Classics fantasy – 11

– Let’s be chosen – that surely answered. It gave the order, and propellers started working. But “Taiga” sat down thoroughly. It was necessary to put a caterpillar drive instead of runners. Business went rather. The all-terrain vehicle got out of a snowdrift and again became on skis.

– Went!

14. Uneasy night

There was only the fourth hour p.m., but in the polar sky, dark blue with a greenish shade, stars already burned. Polar night. Equal ice wind blew directly in a face. With dry hissing as desert sand, was transferred from place to place small snow. Wind, playing snow dust, lifted it to the deck and said directly, pricked the thinnest crystal needles.

Polar night was not such dark as Jim expected. The stars which covered all sky dimly lit white snow. Month hung on the sky. Cold, appear, froze both the sky, and month, and stars and made them ice, crystal. So they were transparent and… are cold. Yes, even stars seemed to Jim multi-colored, transparent cold small pieces of ice. Directly ahead, in the north, the sky shone at the horizon equal blue glow. Highly over it strips of pale blue light flashed and died away

– As if inhabitants of planets exchange words light signals – Ignat told.

Jim for the first time saw the polar lights. And though it was not too effective, Jolie with curiosity observed this mute game of heavenly fires. He began to understand beauty of the North.

– Strange – Ignat continued – over the horizon light remains to constants – amplifies, does not throw out beams. It is possible to think that it is not the polar lights, but far fires of the city.

Simakov grinned.

– So it also is – he answered. – We drive up to Chelyuskin.

– It is necessary to warn about our arrival – Ignat exclaimed and went to a radio cabin. It caused Chelyuskin and asked to transfer to Stepan Asatkin and Leonid Merkulov: “Let leave to meet”.

But they did not leave, and left. Ignat uvidat quickly coming light of headlights soon. Stepan and Leonid arrived on a snowmobile. With them there was a fall which Stepan presented to Ignat and Jim:

– Andrey Ivanovich Lelkin. The chief engineer of the most northern power plant in the world. Change to us in a snowmobile. Rather dokaty.

And in a few minutes Jim and Ignat already rushed to Chelyuskin, briskly talking.

Chelyuskin gradually opened before them. Lamps – them was much more, than on stations of underground gasification, wooden izbas, stone houses, warehouses of forest materials, sheds, bricks, stones, winches, cranes, catarpillars…

Jim was interested:

– So it is also “The ice city”?

– It is still an embryo – a city germ – Stepan told.

– It becomes already similar to the ice city – Ignat exclaimed, pointing to the ice columns serving as support for wires. – It is thought dexterously up!

– We here widely use “local construction material” – Stepan told. – And ice – magnificent material: always near at hand, strong, cheap, pliable. Here it is hard to deliver the wood. And we use ice everywhere where it is only possible. Our meteorologist Verkhovsky thinks out all this. You get acquainted with it. “Father Frost”. Interesting old man. Have a look at these ice cubes.

– Ice house? – Ignat asked.

– Ice тепляк – Asatkin explained. – To build on such frost – hard piece. Mittens disturb, without mittens, any minute, will freeze hands. Now we perform almost all works in teplyaka. We build over construction an easy case from thin plywood or even a cardboard and we pour water. It turns out ice тепляк with any thickness of walls. It perfectly keeps heat. Heating – electric or gas.

– But what will be with all these teplyaka and ice columns when the summer comes?

– In the summer of a teplyaka are not necessary, and columns let thaw. It is temporary conducting for publicizing of buildings. Work will be finished before heat comes.

– We and Jima already prepared for you a house. For visitors we have no hotel yet. Froze, Jim? – asked Pelkin Jima as old friend.

– Cold – Jim answered.

– And what, Pelkin whether you threw the North for the sake of hot Florida? – Ignat asked.

– Of course, no – the fall answered.

– Here, you see, Jim. Andrey Ivanovich says that the best places on the globe begin only behind the Polar circle. – All burst out laughing.

– We will warm you – Asatkin consoled. – Here and izba. It only witness mark…

– From whom it is necessary to guard here? – with surprise Jim asked.

– From polar bears mainly. Despite fires, these curious animals quite often visit us. Overlook – will get into our refrigerators.

– Yes, in storage of products it is far better in the north, than in Florida. Meat does not spoil – Ignat told.

All entered a small izba. Walls smelled of a fresh larch. Electric lighting is carried already out, but the electric furnace is not installed yet. In a corner on bricks there is a small iron furnace. Near it a heap of spill and scraps.

Pelkin quickly kindled the furnace, put a teapot. Merkulov brought from a snowmobile suitcases with bread, canned food, cervine sausage. Friends decided not to go to the dining room, and to have dinner here to talk and “to remember old times”.

Merkulov and Asatkin were “nomadic builders”. They traveled all over all USSR from edge to edge. Their ways dispersed from Ignat, again were crossed. It was the meeting after several years of separation.

Jim with interest listened to life of “people without settled life”. He well knew “vagrant America”. But there people loafed from end to end in job searches. They were pursued as tramps, arrested, put in prison. This homeless was considered almost beyond the law. The homeland for them was not the homeland, but the country inhabited by hostile tribes in a police uniform. The unemployed felt almost the same as the first English pioneers among the virgin nature and the hostile Indian population.

And these Asatkin and Merkulov! They are not bezdomna. They only live in the big-big house where one “room” is called Central Asia, another the Far East, the third… yes all rooms and not to count.

The human voice of clock radios reported time everyone a quarter of hour. Friends did not notice how midnight came. Pelkin, Asatkin and Merkulov began to say goodbye.

– Do not forget to switch off clock radios, otherwise this herald will disturb you at night. Put this arrow at six in the morning. Not early? And in six you will be woken – told, leaving, Pelkin. – Good night.

They left. Ignat wearily stretched, and Jim sat at an oven and everything enclosed firewood. The furnace was heated.

– Really to you it is still cold? – Ignat asked, undressing.

– By the morning will blow – Jim answered. – The house is recently difficult.

At last they switched off clock radios, turned off light and settled. Ignat immediately snored. To Jim it was not fallen down. Whether stirred roulades which were removed a nose by Ignat, whether the homeland was remembered. There now day. The bright, hot sun shines. And on streets also warmly, is even even warmer, than in this izba… And here behind the walls smelling of pitch wind howls, lifting blizzards. Around on one thousand kilometers the ice desert. Wolves, bears… Anna Fokina was remembered. Whether he will see it tomorrow? To Jim it became sad. It is a pity, the Hawaiian guitar in a suitcase. Would play on it, absolutely quietly not to wake Ignat. However, perhaps, and gun shots you will not wake him… No, it, Jim, will not remain here. Will go to Uzbekistan, to Transcaucasia. There is more sun, more probably home.

Under a floor, at an oven, the crash was heard. Crude dries up. Again crash and someone’s heavy sighs. Ignat sighs? No, he snores exactly, rhythmic. A strong crash, hissing, as in a water tap, when there is no water, whistle, a smack… And suddenly Jim felt that the bed under him is unsteady. Or he has a dream? Jim pinched himself for a cheek. No, he does not sleep. The crash does not stop. Jim begins to worry. He lowers legs on a floor and feels in darkness that the floor board into which he stepped costs an edge. In the formed crack bears ice cold. It is necessary to light fire rather. Jim goes on a floor, stumbles, falls. Legs freeze. Where this damned switch? Jim switched on light. At the same moment the roar was distributed. Boards of a floor rose, turned, from under them water began to act. Jim woke Ignat. That half asleep could not understand in what business.

– Rather! Get up rather! – Jim hurried him. The izba was quickly filled with water. One more shot. The wall warped, between logs the crack was formed. Frosty air began to enter this crack with whistle. Water rose, froze, ice with a crash broke, from a crack stuck out water flows and immediately froze. In the face of the surprised Jim and Ignat the izba turned into a glacier.

They began to put on quickly. Ice already on half-meter filled an izba. It squeezed out a door which with a crash was opened, and now in an izba became also cold, as well as outside.

Hardly two friends ran out on the street as there was a new eruption. On their eyes all izba was filled with ice up to the top. Ice squeezed out windows, came to light. With a roar of weapon shots it broke off a tree, a stone, everything where water got and where it froze.

The amazed Jim and Ignat stood and looked at this extraordinary show. Ice filled an izba to a ceiling, stuck out from windows and a door, went down to the earth. At last everything calmed down. Light of the next lamp lit dilapidated to a witness mark.

– Legs did not wet? Go rather to mine to a witness mark to be heated and dry. Not that you will be left without legs. Pound legs snow, take off boots! – the appeared watchman – the Chukchi or the Yakut ordered goodness knows where from. Jim and Ignat could not distinguish him yet. The watchman forced to undress legs and to rub with snow. Only when legs became red as paws of a goose, the watchman took away Jim and Ignat in the izba standing in the neighbourhood.

– What happened? – Jim asked.

Ignat already understood and explained to him:

– All this permafrost “jokes”. You do not know what is permafrost? The layer of the frozen soil which is not thawing in the summer. In places here even during a thirty-degree summer heat the sun heats the soil only on one and a half meters. And below the layer of the chilled soil and ice lies. It never thaws. Though, of course, permafrost actually is not eternal. It is possible that to – гда in these latitudes there was warmer climate and permafrost was not. It is also possible that the climate will become warmer over time and permafrost will disappear. But now it is necessary to potter with it much. It prevents agriculture though small permafrost and does not interfere with growth of some plants. But especially permafrost brings a lot of trouble upon builders. The bases, walls of buildings burst, sometimes all building collapses. The majority, for example, of the railway buildings lying on the route of the Great Siberian way is constructed in permafrost strip. And repair of these buildings destroyed by permafrost manages if I am not mistaken, millions in five in a year.

– But why it occurs?

– Very simply – Ignat answered. – Our izba or to a witness mark was constructed on the frozen soil. Unpleasant property of permafrost – its water tightness. From here also all tricks which are caused by permafrost to builders result. Ground waters are clamped in rather thin layer of earth. From above – the soil which is freezing together in the winter, and from below – permafrost layer. This layer gives quicksands and landslides in the summer. In the winter – it is even worse. As winter frosts it is more and more, expose to frost the top layer of earth, ground waters which are between this top layer and lower, merzlotny below and below, contract stronger. There is a huge pressure – to two thousand kilograms per square centimeter. Water breaks through the top frozen layer in the thinnest or weak point. And a weak point – the made most winter-proof. You heated the furnace, the soil under a floor got warm, ground waters broke, filled the house up to the top, and the house turned into a continuous piece of ice. I was told about such comical case on the Yakut and Amur highway when the barrel put in the fall upside down was a heater. There came frosts, the soil around a barrel began to freeze through quite strongly. And under a barrel still rather warm air remained, and there frost penetration went more slowly. Pressure difference turned out. Ground waters broke and filled a barrel from below. Sometimes these waters form huge hillocks of a pucheniye, up to ten meters high and fifty meters wide. Permafrost – our enemy with whom we conduct persistent fight.

Ignat and Jim dried up stockings, fur boots. Ignat looked in a window. The watchman, apparently, reported already the accident. Near icy witness marks there were several people. The old man wearing spectacles, dressed in a big fur-coat to toe, pottered with the camera. The woman, also in a fur-coat stood nearby. Natives swung mittens and spoke about something.

– Let’s go, we will look what they do there.

– What, unsuccessfully slept? – Pelkin asked, approaching them. – It at us happens. It is visible, very much you heated.

The photographer who appeared the meteorologist Verkhovsky grumbled: the device refused to work.

– The lock does not act on cold – he said. – It is necessary to warm up. – Someone ran behind chips and spread out a fire. Verkhovsky, holding the device over a flame, prepared. The woman in a fur-coat pressed a pocket small lamp. Dazzling light of extraordinary force flashed.

– Belief! – Bugaev screamed.

– Ignat!

The bright flash of magnesium blinded Jim. He heard as snow under Ignat’s legs began to creak.

– Why you did not report about the arrival? – Vera asked.

Jim understood that the girl who was him in dazzling flash of magnesium also was “the snow queen” – the engineer Vera Kolosova.

15. Father Frost

– This the real ice city – Ignat exclaimed.

Jim with surprise looked at an unprecedented show. On the bank of the frozen sea there was the whole town of dome-shaped ice houses. Lit with bright electric light, they had an extraordinary appearance as if houses of the fantastic city of the unknown planet. Ice houses-kupoly had no windows. Several steps cut from huge bricks of ice conducted to a low and narrow door. Between houses people in fur clothes wandered and dogs ran. At the sight of strangers of a laika began a bark, but immediately waved tails.

– Where here Verkhovsky’s house? – Ignat asked the counter Eskimo.

– Father Frost? – the Eskimo smiled and pointed to the ice dome differing in nothing from others.

Jim and Ignat approached to the door. It was veiled by cervine skins from within.

– There is no electric call – Ignat told, inspecting a door. – To knock on an ice wall – will not hear. It is necessary to enter without report. – And he tried to raise a skin. But it was densely attached.

– Now I will open – Verkhovsky’s voice was heard. The edge of a skin rose. Having bent, Ignat and Jim entered the dwelling. They were met by the owner, the meteorologist Verkhovsky. Having looked at his big gray-haired beard, Ignat grinned and told:

– You here Father Frost are called. It for your gray-haired beard?

– And not only for a beard – the old scientist similar to toy fir-tree Father Frost answered. – I fight against a frost here and I operate it on a potreba of the person. You sit down, guests you will be, I will tell.

On it there was a jersey, leather trousers and pima. Guests looked round. The interior of the ice house was so original, as well as its appearance.

– As if under a dome of observatory you are – Ignat noticed.

– This modernized “needle” – the Eskimo dwelling – Father Frost told – in a most up-to-date way equipped.

The modern equipment consisted in electric lighting, an electric oven, a plate. On a wooden floor there was a dining table with three chairs. At an entrance door – “kitchen”. Along vaulted walls the table ring having a gap only at a door for pass in the room lasted. On a table – books, meteorological devices, heaps of papers, magazines. Over this infinite table there was an iron rod on which it is possible to move an electric bulb to any place.

– And electric kitchen at you what for? Unless you not in the public dining room have dinner?

– You will sometimes be earned, there is no wish to go, I prepare houses – the meteorologist answered. – Here a ventilation outlet, you see? And light-, and warmly, and air good.

And Verkhovsky told a story of the ice city.

– I arrived with the first party of builders here. It was necessary to live in tents. It was in the summer. We were brought here by the ice breaker. In the afternoon in tents was even hot, at night coldishly. But also in the summer sometimes the snowball dropped out. After us there had to arrive the steamship with food and forest construction material. But jammed it. Our ice breaker went to revenue It made the way through heavy ices very slowly. And the winter was on a nose. It was necessary to undertake something not to appear in tents to winter frosts. But what you will undertake here? The strip of the woods lies far in the south. We had several trucks, saws, axes. Counted – not to manage to cut down, take out, construct. While thought-guessed, the frost knocked. The coast froze, the rivers froze. Here the thought also came to my mind: it is necessary to build houses of ice. – Verkhovsky waved a hand on a ceiling. – As though simple piece, and it is not so simple to put such house. I set our architects – Verochka Kolosova and her assistants – for drawings and calculations. It was necessary to draw precisely a figure of each ice “brick” from which then it would be possible to put these vaulted houses.

For them it was the task like that which was resolved by the famous Italian architect Brunelleski when he projected a dome Florentine “дуомо” – a cathedral. But, however, nothing – coped our Brunelleski. To tell the truth, the first a needle left such that Eskimos, likely, would laugh. It is good that material painfully pliable. There you will chop off, there you will fill in with water, a frost will take – that your concrete. Remarkable material. And here, on our happiness, and Eskimos came. And what you think? This builders! Did of house snow on own arshin – a palm yes a mitten. One Eskimo cuts out a form of bricks on snow, other of these bricks builds the snow house. The house directly in the eyes grows. Whether you trust, for half an hour on the house did. Inside a scraper will scratch, will level – and it is ready. The stove bench snow will be built, on it skins outlined. The door is closed by an ice block. Will light three-four lamps on seal fat – heat will become so that undressed it is possible to go. In the spring when the arch begins to melt, holes thawed patches stop up with new snow bricks.

So we built the first ice settlements and this winter lived the real Eskimos. We had flour, crackers.

But there was not enough meat, fats. And here to us Eskimos and Chukchi helped to hunt an animal. We had guns. Provided with meat, fat of. Also were lit with fat, fat and отоплялись, and ate fat.

However, several people got sick with a scurvy at us without habit to such food. Reported about it on radio. To us on airplanes vitamin medicines delivered. And all patients got on feet soon.

But nevertheless this first winter was heavy.

Brought construction materials in the summer. Them to deliver hard here. Here I also thought: why don’t we use local construction material at all – ice – where it is only possible? Talked to our engineers, discussed this business and developed the real ice industry. Columns support for temporary conducting of electricity were seen? Ice. These houses – a needle – ice. Teplyaki on buildings and some works – ice… It is necessary to tell about these teplyaka separately. Now I will prepare tea.

– Too ice?

– Hot.

– To us it is not cold – Ignat told. – Here even our tropical Jim and that, apparently, does not freeze. You did not freeze, Jim?

– Did not freeze, and hot to tea I will drink – Jim answered, shrinking.

– But tell, please – Ignat asked a question – from internal heat, from your electrokitchen unless ice walls do not melt?

– Of course, melt a little, but an utter nonsense. If on centimeter two in a month melt what it means at a wall thickness in meter? And if thawed more, the trouble is not big. Pour from above water, the new ice layer will accrue. Only also put that by spring your ice izba in an internal cubic capacity will win – will become more spacious. So I wanted to tell about teplyaka.

– Forgive, I interrupt you – Jim told. – Here permafrost moved us from wooden witness marks and destroyed it. And there cannot be it?

– About permafrost there will be a special conversation? So far I will tell only one: the izba was under construction on frozen soil, and a needle is under construction on the ice base. Ice – the bad conductor of heat. It does not allow to be warmed to the soil and to be swollen out. So about teplyaka.

What here, on Far North, we had to fight most of all against? With cold and a gloom. Well, we suffered only the first winter from a gloom. Installed in the summer wind-driven generators which gave us the first energy, and with it and light. Then the station of underground gasification, and further not far off and the temperature station – our main goal earned. Now we have enough light. And it was necessary to tinker with cold. It is impossible to conduct construction on Far North only in short polar summer. So and in two hundred years of everything that we started, you will not build. It was necessary to resolve by all means a question of a year-round construction season. Business as though and not it terrible. In fur clothes warmly. But in it it is difficult to work in the open air. The main thing – hands. In fur mittens it is inconvenient. It is not work any more – bear paws. Well, our many workers, especially from alien, also removed mittens: in work supposedly hands will not freeze. Till the native winter, on the frosts measured. And here as will take, you iron – hands and are freezed. – Verkhovsky sighed. – Several people so on imprudence of hands lost. Gangrene – also cut off fingers, and even all brush. Of course, we began to build wooden teplyak at once. But there was not enough tree. Here again remembered ice. Light board or plywood тепляк water you will pour – and it is ready. Does not pass heat. And then and entirely learned to build of ice. “The plant of ice casting” was opened. From thin sheets of iron of forms made a large number. Water of a form you will pour, on a frost you will expose – it is ready. Froze. Then in the warm room you will bring them that walls a bit thawed, and take out freely. Here to you an ice column with grooves. Here to you ice board of any size and thickness. You will start an ice board in a groove of an ice column, water you will flow – and it was soldered without the slightest crack. But with water without habit too stories left. Water on a frost – that fire. To one worker naked hands poured, they in ice ingots addressed at once. It was necessary to thaw carefully. Incidentally from a hose warm water poured over another. It turned into an ice statue. It is good that the face was not filled in. Speaks, even laughs, to it it became even warmer under skins, and cannot set either a hand, or a leg. And to the earth froze. It was necessary to cut down it from an ice pedestal, in тепляк to carry and there to thaw.

Gradually seized also ice production. For teplyakam warehouses for provisions began to do. In the summer of geese, ducks we will fill; polar bears – all the year round shoot. And in ice warehouses. On ice columns ice regiments, an ice roof, ice fences… With these fences the funny thing at us left. We built them above human height and thickness in a quarter of meter. The bear should not get (our warehouses stand on the suburb). And products began to vanish. It is visible, bears managed. And lighting electric did not save, even electrograggerses did not help. We began to watch. And what you think? Bears sapped. Both breathe, and lick, and scrape claws ice and eventually will do a manhole. It was necessary to do then more thickly ice walls and with a slope. Couple of bears was hit on the crime scene. Then their marauding came to an end. After all and now alien bears still get, go around warehouses. And local we are known. Close are not shown. Like border now at us: we see them, they – us, and they do not cross the border.