A. Belyaev - Classics fantasy – 11

On us shaggy teams

The frosts and snow…

Or at Nekrasov: “Moroz voivode a patrol bypasses the possession”. Of course – the voivode. With it do not joke. But if was able to undertake it, then and he from the voivode in our servant will turn back. Here we will build the temperature station and a frost to the public, in heat, we will turn into work.

– And all your ice city with a spring will thaw as the Snow Maiden – Ignat told.

– Will thaw – Verkhovsky as if he also really was Father Frost mourning death of the kingdom heaved a deep sigh! – Will thaw. As you will think of it is melancholy will take. Whether you trust, at me begins to suck in the pit of the stomach when the sun for the summer turns and because of the horizon is shown. No, the right, is a pity. Here this short summer to anything. It is not enough from it joy.

– Or perhaps will also not thaw! – suddenly he shouted and derisively looked at Ignat.

– Whether you read about such project: to arrange among the Atlantic Ocean the artificial island airport from ice? In warm climate, in the warm sea! Ice should be done artificial there – refrigerators, keeping it under heat insulation… And freezing of the soil at large earthwork? Here, eventually, only energy is necessary. We will be rich with it soon, and then, I think, we will keep on all the year round our many ice constructions.

– To you to move to the South Pole. There ice does not thaw also in the summer.

– Let’s reach also Youzhny, give term. There, likely, for us still such riches under an ice cover are hidden about which we also do not dare to imagine.

Here and tea is ready, here fresh bear’s flesh. Excellent piece. We killed this bear last year, and watch what fresh meat.

– But in the summer your refrigerators thaw – Ignat was surprised.

– And we, smart guy, store only such stock of provisions which is necessary to us for the winter in them. By then, as begins to grow warm, and warehouses become empty. And we store all other stocks in permafrost. There meat at least thousand years fresh will lie. Heard about the mammoth found in permafrost? Its meat so well remained that wolves and dogs of its fir-tree. They say, and some scientist tried mamontyatina. Here and permafrost on something was useful though it also causes many troubles to our Verochka.

– And there is a lot of it, this permafrost? – Jim asked.

– Whether there is a lot of? Perhaps, Florid about one hundred will get. The southern border of permafrost goes from Mezen through Berezov on Turukhansk, goes out of the USSR, appears at Blagoveshchensk again, turns on the South, small Hingan bends around, creeps to the southern parts of the Sea of Okhotsk…

– Why such broken border?

– Depends on the different reasons: from thickness of snow cover, from the soil, humidity, from height above sea level.

Skins at doors began to move.

– Brought someone else. – The old man opened a fur door. – And – and-and, Verochka. And we just spoke about your deadly enemy.

– About what enemy? – Kolosova asked. Her cheeks from a frost burned. Hoarfrost on a hat and a fur collar quickly turned into brilliant droplets.

– Well, what enemy at you? Of course, not the person. All the person love our Verochka. Permafrost – here your enemy.

– Ah and. It is right. – The girl sighed.

– What, again? – Verkhovsky asked.

– Again – the girl sadly answered.

– Well what to do. The enemy is strong, as they say, but we will win against him, Verochka. Sit down with us, drink, tell.

The girl waved a hand.

– Not to tea to me. I would like that you looked, Verkhovsky… when terminate tea to have – she added, having had a look at Ignat, with appetite who was eating greedily smoked bear’s flesh and washing down pieces with hot tea.

– We now. We already finish – Ignat told, quickly chewing a piece. – We will go too.

All quickly put on and came to a frost.

16. Fine vision

Ignat and Jim got over in hotel. In number there were two more persons – the representative Soyuzkinoradio who arrived to arrange sound telecinema, and the ethnographer “with a linguistic bias” as he introduced himself. He came to study the northern people and tried to discover root communication of their languages with languages of North America. He was convinced that the American Indians came to America from Asia through an isthmus which existed once on the place of the Bering Strait. The ethnographer arrived from Votyatsky edge where he studied votyak.

Jima it was uninteresting to listen to stories of the ethnographer about votyaka. He was interested in the film technician Kostin, cheerful, strongly sutulovaty cripple more (the left leg at it was shorter than right). From the constant movement along a crutch on big and index fingers of Kostin there were callosities.

Once, when behind walls of hotel the polar blizzard stormed, Kostin suggested Jim, Ignat and the ethnographer to look at a picture.

Kostin extinguished an electric lamp under a ceiling, included current in the device and in the twilight began to conjure.

Audience uvidat boundless ice-rinks of the Arctic Ocean, smooth as the surface of the frozen lake, with chaotically heated up ice blocks. The panorama moved, and Jim clearly imagined that he flies on the airplane and under it there pass the dead, snow spaces lit with twilight light. Here ice slopes – icebergs – with the hung arches, ice bridges which half fell, caves – and again a boundless smooth surface rise izjyazvlenny the sun, warm winds and rains… Here ice-covered, snow-covered rocky edges of some island rise. The polar bear looks back, turns the head up, apparently, looks directly at Jim and probably frightened by noise of aeroplanny motors, hurries to take refuge in coastal hummocks.

The island departures back – and again the desert, the snow plain endlessly and edges.

But here it began as though to turn around. Or the airplane a spiral rises up? The horizon extends, rises. Contours of coastal gulfs, bays, capes, islands are visible distinctly. Ignat learns and calls them.

And suddenly all this dead space recovered. From a lip to a lip, from a bay to a bay, from the gulf to the gulf, from the Continent to islands on a white background of snow the set of dark sticks, similar to Koch’s sticks as they are represented in bacteriology courses moved. It is, of course, already the animation imposed on film pictures from nature.

– If you could see through ice, you would uvidat such picture – the voice of the invisible announcer was heard. – These are submarines which carry out communication between separate points of the coast, polar stations, winterings, islands… And here the big stick separated from our coast and, crossing the North Pole, goes to coast of America. That moves the big passenger underwater ship making flights under ice between the USSR and North America…

Jim was stunned. How? These unruly people get even under ice of the cold Arctic seas? And there life, movement, work? Jim already got used that in a wild taiga and even in the dead tundra of the person it is easier to meet, than it would be possible to expect. But under ice! No, it is improbable! Of course, the submarine can float some space under ice. Jim remembers Vilkins’s attempts.

But it, Jim, want to assure that there is a regular, brisk underwater and subglacial movement…

– Submarines transport mail, vitaminozny products, medicines, furs, the radio equipment – the announcer continues. – We have no winterers who are cut off from the world for eight-ten months in a year now. In case of need each winterer can be transported to Moscow, Leningrad and is replaced by other winterer.

– Saw? Heard? – Kostin asks. – Well that! And if not all believe that underwater communication really exists, can admire a type of submarines outside and from within.