"Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автора

coil transmitter.

He stopped and listened carefully. From somewhere in the depths of the
forest came a monotonous, muffled rumbling. Maxim realized that he had been
hearing it for some time before it broke through to his consciousness. It
was not an animal or waterfall, but a mechanical device, some sort of
barbarous machine. It wheezed, made grinding noises, and gave off a rusty
odor. And it was drawing closer.
Hunching over and edging closer to the shoulder, Maxim ran noiselessly
toward the machine and then stopped just before reaching an intersection.
The road here was muddy, with deep ugly ruts and slabs of concrete jutting
up. It smelled foul and was very radioactive. Maxim squatted and looked to
his left, toward the approaching rumbling and grinding.
A minute later it appeared. A hot stinking mammoth of riveted metal,
rumbling along the road with enormous mud-clogged caterpillar treads. It
plodded along, humpbacked and shabby, clanging through the iron litter in
the forest. It was stuffed with a mixture of raw plutonium and lanthanides.
Driverless and helpless, yet menacing, it swung over the intersection and
plodded on, dangling a tail of scorching heat. It disappeared into the
forest, growling, tossing and turning, roaring, its fury gradually
subsiding.
Maxim caught his breath and brushed away the midges. He was stunned: in
his whole life he had never seen anything so absurd and pitiful. "Well," he
thought, "I won't find any positron senders around here." He watched the
monster until it disappeared and he suddenly noticed that the crossroad was
just a narrow corridor through the forest. Maybe he ought to overtake it.
Stop it and turn off its reactor. He listened carefully. Crackling and
crashing filled the forest. The monster was moving deeper into the forest
like a hippo into a bog. Then the rumble of the engine drew closer again.
Clanging and roaring, it plodded once more over the intersection and
returned to the area it had just left. "Boy, oh boy," thought Maxim. "I'd
better keep clear. Vicious beasts and uncivilized robots are not for me." He
paused, broke from the bushes, and, with one bound, leaped over the polluted
intersection.
After walking very rapidly for some time, inhaling deeply to clear his
lungs of the iron mammoth's exhaust fumes, he slowed down. He thought about
what he had encountered in his first two hours on his inhabited island and
tried to construct a logical picture from his bizarre experiences. It was
too difficult; the pieces were incredible, unreal. The forest itself was
straight out of a fairy tale: almost human voices of fantastic creatures
echoed through it. As in a fairy tale, an old deserted road led to an
enchanted castle, and invisible, evil sorcerers placed obstacles in the way
of those who chanced to pass by. From afar, they had showered his ship with
meteorites and, failing to turn him back, had then burned his ship, caught
him in a trap, and dispatched an iron dragon after him. The dragon was old
and stupid, but they had surely realized their mistake and were preparing
something more up-to-date.
"Listen here," said Maxim to them, "I've no intention of breaking the
spell over your castles and waking your sleeping beauties. All I want is to
meet one of you, one of your more intelligent people, who can help me with a