– It was only the beginning. We tried to apply the air fleet. At that time and our equipment was already highly developed. We had aircrafts operating by the principle of flight of rockets. These vessels could rise above a layer of the air atmosphere, that is it is more than two thousand meters. We hoped to attack the enemy unawares “from the sky”. But the enemy was well prepared. Obviously, on all borders of America from the earth the same invisible, but killing beams were directed up. Hardly our aircrafts made of special metal entered this veil as were burned even not to ashes, and to steam…

And ten hours later terrible disaster rushed over all countries of Europe and Asia. Through the fortieth meridian of northern latitude – across Spain, Italy, the Balkans, Asia Minor, Turkestan, China and the island Nippon in Japan without uniform sound the killing beam which incinerated on the way in a strip hundred kilometers wide all buildings, people, animals, fields, cotton fields, gardens rushed.

– Yes here, look – told Ale.

He approached a distributive board and pressed several buttons with figures, then turned the lever. Light went out, and the screen recovered. I expected to see the movie, but what I saw surpassed all my expectations. It were not “documentary pictures” it there was life. Illusion was full.

Here street of some city…

– Spain – said Ale in low tones.

…All houses along the street obliquely were as though are cut off by some invisible knife which opened internal rooms. Where there passed the awful beam, there were only heaps of ruins, heaps of ashes and garbage. Here and there parts of human bodies rolled. Everything, got to a beam area of coverage, was incinerated. In places the fires burned down. I heard a flame crash, a roar of falling of walls. The escaped mad people wandered among these ruins, vainly trying to find for the family. They sobbed, shouted, sent someone damnations… Here the woman ran with a wild hair and mad eyes.

– Augusto, Augusto! – she shouted. And suddenly, having faced directly me, hysterical laughed loudly…

I heard her laughter, terrible cries of people. The show was tremendous. Involuntarily I turned away.

– Several hours later later accidents are removed – with emotion spoke Ale.

It turned levers, and on the screen the new picture appeared.

– Everything that remained from the Italian town of Marateo of the gulf Polikastra – Ale told.

Several palm trees and heaps of ruins, two swarty, curly children and the old woman in tatters. At one child legs on a knee were annealed. It lay unconscious. The boy is more senior looked at him with silent horror, and the old woman, having inclined over the child, shook the gray-haired ruffled head and howled lingeringly, hysterically as dogs howl… Nearby, with oskalenny teeth and the big glazed-over eyes, the asinine head – one head lay… Leaves of palm trees rustled, stones under the running waves as sad accompaniment to monotonous, tugging at heartstrings, I howl old women rustled… It was too…

– I cannot more – I said in low tones – there is enough!

Ale sighed, turned the lever. The screen went out, and in the room light lit up.

Suppressed just seen, we sat silently.

– I saw these pictures more than once – told at last Ale – but also I cannot still watch them without deep nervousness…

– Yes, it is awful – I answered.

– When our youth sees these pictures, it is lit by such hatred and such thirst of fight that it is difficult to keep her from daredevil acts and the aimless victims. We infrequently show these pictures.

– Tell me, this cinema? – I when nervousness settled a little asked.

– A combination of the sounding cinema and transfer of moving images and sounds on radio. We have a central film archive operating automatically. I put number on this board, the movie necessary to me automatically moves in a movie camera, it begins to work at the screen installed in film archive. Through radio the image and sounds are transmitted to any place.

– Amazingly! And what was farther?

– What could be after everything that you saw? Further persistence from our party could ruin all Europe and Asia. We were forced to stop fight, we will not create equal weapon yet. And our engineers worked over the invention of such weapon much. In this regard we are obliged by much to Li. This is the ingenious young man.

– Li? Assistant to the astronomer Tong? In a blue tunic? Unless it not the girl?

Ale smiled.

– No. This is the young man rather the young man. We grow old not soon. How many, you think, can be to me years?

– Thirty five, the biggest, forty – I told.

– Eighty six – smiling, Ale answered – Li – thirty two, and Ea – twenty five.

I was struck.

– And what was invented by Li?

– He invented means of an obstacle from devil beams. They are not terrible to us any more. It found a secret and productions of devil beams. We were made even by forces.

– And now it is possible to begin fight?

– Not absolutely. Their beams do not punch our invisible armor, and ours – them. We became mutually impregnable for each other, but also only. And still fight continues. Not so long ago by some miracle one more fugitive – the Black made the way to us from America. It worked at coastal obstacles, at east coast of North America. There was a damage of the device radiating protecting beams. Having used it, the Black rushed to the ocean, long floated until it was picked up by any fishing boat, and at last reached our coast. He told that, despite everything cruelty, on unprecedented suppression of workers, in America there is an underground revolutionary work. Revolutionaries got even into the coast guard. We managed to give up them the intercourses. We learned that America, being afraid of our help to their revolutionaries, plans to exterminate us. Having convinced that their beams are harmless to us, the American capitalists decided to send to us spies, having transferred them in the way unknown to us through our air obstacles, to learn our military forces and means, and then to transport here in the same way the agents with destructive beams to destroy “the revolution center” on the place.

– Europe and Asia – good “center”!

– Yes, to destroy a big half of the world. Before it they will not stop! But we are not idle too. Li is close to permission of a task – to find the tool punching all protecting means of Americans.

– But Li is an astronomer?

– The astronomer, the engineer, the artist, the chess player – everything that you want. And in all areas it – the first-class size. Days it gives to the engineering occupations, and works as nights with Tong.

– Also is not tired?

– Li – at least; our youth does not know fatigue. You do not want to sleep?

– I feel perfectly.

– Well, here you see. And so, we received data that one of spies is sent to us. In it it is a high time you appeared. Now you will understand our precaution concerning you?

– Unless I am similar to the American spy? – poluvozmushchenno-polunedoumevayushche I asked.

Ale shrugged shoulders:

– The ingenuity of the enemy is boundless. Bad that spy, at a view of whom each child will tell: “It is the spy”. You do not take offense. I trust you. But nevertheless some time we still will have to be engaged in your personality. Situation is too serious. Do not worry, you will use freedom.

– Remaining at the same time under supervision?

– Just at you will be to the chicherena, otherwise you will have nobody to throw with questions. I will sometimes accompany you if you have nothing against. By the way, today I will be able to visit with you “the country of memoirs”.

– Willingly – I answered, without deciding to bother it with new questions any more: what it for “the country of memoirs”?

– You have to learn our language, you see as far as I trust you. Study rather.

– With great pleasure, though to admit, I have no special linguistic abilities.

– It will not take a lot of time you. Here, you look – Ale turned on the screen again. On it images of objects began to appear, and their name at the same time sounded, and over the image the inscription appeared. On the screen throughout a minute flew, at least, fifty objects words.

– And well repeat them.

To my amazement, I repeated them without any work.

– Believe that you will not forget them any more. By the morning you will perfectly master language.

– I do not learn the memory! – I exclaimed.

we have a small secret which helps memory!. You not just see objects and their verbal image and hear a pronunciation. All these visual and acoustical phenomena are followed by the radiation of special radio waves.

– Again radio!

– Not without reason our city is called Radiopolis. You will hear about radio still more than once. And so, these radio waves strengthen brain perception, deeply imprint in a brain visual and acoustical impressions – the word, accelerate storing process. Only in such way our younger generation also has an opportunity to incorporate a huge number of modern knowledge and to be deeply educated in the most various areas.

– But abstract concepts?.

– You will see them figuratively and will acquire them as easily as the simplest things.

The door opened, Li and the room was entered also by Ea. I with new curiosity looked at Li. Engineer, astronomer! Directly incredibly. At us in Moscow girls from a ballet school so look.

This time the astronomer looked anxious. Li quietly whispered to Ale several words.

Having addressed me, Ale told:

– Important news: we, apparently, found our American a trace. We have to leave you. Be engaged in studying of language so far. In two-three hours I will come for you.

And these surprising people quickly left.

Chapter 4

IN THE COUNTRY OF MEMOIRS

There was an early morning when I came to the observatory platform. Our air dwelling shone in beams of a rising sun as a race car, and below Radiopolis still sank in a bluish haze at dawn.

– Good morning! How do you feel? – I about myself heard a voice of Ea. She spoke the language, but now I have it down to a science. It was no Esperanto as I thought in the beginning though Esperanto was the basis for modern international language, simpler and sonorous.

– I thank you, perfectly – I answered the girl. – Ale promised to accompany me today.

– Here it flies – she answered, Looking in the chasm which revealed under us.

I saw nothing yet.

– Tell how this air construction keeps in air? – I asked.

– The propellers placed under the platform hold it, and gyroscopes give full horizontal stability. Quite capital construction. Just in case all of us hold several parachutes here.

– On one of which I also made the involuntary trip?

– And it is very happy for the first time – smiling, Ea answered.

– But to set propellers in motion, strong motors and for them the whole warehouses of fuel are necessary?.

– Our energy for all engines is broadcast – Ea answered.

– Again radio!

Below small noise and a voice of Ale was heard:

– Good morning! Put on rather wings, we fly to the country of memoirs!

I put on the wings brought to me by Ea. Ale examined wide belts, crosswisely strapped on my breast, and made instructions how to operate this aircraft, unusually simple on a design.

– Try to rise and fall on the platform – he told.

Not without nervousness I turned a rychazhok at my hip. Sustavchaty wings as at a bat, trembled at me behind the back, and I felt that the soil crumbles under the feet. Instinctively I placed hands and legs, as if being going to fall to all fours. My look was probably very ridiculous, I heard the muffled laughter of Ea.

– Stick to pryamy! – ordered El. – Right lever. Turn. It is more. So. Return. Left lever back.

I smoothly fell.

– Well. We can fly.

I and Ale approached the region of the platform, a vsprygnula on a fencing and… rushed down. It was my third air travel in Radiopolis which left in me the strongest impression. I had to fly once on airplanes. But unless it is possible to compare that bulky, roaring car of my time to these wings which almost you do not feel! For the first time I felt the flying person easy and free as a bird.

Several seconds of flight – and we left the space lit with the sun, having plunged into blue twilight.

Ale flew row, a little ahead, directing the flight to the Kremlin.

Soon under us the fountain already familiar to me in a cypress grove seemed.

Our wings so slightly rustled that we could talk freely.

– These cypresses – I pointed to a grove – are exposed for the summer from a greenhouse?

– No, they freely grow here. We changed climate. What are you surprised to? We could reach it in the different ways, but for this purpose there was enough also one radiant energy of the sun. You know that on space in one square kilometer this energy used only for ten percent will be able to perform the work equal to seventy five thousand millions horsepowers. We receive thousands of millions horsepowers of this energy in one Turkestan: quite enough that not only “to be warmed”, but to put all our cars in action.

Towers of the Kremlin flew under us. We fell by the quiet snow square and put wings. There was an early winter morning.

– We restored the past a century after a century. All old Moscow – your Moscow – is turned into the museum – told Ale. – Flying from a quarter in a quarter, you as if will fly from century to century. Before you all will pass characteristic of this time, from architecture to life trifles.

Ale was right: we really flew from a century a century.

– Let’s come into one of commissariats. Not nevertheless to you to ask me, I want to ask about something you too as at the contemporary of this era, to fill up the historical knowledge – he told, smiling. – You where served?

I answered…

We entered the familiar building. I was involuntarily captured by nervousness. Everything remained still. Whether miracle? Even my desk and on it folders of affairs – everything as I left them yesterday if only it was yesterday.

– Will you be so kind as to explain to me, than you were engaged what your work consisted in?

I was flattered. At last I will be able to offer explanations for this person of unlimited knowledge. I willingly opened the folders and began to explain what my work consisted in. Ale listened carefully. Sometimes it seemed to me that he wants to correct me, but, obviously, I was mistaken: he only not absolutely understood me and asked explanations.

– There is enough – at last he told. – I was finally convinced that you as it is strange, the person from the past. Nobody is better than me does not know last history. And you showed – in the area, of course – such knowledge that any thought of a mystification is excluded.

I understood it not at once.

– Thought of a mystification?. – And suddenly, having understood, I involuntarily reddened from disappointment. – Means, all this was only test?

Ale friendly took me by hand.

– I assure you, the last – he answered. – And now, to smooth unpleasant impression which, I see my cunning necessarily left, we will examine fluently other departments of our museum. For us they also only the country of memoirs, and for you is the country of not given rise future.

And suddenly, without visible communication, he told:

– Yes, yes. I am very glad. Only car? It is interesting to look. – After that, addressing me, explained: – Li reports that he found the broken flying car buried in sand near the Red Sea.

– But it is for thousands of versts!

– For us there are almost no distances – Ale answered. Having taken out the device reminding the tseyssovsky field-glass from a pocket it twisted eyepieces, looking at divisions with figures, and looked, then transferred him to me.

I saw the sandy seashore. From a heap of sand parts of some broken device were seen. Li stood nearby and looked in the same field-glass in the direction to me. Obviously, having seen me, Li smiled and friendly waved a hand. I answered it.

– I am not surprised to range of distance of your field-glasses any more. But how they can see through walls and only what is necessary?

– You see what is necessary by means of exact aiming. And to see through a barrier? Unless it is so surprising for you, familiar with X-ray beams?

– But they not absolutely that.

– New always not absolutely the fact that old, it also differs in that from old – with a smile Ale answered. – We fly!

And we departed to examine Moscow, new to me.

– We rise above. This site – Moscow of the second half of the twentieth century. Along with multystoried skyscrapers you see also those houses which stood in your time. There is already the whole network of the underground railroads and construction of air is begun. Moscow by this time long ago passed old borders and widely spread extensively. At the beginning of the twenty first century we built skyscrapers, but already separated from each other by big vacant sites. You look.

The strange look was represented by this new Moscow. On huge space towered symmetrized as if milestones, skyscrapers to several dozens of floors, with flat roofs.

– For landing of aircrafts – explained Ale.

– One cannot say that this city looked very beautiful – I involuntarily told, looking at the sad square stuck by houses columns.

– But it is more hygienic, than your dense old cities. When we began to build Moscow of skyscrapers, we had many disputes on whether to build these mansions or to start constructions of the cities houses where the multimillion population could live literally under the same roof. A dispute there began our doctors-hygienists who warned against hobby for urbanism, predicting physical degeneration of the population in too artificial living conditions of these cities houses. But we were not so rich yet to finish the cities. These mansions skyscrapers were a compromise.

– To finish the cities?

– Yes, and we were through with them. Eventually density of the population is caused not only a lack of land area as was in New York of the twentieth century, but also relative low cost of “housing concentration”, and also imperfections of ways of communication.

The radio policy – only the old name which remained behind the area. We have no more cities. If you fly by from Moscow to Leningrad, you will find continuous gardens, fields and white lodges scattered among them, but the cities there, in other place will not find.

– But you unproductively occupied the huge land area which could go under crops!

– You do not represent progress of our agrikultura. On square meter we get food more, than you got on the… to tithe. By the way, from where there was this word? Root, apparently, “ten”?

– I do not know – I confusedly answered.

Ale smiled.

– Besides, we produce food in the chemical way. We and now have more parks and flower beds, than fields. Yes, a lot of things changed for these years. We have no cities, we have no government, we have no offices. The category of “sovrabotnik” necessary in due time died out long ago as horses died out. By the way, you still can see several horses in our zoo, and sovrabotnik remained only in the form of museum dummies. They, however, are very similar to the original.

For me it was really the biggest sensation for all stay in Radiopolis. There are no offices, there are no sovrabotnik! It too. Whether Ale jokes? How it is possible to do without sovrabotnik?

– But themselves writes papers? – with the sneer which is not deprived of bitterness I told.

– My friend, at us papers “are not written” at all. I see, you cannot accustom with all these changes at once.

We smoothly fell by a green lawn. Among this lawn, on a sandy circle, there was a cigar-shaped gray subject reminding the zeppelin, but considerably smaller sizes.

Near the zeppelin there was Ea. She still from a distance waved a hand to Ale and shouted:

– More likely, it is necessary to hurry!

I and Ale, without removing wings, entered the zeppelin. Эа followed us and densely slammed a thick door. Bright light flashed, having lit easy chairs, a table, the screen in a corner.

– It is our “Gun”, the most skorostrelny aircraft.

Эа passed forward, for the varnished partition. From there the buzzing was heard, and I felt how a forward part of our aircraft rose.

– We fly – told Ale.

– Why there are no windows here?

– They are not necessary: speed and flight altitude are so big that all of you equally will see nothing.

Where I still fly? What waits for me ahead?.

Chapter 5

ON THE BANK OF THE RED SEA

We rushed on our air shell which was at the same time both the gun, and a kernel. Behind a partition something quietly buzzed.

– Tell, Ale why you, Ea and Li are engaged in searches? Directed “investigation” about me, now you chase all over the world this American spy. Or you combine…

– The scientist’s position with an honorary title of the detective? – asked El. And, having sighed, continued: – I see that it is difficult for you to get used to our social system. I said to you that we have no militia in sense of the word, usual for you. But if you want, we have each citizen – the militiaman or the investigator if it is demanded by circumstances. Each our citizen, without instructions and codes, knows how to protect interests of society. And if the case gave it to face the fact menacing to our order and tranquility this citizen and finishes business.

– But it has also other duties?

– What from this? At the investigator too not one business happens on hands. Obligatory social activities take us about three hours. There is time to be engaged – at least and searches of the American spy.

– You told that obligatory work takes about three hours you. Why you did not specify exact norm?

– Under the code about work? – with a smile asked Ale. – We have no exact norm, there is no code also. If business of it demands – we work! And it is more than three hours. But it happens only in exceptional cases: some casual accidents, natural disasters. Our usual work “at the machine” does not exceed three hours.

– And the rest of the time?

– Everyone is engaged in what he wishes. The main thing and our almost exclusive occupation – we study, study and study. Continuously we fill up the knowledge, we invent.

– And if Who does not want to work even three hours a day? What coercive measures you take against idlers?

Ale looked at me with extreme amazement.

– Forgive, but this time I refuse to understand you – he told. – Unless it is necessary to force fish to float, and a bird to fly? It is their vital sign. The same vital sign, insuperable requirement is for us work.

– But work can be unpleasant, for example hard physical work.

– Physical work is carried out by our slaves.

I even jumped up on a chair.

– Slaves? You have a slavery?

– Well that so surprises you? Enslaved forces of nature, cars – here our slaves. And all of us, free citizens, work not only from consciousness of public advantage – it is the alphabet about which we already forgot – but also because work became for us the second nature long ago.

– What is it? Light went out?!

– Do not worry, I want to look at the card – told Ale.

Before it the square on which outlines of some sea appeared flashed poor light.

– This card moves?

– Yes, it moves because we fly. Our card – the earth. Here… as it you called outlines?. Sea of Azov, here Black. We fly by it.

– Already! So soon…

– Turkey. We will see the Red Sea soon.

– But how you can do absolutely without card?

– Эа directs our air ship on a radio compass. Li sends a radio wave, and we fly in this direction as butterflies on a spark. The mistake cannot be. However, we can if it is necessary, cope according to the card and a magnetic compass…

And, having bent down over the card, Ale told:

– The twentieth degree of northern latitude and the fortieth – east longitude. We in the neighborhood of Mecca. We will be on the place soon.

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