it is necessary to dig out – he told Simakov who already held the ground the captain’s bridge.
– Let’s be chosen – that surely answered. It gave the order, and propellers started working. But “Taiga” sat down thoroughly. It was necessary to put a caterpillar drive instead of runners. Business went rather. The all-terrain vehicle got out of a snowdrift and again became on skis.
– Went!
14. Uneasy night
There was only the fourth hour p.m., but in the polar sky, dark blue with a greenish shade, stars already burned. Polar night. Equal ice wind blew directly in a face. With dry hissing as desert sand, was transferred from place to place small snow. Wind, playing snow dust, lifted it to the deck and said directly, pricked the thinnest crystal needles.
Polar night was not such dark as Jim expected. The stars which covered all sky dimly lit white snow. Month hung on the sky. Cold, appear, froze both the sky, and month, and stars and made them ice, crystal. So they were transparent and… are cold. Yes, even stars seemed to Jim multi-colored, transparent cold small pieces of ice. Directly ahead, in the north, the sky shone at the horizon equal blue glow. Highly over it strips of pale blue light flashed and died away
– As if inhabitants of planets exchange words light signals – Ignat told.
Jim for the first time saw the polar lights. And though it was not too effective, Jolie with curiosity observed this mute game of heavenly fires. He began to understand beauty of the North.
– Strange – Ignat continued – over the horizon light remains to constants – amplifies, does not throw out beams. It is possible to think that it is not the polar lights, but far fires of the city.
Simakov grinned.
– So it also is – he answered. – We drive up to Chelyuskin.
– It is necessary to warn about our arrival – Ignat exclaimed and went to a radio cabin. It caused Chelyuskin and asked to transfer to Stepan Asatkin and Leonid Merkulov: “Let leave to meet”.
But they did not leave, and left. Ignat uvidat quickly coming light of headlights soon. Stepan and Leonid arrived on a snowmobile. With them there was a fall which Stepan presented to Ignat and Jim:
– Andrey Ivanovich Lelkin. The chief engineer of the most northern power plant in the world. Change to us in a snowmobile. Rather dokaty.
And in a few minutes Jim and Ignat already rushed to Chelyuskin, briskly talking.
Chelyuskin gradually opened before them. Lamps – them was much more, than on stations of underground gasification, wooden izbas, stone houses, warehouses of forest materials, sheds, bricks, stones, winches, cranes, catarpillars…
Jim was interested:
– So it is also “The ice city”?
– It is still an embryo – a city germ – Stepan told.
– It becomes already similar to the ice city – Ignat exclaimed, pointing to the ice columns serving as support for wires. – It is thought dexterously up!
– We here widely use “local construction material” – Stepan told. – And ice – magnificent material: always near at hand, strong, cheap, pliable. Here it is hard to deliver the wood. And we use ice everywhere where it is only possible. Our meteorologist Verkhovsky thinks out all this. You get acquainted with it. “Father Frost”. Interesting old man. Have a look at these ice cubes.
– Ice house? – Ignat asked.
– Ice тепляк – Asatkin explained. – To build on such frost – hard piece. Mittens disturb, without mittens, any minute, will freeze hands. Now we perform almost all works in teplyaka. We build over construction an easy case from thin plywood or even a cardboard and we pour water. It turns out ice тепляк with any thickness of walls. It perfectly keeps heat. Heating – electric or gas.
– But what will be with all these teplyaka and ice columns when the summer comes?
– In the summer of a teplyaka are not necessary, and columns let thaw. It is temporary conducting for publicizing of buildings. Work will be finished before heat comes.
– We and Jima already prepared for you a house. For visitors we have no hotel yet. Froze, Jim? – asked Pelkin Jima as old friend.
– Cold – Jim answered.
– And what, Pelkin whether you threw the North for the sake of hot Florida? – Ignat asked.
– Of course, no – the fall answered.
– Here, you see, Jim. Andrey Ivanovich says that the best places on the globe begin only behind the Polar circle. – All burst out laughing.
– We will warm you – Asatkin consoled. – Here and izba. It only witness mark…
– From whom it is necessary to guard here? – with surprise Jim asked.
– From polar bears mainly. Despite fires, these curious animals quite often visit us. Overlook – will get into our refrigerators.
– Yes, in storage of products it is far better in the north, than in Florida. Meat does not spoil – Ignat told.
All entered a small izba. Walls smelled of a fresh larch. Electric lighting is carried already out, but the electric furnace is not installed yet. In a corner on bricks there is a small iron furnace. Near it a heap of spill and scraps.
Pelkin quickly kindled the furnace, put a teapot. Merkulov brought from a snowmobile suitcases with bread, canned food, cervine sausage. Friends decided not to go to the dining room, and to have dinner here to talk and “to remember old times”.
Merkulov and Asatkin were “nomadic builders”. They traveled all over all USSR from edge to edge. Their ways dispersed from Ignat, again were crossed. It was the meeting after several years of separation.
Jim with interest listened to life of “people without settled life”. He well knew “vagrant America”. But there people loafed from end to end in job searches. They were pursued as tramps, arrested, put in prison. This homeless was considered almost beyond the law. The homeland for them was not the homeland, but the country inhabited by hostile tribes in a police uniform. The unemployed felt almost the same as the first English pioneers among the virgin nature and the hostile Indian population.
And these Asatkin and Merkulov! They are not bezdomna. They only live in the big-big house where one “room” is called Central Asia, another the Far East, the third… yes all rooms and not to count.
The human voice of clock radios reported time everyone a quarter of hour. Friends did not notice how midnight came. Pelkin, Asatkin and Merkulov began to say goodbye.
– Do not forget to switch off clock radios, otherwise this herald will disturb you at night. Put this arrow at six in the morning. Not early? And in six you will be woken – told, leaving, Pelkin. – Good night.
They
