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

the glass and the white-draped figures on the long stone slabs could be seen
plainly.
Hayes also stopped. He gave a start.
"Why," he said, "they're alive!"
Doug stared. He saw one of the enormous green figures slowly close the fingers
of one hand that lay by its side.
"The air must have done it," muttered Hayes, almost to himself. "They were in an
airtight, transparent tomb. Only fresh air was needed to revive them."
Doug's eyes were fastened on the nearest figure, which was turning its great
bald head slowly to one side, although the eyes remained closed. "But," he
whispered, "why?"
"Possibly these people are travelers from a distant planet--from the size of
them I'd say a tremendous planet. Perhaps, after leaving for their destination,
which might or might not have been Earth, they placed themselves in suspended
animation, leaving the mechanical details of the weary journey to their
near-intelligent robots."
"Then--they may have been here for years," commented Doug in awe.
"Decades, perhaps. Evidently the robots had instructions to revive them when
that destination was reached. The fact that they have not done so leads me to
believe that Earth was merely an accidental, unplanned stop. En route disaster
overtook them."
"A meteor?" suggested Doug, thinking of the gaping hole in the side of the
sphere. "You mean they used Earth as a sort of interplanetary garage?"
He received no answer. Following Hayes' gaze, he saw the nearest of the waking
green giants wrinkle its brow in a mighty attempt to open its eyes.
At that moment the robot who had been leading them reappeared around a corner,
evidently in search of them. Upon catching sight of them, it hurried forward and
whipped out a tentacle that swept Doug off his feet. He made no resistance this
time, not because he was used to being handled like a sack of wheat, but because
he was convinced that the robots were friendly and trying, in their own way, to
help them.
Doug looked back to see Charlie Hayes standing as one bewitched, his jaw muscles
showing bunched through his skin, perspiration standing out on his brow, his
eyes fixed in a wide, unseeing stare on the figure behind the broken glass.
For one terrible moment Doug saw the huge, quasi-human being, now sitting
upright on its slab, supporting itself on its palms, its glowing superhuman
white eyes boring into those of Charlie Hayes.
DOUG PELTON HAD a confused recollection of being locked with Hayes into a metal
bubble in a room filled with pulsing machinery and circular openings in all the
walls. He was glad the robot had wrapped a segmented arm around his wrist and
fastened it to a handle, because when the bubble had stopped shooting upward
swiftly through a tube, then more slowly through water, and finally bobbed up
and down on the surface, he pulled the handle almost automatically. The top of
the globe fell away, disclosing the Pacific Ocean, a battleship and a prodigious
amount of air-bubbles coming to the surface from below. Of the sphere and plane
there was no sign.
Shortly afterward a motor launch brought Doug Pelton and the unconscious Hayes
to the ship, where the young captain apologized in Oxford English for having
caused discomfort to two honorable American citizens.
"Three," corrected Doug, somewhat dizzily. "One's down there--" he indicated the