"Harry Harrison - A Transatlantic Tunnel Hurrah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

man in a dustup, thumbs ready all’t‘time. Trying to even the score you see
for the one he had gouged out.”

Conro glared out of his single red-dened eye until they had climbed up
beside him, then ground the train of wagons forward.

“And how’s the face?” Fighting Jack asked.

“Sand.” One-eyed Conro spat a globe of tobacco into the darkness. “Still
sand, sand. Loose at the top so Mr. Washington has dropped the pressure
so she won’t blow, so now there’s plenty of water at the bottom and all the
pumps are working.”

“‘Tis the air pressure you see,” Fighting Jack explained to Drigg as
though the messenger were inter-ested, which he was not. “We’re out
under’t’ocean here with ten, twenty fathoms of water over our heads and
that water trying to push down through the sand and get’t‘us all the time,
you see. So we raise the air pressure to keep it out. But seeing as how this
tunnel is thirty feet high there is a difference in the pressure from top to
bottom and that’s a problem. When we raise the pressure to keep things
all nice at’t’top, why then the water seeps in at’t‘bottom where the
pressure is lower and we’re like’t’swim. But, mind you, if we was to raise
the pressure so the water is kept out at’t‘bottom why then there is too
much pressure at’t’top and there is a possibility of blowing a hole right
through to the ocean bottom and letting all the wa-ters of the world down
upon our heads. But don’t you worry about it.”

Drigg could do nothing else. He found, that for some inexplicable
reason his hands were shaking so that he had to grip the chain about his
wrist tightly so it did not rattle. All too soon the train began to slow and
the end of the tunnel appeared clearly ahead. A hulking metal shield that
sealed off the workers from the virgin earth outside and enabled them to
attack it through door-like openings that pierced the steel. Drills were at
work above, whining and grumbling, while mechanical shovels below dug
at the displaced muck and loaded it into the waiting wagons. The scene
appeared dis-organized and frenzied, but even to Drigg’s untutored eye it
was quickly apparent that work was going for-ward in an orderly and
efficient manner. Fighting Jack climbed down and Drigg followed him,
over to the shield and up a flight of metal stairs to one of the openings.

“Stay here,” the ganger ordered. “I’ll bring him out.”

Drigg had not the slightest desire to go a step farther and wondered at
his loyalty to the company that had brought him this far. Close feet away
from him was the bare face of the soil through which the tunnel was being
driven.

Gray sand and hard clay. The shovels ripped into it and dropped it
down to the waiting machines below. There was something sinister and
frightening about the entire oper-ation and Drigg tore his gaze away to