"Wilson, Richard - Transitory Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Richard)

In the plane he found what he wanted: a waterproof flashlight. Again he went
down. This time he made straight for the hole. With the light held firmly under
his armpit, he swam cautiously inside. The light illumined a small compartment.
The swimmer shuddered. It was cold in here. His natural buoyancy caused him to
rise. He flashed the light upward, and almost dropped it. He caught a glimpse of
a bloated, distorted human figure, floating face down.
He felt a trifle silly when he realized that the apparition was merely a
reflection of himself on the undersurface of the water. A second later he broke
through into air.
Carefully he expelled some air from his lungs, drew a shallow breath. The air,
although dank, was breathable. Gratefully he filled his lungs.
From the curvature of the gray walls revealed in the searching beam of his light
it would seem that he was in a space between the inner and outer hulls of this
strange, artificial sphere. The hulls were about ten feet apart, joined at
intervals by girders of the same gray material.
Doug Pelton stuck the flashlight in his belt and hauled himself up on a girder.
Here he sat, shivering slightly, while he pondered his next move.
Above him on the inside hull he made out a circular panel--or was it a door?
BY STANDING on the girder and leaning his body against the inside hull Doug
managed to reach what appeared to be a knob in the center of the door. It turned
under his hand.
The door opened slowly and silently--outward. He shone his light inside. A bare
room, perhaps a dozen feet square, was revealed. At the far side was a door
similar to the one standing open. But what caught his eye was the diving helmet
Charlie Hayes had worn, lying on the floor. Doug climbed in and picked it up. It
was still wet. So was the floor, he noticed, where Hayes' bare feet had tracked
water across the room.
He closed the door. The far door opened as easily as the first.
At that moment the rays from his flashlight became weak, ineffectual compared
with the radiance that poured through from beyond the doorway. When his eyes had
accustomed themselves to the light, Doug found himself on the threshold of a
strange, glittering world. He stepped through the doorway onto a platform. The
door closed automatically behind him.
Immediately above him the whole ceiling of the huge room glowed with a
brilliant, but unglaring, radiance. To his right at the edge of the unrailed
platform was a set of parallel moving cogs, resembling the beginning of a
descending escalator, but without steps or railings. It swept down, arced like a
ski-jump, and vanished through a portal in the wall of the room below.
A rhythmic throbbing came from a glittering pile of machinery a hundred feet
below. Doug, gratefully absorbing the glow of heat, marveled at the machines,
that dwarfed even those that drove ocean liners. What sort of place was this?
And where were the people in charge of it? So far he had seen no human being.
He looked for a way to get down to what seemed to be the center of activity.
There was none--unless the rows of cogs that clicked downward in an endless
chain were a means of transportation.
He dared not attempt such a descent in bare feet, and cast about for something
to protect him. Standing in a row at an end of the platform were half a dozen
gleaming cubes of silver, measuring perhaps three feet each way. Atop each was
what seemed to be a handle, in the center of which was a metal ball the size of
an orange--also silver in color.