object had disappeared.

Almost at the same time a sharp gust of wind whistled through the tunnel. They were caught so unawares
that Bell whirled around with a hoarse gasp of amazement and searched the tunnel to find an opening
through which the air could have blown in.

There was nothing at all. The wind, which came from nowhere, was very cold as the thermometer
indicated. As a result of BellтАЩs discharging his thermo-beamer the temperature at the place in the corridor
where they had discovered the flounder had risen to over 100┬░F. The wind now blowing at a steady
velocity through the corridor caused it to sink rapidly. Within a few minutes it was down to 57┬░F. The
wind died down and the thermometer slowly climbed back to 57.3┬░F. again where it remained. The
procedure was so obvious that it took no guesswork: automatic temperature regulation from a reservoir.

What made Bell jittery however was the fact that he neither knew where the reservoir was located nor
had any idea how the air was made to flow.

Meanwhile the lacquer-flounder was completely gone. Bell pressed his helmet against the floor and
stared into the semi-circular hole he had carved out with his weapon. He made a decision: "WeтАЩre going
to follow that thing. ItтАЩs going to be a lot of trouble but somehow weтАЩve got to determine what we got
into."

Marshall read the other thoughts which were also on his mind: there probably are, after all, no hidden
doors in the walls of the tunnel. If the installation was indeed constructed by the Gom creatures, then a
certain porosity of the walls sufficed to permit passage of the lacquer-flounders whose bodies were less
than five-thousandths of an inch thick.

Bell motioned his people to stand aside and began to enlarge the hole with his thermo-beamer. He
adjusted the output of the gun to a higher magnitude which not only had the effect of making the hole
grow faster than before but also triggered the automatic temperature regulator, causing it to blow such a
storm through the passage that they had to brace themselves to keep from being swept away.

Betty Toufry and John Marshall perceived that the feeling of effort and strain emanating from the strange
being increased substantially.

Bell followed a definite direction. He branched off from the floor of the shaft at an angle down into the
rock. When he had progressed about 15 feet he proved to be right with his assumption: the
lacquer-flounder showed up again. The steady fire-ray unearthed a part of its body as it dug in. Now it
seemed to dislike the increased heat of its surroundings and it rushed to escape from it.

But Bell stayed on its track. The slanted branch was driven into the stone foot by foot. It was narrow
when the flounder moved quicker and became wider when it hesitated.

Then suddenly the energy-beam penetrated, a void. A circular hole emerged at the end of the shaft. The
flounder disappeared through the opening into the darkness which lay behind it.
 Bell switched off his weapon when the hole was big enough. He turned around and let his feet dangle
into the darkness. Then he bent forward and shone into the opening with his helmet-lamp.

What he saw was part of an apparently circular room which, though not much higher than 6 feet, was