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

in upon my somber reflections.

"Ninety miles and 153 degrees," I replied.

"Gad, but we've knocked that thirty-mile-crust theory
into a cocked hat!" he cried gleefully.

"Precious lot of good it will do us," I growled back.

"But my boy," he continued, "doesn't that temperature reading
mean anything to you? Why it hasn't gone up in six miles.
Think of it, son!"

"Yes, I'm thinking of it," I answered; "but what difference
will it make when our air supply is exhausted whether
the temperature is 153 degrees or 153,000? We'll be just
as dead, and no one will know the difference, anyhow."
But I must admit that for some unaccountable reason
the stationary temperature did renew my waning hope.
What I hoped for I could not have explained, nor did
I try. The very fact, as Perry took pains to explain,
of the blasting of several very exact and learned
scientific hypotheses made it apparent that we could not
know what lay before us within the bowels of the earth,
and so we might continue to hope for the best, at least
until we were dead--when hope would no longer be essential
to our happiness. It was very good, and logical reasoning,
and so I embraced it.

At one hundred miles the temperature had DROPPED TO 152 1/2
DEGREES! When I announced it Perry reached over and hugged me.

From then on until noon of the second day, it continued
to drop until it became as uncomfortably cold as it had
been unbearably hot before. At the depth of two hundred
and forty miles our nostrils were assailed by almost
overpowering ammonia fumes, and the temperature had dropped
to TEN BELOW ZERO! We suffered nearly two hours of this
intense and bitter cold, until at about two hundred
and forty-five miles from the surface of the earth we
entered a stratum of solid ice, when the mercury quickly
rose to 32 degrees. During the next three hours we
passed through ten miles of ice, eventually emerging
into another series of ammonia-impregnated strata,
where the mercury again fell to ten degrees below zero.

Slowly it rose once more until we were convinced that at
last we were nearing the molten interior of the earth.
At four hundred miles the temperature had reached 153 degrees.
Feverishly I watched the thermometer. Slowly it rose.