"Aleksandr Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Horsemen from Nowhere ("ВСАДНИКИ НИОТКУДА", англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автораwere engaged close by, and a third group, that I couldn't see any more, was
operating deep inside the ice. Soon the second one and the one next to us disappeared in the ice-like a Gulliver Travels circus. All of a sudden, it pushed up into the air a perfectly blue parallelepiped of ice, a glass bar nearly a kilometre in length, geometrically flawless. It rose slowly and floated upwards lightly and without a thought, like a toy balloon. Only two "clouds" participated in this operation. They contracted and turned dark, converting into the familiar saucers, turned skywards not earth-wards-two incredible red giant flowers on invisible expanding stems. They did not appear to be supporting the floating bar, for it rose above them at a decent distance and was in no way connected or fastened. "How does it hold up?" Martin asked in surprise. "On a shock wave? What force must the wind have?" "That's not the wind," said Tolya picking out his English words carefully. "That's a field. Antigravitation." He threw an imploring glance at Zernov. "A field of force," Zernov explained. "Remember the G-loading, Martin, when you and I tried to approach the airplane? Then it strengthened gravitation, now it is obviously neutralizing it." At that moment yet another kilometre-long bar of ice rose from the surface of the ice plateau, thrown into space by an invisible titan. It rose much faster than its predecessor and soon caught up with them at the altitude of ordinary polar flights. One could clearly see how the ice bars approached in the air, docked alongside one another, and merged into one broad bar that hung motionless in the air. This was immediately followed by thicker with every fresh bar: the "clouds" required three to four minutes to cut it out of the thick continental ice and raise it into the sky. As new bars came off, the ice wall receded into the distance, and with it the rose clouds too, which appeared to dissolve and vanish in the snowy distance. As before, two red roses hung in the sky and above them the enormous crystal cube with bright sunlight filtering through. We stood speechless, enchanted by this picture that was almost musical in its tones. A peculiar kind of gracefulness and plasticity of the rose-coloured disc-knives, their coordinated rhythmical motions, the upward flight of the blue ice bars that formed a gigantic cube in the sky-all this was music to our ears, a soundless music of the mysterious spheres. We did not even notice -only my cine camera recorded it-how the diamond cube of sunlight began to diminish in size as it rose higher and higher, and finally vanished way up beyond the cirrus cloudlets. The two command "flowers" also vanished. "A thousand million cubic metres of ice," groaned Tolya. I looked at Zernov. Our eyes met. "That's your answer to the main question, Anokhin," he said. "Where did the ice wall come from and why there is so little snow under foot. They are removing the ice shield of the Antarctic." |
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