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

disappeared.

"Hello, I've found it—the inner door!" Malachi shouted.

Obrion turned and saw an orange glow spilling out from the new circle. He walked forward and stepped
through into a corridor which seemed covered with hard obsidian. Overhead, orange-yellow lamps
curved away to the left. The black floor reflected the lights as a dull white streak.

The others stepped through behind him. Obrion waited until the portal had disappeared before leading
the way forward. They would explore while the crew slept above them, exhausted from the digging.
Obrion had gained eight to ten hours before the foreman called in a report, at best a day before Summet
arrived with his baggage of worldly consequences and locust-like experts, including UN military security
teams. He shuddered at what the security and military personnel would see in this thing. It was certain
they would try to turn it to their advantage in terms of appropriations and practical authority.

Obrion loosened a shoulder strap on his backpack, threw back the hood of his parka and adjusted the
position of the emergency light on his hooded cap. As he walked forward, he started to feel very
pro-tective about the structure, as if he had been its architect, almost as if it were enlisting his help,
leading him on with promises of strange rewards, stirring his curiosity in a way he had not known since he
had been a small boy…
"The curve of the corridor is a spiral leading down," Malachi said from behind. "My level indicates we're
moving lower into this thing."

"Look at the markings on the walls," Lena said.

Obrion stopped. Immediately ahead was a large circular opening cut in the floor. The corridor continued
on the other side. They walked up to it together and looked down.

The passage was filled with bright yellow light and went straight down as far as they could see. Warm air
was coming up from it, air that seemed to be overly rich in oxygen. Obrion took a coin out of his pocket
and dropped it in. The coin floated down slowly, as if something were holding it in a vise-like grip.

"Curious," Rassmussen said as he watched, "it stays flat, in the position it had when you let go."

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!" The sound came from behind them in the corridor. They all turned suddenly.
Next to Obrion, Malachi staggered back from the load of his pack and stepped into the opening in the
floor.

"Juan, help me," he said desperately.

Obrion turned in time to see him moving downward. He fell to his knees at the edge, as did Lena and
Magnus. They all reached down with their hands, but Malachi was too far down, falling slowly away, yet
held aloft as if by some force, a man in an invisible elevator. Obrion could see him moving his lips as if in
prayer, but all sound seemed cut off.

Gradually his figure dwindled to the size of a toy doll, then to a dark point, and in another instant Malachi
Moede was gone.

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!" The sound repeated itself behind them, as if to confirm with a banshee's glee the
loss of Malachi, one of Africa's new men, newly swallowed by a mechanical leviathan hibernating in the