"Robert Grossbach - Of Scorned Women and Causal Loops" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grossbach Robert)

except for a giant overhead crane suspended from a heavy steel girder.
But as they approached the far end, Lagrange suddenly saw that a huge
section of floor simply vanished into a cavernous rectangular pit. He fought
off vertigo as they stared over the edge.

“Six stories deep,” said Elizabeth.

At the bottom, amidst scattered pieces of equipment, tools, and
ladders, was a structure that looked like two piggy-backed railroad cars.
Thirty-centimeter-diameter ropes of cable, numbering in the hundreds, ran
from the cars up the sides of the pit and disappeared into boxes of
electronics that lined the walls.

Lagrange pointed to a circle on the roof of the top car. “That’s where
Monsieur Parino entered?”

Elizabeth nodded. “A hatch. Hard to tell from up here.”

“And you’re absolutely certain there’s no other way into or out of the
experi-ment?”

She shrugged. “You should know, Inspector. Your people have been
over that structure about a thousand times.”

“Not my people.”
 “You’re Swiss? I’m sorry, I just assumed you were French. I know
there was some sort of a jurisdictional dispute because the tunnel straddles
the border and —”

“I’m with Europol.”

Her eyes rose in feigned admiration. “Ah, Europol. Yes, someone
said they were sending an expert.”

“Hardly an expert,” said Lagrange. “Far far from it. But I suppose,
relative to my local colleagues, I am perhaps ever so slightly more
educated in the area.”

“Would you like to go down to make an examination?” she asked. “I’m
sorry, but there are no elevators, we’ll have to use the ladders.”

Immediately, Lagrange felt his buttock spasm in anticipation. “That
won’t be necessary, I’ve studied the reports.” He indicated an aperture in
the side of the pit, five stories below. “That’s where the beams emerge?”

“That’s the opening into the collider tunnel, yes, but ‘emerge’ is
perhaps not the right word. In operation, of course, the tunnel is continuous
through the experiment. An extremely high vacuum must be maintained.”
Somehow, she seemed to sense his discomfort. “Would you be more at
ease in another area?”