A. Belyaev - Classics of a fantasy

news. Order of a big passenger starprobe vehicle. Blotton’s departure,

Zander and Vinkler in some unknown Stormer-city…

New duties are assigned to Hans: purchase and reception

high-quality staly Europe in the different cities and America.

Continuous trips. It is interesting. But… “purchasing agent” – such

work not in Hans’s taste. It sends desperate letters to Vinkler. At last

Vinkler “took pity” on him. Arrived to Europe personally to make

some purchases and to capture with itself Hans. And now they fly in

this mysterious Stormer-city. Also Blotton flies. He will make the first

rise in a stratosphere on the single rocket. He did not want this honor

to concede to nobody.

Hans looks out of the window. The sky at this height of gray and flaky color. Sun

it is dazzling is white.

And what becomes below? Concave dark blue board of the ocean. On it

it is dazzling a bright circle – reflection of a solar disk.

Magnificent, wonderful flight! Terrible jump! From west banks

Europe on the southwest, through the Atlantic Ocean, to South America.

Stratoplan crossed all its continent from edge to edge over a river basin

Amazons, passed through the Andes, made a wide semicircle over the coast

The Pacific Ocean and now goes to the same Andes from the southwest. Here they

are seen hardly noticeable zazubrinka on the horizon…

– Уф! – Hans zasvistat a march again.

– What did you rassvistetsya there? – Vinkler from the next cabin speaks.

– Very well we fly! – Hans answers, going to Vinkler.

– On the airplane so would not whistle! – Vinkler speaks. He sits at

little table also considers something in the notebook, puffing

unseparable tube.

– I only in water am not able to whistle, – Hans answered. – And in the airplane —

as much as necessary.

– The same effect that in water: stops the engine.

– It is right, – Hans agreed. – Here it is absolutely silent. As if you fly on

balloon. Even explosions are not heard.

– Quicker than a sound we fly, because and it is not heard. Four hundred. We slow down

the course also we decrease. Height is only fifteen kilometers.

– But here temperature has to be much lower, than on

the Earth’s surface, the speed of a sound decreases with decrease

temperatures…

Vinkler nodded in the affirmative.

– . reaching at zero three hundred thirty two meters per second.

Now probably the motor is switched already off.

– And what ceiling?

– Twenty – twenty two kilometers. It is the most favorable height if

not to chase record speed.

– Mosquito take-off. Two hundred – three hundred kilometers – all right! Five hundred

– six hundred is the real height! – the voice of the third was heard

passenger.

Smoking the Egyptian sigarette, Henry Blotton approached Vinkler’s chair.

The lord was dressed in warm light brown sports overalls though in

to such “prozodezhda” there was no need: cabin of a stratoplan

it was well heated by electricity and supplied with clean air. In it

it was warm, cozy, with comfort, as in a compartment of the pullman car.

– Aeroplanny champions of height, certainly, pottered about in dust on

to comparison with us. For all these “saunders-Valkyries”,

“pharman-sou-pergoliafov”, “yunkers” twelve – fifteen thousand meters

were already almost extreme height. Researchers of a stratosphere rose

higher. But they rose on balloons. And recently in Taymsa I

read…

Blotton rode out the favourite fad and began a never-ending conversation

about height records, about rivals who can challenge its monasteries, about

chances of a victory of the same champions, as it.

– You will go to an interplanetary travel and at once will beat all

the rivals, – Vinkler told. Blotton did not understand a sneer.

– Yes, but., I am afraid that about it it will not be printed in Taymsa and

my rivals just do not learn about a new record, – melancholically answered

it.

Stratoplan decreased and reduced speed. Mountains on the horizon grew, dark

color of the sky turned pale, turned blue, stars, as one by one died away on

dawn.

Far below, at a foot of mountains as the bright green ocean, spread

violent tropical vegetation.

– The Andes – the South American continuation of the Cordilleras, – Vinkler told. —

Behind them the desert lowland, and further – the Rocky Mountains the republics

Ecuador.

– Surprisingly! It is difficult to get used to it. What speed, what

victory over space! – Finger exclaimed and once again Endured all

flight.

Europe – as if the big card. On the right – the Azores, at the left —

the Cape Verde Islands, hardly distinguishable even in the strongest sea

field-glass, South America… The basin of Amazon with its inflows similar on

tree branches… A semicircle of “atmospheric braking” over the Great ocean and

again coast of South America, already western.

– Yes, quite good way of studying of geography. It is better our school

books and maps, – Henry told. – But speed turtle. Other business —

space flight!

– Space flight! Turtle speed! – in Blotton’s tone continued

Vinkler. – That twelve mean some – eighteen kilometers in

second of space flight in comparison at least with thirty kilometers

flight of Earth? And star fogs! Some of them fly from huge

speed.

– ? – Blotton asked.

– About one thousand kilometers per second – usual average speed. But

there are also exceptions. According to the latest data, a fog Big Dipper

number twenty four flies with a speed of eleven thousand seven hundred

kilometers per second, Lev number one – nearly twenty thousand kilometers.

– Yes, such speed is pleasant to me. But do not laugh, kind Vinkler.

I understand in such things a little, but our friend Leo Zander said to me that

when we have radioactive energy down to a science, it will be possible

to reach also velocity of light.

– Alas, even with velocity of light you should fly to the next

stars four years and four months. To other sun stars, which we

we consider our “neighbors” in world space, – ten – fifteen

years. Some tens of stars are from us on such close

distance. To the others it should fly hundreds and thousands of years. You

the immense desert within months, years, decades would surround.

Any concept about time will disappear.

– What star, next to the Sun? – Blotton asked.

– Alpha Tsentavra. In total about forty trillion kilometers.

– Four over a year – are not much. Having kept silent, lord Henry

returned to terrestrial affairs:

– And why, actually, for start this is chosen wild, desert

place?

– Just because it wild, desert, unsociable. Such is desire

shareholders of your wild society “Noah’s Ark”. Conspiracy.

– But there is a lot of desert places on the globe, to take at least Youzhny

pole. There nobody would prevent us, even efficient reporters. Why

exactly here? I would like to know, than the choice was defined.

– On it there were the, and important, the bases, – seriously answered

Vinkler. – Exactly there are optimum conditions for

take-off. You probably know that to the rocket at take-off from Earth

it is necessary to break through a double armor: atmospheres and terrestrial

inclinations. The greatest inclination exists on poles, the smallest – on

the equator as Earth is a little flattened to poles. Besides on