"David Wingrove & Rand Miller - Myst 01 - The Book of Ti'ana" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wingrove David)

sinuous,
like huge, segmented worms, their tough exteriors kept buffed and polished
when
they were not burrowing in the rock.

Metal ladders went down beneath the gridwork platform to a second,
smaller
platform to which the junior members of the expedition had had their
quarters
temporarily removed to make way for their guests. It was to here, after a
long,
exhausting day of explanations, that Aitrus returned, long after most of
his
colleagues had retired.

There were thirty-six of them in all, none older than thirty_all of
them
graduates of the Academy; young guilds-men who had volunteered for
this
expedition Some had given up and been replaced along the way, but more than
two
-thirds of the original crews remained

Two years, four months, Aitrus thought as he sat on the edge of his bedroll
and
began to pull off his boots. It was a long time to be away from home He
could
have gone home, of course-Master Telanis would have given him leave if he
had
asked-but that would have seemed like cheating, somehow. No, an expedition
was
not really an expedition if one could go home whenever one wished

Even as he kicked his other boot off, he felt the sudden telltale vibration
in
the platform, followed an instant or two later by a low, almost
inaudible
rumble. A Messenger was coming'

The expedition had cut its way through several miles of rock, up from one of
the
smaller, outermost caverns of D'ni. They could, of course, have gone
up
vertically, like a mine shaft, but so direct a route into D'ni was thought
not
merely inadvisable but dangerous The preferred scheme-the scheme the Council
had
eventually agreed upon-was a far more indirect route, cut at a maximum of
3825
torans-22032 degrees-from the horizontal One that could be walked