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

toward Murray.
"Keep away from me!" he cried, backing against a wall. "Don't touch me!"
He drew his gun and fired wildly into the mass of metal advancing on him. One of
his shots shattered the red eye of the robot. It fell forward, its mechanism out
of control, and crushed the pilot against the wall. He gave a ghastly shriek,
then sank to the floor, dead, with the red-spattered robot lying half atop him.
Charlie Hayes grasped Doug's elbow. "Poor fellow," he said, shaking his gray
head. "They weren't trying to hurt us. They're our friends."
Indeed, the metal men were standing quietly now, their tentacle-arms at their
sides.
Suddenly a tremor of titantic[sic] power rocked the sphere. Doug felt an
unpleasant sinking sensation in the bottom of his stomach. The floor tilted to a
forty-five degree angle, precipitating a mass of machines and men to one side of
the room. Fortunately the humans landed atop the others, so that they were only
severely bruised.
Painfully Hayes and Doug climbed uphill, out of the room into the corridor.
"What was it?" asked Doug, flexing a leg experimentally.
"Maybe we were rammed by a ship," suggested Hayes. "Though I doubt it. It's
broad daylight. I hope," he added, "we aren't going to sink."
Doug watched the robots, who were having difficulty getting out of the room.
They kept slipping backward on the smooth surface as they tried individually to
mount the slope.
As he looked, they piled themselves atop each other like children's blocks, till
those remaining were able to clamber out by using their fellows as a ladder.
Then the topmost robot, with a power that amazed him, pulled the others, who had
linked tentacles, into the corridor.
ONE OF THE ROBOTS--he could not be called the leader, since all seemed to be
identical, inside, as well as out--made his way down the slanting floor. He
stopped in front of a cabinet that was one of several set at intervals along the
wall.
His tentacle curled around a switch. The surface of the cabinet glowed, became
opaque. There formed on the glass a vivid reproduction, in color, of the ocean's
surface as it might be seen from the top of the sphere.
Doug gripped Hayes' shoulder.
"Look!" he said.
Steaming majestically through the waves at a respectful distance was a
battleship, bearing the flag of Great Britain. All that could be seen of their
plane was part of the fuselage and the tail, which slowly settled beneath the
water before their eyes.
As they watched, a gun at the side of the ship belched smoke and flame. Almost
simultaneously the floor under them shot to a new angle as both humans and
automatons lost their footing. Reverberating through the corridors came the
sound of rent metal--additional proof that the sphere was the object of attack.
"Idiots!" breathed Hayes. Then, to Doug: "Come on. This fellow seems to know
something."
They ran down the corridor, preceded by a gesturing metal man. Doug recognized
the route they were following as the one he had traversed as a captive, not half
an hour ago.
Doug halted suddenly. He had been right. There were people behind the glass
walls! The two successive shocks from the guns of the battleship had shattered