Classics fantasy – 11

After warehouses we undertook construction of ice roads for a snowmobile. Beauty! One hundred and fifty kilometers per hour you fly. Arrow.

– Snow the way does not sweep up?

– Yes in these latitudes in general rainfall is not enough. The cloth of the ice road is a little raised that wind blew off snow. No, does not stir snow.

– And bridges?

– Wow! And bridges ice. By all means sweep. Well, here. The ice sculpture came for the ice industry. Verochka Kolosova was the real sculptor. In free time it began to cut busts from ice. Made a polar bear. Beauty. And I suggested a thought to it – to make a metal form. Found clays, it molded Lenin and Stalin’s big busts, cast a compound pig-iron form that did not break off, and began to fabricate busts from ice. Now these busts in each polar settlement, in each reindeer-breeding collective farm, in each reserve.

Also the ice recreation park is remarkable.

– Park? – mistrustfully Ignat asked.

– The park – Verkhovsky confirmed. – And when only children managed to build all this?! Funny. Ice fantastic trees. Ice towers. Inside – the course upward, and on a cone surface, from top to down, the screw, a spiral – an ice path for the sledge. Ice roller coaster and what! You will move down down – and there some more kilometers from dispersal you rush. Skating rinks with catapults for skaters. Catapults are, of course, not ice. Palace of miracles. The right, the real palace, to three floors, with halls inside and intricate turrets outside! And in each hall – the fancy things made of ice. Both statues, and animals, and even woods. Furniture is ice, on walls bas-reliefs. With electricity it is lit, you will enter in the evening – beauty. Magic. The fairy tale from “Thousands and one night”. A miracle which you will not find and you will not create in the warm countries.

Think, it is only water, the frozen water. Here what does a frost!

No, whatever you may say, a frost – it is remarkable piece. How it at Pushkin?.

…mighty winter,

As the vigorous leader, conducts

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.

And on the screen images of submarines appeared, on appearance it is not enough what differing from usual, military.

– Never I would agree to work in the submarine, in cold water, under ice! – Jim told.

– Yes there warmly! – Ignat burst out laughing. – Look, the thermometer shows twenty three degrees.

– Nevertheless it is terrible – the ethnographer supported Jim. – As you will think that around ice water, and over the head, maybe, five-meter ice, so you and at thirty degrees of heat will tear a frost!

– A habit – Ignat objected.

– Correctly! – Kostin responded. – Whether here you want to have a talk with seamen of scuba diving? I will establish bilateral connection with the old friend, the captain of the U-246 submarine, and his team now.

It tinkered, jumped, and the pomerknuvshy screen recovered again.

On the screen the person of average years with cut moustaches and the cheerful blinked eyes appeared. On it there was a form of Navy.

– Kostin! You called me?

– To companion Yershov, captain of the U-246 submarine, respect! – the projectionist in the microphone answered. – My cohabitants according to number are interested in underwater communication. If you please, tell how it and that.

– It is possible to tell but only I do not like to spin in front of the televizorny device. Admired – and enough! I am switched off.

The screen went out, and at the same moment Yershov’s voice was heard:

– Now we will have a talk. Well what to tell you? How we seized subglacial transport? Not at once, of course. There were also failures, but about them will tell later. The fact the fact that seized; and seized because we are people persistent.

– Forgive, please – Kostin’s voice was heard because of the device. – You where are now, Yershov?

– Where? Where to me to be? Not on an oven, of course. In the submarine, as always.

– Under water?

– Under water.

– Under ice?

– Under two-meter continuous ice.

– And anything?

– Not nothing, and is excellent. We have heat, light-, comfortably. Clean air. Mechanisms work as a chronometer. Precisely according to the schedule we will be on the place.

– Well that! – Kostin told. – And we have that here such children who consider that it is worse than the submarine on the earth and there is no place.

– Yes they, likely, never were in the modern submarine? Would swim for a while with me, would tell other! – hotly Yershov exclaimed. – We have real underwater ships with the big tonnage and spacious passenger cabins. We photographed transfer of several thousand workers, engineers, technicians together with materials and bulky details of cars. Look how at us all this is organized.

Audience saw pictures on the TV again.

Before them there was a pure big bay protected from an impact of the drifting ices by a powerful dam. Ashore – the arc-shaped pier filled with numerous cranes. Near pier stood in a row as huge spindles, the underwater ships. Over water the black shining backs of these new, terribly big inhabitants of water rose only. On pier there were people in warm fur suits. They patted shaggy mittens, foot tapped legs. It was visible that there is a furious frost. But wet backs of underwater giants did not ice over. From them there was even steam as from the horses who ran on a frost there are a lot of kilometers. The external surface of the underwater ships heated up electricity. Above cases of the underwater ships open hatches were seen. There was a loading. Huge arrows of cranes highly flew by over the heads of the people standing on the coast, took freights in boxes, gave them to holds of the ships.

Jim arrived from the country of the advanced equipment. He saw constructions of large ocean ports, but what he saw on the screen now, struck it. Designs, the principles of loading mechanisms were as though the same. Another surprised: rates and coordination of work. Cranes moved silently and with such speed that the head was turned, looking at them. It was some chain of quickly rotating roundabouts. What power! What victory over friction, weight!

Jim gasped when he saw how the huge ten-wheel engine swept by in a roundabout, and he did not manage to disappear in a hold subsoil as it was followed by other, same heavy and bulky cars. Cranes stood on such distance one from another that the ends of their arrows could touch on the run each other if not the hour accuracy of the mechanisms rotating arrows in one direction.

Did not pass also several minutes as all freights were absorbed by underwater monsters.

The melodious sound was distributed, cranes instantly stopped, having extended the arrows in the direction of port. In several seconds landing of people began.

Watching them, the audience as though also made landing and fluently examined an interior of the multystoried underwater ship. There was everything that happens by big ocean steamships: both fine cabins, and pools for swimming, and platforms for games, and library, and auditoriums. But was also features in machines and devices much: laboratories for processing of sea water in oxygen; standard installations for creation of artificial climate; powerful cars for explosions and melting of floating ices; warehouses of underwater suits for big depths with a reserve of oxygen, drinking water, food and the engines allowing divers to float quickly in any direction across and verticals. Even devices and devices for geological researches at the bottom of the sea.

And in ways of loading, and in the device of the underwater ships there was a lot of “poetry” of the equipment that all were delighted.

The underwater ship went with a huge speed… The new port, some mountains covered with snow, the city, the plant… The young ruddy worker ascends to a station platform – one of many thousands of people transferred with unprecedented speed together with cars, materials for thousands of kilometers under ices.

Audience involuntarily deeply sighed, having ended viewing of this amazing, concerning movie. Yershov, having allowed the audience to recover, continued:

– We did not gather as some other, straight away to cross all Arctic Ocean. We began with coasting swimming. The first submarines could pass without rise on a surface only small spaces. We long and carefully studied a bottom of the polar seas, ices, undercurrents. Adapted submarines for subglacial swimming and improved them. We had drills with which it is possible to drill ice, and tubes for receiving external air, and good explosives. Also case durability increased by compression, the accumulators, a radio communication, radio lots warning about obstacles in a way were improved. At “station” we were expected always by a ready ice-hole – гидропорт. Here is how this business carefully accustomed. Also adjusted so that now risk any. Action radius everything extends. And already the first big passenger subglacial ships crossed the ocean from European to the American coast.

– And incidents after all were? And failures? – Kostin asked.

– The person also will not learn to go without to falling – Yershov answered. – There were also failures, there were also incidents. In the submarine all unfortunate incidents come down to the fact that it is impossible to emerge for some reason or other and the crew risks to choke. Was and with us such case when I on “Perch” swam – so called our submarine. This “Perch” got to an ice trap. There was a furious storm. Nervousness is such that our “Perch” even at a decent depth danced as the glass devil in a jar. It was necessary to fall even below. We had an oxygen reserve for about sixty hours, but nevertheless situation was serious. There is nothing to rise to the surface and to think: screws instantly would break in wild chaos of the rubbing, breaking, mixing up ice floes. But how many hours, days the storm still will last?.

We slowly moved forward, to the polar station – the purpose of our swimming. And suddenly – stop! A push from which all of us got. Somehow looked round, we see: we are in an ice cave. Perhaps, we went off-course and entered a cave which was formed in the glacier of some island which was going down in water; and maybe, it was also in an iceberg; and maybe, it just was an ice heap in shallow water. Anyway, it is necessary to get out of a cave. It was such size that the submarine could not be deployed. It was necessary to go carefully a backing. In a few minutes intense silence we felt a push again. Ice hammered an exit from a cave. We appeared in an ice trap. Us was four: I am a captain, my assistant navigator Chudakov and mechanics Shanin and Burmin. With them I swim also now. We began to confer what to do. Fortunately, the radio station was as it should be. From the polar station, by our calculations, we were nearby. We, of course, immediately wired the situation. But from the outside of special hope to assign it was not come to the rescue. First, storm. The airplane will not depart. And if arrives what he can make? With itself will not bring divers with the full equipment. And divers during a storm will not be able to work. From above to lay down a bomb? The bomb together with an ice cave and us could blow up. Ice breakers nearby were not and it was under our conditions difficult to expect the help from them. Here unless more powerful, than ours, the submarine could try to punch the ice stopper which corked our cave if this stopper is not really big. But also for this time it is necessary.

– I – say the mechanic Burmin – I will take with myself an ammonal charge, I will leave in a cave, I will put a charge in a stopper, I will fit wires and I will return. Let’s blow up an electric spark.

– What will turn out? – the second mechanic, Shanin objects. – All ice cave at explosion will collapse and will crush us.

– Perhaps will also not crush – the navigator Chudakov says. – We in water, and ice is lighter than water.

– We first of all should survey the place of an exit from a cave. Perhaps, the stopper absolutely is also not big. Perhaps, our submarine hit against the hummock which is carried away down by a storm – I expressed the opinion.

– To survey is the first business – Burmin, and behind it and all others agreed.

We quickly equipped Burmin, helped it to put on in a diving suit, fastened to it on a back the oxygen device, distances in one hand an electric lamp, in other kaylo and released outside via the special hatch. In half an hour we hear Kyle’s blows to the case: gives signals that we opened the hatch. Opened. We listen – silence. And then again ringing knock on the case. What there befell? It was come urgently Shanina to the rescue to send. Both returned soon. It appeared, at Burmin the electric lamp deteriorated. He somehow came across the submarine, and the hatch in the dark could not find in any way. The stopper, in his opinion, is not big at all. Just pieces of ice jammed. Burmin assured that he in one place even punched a hole. But there will be enough work at several o’clock and on how many, definitely you will not consider: can be, new pieces of ice a current will bring. There is nothing to blow up, so. Not a wall, and porridge, but as to clear up this mess – here a question.

It was necessary to work in turn. Pieces of ice were involved in a cave and rose up. It became close. Worked hour after an hour, cautiously watching an oxygen consumption.

Well, further I have to disappoint you. You wait for the description as there was not enough oxygen as all began to choke as at the last moment we were saved. Perhaps, it and would be more interesting to listen, but actually everything occurred differently. There was enough oxygen. Got out of a cave independently. But when there passed several knots, again all fell from a push. Really new ice wall? No, iron. We faced, fortunately, on small to the course, the submarine which arrived to help out us. It damaged a radio set and therefore she could not warn us about the arrival. This boat was it is precautionary the large supply of oxygen cylinders is taken. We managed to receive them under water. Both boats were defended, the storm did not stop yet.

Here and all story – finished Yershov.

– And how on the ice-rink threw out you? – Kostin asked.

– It and not a so interesting adventure! – Yershov answered.

– And you after all tell – Kostin was not appeased.

– Well, well, I will tell. The storm threw out us on the ice-rink. Ice floes froze together, and our submarine remained to drift on an ice floe. To the polar station was not really far, perhaps, on foot would reach; but how to throw the submarine? Caused the help. The airplane on skis arrived. Explosions the ice-hole was made. The submarine from ice was torn off, to the airplane tied and tightened to edge of an ice-hole. Then I entered the submarine, and people pushed off it in water. I accepted back freight, crew, fell and continued swimming. Exclusively. And now good-bye.

– Well that? – having addressed Jim, the ethnographer and Ignat, Kostin asked. – Saw? Heard? Are happy? Well, I will show you one more picture, but only with half an eye.

On the TV there was an image of the globe turned to the viewer by the Northern hemisphere. From London line to Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow further on the East, to the Chukotski Peninsula, through the Bering Strait, to Fairbanks, Chicago, New York suddenly ran… The globe turned, the territory of North America opened. The black line from New York went down, to the southern states, to Kay-Vesta to extremities of the Florida peninsula.

– What is it? – Jim, увидав on the globe familiar places started.

– And it here that – Kostin answered. And Jim saw on the screen huge, a strange look an electric train which promptly moved on a track, the exceeding width a usual track twice.

– The shortest Trans-Siberian way from Europe to America – Kostin explained.

– How? And it already exists? – Jim exclaimed and even rose on a chair.

– You will know everything, you will grow old soon – Kostin told. – For today enough. It is necessary and for club to leave something.

The screen went out, the bulb under a ceiling was lit, and Jim still looked at a white rectangle of the screen.

17. An adventure on the ice road

To the room were knocked. Jim playing a sad song the Hawaiian guitar screamed from surprise. Vera Kolosova, fresh and ruddy as always was on the threshold.

– I did not prevent? – The girl quickly removed a fur-coat. Ignat helped it to pull down a heavy fur coat through the head. Now it stood in a woolen jersey and a gray knitted skirt. Then removed also valenoks, having put them in a corner – valenoks were covered with snow, snow thawed, and from them flowed. In woolen stockings, home-style, she approached a table and took seat on the stool substituted by Jim. Jim started over again strumming a song – this time more cheerful. Some time all were silent. – You will not deceive me this song, Jim – at last the girl told. – You grieve, I know. And you want to leave. I heard how you spoke about it with Ignat.