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

remarkably wide. Bell slid forward until he could barely hold on to the edge of the hole; then he dropped
down and called to the others: "You can come down! Be careful when you jump!"

While they slipped through the hole one by one, Bell tried to illuminate the entire room. He noticed that
in contrast to the tunnel through which they had passed the natural rock was nowhere to be seen. The
walls and floor were covered with a dark coating reflecting the light of his lamp as if it were polished.

The flounder they had followed seemed to have vanished. Bell was unable to detect it anywhere.

On the other hand Marshall made a discovery: "It seems to be chockfull of thought-impulses in here as if
we were marching right through the brain of some gigantic being."

"Any danger?" Bell inquired.

"No, it has no tendency and doesnтАЩt concern us at all."

Bell was dissatisfied. "Now we trudged half a day long through the rock and chewed our way in here by
the sweat of our brow. All this only to land in a subterranean room? Where the devil did that flounder go
that led us here?"

Marshall opined: "It might very well be right around here. It would be hard to recognize against this dark
background."

Bell skidded around on his knees, searching the floor inch by inch. Ras Tschubai. and Tako Kakuta
wanted to help him but at this moment a high-pitched rustling sound came from the low ceiling. Bell rolled
over on his side to look up. He saw a piece of the shiny coating peeled off the ceiling and started to float
down.

It fell to the floor between Marshall and the JapaneseтАФa 50-square-foot big paper-thin sheet. It
immediately broke up in 4 parts which hastily got on the move again. Scraping and rustling they slid
across the floor to the nearest wall.

Bell was so flabbergasted, seeing them vanish through the dark coating into the wall-like the
lacquer-flounder that had shown them the way to this roomтАФthat he was barely able to control his
reactions. "Flounders!" he shouted. "The wholeroom is made of flounders!"

He turned around and looked up to the ceiling. The spot from where the 4 weird Gom creatures had
dropped down looked exactly as the other surfaces of the ceiling, walls and floor. However this didnтАЩt
shake BellтАЩs theory one whit.

Marshall and the two teleporters had given up their search. Marshall probed the environs but was unable
to sense anything other than the indecipherable conglomeration of thoughts. "What do you make of it?" he
asked Bell.

"Nothing," Bell replied impulsively, "except that it must be the floundersтАЩ idea of fun to paper the walls of
this room with their own bodies."
"And for what purpose?"

"Who can tell?"