"Aleksandr Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Horsemen from Nowhere ("ВСАДНИКИ НИОТКУДА", англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

duplicates, clouds, vampire flowers and mysterious vanishing."
"Anokhin, didn't you have a camera in your hand when we came up?"
Zernov asked. "You must have been taking some pictures."
"Yes, I photographed everything I could, the clouds, the double machine
and my counterpart. I shot for about ten minutes."
Tolya blinked his eyes, but was still ready to argue, not at all about
to give in.
"It's still a question what we'll see when he develops it."
"You'll see in just a minute," came Zernov's voice from his quarters.
"Look out the window."
Coming towards us at half a kilometre altitude was a tightly wound up
crimson pancake. The sky was already covered over with white fleecy wisps of
cloud, and on their background it appeared to be less of a cloud. As before,
it resembled a coloured sail or an enormous kite. Dyachuk cried out and ran
to the doorway, we followed. The "cloud" passed over us without changing
course, heading for the north to the turning of the ice wall. "Towards our
tent," Tolya murmured and stepped towards me.
"I'm sorry, Yuri," he said and extended his hand, "I'm the poor fool
this time."
I was in no mood to celebrate my victory.
"That's not even a cloud," he continued thoughtfully, summarizing
certain ideas that had been worrying him. "What I mean is the ordinary kind
of condensation of water vapour. These are not droplets and they're not
crystal either. At first glance, at any rate. And why does it hug so close
to the ground, and that strange colour? A gas, it can hardly be a gas. It's
not dust either. If we had an aircraft I'd take a sample."
"They'd be eager to let you have some," I remarked recalling the
invisible barrier and my attempts to get through it with my camera. "It
presses down to the ground mighty hard, I thought the soles of my shoes were
magnetic."
"Do you think it's something living?"
"Might be."
"A creature of some kind?"
"That's hard to say, it might even be a substance." I recalled my
conversation with my double and added: "Probably controllable."
"How?"
"You ought to know, you're a meteorologist,"
"But are you sure it has some connection with meteorology?"
I said nothing. And when we returned to the cabin, Tolya suddenly
expressed a really crazy idea.
"Suppose those are some kind of inhabitants of the ice continent
unknown to science?"
"Brilliant," I said. "In the spirit of Conan Doyle. Courageous
explorers discover lost world on Antarctic plateau. And you're Lord Roxton?"
"There's nothing funny in that. What's your hypothesis if you've got
one?"
Stung, I said the first thing that came to mind.
"Cybernetic robots most likely."
"Where from?"
"Oh, from Europe or from the United States. Just tests that's all."