"Colin Wilson - Lifeforce" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Colin)

miles an hour. Carlsen switched off all the cabin lights. Gradually, as their eyes adjusted,
they could see the grey-black metal walls that seemed to absorb the sunlight. When they
were a few hundred yards away, Carlsen stopped the Hermes. The seven men crowded
against the port. Through its thick crystal, as transparent as clear water, they could look
up at the side of the craft, towering above like an iron cliff as far as their eyes could see.
Below, the same wall seemed to plunge into the gulf of space. They were all accustomed
to weightlessness, but it produced a sensation of dizziness to look down; some
instinctively drew back from the glass.
At this distance, it was clear that the ship, was a derelict. The walls west grained
and pitted. A hundred yards away to the right, a ten-foot hole had been ripped through the
plates. The searchlight showed that the metal was six inches thick. As the beam moved
slowly over the walls, they could see other deep indentations and smaller meteor holes.
Steinberg, the navigator, said: "She looks as though she's been in a war."
"Could be. But I think that's mostly meteor damage."
"It must have been a meteor storm."
They stared in silence. Carlsen said: "Either that, or she's been here a very long
time."
No one had to ask what he meant. The chances of a spacecraft being struck by a
meteor are roughly the same as the chance of a ship in the Atlantic bumping into a
floating wreck. For this hulk to be so battered, it would have had to spend thousands of
years in space.
Craigie, the Scots radio operator, said: "I don't like this bluddy thing. There's
something nasty about it."
The others obviously felt the same. Carlsen said, almost casually: "And it could
be the greatest scientific discovery of the twenty-first century."
In the excitement and tension of the past hour, no one had thought of this. Now,
with the telepathic intuition that seems to develop between men in space, they all grasped
what was in Carlsen's mind. This could make each individual of them more famous than
the first men on the moon. They had found a spacecraft that was clearly not from earth.
They had therefore established beyond question that there is intelligent life in other
galaxies. . .
The sound of the radio made them all jump. It was their reply from moonbase.
The voice was that of Dan Zelensky, the chief controller. Obviously, their message had
already caused excitement. Zelensky said: "Okay. Proceed with caution and test for
radioactivity and space virus. Report back as soon as possible." In the silence, they could
all hear it. They also heard Craigie's reply, dictated by Carlsen, Craigie's voice sounded
cracked from excitement. "This is definitely an alien spacecraft, approximately fifty miles
long and twenty-five miles high. It looks like some damn great castle floating in the sky.
It seems unlikely there is life aboard. It's probably been here for at least a few hundred
years. We request permission to investigate." This message was repeated half a dozen
times at minute intervals, so that even if space static made most of them inaudible, one
might get through.
In the hour during which they waited for the reply, the Hermes bumped gently
against the unknown craft. They were all eating tinned beef and washing it down with
Scotch whisky; the excitement had made them ravenous. Again Zelensky came on
personally, and his voice was also thick with tension.
"Please take fullest possible precautions, and if any danger, prepare for return to
moonbase immediately. You are advised not to attempt to board until you've had a night's
sleep. I've talked to John Skeat at Mount Palomar, and he admits that he's baffled. If this
thing's fifty miles across, it should have been discovered two hundred years ago. Long-