Читать книгу I am Earthman онлайн | страница 33

Adam, for a short time, closed the notebook, picked up a photo of the students. I looked at the photo. Only nine people were captured there, that is, four girls and five guys. And in Andrey's notes, it was about ten students. "Where is the tenth? Perhaps he, that is, the tenth person who photographed all the others, did not enter the frame himself? " thought Adam and then, putting the photo aside, began to read the notes further.

Further, the author wrote that Before going down to the cave, so that the descent into the cave and our entire further excursion would be clearly organized and successful, all the members of the group, after consulting among themselves, despite my objections, chose me as the leader of our hiking group. So, under my leadership, the descent into the cave began. We, by the light of lanterns, going down the slope down the cave and walking about one kilometer, and perhaps a little more than a kilometer, reached the shore of an underground lake. On the shore of the lake, we found traces of a camp of speleologists, where they stopped for a short time and then apparently turned back, since they trampled only there, within a radius of twenty, twenty-five meters, and the tracks did not go further to the right or to the left. After making a short stop here, we decided to continue our journey further. At first we wanted to go along the lake shore to the right, but the flat surface of the lake shore continuously narrowed as we moved forward, and very soon, according to my approximate calculations, after walking about forty meters, we came across a high, insurmountably steep stone block hanging over the water. This meant that there were no paths further along the coast in this direction. We came back where we started on the right. Here one of the girls, probably very tired of walking, suggested to stop, there is a camp here, from here and start exploring the lake. However, many people did not agree with her opinion and proposal. We, that is, everyone else wanted to go further, to see and learn more than the speleologists who had been here before us. With such intentions, we continued our way along the shore of the lake, to the left side. The surface of the lake shore was stony flat, but with turns and bends sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, and the distance to the side walls of the cave on the way of our journey then narrowed, then widened, however, we no longer encountered insurmountable large obstacles on the way in this direction. And after walking along the shore of the lake for about eight hundred meters, we came out into a wide, daylight-lit area. It was a wide area on the shore of an underground lake, surrounded by very high mountain rocks, which, in its outline, resembled a very large, one-tenth open dome, observatory, with a diameter of about four hundred meters at the base. Moreover, the open part of the naturally created dome was located in the southern side of the mountain and the sun's rays penetrated and fell in a narrow strip on a small part of the lake shore, on the water and, as if reflected by a plume from the water surface, one end reached a small island located in the middle, that is, by daylight of the visible part of the lake. On the island and on the shore of the lake where we were, there were densely growing some exotic, tropical small plants that we had not seen before and unknown to us, similar to reed plants that grow closer to the equatorial part of the earth, but significantly different from them in their appearance and shimmering with a very transparent bluish-green appearance, leaves. The water in the lake slightly smelled of some strange smell to us. The air in the cave was a little moist, as after a short rain in the spring, but we were very easy to breathe, which meant that there was a little more oxygen in the air than usual. Despite the month of November, the cave was very warm and cozy. Before we had time to look around properly, such a bright glow was visible from the open part of the dome that it became blinding light under the arches of the dome of the cave. At that moment, all the members of the group thought that a meteorite had fallen near the cave. Without paying special attention to this event, we decided to set up our temporary camp here, so that we could then start exploring and exploring the cave and the underground lake from here. However, after some time, when we had not even had time to properly settle in and distribute the responsibilities of each member of the group, a powerful earthquake suddenly began. The tremors sometimes intensified, sometimes decreased. Waves began to rise in the lake and the water began to flood the shore of the lake where we were. Under such circumstances, it was very dangerous to stay in the cave. We should have saved ourselves. Under these conditions, we urgently decided to climb back to the surface as soon as possible. On the way back, after going up the slope almost half of the way, we learned that the narrow place of the way out of the cave was filled up with stones during the earthquake. So the way back was closed for us, and the earthquakes continued with strong, then small tremors. We didn't have time to establish the scale of the blockage on the way back out of the cave, since the ground was shaking all the time under our feet. Occasionally, from the depths of the earth came muffled, but at the same time reflected in our body with unpleasant sensations and premonitions of a terrible disaster that had already occurred on the surface of the Earth, dull, muffled sounds, as if the Earth was moaning in pain. By the light of lanterns, we found a narrow, not deep opening in the cave with a low integral stone ceiling and entered it. So they protected themselves from falling random stones on their heads. Everyone was wondering "is it really so catastrophically bad there, on the surface, maybe an asteroid or a large comet fell" Cut off from the world, being in a cave, we could not know what happened on the surface and we could only wait. The earthquake continued. We were rocking from side to side, as if we were at sea in the cabin of a ship during a storm. Time passed, but the earthquake continued and it seemed that there would be no end to it. Therefore, in order to save the batteries on the lanterns, we turned them off. No one asked any questions, they sat in the pitch-black cave darkness, pressing their bodies together, in silence. Sitting in the pitch darkness, without waiting for the earthquake to end, from fatigue and from the nervous strain we experienced, we all fell asleep there.