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

two there, one next to the other. I figured another one had been unloaded
and went back to sleep. In the morning there was only one again. So I asked
the engineer where the other one had gone, and he burst out laughing. 'Hey,
you drank too much, you were seeing double. How much did you guys put away?'
"
I was rather suspicious about the true criminals of this splitting, but
I didn't say anything. What I did was I brought along my camera, I had a
hunch it might come in useful. Which it did. We were about three-hundred
metres above the ocean at the very edge of the ice. We could clearly see the
unloaded boxes and machines, the small pieces of broken ice at the shore and
the blue icebergs out in the pure water. The biggest towered up a few
kilometres from the coast line, but did not float or bob on the waves-it was
sitting firmly in the water fixed securely to the bottom. We called it 'The
End of the Titanic' in memory of the famous liner that collided with a
colossal iceberg at the beginning of the century. This one was even larger.
Our glaciologists calculated that it was roughly three thousand square
kilometres in area. That was the goal of the Disney characters that had
stretched out single file across the sky.
I began to film without waiting for a close approach. They were flying
at the same altitude as we were, they were rose-coloured without a single
spot and resembled dirigibles at the tail end of a column. From the front
they were like boomerangs or swept-back airplane wings. "Shall we turn
back?" said Ozhogin in a whisper. "We can put on speed." "Why?" I sniggered.
"You can't get away from them anyway." I could sense the tension in
Ozhogin's muscles, but I didn't know whether it was due to fear or
excitement. He asked: "Are they going to start splitting?" "No, they're not
going to." "How do you know?" "Because they duplicated your helicopter last
night, you yourself saw it," I replied. He didn't say anything.
Meanwhile the column had approached the iceberg. Three rosy dirigibles
hung in the air, getting redder and opening up their familiar saucer-like
stemless poppies, motionless at the corners of an enormous triangle over the
island of ice; then the swept-wing boomerangs plunged downwards. They went
into the water like fish, no splash, no sound, only white spurts of steam
encircled the iceberg. Probably the temperature gradient between the new
substance and the water was too great. Then all was calm. The poppies
flowered over the island and the boomerangs, disappeared. I waited patiently
while the helicopter slowly circled over the iceberg a bit below the poppies
hanging in the sky.
"What's going to happen now?" Ozhogin asked hoarsely. "Is this the
end?" "I don't think so," I replied cautiously. About ten minutes must have
passed. Suddenly the mountain of ice shook mightily and then slowly rose out
of the water. "Let's go," I yelled to Kostya. He understood and swung our
plane to the side, away from the dangerous orbit. The bluish hunk of ice,
scintillating in the sun, had already risen above the water. It was so large
that it was difficult to find any comparison. Imagine an enormous mountain
cut off at the base and rising upwards like a toy balloon. It gleamed and
glistened shimmering in a million colours of molten sapphires and emeralds
sprinkled all over it. This was a scene you could sell your soul to the
devil for. I was the king. Only Ozhogin and I and the astronomers of Mirny
witnessed this incomparable spectacle. A miracle of ice rose out of the