"Stanislaw Lem - Solaris2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

With a muffled sigh of resignation, the spacesuit expelled its air. I
was free.
I found myself inside a vast, silver funnel, as high as a cathedral nave.
A cluster of colored pipes ran down the sloping walls and disappeared into
rounded orifices. I turned round. The ventilation shafts were roaring,
sucking in the poisonous gases from the planet's atmosphere which had
infiltrated when my capsule had landed inside the Station. Empty, resembling
a burst cocoon, the cigar-shaped capsule stood upright, enfolded by a calyx
mounted on a steel base. The outer casing, scorched during flight, had turned
a dirty brown.
I went down a small stairway. The metal floor below had been coated with
a heavy-duty plastic. In places, the wheels of trolleys carrying rockets had
worn through this plastic covering to expose the bare steel beneath.
The throbbing of the ventilators ceased abruptly and there was total
silence. I looked around me, a little uncertain, waiting for someone to
appear; but there was no sign of life. Only a neon arrow glowed, pointing
towards a moving walkway which was silently unreeling. I allowed myself to be
carried forward.
The ceiling of the hall descended in a fine parabolic arc until it
reached the entrance to a gallery, in whose recesses gas cylinders, gauges,
parachutes, crates and a quantity of other objects were scattered about in
untidy heaps.
The moving walkway set me down at the far end of the gallery, on the
threshold of a dome. Here there was an even greater disorder. A pool of oily
liquid spread out from beneath a pile of oil-drams; a nauseating smell hung in
the air; footprints, in a series of glutinous smears, went off in all
directions. The oil-drums were covered with a tangle of tickertape, torn
paper and other waste.
Another green arrow directed me to the central door. Behind this
stretched a narrow corridor, hardly wide enough for two men to walk side by
side, lit by slabs of glass let into the ceiling. Then another door, painted
in green and white squares, which was ajar; I went in.
The cabin had concave walls and a big panoramic window, which a glowing
mist had tinged with purple. Outside the murky waves slid silently past.
Open cupboards lined the walls, filled with instruments, books, dirty glasses,
vacuum flasks — all covered with dust. Five or six small trolleys and some
collapsible chairs cluttered up the stained floor. One chair alone was
inflated, its back raised. In this armchair there was a little thin man, his
face burnt by the sun, the skin on his nose and cheeks coming away in large
flakes. I recognized him as Snow, a cybernetics expert and Gibarian's deputy.
In his time he had published articles of great originality in the Solarist
Annual. It so happened that I had never had the opportunity of meeting him.
He was wearing a mesh shirt which allowed the grey hairs of his sunken chest
to poke through here and there, and canvas trousers with a great many pockets,
mechanic's trousers, which had once been white but now were stained at the
knees and covered with holes from chemical burns. He was holding one of those
pear-shaped plastic flasks which are used in spaceships not equipped with
internal gravitational systems. Snow's eyes widened in amazement as he looked
up and saw me. The flask dropped from his fingers and bounced several times,
spilling a few drops of transparent liquid. Blood drained from his face. I