style="font-size:15px;"> MISCHA THE BARIN GOES TO THE TELEEXPEDITION
In the evening of the same day Mischa heard Ginzburg’s voice from a loud-speaker:
– Hallo, Mischa! I fly over Petrozavodsk. Over the Petrozavodsk airfield a beacon in two million candles. Bumpiness. Night flight over Karelia. Aero beacons specify the direction of flight… Just came back from salon restaurant. Ate tasty fish – a salmon. At supper – a concert from Madrid. I go to bed soon. Good night! In the morning, I hope, we will meet.
The voice ceased. The father entered.
– Who with you spoke? – he asked.
– Motya – Mischa answered and sighed.
This night he slept is disturbing. It dreamed flight over Karelia. The plane fell in dark. Bears ran together and began to jump near the broken car. Mischa drove away them the burning golovny. Then it flew again, and again the plane fell. Mischa bailed out and broke a leg. Leg of a zanyl. He moaned and woke up. Windows of an office were densely closed, the lamp shone, and it was impossible to define, morning now or night. The nurse came, washed Mischa and gave hot tea. There was ninth o’clock in the morning. Suddenly Mischa heard Ginzburg’s voice again:
– Hallo, Mischa! Turn off light.
Mischa forgot about tea and clicked the switch. The screen recovered. Ginzburg, smiling, stood on the deck of the trawler and nodded. For Ginzburg were seen the boat and near port – an arrow and the winch for a trawl raising. Mischa already knew that this winch will lift the underwater TV. Behind a board dark waters of Kola Bay were seen.
Ginzburg made a sign a hand, and the screen darkened. In a few minutes Mischa heard Ginzburg’s voice again:
– Microphones are not installed on the deck yet. You will see soon and will hear me. In an hour we will move to the sea.
So the screen of the TV turned for Mischa into the original fascinating novel. A lack of this book was that Mischa could not overturn the read pages. However Ginzburg consoled him in the fact that as soon as the trawler comes to the place, continuous transfer of everything will begin that will occur.
Pages turned over one by one. Mischa saw how Sergo took to the open sea and began to rock on gray-haired waves as high-speed Perseus caught up with the trawler “Sergo” and went forward… There passed shkher of Finland, the cape Nordkap, Lofoten Islands, coast of Norway, Sweden.
Days went behind days, and on the screen of the TV the new picture – the Leningrad port appeared. The big motor ship lifted anchors and went to swimming. All three ships had to meet in the Atlantic Ocean.
Nikolay Petrovich Borin established a two-way radio communication with all three steamships. Mischa could now several times in day speak with the friend Motya. Got acquainted with the captain Makovsky, still the young man, with swarty Azores who also went to a travel, and, at last, with the diver Protchev. Protchev interested Mischa. If the captain Makovsky had a typical face of the Englishman, then the shaved face of Protchev had obviously Mongolian lines. It could be taken for the Mongol or the Chinese. Once Mischa asked Protchev why he is similar to the Chinese, and that answered that he was born in Vladivostok. Mother his Mongol.
Protchev grew up on ocean coasts and since the childhood fell in love with diving business. Now it was the person of years under forty, very strong. The round head, a very broad breast, to Pomor widely placed legs, heavy fists. He called himself the diver on calling. Still the young man he “set up records” long stay under water without diving suit. Protchev already fell by a bottom of five Soviet seas and now with impatience expected when it is possible to look that he is created at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
During swimming the screen lit up not really often. Mischa saw the deck of Perseus, the captain’s cabin of Sergo, a cabin of the big motor ship.
The ships headed for twenty degrees of the western longitude and thirty seven degrees of northern latitude – exactly here, on the great ocean way from Buenos Aires to London and Hamburg, “Leviathan” died. Moscow shone electric fires for a long time, and on the TV screen Makovsky’s face with the English profile was still filled in with the evening sun. And what tone! This golden light of the sun, an ocean blue, yellow with black strips of a pipe of the steamship, white shirts of seamen – what clearness! Yes, it is better, than on the screen of cinema.
Captains of three ships reported on Barkovsky. Weather favored to an expedition. The ocean was quiet. Mischa himself could observe a rhythmical kolykhaniye of a surface of the water, and sometimes it seemed to it that he inhales “aroma of the ocean”. But, perhaps, this aroma was brought by ep-ronovets Kirillov if only aroma of strong “kepsten” [57] could remind a sea smell.
Sometimes on the edge of the screen steamships with overseas flags were seen. Passed them on a great way between Europe and America much. The Soviet flotilla from three vessels could draw, of course, attention. But as the Soviet vessels often crossed at this time the ocean, a talk on a flotilla was carried on meanwhile only among teams of foreign vessels. Some more days, and a flotilla will come to the place.
IN ATLANTIC
Makovsky sat in a captain’s cabin, having inclined over the card.
– So – he told and put a pencil the end to a skreshcheniye of the twenty ninth degree of the western longitude and the thirty seventh northern latitude.
– Profits? – Azores asked, releasing dense puffs of the Manila cigar from a mouth.
– As if – the captain answered. – The place of death of “Leviathan” is designated quite precisely. We, probably, should probe a bottom on the square about a quarter of square mile, no more. It is necessary to report to the headquarters that we arrived to the place. – Makovsky gave a hand to phone.
– A billeting – Azores stopped it – I will pass in a radio cabin.
Mischa Borin re-read history of ice campaigns.
– Hallo! – he heard Azores’s voice. – Who is on duty in the headquarters?
Mischa jumped up on a bed. He could already sit, but did not allow go to him yet.
– Ya. Mischa. It you, Azores? What new? You arrived to the place?
– Yes. Tell about it by phone to the father and companion Barkovsky. The captain Makovsky waits for orders of the headquarters.
– Now! – Azores heard an uneasy voice of Mischa and grinned. Azores knew with what impatience the inquisitive teenager expected when the flotilla arrives to the place. While Mischa called by telephone to members of the headquarters, Azores came back to a cabin of the captain and told:
– One is not absolutely clear to me: you, Makovsky, say that the place of death of “Leviathan” is known quite precisely; depths of the Atlantic Ocean are precisely known too why our scientists and technicians, designing the underwater TV, counted on depth about one thousand meters? Perhaps, such depth is also not necessary.
– Yes. Depths of the Atlantic Ocean are rather known – Makovsky answered. – Measurements of ocean depths established existence of the greatest underwater plateau which begins to the south of the
