Classics fantasy – 12

In several days Volkov, Konobeev and Vanyushka met on in advance agreed place on the seashore.

– There is a business on a harmony! – Vanyushka exclaimed. – I wrote to Guzik to Leningrad. It, you understand, from shock crew it is sent in addition in higher education institution. Brainy small. And my friend. At one time we together worked with it, there and made friends.

– However nothing will leave this business – Konobeev unexpectedly told, moving with moustaches and dense eyebrows. – I spoke with our collective manager. I ask it: that supposedly if to begin to part cabbage as Japanese whether it is possible on it money from artel to receive or from Dalsoyuz. And the manager speaks, as there is nothing to think. To plant cabbage, speaks, there is nothing; one surf, speaks, casts thousands of tons ashore, and perishes, to neither itself, nor people. Evona, how many! – and Konobeev pointed to heaps of the decaying seaweed cast by waves ashore.

– And look! It that? – Vanyushka exclaimed, pointing to the boat in which two already famous Japanese sat. They continued to plant bamboo bushes. – Show to our manager.

– That case tenth, however – Konobeev objected. – Japanese at themselves pull out all sea cabbage to the last bush, one may say, language lick a bottom, and at us what? Хы! Dog in the manger.

– And you what told earlier? – Vanyushka flared up.

– Said that it is quite good.

– Semyon Alekseevich! What is it? – Vanyushka who reddened for nervousness and disappointment asked. – Same labor desertion. Disbelief!.

– I think that Makar Ivanovich is not right – Volkov answered. – Does not follow at all from the fact that we badly use the natural wealth that we also should not use them. On the contrary, it is necessary to use what the ocean casts ashore that is still stored in its waters, and what can be created the hands. I guided some references. Now we extract seaweed over eight thousand tons, and in one thousand eight hundred eighty fifth more than ten thousand were extracted! – Vanyushka whistled. – Then we sold cabbage to China as foodstuff. Makar Ivanovich is right – now we get less, than earlier. Listen further. The chemical researches made not so long ago showed that the sea cabbage really contains many nutrients and is suitable also for food of the person, and for a cattle forage. It contains from six to thirty percent of protein also a little fat – about a percent one and a half-two. Thus, in cabbage there are all substances, necessary for food. The Japanese cabbage of “amanora” is rich with a protein [55] and is very good nutrient. Japanese great masters to make various foods from an amanora. They put the dried-up cabbage in seasonings or eat it separately prepared. Amanora canned food with bean soy turns out especially tasty.

– Heard? – asked Vanyushk Konobeev, significantly nodding.

– However I heard all this when still you did not exist – the old man responded.

– We could send cabbage both on internal and on external the markets. But a sea cabbage – Volkov continued – it can be used not only as nutrient. From its ashes very valuable fertilizers as in it there are potassium salts turn out. America gets these salts from seaweed for many million dollars annually. At last, in seaweed there are a lot of salts, iodine, bromine and even arsenic. In 1916—1917 there was here a plant which gave up to one thousand kilograms of iodine a year. “The Lyaminaria of a digitat” contains three percent of iodine and to twenty five Percent of carbonic potassium. Are most often eaten “ulva” from green seaweed, “porphyry” and “redimeni” – from red, “alyaria” and “lyaminariya”.

– And how much it is possible to get seaweed? – Vanyushka asked.

– One American calculated that in the Pacific Ocean only one species of seaweed – “macrocisyew” – can give sixty thousand tons of an annual harvest. And stocks of all species of seaweed cannot now even be considered.

– Evona, however? – Konobeev told, having run widely a hand from the North on the South. – On coast of all Strait of Tartary to a bay Plastun, on coast of Sakhalin and for the midday even to Korea. It is incalculable as sand sea!

The new emergency meeting was convened by Vanyushka when he received the answer from Mikola Guzik.

“You, Vanyushka, ask me about diving suits. The best of them – Japanese. It is the device which Closes a nose and eyes (glasses). In the Japanese suits it is possible to plunge about 80 m. It is deeper it is difficult to fall in such devices (water pressure: immersion on each 10 m increases pressure approximately by one atmosphere). For deeper immersion there are rigid devices In which it is possible to fall by depth of 200 m. In such device pressure of water is absorbed by walls. Average immersion in the soft device – 40 m. But also at rigid and at the soft device the diver is connected with the base (air supply). Release of the diver from base (relative) can be reached by supply of the device with compressed air. But this “release” as I told, relative. The diver cannot gain full independence of base already because in water it is difficult to be guided (at a depth of 8 m in daylight it is possible to see in the horizontal direction not further 2—4 m).

So the situation with the existing devices is. But…”

Vanyushka interrupted reading and, having raised a hand forefinger up, told:

– There is a most interesting further!

“… but the invention our laboratory of the new compact accumulator opens the big horizons in the most numerous scopes of electric energy including in diving business. Imagine a small box – like match. And here this box which you can easily put in a waistcoat pocket (if you already got a vest) contains the electricity reserve sufficient in order that throughout several days to move the car with speed limit. “Power plant” in several honeycombs of horsepowers is hidden in your waistcoat pocket. You can be lit, be heated by this energy week, can rotate it mill millstones, set machines, tractors in motion. I decided to use the accumulator to diving business. You gave me the idea! I will create absolutely new type of the diving device.

You probably know that the oxygen necessary for breath, in the nature more than is enough. In the atmosphere of its 23%, in crust – 47,2%, and in the seas and oceans – 85,8%, that is are more, than in air and crust, combined. This oxygen should be extracted only from water. And it is possible to take it by means of electrolysis. By means of the accumulator the diver will receive air from sea water, decomposing water electricity. All “laboratory” for getting of oxygen will be located behind the back in a box with size no more marching satchel. But it is not enough. The same accumulator will give current and for a strong lamp in one thousand and more candles. The lamp will be located over the head of the diver and to light to him underwater vicinities on several tens of meters. At last one more. In the satchel you can have not one, but two, three, ten accumulators. You “will soak up” electricity of the whole power plant in accumulators. You will become walking power plant. And you will be able to use electric current in one direction: for rotation of the small screw which will allow you to float with big speed. You understand what prospects of an ego opens? You will become the real sea inhabitant, you will float tens and hundreds of kilometers under water. You will not need to have any base with which you would be connected. If you want, you will be able even to lodge under water. Your plan about underwater agriculture interested my many friends scientists. They consider this plan quite feasible and promising. Now I conduct experiments, I design the new diving device. When everything is ready, I will write to you. Report how there are at you affairs with the organization of underwater plantations. This thought so interested me that, perhaps, I will not keep and I will arrive to you to try my diving suit.

M. Guzik”.

Vanyushka lowered the letter on knees and looked at listeners. On them the letter, probably, made a great impression, especially on Volkov who understood in it much more, than Konobeev. An impression the fact that scientific people know about cultivation of underwater cabbage in Leningrad and that they find this business feasible and good made on Makar Ivanovich. At all the mood was lightened. Konobeev slapped on knees huge lapishcha and told a deaf bass favourite:

– However!. Leaves so – it continued after a pause – that things are shaping up. A stop behind money.

– Makar Ivanych, you said now that nothing will leave this business.

– In Leningrad people more cleverly than our manager sit – Konobeev answered.

– Now it is only necessary to obkhlopotat this business – Vanyushka told. – We will go to Dalkraysoyuz, to Amurselsoyuz we will be pushed, all regional institutions by oblazy. And if here we do not find support, we will reach Moscow. On such business money has to be. And we will find them! In flat cake we will break, and we will get!

Also settled upon that.

From this day began for underwater farmers of “purgatory”.

In one regional establishment they were accepted by the gloomy person wearing spectacles. He listened to them, smoking a cigarette and pinching from time to time a redenky mochalny small beard. Sometimes raised the right eyebrow that at it expressed surprise, sometimes hardly an edge of lips and folds in corners the century considerably grinned. Vanyushka decided to act directly this time and stated all plan about underwater agriculture, about the underwater plantations spread by divers about grandiose figures of production of cabbage. He did not decide to tell only about underwater tractors. But also what he told was enough to force the gloomy person to cheer up. At the end of Vanyushki’s report the gloomy person showed even the curve teeth bared by a smile. It is necessary to do it justice, he was able to listen.

When Vanyushka ended, wiped the sweated forehead and took seat on a chair as the defendant, the told last word, the gloomy person, without ceasing to smile, corrected points and told:

– So! – The voice it with hoarseness did not foretell anything good. – Grandiosely! Perfectly! – It dragged on a cigarette and, having changed tone on a business tongue twister, unexpectedly began to pour words as peas: – But whether it is necessary to make all this underwater fuss, my dear? Whether you what space is occupied by the Far East region know? – The gloomy person rose and pointed to the map hanging on a wall. – Here, admire!

– Saw! – not really kindly Vanyushka answered.

The gloomy person looked on him strictly as the teacher on the pupil who interrupts the teacher and continued:

– The Far East occupies the space in two million seven hundred seventeen thousand seven hundred square kilometers. You understand what is a large object? For an example it is possible to tell that on the surface of the Far East region Italy, Belgium, Romania, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Denmark, France, Germany keep within moreover there will be a surplus almost in half a million square kilometers. And in all region it is less population, than in one Moscow! If density of Dalkraya was such as, say, in Poltavshchyna, that is about seventy five people per square kilometer, then in our free places it would be possible to place hundred seventy eight million five hundred sixty thousand people – it is more, than in all USSR! Is where to disperse! Lands plenty. We still far did not develop this huge site of the terrestrial land. Plow, spread plantations, you sit down kitchen gardens how many for your soul it is necessary. Arrange state farms, collective farms, farms. Whether it is simpler, than to climb under water to spread a sea cabbage? – And the gloomy person victoriously looked at Vanyushka over points. Vanyushka did not give up.

– But unless it contradicts one another? – he asked. – Let whom want plows the earth, and we want to plow an ocean floor because it will give us export goods, currency. We wish to use natural wealth of edge. We…

But the person wearing spectacles was against “fantastic projects”.

Friends left with anything. How many still such debates, skirmishes, a talk they before, at last, the necessary sums were released had to conduct! Worker correspondents wrote correspondence, rustled, “brawled”. Volkov and Vanyushke had to visit even Moscow.

Chapter 6

IN “MORE-OKIYANE”

The most difficult and boring period of the organization came to an end. Further business began. In May there arrived Guzik with several diving suits. This arrival was the whole event in life of underwater farmers. Test of devices was coming. Guzik, Volkov, Konobeev and Vanyushka left on the boat. The ocean was quiet, weather excellent.

Friends had a cheerful, joyful mood. Having settled down on the deck of the boat, Guzik showed devices and offered explanations:

– This – a “summer” suit. It is arranged as the Japanese diving suits for small, rather, depth – meters to seventy. Summer I call it because all it consists only of a nanosnik with points, a lamp yes of a satchel laboratory where the accumulator turns sea water into oxygen. Having put on such mask the person and having bound a satchel for a back, it is possible to fall by a bottom naked that, of course, is pleasant only in warm season when also ocean water is warm. In such “suit” from a nose and points you will have full freedom of movement. It is very valuable to underwater works. These devices I brought a couple so far, but it is possible to make them much in a short space of time.

– Let’s outdo Japanese! – cheerfully Vanyushka told, trying on a mask. – Well! Very well! – he laughed loudly, glancing at himself in a small pocket mirror. Konobeev stretched a lapishcha to the second device. But Makar Ivanovich was waited by disappointment. The rubber nanosnik covered only the tip of his nose – the myasist Makar Ivanovich’s nose was very big yes.

– Not with your nose a diver to be, Makar Ivanych! – Vanyushka joked. – To seven god bore this nose, to one got. However, if to cut off from kilograms, then, maybe, and will enter.

– However there is nothing to scoff – Makar Ivanovich sensitively answered. – And there is nothing bad. It is told: the nosovity, the krasovity.

– Do not mourn, Makar Ivanovich. I to you will make the device by the special order. Rubber also will be enough for your nose – Guzik calmed the old man.

And the announced Vanyushka already sverzitsya overboard in the mask, dived, but came up outside soon, having nearly choked. He did not get used to inhale oxygen a nose yet, and to exhale carbonic acid a mouth. It was necessary to get used to the device.

– You will manage to swallow sea water still! – Guzik shouted to it. – Climb, listen further!

Vanyushka was lifted aboard.

– Harafo, only water in a mouth climbs! – Vanyushka told.

– It is a “winter” suit – Guzik continued the explanations. – It is, actually, usual diving inert, except for the fact that supply with oxygen comes from own “gas generator”. But here, however, there is one more small improvement – he modestly declared. – In matter – a suit lining – there are metallic threads which are connected to the accumulator. Threads can heat up and give heat. In such suit it is possible, without being afraid to catch cold, to fall to ice waves of the Ledovity ocean or to rise by height in ten thousand kilometers over the Earth’s surface.

At last the last – the rigid device for underwater depths – was continued by Guzik. – In it it is possible to plunge on three hundred meters and more. It is supplied with especially strong lamps. I do not know whether this device is required to you. Already “and depth of fifty meters the bottom opustevat, and at a depth of four hundred – there are no large seaweed. Sea flora is concentrated on the narrow strip going not further in one hundred and fifty nautical miles from the coast. And all infinite extent of a bottom of the seas is farther and deeper is the desert deprived of any vegetation.

– Yes, but the rigid device can be necessary for us for the research purposes. Eventually the ocean floor is studied far not fully – Volkov objected.

That time on a bottom of the sea Volkov and Vanyushka plunged, and cob-nosed Konobeev only with envy looked at them and grunted with such upset look that Guzik felt sorry for the old man, and he promised to produce a nanosnik in the handicraft method here, on the place, in the temporary laboratory.

And already in the following trip Konobeev with pleasure pulled a black rubber tire on the pear-shaped nose. In big points, with a huge black nose, with a gray-haired small beard and long moustaches it looked extraordinary comical.

– Directly water! – Vanyushka shouted, rolling with laughter.

– Even more important, the Neptune – sea god! – Volkov responded, echoing Vanyushke.

– Neptune Ivanych! Great!

And followed Konobeev this “Neptune Ivanych”.

* * *

Fishermen and hunters live in the world of a case, good luck, risk, an adventure, surprise. It leaves a special mark on their psychology. The everyday situation deprived of sharp experiences, surprises and risk seems to them boring and fresh. They need an eternal game with fire, dangers; they need novelty and sharpness of impressions. Such is there was also an old man Konobeev. Hunting feelings and instincts over the years did not die away, and inflamed in it stronger. His gray eyes under shaggy black eyebrows came to life, lit up sparks when he had to fight against waves or a wild animal. And now the new pleasure, untried feeling, perhaps, the whole chain of new adventures was necessary to it. Poor Marfa Zakharovna! It was waited by new tests, a new strip of loneliness. When it was asked where the husband, she only hopelessly waved a hand.

Konobeev should fall by an ocean floor, that ocean which ruthlessly absorbed fishermen, their networks and production; to go on a visit to fishes, to look how they live-live there. In a diving half mask Konobeev felt like the fantastic sea tsar. Guzik, worrying a little, explained to the old man as it is necessary to inhale and exhale air, but Konobeev waved away with such look as if it all life went in this half mask and was born at an ocean floor.

– However I will not choke! – he spoke. – Here only one is bad: it is impossible to smoke there. Make favor, Mikol, think up somehow that I with a tube could go. – Guzik, laughing, promised to think up.

Konobeev well remembers how he for the first time in a shirt and ports (so the old man considered more decently – he did not recognize pants) fell by an ocean floor. Water was cool and pleasantly pricked the tempered body, forcing to move quicker, as on a frost. With breath Makar Ivanovich is an excellent swimmer and nyrets – coped soon, starting up a stream of bubbles through a mouth. During a calm from a surface it was easy to determine by these bubbles where there is a diver.

Having plunged into the mysterious twilight of a seabed, Makar Ivanovich from pleasure sniffed and walked in depth. Lit a lamp. On light was going to look at incredible quantity of fishes on an unprecedented show. They were curious not less people.

“Fishes, fishes, how many! – Konobeev thought, coming to fishing delight and being enough them directly with hands. – What disappointment, did not occupy network! However now you will not leave me!” – And he walked on the underwater wood of seaweed, surrounded with hordes of the fishes shining sides at turn as silver knives. It was so amusing, extraordinary and beautifully that Konobeev suddenly, having forgotten where he is, began to guffaw with all the might lungs, having started up so many bubbles on a surface that sitting on the boat seriously were disturbed for the old man. However, bubbles soon began to appear regularly, but they were removed further and further. They died it is visible soon.

Konobeev for the first time walked several hours in a row, almost till the sunset. Returned excited, shining.

– Well and life under water, however! – he told. – And why people on the earth live, but not in the sea-okiyane?

Chapter 7

TYPHOON

As it was pleasant to wander in novel tracks of an underwater taiga, Makar Ivanovich had to constrain the hunting passions and to set to work. And works was more than enough.

The Japanese fishers and poachers who were darting about at our coast with surprise and displeasure glanced at a big white tent which appeared in one night on the bank of the small river flowing into the ocean. It was “general staff” where there lived Vanyushka and Volkov. Soon near this tent others appeared; in several days on the coast there were navezeno many boards, logs, bricks. Saws began to squeal, began to knock axes. Temporary barracks began to grow.

Among the invited workers was many Japanese and Chinese who had to prepare cabbage as it prepares at them in the homeland. And the Russian workers studied at Japanese and Chinese. Volkov cared for that the export goods met all requirements of foreign consumers of a sea cabbage. The seaweed taken from water washed out in special tubs, cleared of sand and silt, sorted manually, once again cleared, small izrezyvat and put even layers of a certain size on the bamboo mats outspread in the open air in inclined situation. From these layers of seaweed dry plates turned out. The dried-up plates which stuck together in zhelatinoobrazny weight were torn off from mats and pressed for giving of uniform thickness to them. Tiles in 25x30 centimeters developed on ten pieces and accurately communicated. Volkov drew great attention to that tiles were prepared accurately and equally as chocolate bars.

Thoughtful Guzik, having stood once ashore where these works were performed, told:

– Human hands are well arranged, but they could be arranged even better. – And, having sat several evenings over drawings and calculations, he constructed the simple, but very expediently arranged machines for sorting and cutting of seaweed. After that work went even quicker and more accurately.

Volkov and Guzik’s efforts were crowned with success. The Japanese and Chinese buyers wholesalers estimated quality of the Soviet preparation soon and began to show the increased demand. Old Japanese merchants, having received samples, long rumpled in hands flexible, thin as writing paper, plates, looking narrowly to purple brown I blossom with light specks and slightly brilliant surface, weighed on a hand, smelled, tried on tooth, admired accurate processing and packing – and declared:

– Yes, it is good!

It was necessary to double, treble, decuple number of workers soon. Work was humming. The seaweed cast by storms and waves ashore also did not vanish. They were burned through in ashes, extracting alkalis, or brought to the small plant for iodine getting. For the first half a year the plant gave more than two thousand kilograms of an exit of iodine.

However it was necessary to get seaweed so far in almost exclusively old Japanese way on rather small places: workers by boats slid along coast with poles in hands. On the end of poles were крючья by which seaweed were hooked and taken on a surface and kept within on the boat while it was not filled up to the top. Production was brought to the coast and again sailed “to pinch a grass” as Vanyushka spoke. He could not wait to transfer rather work to a bottom and to start underwater farm vehicles: tractors, mowers…

Volkov, Vanyushka, Guzik and Konobeev daily fell in diving suits by an ocean floor and went on the future underwater plantations, performing nivelirovochny and geodetic works.

From the first steps it became clear what huge prospects are opened by diving processing. While Japanese could process in the usual way plantations at a small depth in three-five meters, the underwater farmers supplied with guzikovsky diving suits had an opportunity to work at depth of several tens meters. And it expanded the area of an underwater agrikultura on many thousands of hectares. At a depth of twenty – fifty meters it was not necessary and to sow huge spaces: they were already covered with dense thickets of the seaweed rich with iodine.

In the summer, at the end of June, the strongest typhoon burst. Konobeev the first predicted his approach on mysterious, to one to it to the known signs. The day before he long looked at a clear sky, at a blue quiet smooth surface of the ocean, smelled air, inflating nostrils of a nose fleshy, overgrown with hair, swung the head and grumbled: