anything serious. Passengers are recommended to keep full calm. Disperse on cabins.
Williams almost jumped out of a chair and, uneasy, ran before Hurges.
– Business takes a serious turn, oh, damn! How you assume, we will not drown?
Hurges shrugged shoulders again.
– “Leviathan” has partitions – he answered. – If he received a hole, then water will not pass further the first partition. Besides we on one of “crowded” sea roads: Buenos Aires – London. “Leviathan” will cause the help on radio. And still it is necessary to be ready to everything.
The steamship sharply decelerated. The stern considerably fell. On the vessel panic began.
– Don Hurges, we sink! We sink! – almost Williams shouted. – It is necessary to be ready to everything… Your plan, Don Hurges?! I do not want to die! And I… My baggage… my life… Ecuador. Twenty two years of deprivations, work… Kegs… Boats… To sink… and when – not during a storm, at the sun… Calm… Mirage… Bad dream… Nightmare!
– Passengers are offered to put on saving belts – the team thundered.
– My God! My God, do not leave me! – Williams cried and, having clutched at the head, ran.
Hurges slowly moved to a cabin, took out from a suitcase a plate from dark metal with a chain and the lock on it, a bottle with a hermetic cover and went to a rostrum.
– Don Hurges, you here? I look for you on all steamship – Williams called it. On it there was already a saving belt. – And why you without belt? Unless it is not in your plan?
– Does not enter – Hurges answered. – My friend, the skilled captain, said to me that he against saving belts: they only extend sufferings of sinking… However, it concerned the cold seas. What after all happened to “Leviathan”?
– Nobody knows anything. Even the captain if only he does not hide the reasons…
“Leviathan” was doomed, in it there was no doubt left. The stern was covered by water. The order was heard: to lower boats. Panic bustle began. Near boats animal fight for existence was started. Hurges appeared the rights: there were not enough boats.
– Why you do not hurry to boats? – Hurges asked.
– Because I managed to draw up the plan and even to carry out it – Williams answered. The smile flashed on his turned pale person. – If only only they were not late… Oh, gold reigns over the person while he is living. I promised sailors a keg… And maybe, everything will manage. The radio operator transmitted a distress signal, and say that to us to the aid two steamships already hurry… Here they… Here.
– Steamships?
– Well.
Hurges uvidat sailors who dragged kegs, being torn through crowd to the boat hanging on a nose.
– Get quicker into the boat! – Williams shouted.
– I did not implement the plan yet – Hurges answered. It passed a chain throughout a link of an anchor chain, clicked the lock, attached a metal plate to a chain. Then quickly wrote a note, put it in a bottle, densely fitted a hermetic cover. He briefly answered amazed looks of Williams:
– It is my baggage. Result of my life.
Sailors flung away passengers and loaded kegs in the boat.
– An overload – shook-headed Hurges, looking at heavy kegs.
– I cannot leave them – Williams told.
The boat was floated. Ten sailors, Hurges, Williams, kegs with gold, crackers, a water barrel… The boat was overloaded and settled to boards. And drowning clung to boards. Sailors ruthlessly struck them a bargain oars, knives and fists.
– To manage to drive off quicker from the sinking steamship!. – Williams the shivering bloodless lips muttered.
The boat did not manage to sail also twenty meters as the steamship, having become a nose up, went to a bottom. Over the place of death the huge water column was reared, hard settled and rushed a mad shaft. The shaft rushed to the boat.
– End! – Williams screamed.
– Any end can be also the beginning – Hurges quietly answered and threw a bottle in water. It were his last words.
Water covered the boat, muffled the last shouts of drowning. In two hours to the accident site there arrived the first steamship which accepted distress signals.
FOR THE GROUPER
On a long table – a black sphere with a diameter of one and a half meters. Its one side is cut off. The wide window comes to Kola Bay. There masts and pipes of trawlers of fish trust are seen. However nobody looks out of the window. Eyes of all are turned towards a black sphere. Twelve Komsomol members, members of a circle on studying of radio engineering, a close ring surrounded a table. The majority – students of sea technical school, a part – radio operators from trawlers.
Motya Ginzburg, the designer, the inventor and the head of a circle, the radio operator of the trawler “Sergo Ordzhonikidze”, patting a palm on a black metal surface of a sphere, asked with a smile on a clever thin face:
– You see an eyeball…
Kruzhkovtsa laughed:
– Pretty apple!
– What has to be an orbit to contain such apple!
– The sea will be an orbit. There is enough? – Motya asked. – It is a radio eye by means of which we will see what is created in sea depths.
– TV! – one of standing near a table exclaimed.
As a matter of fact, Motya did not invent anything or almost anything. It happened to it to see photos of the American and German TVs adapted for observations at a sea depth. However, it were photos. But the principle of operation of the TV is known. It was necessary to think over independently some design features of the underwater TV. And Motya as if successfully coped with it: the small skilled TV worked regularly. Why not to work also to it, big? It is almost ready. To insert into a round opening a lens, near it – a lamp of searchlights, and all. In a word, hour two installation works, and the TV can be omitted in water.
– To look what becomes at the bottom of the sea? – the first-year student of sea technical school asked.
– Exactly. To look, how are sea crabs – picked up, indulgently smiling, his neighbor who considered himself the person skilled.
– Well, and it is interesting – Ginzburg seriously answered.
– Let’s catch groupers?
– Yes, yes. Today – the first test. The trawler leaves an hour zero-zero. By this time we will manage to finish – Ginzburg answered and ordered: –
