"Aleksandr Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Horsemen from Nowhere ("ВСАДНИКИ НИОТКУДА", англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автораalmost three metres of snow covering it. In another half minute the frothing
edge of the trunk, or pipe, began to turn upwards and in the empty rosiness of its inside we no longer could see either chair or man. In another minute, violet foam had gone through the roof as if something immaterial, without damaging either the plastic or the thermal insulation. "That's all," said Zernov rising to his feet. "Finis, as the ancient Romans used to say." * PART TWO. THE CREATION OF THE WORLD Chapter IX. "THE END OF THE 'TITANIC'" In Moscow I had hard luck. I had got through the fierce Antarctic winter without even having sneezed in sixty degrees below zero, but back here in Moscow I came down with a cold in the autumn slush when the thermometer had hardly dropped to zero outside the window. True, by next Sunday morning I was still lying with mustard plasters on my back and unable to go downstairs for the newspapers. Tolya Dyachuk brought me the papers. He was my first visitor Sunday morning. And though he did not take any part in our fussing with the rose clouds and immediately returned to his weather-forecast institute and his charts of the winds and cyclones, I was sincerely happy that he did come. The anxious events that we had both gone through just a month before were still deeply felt. And Tolya was an easy-going convenient guest. One could be totally silent in his presence and think one's own thoughts without any risk of offending him, and his jokes and exaggerations would never offend his host. So the guest ensconced himself in a chair near the window and strummed on the guitar purring to himself one of his own compositions while the host lay patiently enduring the stings of the mustard and recalling his last day at Mirny and the try-out of the new helicopter that had just arrived from Moscow. Kostya Ozhogin had arrived at Mirny with a fresh group of polar workers and had only the faintest idea about the rose clouds. Our acquaintance began as he begged me to show him at least a little bit of my film. I showed him a whole reel. He responded by offering me a seat in the new high-speed helicopter during a trial run out over the ocean. The next morning-my last at Mirny-he came over and told me in secret about some kind of "very terrible thing". His helicopter had been out on the ice all night, about fifty metres from the edge, where the ship "Ob" was moored. Here is the way he described it: "We were celebrating a bit, had been drinking, not much, and before going to bed I went out to take a look at the machine. There were |
|
|