"James Rollins - Subterranean" - читать интересную книгу автора (Romeyn Henry)

thank you all for joining us." He paused. "I know it has been a hardship to leave your regular lives behind
so abruptly.

But in a few moments, I'm sure you will be convinced that the disruption was well worth it."

He picked up a remote control for the slide projector and pressed a button. A photograph of a
snowcapped mountain with a plume of dirty smoke appeared on the screen. "Mount Erebus on Ross
Island just off the coast of Antarctica. One of three volcanic cones on this continent. At the base of this
volcano is the U.S. research station, McMurdo. My home for the past five years."

He clicked the button to zero in on a group of low metal buildings clinging to the surface of a gray
glacier. A satellite array sprouted like a bizarre spider from the rooftops. "I have been conducting
geothermal studies for the past ten years on some hot rifts still active deep under the cone and under the
neighboring Ross Sea. NASA assisted with this research. Their third shuttle, six years ago, made radio
scans of the earth's crust, looking for oil fields and other such pockets. I commissioned a scan of Mount
Erebus and found some amazing things."

He tapped the button, and a cross-sectional diagram of the crust under the volcanic cone appeared on
screen. A murmur arose from the crowd. "As you can see, an intricate cavern system was discovered
below Erebus, spreading hundreds of miles."

He clicked to the next slide. "Closer investigation with sonar and radar revealed a huge cavern separated
from the deepest rift by a mere six hundred meters of stone." He guided a pointer to show the network of
rifts that led to the massive pocket. "We named this cave Alpha Cavern. Almost five miles in diameter,
the cavern floor was plumbed at two miles below the surface of the continent. Almost three times deeper
than man has ever stepped foot."

The next picture showed a group of smiling men, faces encrusted in dirt and dust, posing in front of a
large raw-edged hole. "After three years of work, we blasted and mined our way into this chamber. It
took another year to wire and set up a camp on this chamber's floor." A spot-lighted set of Quonset huts
and tents appeared next on the screen. A three-story wooden building protruded from the middle. A
second, similar building, a mere skeleton of wooden framing and scaffolding, was under construction.
"Alpha Base," he noted. "We worked in secret. Access restricted to those with the proper clearance."

The next slide caused his audience to gasp. Blakely smiled slightly. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present a
mystery."

Ashley, who had been rubbing her eyes and yawning, wondering what all this talk of volcanic activity
and mining had to do with her, bolted out of her seat. It had to be a hoax. What she saw blew a
mile-wide hole in accepted anthropologic theory.
 The photograph projected on the screen revealed a spot-lighted section of the cavern wall. Dug into the
wall was a network of cliff-dwelling homes, rising several hundred feet up the wall. Unlike the organized
Anasazi cliff dwellings she had studied in New Mexico, dwellings with distinct terraces and geometric
conformations, these cavern dwellings were more rudimentary, crude, a haphazard series of rough caves.

Blakely continued after the audience's reaction had subsided to a quiet murmur. "Unfortunately, no one
was home"тАФnervous laughter tickled across the roomтАФ"but we discovered a few scattered artifacts."
He clicked through the next series of slides. One of the slides was the diamond fertility figurine.

Ashley was numb as she settled back into her seat. She raised her hand. "Excuse me, Dr. Blakely."