"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 181 - Up From Earth's Center" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The warm days ended. Winter came. The pools of rainwater in the potholes in the island stone began to
have thin crusts of ice, and the rocks became bone-colored with coatings of frost.

Gilmore made hardly a move to thwart the certainty of freezing to death. It was too much of a certainty
for him to compete against. It was inevitable. His pants now were frayed into shorts, and he stuffed them
with dry seaweed, and tied seaweed about himself with other seaweed for binding until he resembled an
ambulatory pile of the smelly stuff. Actually, it did no good, and it soon became definitely established in
his mind that he would freeze to death. He began to wait for death almost as one would await a friend.

But rescue got there before death, although at first it was dull and undramatic.

Gilmore was sitting on a stone, contemplating eternity, when a pleasant voice hailed him. "Hello, there,"
the voice said. 'Are you the proprietor of this heavenly spot?"

A glaze settled over Gilmore's sore eyes, and for a long time he did not turn around. In fact, he did not
turn until he had conducted quite an odd conversation, in a small choking voice.

"So you finally got to me," Gilmore said. His voice had the hopelessness of a soul lost in interstellar
space.

"Yeah. It took a little time to climb the cliff." The voice contained some pleasant surprise. "I didn't think
you had seen us. You didn't give any sign. We were rather puzzled."

Gilmore shuddered and said, "I don't always see you, do I?"

"Huh?"

"Us?" Gilmore continued, selecting carefully from the words the pleasant voice had said. "Us? We? Is
there more than one of you now?"

"There are eighteen of us," the voice said. "Say, what's the matter with you, fellow?"

"So you went back for more experienced help!" Gilmore went on.

"Eighteen of you!" croaked Gilmore. "Good God! They must have depleted the staff!"

"What staff?"

"The executive personnel in hell!" said Gilmore bitterly.

"Who are you kidding?" the amiably friendly voice inquired.

Now Gilmore swung around, to stare at the stranger, and to lose his composure until he was a shaking,
gibbering man. Gilmore saw, standing before him, a tall middle-aged man with a fat ruddy face and a
sheepskin greatcoat and a faint odor of good hair pomade that oddly fitted the icy island wind. Gilmore
saw beyond the man, on the chopping sea, a sailing yacht of about eighty feet waterline, schooner-rigged,
and on the beach a dory with shipped oars and a couple of waiting sailors in thick blue peacoats.

Strangers all. Man, yacht, dory, sailors, all strangers and inconceivable. Unacceptable, an illusion, a
figment concocted out of ghastly chicanery, a work of Satan as far as Gilmore could understand.