"01 - At the Earth's Core" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

While we were talking the mighty iron mole had bored its way
over a mile into the rock of the earth's crust.

"Let us continue on, then," I replied. "It should soon
be over at this rate. You never intimated that the speed
of this thing would be so high, Perry. Didn't you know it?"

"No," he answered. "I could not figure the speed exactly,
for I had no instrument for measuring the mighty power
of my generator. I reasoned, however, that we should make
about five hundred yards an hour."

"And we are making seven miles an hour," I concluded
for him, as I sat with my eyes upon the distance meter.
"How thick is the Earth's crust, Perry?" I asked.

"There are almost as many conjectures as to that as there
are geologists," was his answer. "One estimates it
thirty miles, because the internal heat, increasing at
the rate of about one degree to each sixty to seventy
feet depth, would be sufficient to fuse the most refractory
substances at that distance beneath the surface.
Another finds that the phenomena of precession and
nutation require that the earth, if not entirely solid,
must at least have a shell not less than eight hundred
to a thousand miles in thickness. So there you are.
You may take your choice."

"And if it should prove solid?" I asked.

"It will be all the same to us in the end, David,"
replied Perry. "At the best our fuel will suffice to carry
us but three or four days, while our atmosphere cannot
last to exceed three. Neither, then, is sufficient to bear
us in the safety through eight thousand miles of rock to
the antipodes."

"If the crust is of sufficient thickness we shall come
to a final stop between six and seven hundred miles
beneath the earth's surface; but during the last hundred
and fifty miles of our journey we shall be corpses.
Am I correct?" I asked.

"Quite correct, David. Are you frightened?"

"I do not know. It all has come so suddenly that I scarce
believe that either of us realizes the real terrors of
our position. I feel that I should be reduced to panic;
but yet I am not. I imagine that the shock has been
so great as to partially stun our sensibilities."