Classics fantasy – 4

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:

– “In case of my death inform S3R”.

– What does it designate? – Azores asked.

– Dear Blasco! I recognize you. Even in the code you resorted to a formula – with soft grief said Carat as if talking to the late friend. Addressing Azores, he asked: – Unless you do not guess? Эс – three – Ayr. It is the USSR. To report to the government of the USSR that in the depth of the Atlantic Ocean the treasure intended for the Soviet Union is stored. But whether the ocean will give the secret now? – asked Carat, addressing Azores. – If I am not mistaken, “Leviathan” sank somewhere about the Azores. Blasco Jurgues’s “portfolio” lies at a depth of two-three thousand meters. Unless it is possible to go down on such depth? However, to find “portfolio”, it is not necessary to lift the steamship. Blasco was provident – I already spoke about it. It was going to attach a plate to an anchor chain. And nevertheless it facilitates a task a little. The diver cannot fall more deeply than by three hundred meters, and I am afraid that Jurgues’s secret died forever.

– Well, still early to determine it – Azores answered. – I, in any case, will execute the last will of the great scientist also I will inform the Soviet government on everything that I know. Let decide what to do. I thank you, Mr. Kar…

– Companion Kar – with soft reproach corrected Azores Kar.

– Companion Kar… I thank you, and allow to say goodbye.

– No, wait – the Carat vividly objected. – You guess as this business is expensive to me. And then… I can be and is useful. I would like that you, companion Azores, informed me of the future of this business.

– To inform – it is hard – laughing, Azores answered. – You, of course, understand that it is impossible to write about such things.

– Why to write?! It is possible to arrive differently. We will speak. And to say so that any person will not understand us. – The carat laughed again. – It also one of the latest discoveries of Hurges. Not such important, as “gun”, but nevertheless interesting. He presented it to me before departure. Short-wave radio station. For it energy in the tenth shares of watt – less, than is necessary for the battery of a pocket electric small lamp. The antenna – five centimeters, range of action is unlimited. The main thing – the sharp orientation guarantees the mystery of transfers. This device watches the direction of a beam. The smallest deviations are registered and immediately automatically are eliminated. How it is pleasant to you? – The carat laughed again and rubbed hands. – I will give you one reception and transfer radio station. Or not… I will give you the scheme and some explanations on two pages of the notebook. In the USSR, of course, there are skilled radio operators?

– Certainly.

– And so, we will talk. I hand you the gift. – The carat took out paper from a desk, quickly outlined the scheme, explanations to it and all this transferred Azoresa.

– And so, we will talk and even… to see if we want. Yes, yes, on TV. At noon local time I will catch a wave. Good-bye.

They left friends.

Azores almost ran on the sidewalk, without feeling under himself legs. It was captured by rough joy. He did not see either empty shops, or the overturned cars and trams. That to it to these pictures of the dying Old World! It is rather in hotel and from there – to the port.

THE DESTINY OF THE EXPEDITION IS DECIDED

In Moscow Azores reported all on the special commission. Experts were invited to a meeting.

– Your opinion? – the chairman addressed the academician Toffel.

The gray-haired, high, full, ruddy academician rose and quietly said:

– The persistent attack, more precisely – the correct siege, strongholds of an atomic nucleus is around the world conducted. People work, without feeling sorry for work, means, energy, and it is clear why. If it is possible to ride out atomic energy, then consequences will be extraordinary. We cannot even present now what will become the world when in our hands there is this originally space force. Since when people began to invent, any invention, any opening – neither steam, nor electricity, nor radio – nothing can be compared to it. Atomic engines will make a full revolution in the equipment, in life. We will become immeasurably stronger and richer. To take at least our uniform high-voltage network. It cost us billions, and its operation costs millions, tens of millions. Wires, support, cables, expensive, bulky dynamo cars, turbines – all this will become unnecessary or almost unnecessary. We will preserve our fuel: coal, oil, wood. They will not be fuel any more. They will be only initial raw materials for chemical processing in high-valuable products. Wood will go only for manufacture of paper, piece silk, sugar and other products and goods. Only one this rescue of coal, oil, the wood from barbarous destruction in fire chambers promises billion savings.

Concerning the most atomic energy needless to say. The fact that it can bring does not give in to calculation. Why we lay our electrohighways on one thousand kilometers now? To transfer energy there where it is absent. Coal, oil, the wood, water – modern power sources – are not always available where there are an ore and other minerals. Atomic energy and atomic engines will give unlimited resources of energy where it is necessary, without any efforts, without bulky constructions. In the tundra and a taiga, in mountains and deserts – everywhere we will be able to have pocket Dneprogesa.

Entirely transport will change. Insatiable engines will disappear. There will be new types of the high-speed land, air and water transport. Even flights to planets will become a reality. Barriers and to construction works will disappear. We will be able to cover with channels all country. We will move literally mountains. The thought, the creative imagination of the modern builder were still connected by “a power limit”. Now many of projects just do not occur to us because energy expenses, excessive for us, are necessary for their performance. Freedom of technical dreams will become original. The person will be a sovereign keeper of the nature.

Whether it is possible to determine the monetary cost of this invention? I find it difficult to give numbers. It should estimate not in billions any more, and in trillions. If the slightest opportunity to seize the similar invention, then any expenses is represented at least, they are as if big were, will pay off in unprecedented sizes.

The academician made a pause and continued:

– But all this under one condition: if Hurges’s device is suitable for obtaining not too expensive intratomic energy. Ourselves learned to destroy an atomic nucleus and if did not design the skilled atomic engine, then only because it is premature. And it is premature because getting of atomic energy costs still immeasurably much. For atom splitting we use high and ultrahigh tension in millions of volts. And the result of this expensive attack, unfortunately, is too small. Our “shells” badly hit the mark. From one thousand shots one hit.

Companion Azores told us that there is witness, the employee Hurgesa companion Kar who confirms the fact that Hurges successfully destroyed atomic kernels. But the description of great opening lies at the bottom of the sea so far. I do not allow a mystification. However who will be charged what Hurges and Kar not from breed of schemers? Unless alchemists were not sure that they “almost” opened a secret of transformation of ignoble metals into gold?

– Your conclusion? – the chairman asked.

– My conclusion: to look for Hurges’s tables if it is technically feasible and if costs of searches in power to our state.

– Sorry, the academician – asked a question the elderly economist – and atom splitting, so to speak, in factory scale, will not cause…

– World accident? – Toffel asked. – I do not think. As I already told, atoms split now nearly daily. And anything, world целехонек. I had to hear similar fears more than once. I believe that they are superficial.

– Your opinion, professor Reynberg?

The low, tidy old man – a small beard klinyshky, long gray-haired moustaches – easily rose, abruptly turned to Toffel, then to the chairman and peas scattered words:

– First of all I have to note one sad misunderstanding. Here it was told about getting of internal energy when splitting an atomic nucleus. When romantic fantasts write about similar things, it is still admissible, but when with the idea of production of inexhaustible intratomic energy the scientist acts, I as the power engineering specialist, I protest. It is extremely deep, sad and even harmful mistake. When splitting an atomic nucleus we will not have any internal energy while exists and will not disprove the second law of thermodynamics.

And not Hurges, as far as I understand aspired to it. He was interested in the splitting of atomic kernels, but not energy. It approached a question as the physicist, the chemist, but not as the power engineering specialist. And in this gun light of Hurges – the greatest invention if it is only not the myth. But it let will be defined by chemists.

Reynberg quickly sat down and took a sip to tea.

– And it is necessary to look for? – the chairman asked it.

– If you intend to get energy from atom, then there is no need to climb under water. Chimeras and on the earth are enough – Reynberg from the place answered and all at once drank up the cooled-down tea.

– Your word, professor Bagorsky.

Powerful the put man with gray moustaches and young eyes got up without hurrying, leaned hands against a table and began:

– I, as well as all of us, have very poor materials to judge Hurges’s opening in essence. But also what is what I managed to get acquainted with is, enough, to draw a conclusion that the question deserves the close attention. I agree with Pyotr Ivanovich Reynberg: power here at anything. – Reynberg victoriously looked at Toffel. – However from it the question does not become less important – Bagorsky continued. – Companion Azores retold to me everything that he heard from Cara, and I had such impression: if this person can be also mistaken, as well as everything, then he is not inclined to enter into deception of others obviously. And the fact that he told about experiences of the died inventor is something extraordinary. If Hurges’s “gun” is capable to knock out at insignificant power consumptions the set quantity of electrons from an atomic nucleus, then this really epoch-making invention. Here Pyotr Ivanovich remembered fantasts and novelists. If I belonged to them, I could represent to you wonderful prospects. But I am not a fantast and not the novelist. You know value of a problem of decomposition of an atomic nucleus also. And I can tell you only one: if we manage to get keys to Hurges’s invention from an ocean floor and if it equals only the tenth part of our hopes, then and in this case expenses on searches of the hided treasure hundreds and thousands of times will pay off.

The chairman addressed the chairman ЭПРОНа to the engineer Kirillov:

– Your opinion?.

Kirillov, the healthy, suntanned man of average years, in a sea jacket, rose and slowly began:

– We do still precisely not know the place where “Leviathan” sank, and depth is absolutely unknown. All business depends eventually on depth. EPRON still worked at depths about twenty-thirty is put off.

– Companion Kirillov – suspended him the chairman – most of the audience here – people overland, got used to consider on meters.

– The sea sazhen equals to six feet, or one and eighty six 100-th meter – Kirillov explained. – Well, I will transfer to meters. And so, we work at depths of fifty-sixty meters and above, of course.

– Not more deeply?

– Depth in hundred meters for the diver in a usual diving suit is considered already record. In the American rigid suits it is possible to fall by two hundred, even by three hundred meters. It is meanwhile border for divers. It is possible to fall by depth seven hundred fifty – one thousand meters only in the special steel gondola capable to sustain huge pressure. Unfortunately, in a similar gondola it is only possible to observe underwater life, to photograph – and only. We need to act under water – to lift the sunk ship or, in case of need, to find by it Hurges’s “treasure”. Then business comes down to that, “Leviathan” how deeply lies. You know that in oceans there are depths in ten thousand meters. And modern border of lowering – a little more than one thousand meters.

– A stratosphere, it appears, it is easier to win, than the hydrosphere – concluded, grinning, the chairman.

– Yes, thirty kilometers are easier to rise above the ground by twenty five – than to go down to the ocean on two-three kilometers. The terrifying pressure of water keeps secrets of sea superdepths. I even doubt whether people will be able and to go down in the future to the deepest places of the ocean…

– Even in a gondola?

– Even in a gondola, and only to observe. The gondola with people has to be tied to a cable or a chain that it could be pulled out from water. But no cable of ten kilometers will sustain a body weight. … I do not know it… the cable should be done in the form of a cone with a huge diameter in the basis. I do not say any more that from the ship it is impossible to lift such weight and cranes such it is impossible to build.

– And if to lower a steel sphere without people, but with devices which would transfer to the earth of the image of the deep-water world? – the economist became interested.

Kirillov grinned.

– You offer me the questions overstepping the bounds of diving practice. It if you want, already area almost a fantasy. But I believe, as with such sphere nothing will turn out.

– The steel sphere with walls of enormous thickness – did not calm down the economist.

– And glass? – Kirillov asked. – After all your sphere has to have windows through which it would be possible to light with a searchlight a seabed for operation of the TV. It seems to me that even quartz glass will not sustain pressure. Besides, do not forget that such sphere will not have any wires. Probably, in him it is necessary to have power plant or accumulators of sufficient force and radio station. However and there is more to come. How to transfer the image without wires? Radio beams will be absorbed by ten-kilometer thickness of water. No, what is located at a depth of ten kilometers is completely inaccessible for us.

– Fortunately, “Leviathan” sank not in Silent, and in the Atlantic Ocean, more “shallow”. However, and in Atlantic there are “failures” depth in several kilometers, but there are much also depths, available to us. There are also underwater ridges which tops lie rather close to the surface of the ocean, and here and there these mountain tops rise over the surface of the ocean, creating all the known islands, for example group of the Azorsky, Canary Islands.

In this regard I submit the general plan of an expedition so. In the distress signals dispatched by “Leviathan” on the eve of death the longitude and width are marked. This place, as far as I know, represents rather raised underwater plateau with extremely cut up relief. There are both deep abysses, and high mountains. On the general cards all this is designated, naturally, only approximately. We have no yet so authentic maps on which the relief of each square kilometer of Atlantic would be represented precisely. We sail to the place of death of “Leviathan” and diligently we measure lotliny depths. If they reach several kilometers, then as it is sad, we should recede. Similar depths exceed modern technical capabilities ЭПРОНа. Other business if research establishments help us and will give hardware for a gain of similar depths. Anyway this reconnoitring expedition will cost not much.

– And if depth is suitable? – the chairman asked.

– Then we will start the second stage of work – to searches of the sunk steamship. Here on a scene divers act. If “Leviathan” is found, further we work on your tasks: we look for “treasure” by steamship, under water, or we will bring it to the surface that, however, will run already into money.

Azores asked words.

– I think that we should not lift the steamship – he told. – Hurges was so provident that hung up if only he managed to make it, the plates on an anchor chain on a steamship nose. Thus, we should find only the steamship at the bottom of the sea and to find plates on an anchor chain.

– However, to find, it is necessary to fall by a bottom and if a bottom deeply? – Kirillov told.

– The person does not have need to go down – Azores quietly answered.

– But how to find? – epronovets did not calm down.

– Very simply. I got acquainted with your fisheries in Murmansk. Floated on trawlers. And there I happened to see the underwater TV designed by one Komsomol member by means of which fishermen very easily find fish. And not only fish. We incidentally managed to find the sunk trawler at the bottom of the Barents Sea. You, obviously, already heard about it. And so. To make the big TV which could be lowered at least on depth of one thousand meters – not so a difficult technical problem. By means of the TV we will manage to find a nasal anchor chain and plates. It is necessary only to lift these soldered plates. I assume that the Soviet technicians will be able to create such mechanical hands which will be able to fall by a sea bottom, to be enough with iron fingers production there and to bring it to the surface.

– It is really the quite good idea – Kirillov said.

– A radio eye – here that will help to find Hurges’s “treasure” – Azores finished.

– How you think? – the chairman of the engineer Borin, the large inventor in the field of radio asked.

– As for the TV – Borin answered – that this idea, in my opinion, is completely real. The TV will be soon introduced in diving practice. Telling the truth, it will be not absolutely a radio eye. Researches of radio signals from the submarine which went to depth showed that radio waves are strongly absorbed by water. Therefore transfers from depths of the sea have to go not by radio waves, and on wires from the TV. But it equipment question. I know the inventor. Not so long ago I had it, showed the small TV. I willingly will take it to myself in assistants and with it I will develop a design of the deep-water TV. I can undertake it. “Mechanical hands” … I think, we will build them.