burned. Hoarfrost on a hat and a fur collar quickly turned into brilliant droplets.
– Well, what enemy at you? Of course, not the person. All the person love our Verochka. Permafrost – here your enemy.
– Ah and. It is right. – The girl sighed.
– What, again? – Verkhovsky asked.
– Again – the girl sadly answered.
– Well what to do. The enemy is strong, as they say, but we will win against him, Verochka. Sit down with us, drink, tell.
The girl waved a hand.
– Not to tea to me. I would like that you looked, Verkhovsky… when terminate tea to have – she added, having had a look at Ignat, with appetite who was eating greedily smoked bear’s flesh and washing down pieces with hot tea.
– We now. We already finish – Ignat told, quickly chewing a piece. – We will go too.
All quickly put on and came to a frost.
16. Fine vision
Ignat and Jim got over in hotel. In number there were two more persons – the representative Soyuzkinoradio who arrived to arrange sound telecinema, and the ethnographer “with a linguistic bias” as he introduced himself. He came to study the northern people and tried to discover root communication of their languages with languages of North America. He was convinced that the American Indians came to America from Asia through an isthmus which existed once on the place of the Bering Strait. The ethnographer arrived from Votyatsky edge where he studied votyak.
Jima it was uninteresting to listen to stories of the ethnographer about votyaka. He was interested in the film technician Kostin, cheerful, strongly sutulovaty cripple more (the left leg at it was shorter than right). From the constant movement along a crutch on big and index fingers of Kostin there were callosities.
Once, when behind walls of hotel the polar blizzard stormed, Kostin suggested Jim, Ignat and the ethnographer to look at a picture.
Kostin extinguished an electric lamp under a ceiling, included current in the device and in the twilight began to conjure.
Audience uvidat boundless ice-rinks of the Arctic Ocean, smooth as the surface of the frozen lake, with chaotically heated up ice blocks. The panorama moved, and Jim clearly imagined that he flies on the airplane and under it there pass the dead, snow spaces lit with twilight light. Here ice slopes – icebergs – with the hung arches, ice bridges which half fell, caves – and again a boundless smooth surface rise izjyazvlenny the sun, warm winds and rains… Here ice-covered, snow-covered rocky edges of some island rise. The polar bear looks back, turns the head up, apparently, looks directly at Jim and probably frightened by noise of aeroplanny motors, hurries to take refuge in coastal hummocks.
The island departures back – and again the desert, the snow plain endlessly and edges.
But here it began as though to turn around. Or the airplane a spiral rises up? The horizon extends, rises. Contours of coastal gulfs, bays, capes, islands are visible distinctly. Ignat learns and calls them.
And suddenly all this dead space recovered. From a lip to a lip, from a bay to a bay, from the gulf to the gulf, from the Continent to islands on a white background of snow the set of dark sticks, similar to Koch’s sticks as they are represented in bacteriology courses moved. It is, of course, already the animation imposed on film pictures from nature.
– If you could see through ice, you would uvidat such picture – the voice of the invisible announcer was heard. – These are submarines which carry out communication between separate points of the coast, polar stations, winterings, islands… And here the big stick separated from our coast and, crossing the North Pole, goes to coast of America. That moves the big passenger underwater ship making flights under ice between the USSR and North America…
Jim was stunned. How? These unruly people get even under ice of the cold Arctic seas? And there life, movement, work? Jim already got used that in a wild taiga and even in the dead tundra of the person it is easier to meet, than it would be possible to expect. But under ice! No, it is improbable! Of course, the submarine can float some space under ice. Jim remembers Vilkins’s attempts.
But it, Jim, want to assure that there is a regular, brisk underwater and subglacial movement…
– Submarines transport mail, vitaminozny products, medicines, furs, the radio equipment – the announcer continues. – We have no winterers who are cut off from the world for eight-ten months in a year now. In case of need each winterer can be transported to Moscow, Leningrad and is replaced by other winterer.
– Saw? Heard? – Kostin asks. – Well that! And if not all believe that underwater communication really exists, can admire a type of submarines outside and from within.
And on the screen images of submarines appeared, on appearance it is not enough what differing from usual, military.
– Never I would agree to work in the submarine, in cold water, under ice! – Jim told.
– Yes there warmly! – Ignat burst out laughing. – Look, the thermometer shows twenty three degrees.
– Nevertheless it is terrible – the ethnographer supported Jim. – As you will think that around ice water, and over the head, maybe, five-meter ice, so you and at thirty degrees of heat will tear a frost!
– A habit – Ignat objected.
– Correctly! – Kostin responded. – Whether here you want to have a talk with seamen of scuba diving? I will establish bilateral connection with the old friend, the captain of the U-246 submarine, and his team now.
It tinkered, jumped, and the pomerknuvshy screen recovered again.
On the screen the person of average years with cut moustaches and the cheerful blinked eyes appeared. On it there was a form of Navy.
– Kostin! You called me?
– To companion Yershov, captain of the U-246 submarine, respect! – the projectionist in the microphone answered. – My cohabitants according to number are interested in underwater communication. If you please, tell how it and that.
– It is possible to tell but only I do not like to spin in front of the televizorny device. Admired – and enough! I am switched off.
The screen went out, and at the same moment Yershov’s voice was heard:
– Now we will have a talk. Well what to tell you? How we seized subglacial transport? Not at once, of course. There were also failures, but about them will tell later. The fact the fact that seized; and seized because we are people persistent.
– Forgive, please – Kostin’s voice was heard because of the device. – You where are now, Yershov?
– Where? Where to me to be? Not on an oven, of course. In the submarine, as always.
– Under water?
– Under water.
– Under ice?
