A. Belyaev - Classics fantasy – 4

Azores submitted the letter. The carat seized him, almost pulled out from hands, and stared hard at paper.

– So, so… It is his hand, its code…

– And a key from the code? – Azores asked.

The carat once again searchingly looked at Azores: whether it is possible to trust it?

– I am a communist – Azores resolutely told. – You will like it or not, but it so. You see, I am frank, be and you are frank with me.

– Oh, of course, of course! – the Carat began to fuss. – The code at me. Here, in this case where wires, insulators and any stuff are stored. The most reliable place! It is better, than on the apartment. This building as you already, probably, noticed, in essence without people. Yes, yes. Crisis. During a prosperity time the electric company organized the broadest research works here: radio tubes, photo cells, TVs… Hundreds of research associates, the most famous experts, inventors… And now all work is winded down, research associates dissipated in job searches.

– And you? – Azores asked.

– Now – the semi-laboratory assistant-semi-watchman – with a sad smile answered Carat.

– You were well familiar with Blasco Jurgues?

– Whether well I was familiar! – the Carat exclaimed, and his red eyelashes began to blink. – I was the closest assistant to Hurges. Hurges! This is the great inventor. Great mind, great heart! Here in this room, we worked for this table with it twelve years. Many nights are a lot of days and ….

Azores would not be a skilled correspondent if did not try to find out everything that concerned Hurges at Cara. The carat willingly answered, and Azores learned more, than expected.

Hurges’s father, Solomon Hurges, was the Polish Jew. In due time he emigrated to the United States, but there he was not lucky, and he moved to South America. Exactly here, in Buenos Aires, it had a workshop on car repairs, bicycles, motorcycles. Zhuan Hurges helped the father and when the father died, got a job on the big plant and there joined in revolutionary fight. To his elder brother, Blasco Jurgues, it was succeeded to get the higher technical education, and he worked in research laboratory of the electric company which was branch of New York. It was very much appreciated. He gave to firm many remarkable inventions, introduced economic lamps and when production of radio receivers was arranged, designed very successful type of the amateur heterodyne radio receiver.

– But he did not sell the soul to firm – significantly said Carat.

– What do you want to tell these? Hurges was a communist?

– He thought as the communist – the Carat answered. – That’s all what I can tell. He lived in peace and friendship with the brother. Once at me Blasco told Zhuan: “We go towards one aim, but in the different ways, and, probably, to us more favorable more rare to see with each other that yours “revolutionary popularity” did not predict suspicions and on me, for “our revolutionary work” – and he pointed to me. Yes, on me – with pride repeated Carat. – Because we worked together, we had no secrets.

– And what it for “revolutionary work”?

– Revolution in science and technology which is designed to serve revolution proletarian – the Carat answered. – We are inventors. By itself, Blasco invented, and I helped him. Ah, it had originally Edisonova the head! Since the October revolution of Blasco lived a thought of the Country of Councils. He worked for it and dreamed to arrive there not empty-handed. Oh, he prepared a rich gift! And here, when… Ah, Blasco, Blasco!. Such careful even in trifles and… Why you did not listen to me?. – Red eyelids with red eyelashes began to tremble again, began to blink as if the Carat was going to begin to cry.

Azores guessed that here the great secret is covered.

– And what the invention on which you worked is?

– This invention … – Eyes Cara flashed inspiration fire, however it extinguished this fire, quickly approached to the door, slightly opened it, looked out in an empty corridor and, having left a door half-open – approach of steps is so more heard – came back to the place, sat down near Azores and whispered: – Wisdom stone. – The carat held breath and silently burst out laughing.

“Whether this odd fellow went crazy?” – Azores thought. But that continued:

– Yes, philosophers’ stone. Dream of alchemists of transformation of elements. And in a most up-to-date way – a shell for splitting of an atomic nucleus. Revolution! A new era in chemistry, in the history of mankind!

In hobby he splashed dry handles and grinned. Azores started back to a back of a chair and silently watched several seconds on Cara.

– Yes, yes, yes – ardently whispered Carat, maintaining Azores’s look. – Not a dream, not a problem, not a hypothesis, but fact. Here, here on this table, we finished the last experiences. Here, on this place, there was a device – latest “gun” for bombing of an atomic nucleus. And what she created! What miracles of transformation of things were done by it before our eyes!

– And where this device? – Azores asked, feeling that at him the back grows cold and goosebumps on a body run.

– Anywhere. – The carat heaved a deep sigh. – Such things could not be taken with themselves. It is safer to carry them in the head. But unless the head cannot be ruined on the way? Hurges had big money and almost them spent everything for researches. And on the last bought the ticket for the best, appear, safest steamship – the steamship of billionaires as he was called in both America – “Leviathan”. But there is no such ship which could not sink… Hurges took all precautionary measures. The calculations, formulas, calculations – in a word, it made all “extract” of the most famous opening in duplicate: one – on paper, it was stored at it in a wide belt…

– And the second? In a metal box? – with impatience Azores asked.

– Hurges was more provident. What is a box? The steamship can sink at a huge depth, and then pressure of water will flatten out a box and papers will die. No, Hurges arrived differently. He engraved all figures, formulas, schemes and short explanations on thin metal plates, put plates and them soldered edges. It is thought perfectly up! – The carat chilly burst out laughing. – If such “portfolio” sank even on ten thousand meters of depth, all the same nothing would happen to it.

Unfortunate Blasco! Means, you died… Till today I still had hopes – already by other tone continued Carat after a pause. – Now this hope is absent any more. Mistake, bitter mistake!

– But in what its mistake? – Azores asked.

– And that it did not leave me the copy.

– Unless you without it are not able to build “gun”?

The person the Penalty expressed suffering.

– What is I? – the Carat moaned. – I was only Blasco’s hands, and Blasco very much praised these hands. – The carat looked at the hands overgrown with red hair. – Well, let us assume, I saw how the device was under construction, did it by the hands. But… You do not know what is a difficult thing! On formulas and schemes I could make, and formulas lie at an ocean floor now… Did not want to leave the copy, here and a mistake. Naturally, it was dangerous. Zhuan sits here… Salted pork fats could become interested also in his brother, at least and the dead, could glance here…

– However what was written by Hurges in the encoded letter?

– Now we will read. Though I beforehand, almost for certain, can tell that he wrote.

The carat rose, opened a big case and from a heap of any electrotechnical materials and old details took out a thin aluminum plate of the same format, as well as the letter. On a plate quadrangular openings by size about a typewriter letter were cut out in different places. The carat imposed a plate on the letter and read: