"Allen Steele - Labyrinth of Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

half-ton and resembled an egg which had sprouted semirobotic arms and legs. Within its cocoon-
like interior, Moberly's body was covered with biosensors.
"Respiration, EKG, blood pressure, brain alpha patterns all rising," the Russian doctor
reported. "He's extremely nervous. Dr. Kawakami."
 "Don't inject him with anything, Tamara," Kawakami replied. "I would rather have him
nervous than somnambulant at this juncture." He glanced over Verduin's shoulder. "What's in
there, Paul?"
Verduin shook his head. "It resembles a normal chamber, except that the walls seem
irregular. Lumpy. And look at this." He pointed to the spectrographic readout. "Metal, not stone.
Light aluminum-steel alloy of some variety. We have not seen anything like this yet."
Don't keep me in suspense, guys. Moberly's voice came through their headsets. Are there any
booby-traps here?
Kawakami and Verduin traded glances. An unnecessary question. Each chamber of the
underground labyrinth had been booby-trapped, and already one person had been killed. Moberly
was really asking if there was anything which would annihilate him the moment he entered the
new chamber. Verduin shrugged, then shook his head. "Go ahead, Hal," Kawakami said. "Take
two steps into the room and stop. Also increase your white-light intensity a little bit so we can get
a good picture."
As Moberly stepped through the door into Room C4-20, the TV image transmitted from his
armor's chest-mounted camera brightened. Kawakami and Verduin watched the monitor screen
between their stations. The walls, toned like burnished copper, were intricately patterned,
interlaced with whorls and swirls as if cut by a jigsaw. Very strange. Other chambers in the
Labyrinth contained wall designs, but none as complex or extensive as these. The camera
swiveled to the far wall and stopped. Hey! Moberly yelled. Do you see that?
"Yes, we see it," Verduin replied excitedly. Isralilova turned to look at the monitor. After
staring at the screen for a moment, she cast a rare smile at Kawakami.
What they saw of significance in the last wall of the new chamber was nothing at all. There
was no door in the far wall.
"That's it," Kawakami whispered. "The end."
Then Verduin glanced down at his console and stopped grinning. Cupping his left hand over
his headset mike, he pointed at his screen. Kawakami looked and felt his elation vanish.
"Electromagnetic surge," Verduin whispered. A computer-generated red line in a window on
his screen had suddenly spiked in its center. Before Kawakami could ask, Verduin answered his
next question by pointing at a more regular blue line underneath the red spike. "That is his suit
voltage. The red line indicates an exterior source. The surge happened the moment he stepped in
the room. I cannot isolate the source, but it is definitely from inside C4-20."
They heard a familiar grinding sound in their headphones, picked up by the armor's exterior
mike. Everyone looked up. The door's closing, Moberly said. There it goes. The TV image on the
monitor screen shifted sharply as Moberly turned around, now showing the door to the corridor
quickly shutting itself. Moberly lurched forward a step, but the door was sealed before he could
reach it.
Everyone in the module took a deep breath. Although it had been anticipated that the new
room would reseal itself once Moberly was inside, there was still a palpable sense of foreboding.
Hal was obviously keeping his own fear under tight reinтАФthe professional cool of a scientist-
explorer, typical of a man who had hung a framed picture of Sir Richard Burton above his
bunkтАФbut the people at the other end of his comlink were at the edge of their nerves.
They remembered what had happened to Valery Bronstein . . . and they were all too aware of
the solitary grave that lay on the small hill behind the base.
Still, Kawakami thought, it's not going to do Hal any good if we begin to panic. "All right,"
he said. "It knows he's in there." His fingers found the keypad in his lap and punched in two