A. Belyaev - Classics fantasy – 3

They appeared back soon.

They already passed halfway as suddenly there was something what I grew cold with. The housekeeper dropped to bank with oil and, wishing to pick up her, broke and departed to a chasm…

Wagner made attempt to save it: he unexpectedly unwound the rope attached to a belt and, having hooked on it for a bracket, rushed after the housekeeper. The unfortunate woman fell quite slowly. And as Wagner a strong push gave to the body more bystry movement, it managed to catch up with it. He already gave to it a hand, but could not get: centrifugal force rejected its flight a little aside. And it separated from it soon… Wagner hung for a while a little on the dismissed rope and began to rise slowly from a sky chasm by the earth…

I saw how the unfortunate woman waved a hand… her body quickly decreased… The come night as a curtain, covered this picture of death…

I shuddered, having imagined her last feelings… What will be with it?. Its corpse which is not decaying in Universe cold will rush eternally forward if some star passing close does not attract this corpse.

I was so busy with the thoughts that did not notice how Wagner entered and fell near me.

– Fine death – he told quietly.

I clenched teeth and did not answer it. In me suddenly hatred to Wagner wakened again.

I with horror looked at the chasm which is spread under my legs and for the first time with extraordinary clarity understood that the sky – not blue space over us, and a chasm… that we «live in the sky», having stuck to a mote, Earth, and with the big right therefore it is possible to call us inhabitants of the sky, «inhabitants of heaven», than inhabitants of Earth. Insignificant inhabitants of heaven! Inclination of Earth, obviously, affected not only our body, but also consciousness, arresting it to Earth. Now this communication tore. I felt fragility of our terrestrial existence… Our consciousness arose together with the earth, in sky chasms, in chasms of infinite space, and in the same place it will die away…

I thought, and before my eyes something extraordinary was created… Stones came off the earth and fell up… The whole blocks of rocks began to come off soon… Day and night were replaced quicker and quicker… The sun rushed on a chasm sky, and there came night, stars rushed with the same mad speed, both again the sun, and again night… Here, in the light of the sun, I see how the fence broke and fell, having opened the horizon. I see the dried sea bottom, the devastated earth… I see that soon the end…

But people still are on Earth… I hear how tells a small loudspeaker of our radio station…

The earth is devastated almost to poles. Everything perishes… It is the last escaped radio station, on Wrangel Island. She gives signals, waits and does not receive the answer… Radio waves fly to dead emptiness… Earth is silent, also the sky is silent.

Days and nights so quickly replace each other that everything merges in a haze… The sun, flying by on the sky, draws a fiery strip against a dark background – together with the last remains of the atmosphere Earth lost the blue bed curtains, light of a heavenly azure… The moon decreased in sizes, Earth cannot hold more the satellite any more, and the moon moves away from Earth…

I feel how thick glasses of our glass floor napruzhitsya, became convex, shiver… They will not sustain soon, and I will fail in a chasm…

Who it grumbles near me?. And, professor Wagner.

I hardly rise: mad speed of Earth filled with lead my body. I pant…

– You!. – I address maliciously professor Wagner. – Why you made it? You ruined mankind, you destroyed life on Earth… Answer me! Now reduce the movement of Earth, differently I…

But professor silently negatively swings the head.

– Answer! – I shout, clenching fists.

– I cannot do anything… obviously, I made a mistake in calculations…

– So you pay for this mistake! – I exclaimed and, having absolutely gone mad, rushed on Wagner and began to smother him… At the same moment I felt how our floor cracks, glasses burst, and I, without letting out Wagner, I fly with it to a chasm…

V. «THE NEW WAY OF TEACHING»

Before me smiling face of professor Wagner. I with surprise look at it, then around myself.

Early morning. Blue bed curtains of the sky. The sea becomes blue in the distance. At a verandah two white butterflies peacefully flit. By me there passes the housekeeper with a big piece of butter on a plate…

– What is it?. What does all this mean? – I ask professor.

He smiles in the long moustaches.

– I apologize – he says – that I without your permission and even without being with you a sign used you for one experience. If you know me, then you probably know that I work on permission of a question long ago as to one person to contain the huge mass of modern scientific knowledge. I personally, for example, reached that each half of my brain works independently. I destroyed a dream and fatigue…

– I read about it – I answered. Wagner nodded.

– It is better for those. But it is available not to all. And I decided to use hypnosis for the pedagogical purposes. Eventually and in usual pedagogics there is a hypnosis share… Having come today early in the morning for walk, I noticed you… You are on duty not the first day behind a juniper bush? – he asked with a cheerful sparkle in eyes. I was confused.

– Well, here I also decided to punish you for your curiosity, having subjected to hypnosis…

– How, really all this was?.

– Only hypnosis, since that moment as you uvidat me. Isn’t that so, all of you worried as reality? And, of course, never in life you will forget endured. Thus, you had an opportunity to receive a lesson of visual instruction about laws of weight and centrifugal force… But you were very nervous pupil and at the end of a lesson behaved a little heatedly…

– But how many time the lesson proceeded?

Wagner looked at the watch.

– Minutes two, no more. Isn’t that so, productive way of assimilation of knowledge?

– But allow – I exclaimed – and this glass window, these brackets on the earth!. – I gave a hand and suddenly became silent. The area of the yard was absolutely equal; there were neither brackets, nor glass round «window» … – So it… there was a hypnosis too?

– Well, certainly… Confess what you not really missed behind my lesson of physics? Fima – he shouted – coffee is ready? Idemte to have breakfast.

– Dez… I will not transfer its loss! Dez – my best friend… I am so lonely…

The citizen Shmeman wiped a lacy kerchief red weak-sighted eyes and a long nose.

– I assure you – it continued, having plaintively sobbed – that this work of professor Wagner. I saw more than once how it brought on a string of dogs into the apartment… What does it do with them? My God! I dread to think! Perhaps, my Dezi is dead… Take measures, I ask you!. If you do not make it, I will go to militia!. Dez, my poor baby!.

And madam Shmeman began to cry again… Her thin old cheeks became covered by red spots, the lower lip drooped.

Zhukov, the chairman of housing association, abruptly turned on a chair and clicked fingers. It lost patience.

– Calm down, the citizen! I assure you that we will take measures. And now, forgive… I am very busy…

Shmeman deeply sighed, bowed and left. Zhukov breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to the secretary of board Krotov:

– Faugh!. Exhausted! There are such annoying women!

– Yes … – Krotov thoughtfully responded. – Mischievous old woman! And case should be investigated. It is the fourth case of loss of dogs only on our yard. Neighbors complain too. What for a dog pestilence? I will not be surprised if really it turns out that dogs are stolen by professor Wagner. Only why the hell they are necessary to it? Does collars on a fur coat? Strange person! Suspicious person!