"034 (B014) - The Fantastic Island (1935-12) - Ryerson Johnson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"That's anybody's guess."



"We could sure use Doc Savage about now." Climbing higher up the glassy slope, they passed through a belt of cold volcanic pits and cones, where, ages before, the molten rock had bubbled like mush and cooled in scabrous pockmarks.



They came out on a wide plateau where nothing grew, not even the cobra-head cactus, and where the pits were smaller, clogged with earth and so close together that it was necessary to skirt the region to make any forward progress.



Monk stopped suddenly.



"These pits are all in geometric order," he declared. "They're not volcanic pits like the ones below. They're manmade."



Ham stared. On the plain, the glassy rock had given way to a kind of reddish clay, or hard-packed volcanic ash.



"Right," he clipped. "The pits are crumbling away now and mostly buried under loose earth. Hard to tell, but they must have been laid out originally with the regularity of cells in a honeycomb."



As they continued on, the honeycomb pattern became more apparent as the pits were revealed in a less crumbling condition.



"These were dug later," Ham observed.



"Yeah," Monk agreed. "The farther we go, the fresher the pits look."



"Rut what are they for?" Pat wondered. "Say, this all gets queerer and queerer. What's it all about?"





"LISTEN," Ham said, tensely.