"George Zebrowski - The Star Web" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zebrowski George)

Juan opened the channel to the mysterious signal. Suddenly the perfectly symmetrical wail seemed like a
crying in a huge empty auditorium where the house lights were stars. The sound was set in a great silence,
a solitude that suggested an opened vastness, a space of feeling and pride beyond anything Juan had ever
known…

There was nothing left to do now except make preparations to excavate.

In the morning the big copters appeared with the heavy digging machinery. Juan Obrion watched them as
they beat across the blue from the north like giant insects and set down one by one within the circle of
red flags which now outlined the area of ignorance. Summet had promised fifteen machines, with all the
equipment and supplies necessary to the task, together with a hundred men to do the heavy labor. He
had been true to his word.

By noon one heavy steel rotary digger had gone down a hundred feet to shatter itself against a hard
surface of some kind; by one o'clock the same thing had happened in a spot two hundred feet away.
Two big scoops were brought into place and they began to dig a large hole between the two smaller
holes made by the rotaries. Fifty feet down the scoops ran out of reach,- forcing the workers to stop.
The rest of the day was spent in widening the hole and constructing a forty five degree ramp of packed
snow down into the crater for one of the smaller scoops to use.

As it grew dark, Juan and Malachi watched the excavators set up huge floodlights around the site, along
with the portable generators which picked up their daily power load through the microwave transmissions
from orbital solar plants. The compact batteries could store up to seventy-two hours of electrical power,
more than enough to last until the next feed from orbit. One by one the microwave dishes were lined up
to catch the power station as it came up over the horizon, and each ear would sweep one hundred eighty
degrees until the source was lost to sight at the other edge of the world. Against the darkening blue of the
sky, the ears were black circles, expectant sentries listening inside a hollow universe…

Juan watched as the small scoop rolled down into the crater to eat away at the hard ice at the bottom.
The ice began to look dark in the harsh glare of the blue-white plasma lamps.

The crews were working in shifts around the clock, under strict orders. Lena and Rassmussen had long
ago gone to sleep. Juan and Malachi had come out twice during the night.

"The color of that ice," Malachi said, "it's not just the lights."

"It bothered me too," Juan said.

Suddenly there was a grinding sound and the scoop was quiet. Juan moved to his left at the edge to get a
better view.

At the bottom of the crater a section of something black protruded from the ice like a portion of some
huge swimming beast trapped below, no longer capable of motion through whatever sea had first
contained it.

Juan walked past Malachi and down the ramp. Malachi followed. The workers had stepped back from
what they had uncovered. The claw of the scoop was frozen in mid air. The operator had climbed out
onto the tread and was staring at what he had found.

Juan came up to the thing and squatted down to feel the surface with his gloved hand. He made a fist and