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

almost 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
Tuesday the doctor said I'd be up and around and my own self again, but
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