aid – moistens Semenova with whisky alcohol, wipes cotton wool the blood-stained hands and a face.
– At it – Doronin explained – there was bleeding from a nose, dizziness… How you feel, Semenov?
Semenov smiled and answered with a gruffish voice:
– Now it is better, but the head is still turned. I cannot understand why it…
The sick pilot was carefully transferred to a cabin of a fodder compartment and laid on a floor, on the outspread mattress, having highly raised the head.
Jim looked in a cabin window. Gloomy, impassable wall of the wood. It seemed to impressionable Jim that dark larches the hostile and triumphing system surrounded the steel bird who came on a silver platter. Now she together with people was a captive of the wood. Around – a deficiency, forest swamps on hundreds, perhaps, thousands of kilometers. You will get lost, you will die of hunger before you reach people. In the airplane of food for only several days… Sick Semenov… Gloomy picture!
But Bugaev is absolutely quiet. He squeezes out water of a towel the strong hands and puts a compress on Semenov’s head.
– What became silent? – Ignat asked Jim. – Do not worry. We everywhere houses. If the wood is not quite won, then and over us he does not dominate more. Ourselves will not come out of the wood – we will be found.
It was heard as Doronin works at an emergency radio set and then talks on a radio telephone. In a few minutes it returned.
– The next settlement is nearby, in three hundred kilometers, the next aviapoint – in five hundred – he told. – But somewhere the radio station of the Taiga ship works absolutely nearby.
– Ship? – Semenov asked, raising the head and trying to smile. – Which of us is sick, you or I?
– Perhaps, I became deaf, did not catch – Doronin made a helpless gesture. – But the unknown radio operator clearly told: “Tells the Taiga ship. We are in only thirty kilometers from you, directly on the East. In two hours we will send the doctor as soon as “Dragonfly” returns.
– But directly on the East thousands of kilometers of the continuous wood – Semenov told again.
– I also know that around the wood and to the sea it is far. What waves and winds brought the ship here?
– You also asked about it – Ignat told.
– Also asked. And the radio operator laughs. You come, speaks, and look at.
– Yes, but in two hours it is impossible to pass the wood thirty kilometers. Perhaps, it is a mystification what – Bugaev reflected aloud. – Or it is the air ship which transferred accident, as well as we.
– With distress signals do not joke – Doronin almost angrily answered.
Time hung heavy. On an end of the second hour after accident “Taiga” reported that “Dragonfly” took off and in a few minutes will be on the place. Means, this is not the doctor, and the airplane? And the mysterious ship really exists?
The motor rumble was heard soon. The last red beams of the sun lit the silvery “Dragonfly” who seemed over the wood. It was the small two-seater airplane – the gelikopter having two propellers.
“Dragonfly” took a detour over a glade, choosing the place of landing. Gelikopter almost steeply fell near Semenov’s car.
The cabin left the elderly woman in a leather coat with a small suitcase in a hand.
Doctor Dubrovina examined Semenov and declared that he needs to be taken on the airplane to hospital. She left drugs from the road first-aid kit, explained how to look after the patient, and departed.
– Hallo! – the voice from a loudspeaker was heard. – The air base speaks. The sanitary airplane arrived. We can send it to you. Spread out fires that it could find you.
Ignat, Jim and Doronin hurried to make fire at the edges of a glade. There was a fresh night. Boughs crackled. Smelled of the burning needles and dampness of the wood. Fires lit a wall of the larches surrounding a glade.
Suddenly Ignat uvidat the blue spark flashing between trunks. The same minute noise of the airplane was heard. It roamed over a glade and decreased in ten meters from travelers.
– Too quite good landing – Doronin approvingly told.
– If to look, in this taiga, it appears, not so there are not enough people – Jim was surprised.
– I said to you that we everywhere houses – Ignat responded.
The pilot left a pilot’s cabin, examined a glade and
shook the head. Doronin understood it: it is hard to sit down, but it is even more difficult to fly up from this glade. Any minute – you “will hit” in a tree and you will break.
People with lamps approached from the wood. One of them was the bearded man of years for fifty, similar to the old taiga hunter, another – young, almost the young man. Both of them were in leather suits.
Got acquainted. Young it was the captain, and bearded – the navigator of mysterious “Taiga”. Ignat could not wait to find out that it, at last, for the ship. But at first it was necessary to resolve more important issues. The arrived pilot suggested to take Semenov to hospital, instead of Semenov other pilot can conduct the airplane, but Semenov declared that he can entrust nobody the car. He was sure that he in a day or two will recover and will depart further. Not to concern the patient, he was not objected.
With the first beams of the sun Semenov was transferred to the sanitary plane. Doronin helped to examine motors. The car was dragged on edge of a glade. The plane rose, the abrupt bend made, shook and was behind the wood. Whether it will be leveled?. – with nervousness Doronin thought, listening to sounds. But motors rolled exactly, sounds were removed. The plane became visible already at big height soon. Having made a semicircle, it took on the South.
– Kind way, companion! – Doronin shouted it is experienced as if Semenov could hear him.
– We go, perhaps? – Foma told.
4. Taiga ship
The captain, the navigator, Jim and Ignat, having said goodbye to Doronin, went to the wood.
– Telephone us if bears attack you! – Ignat shouted, turning around, and smiled.
– For myself I am not afraid – Doronin answered. – In a cabin I will not be got. And I have a weapon. However and you remind of yourself.
Travelers went deep into the wood. Smells of a Labrador tea, needles, the earth. Slanting beams of the sun light bloody spots of leaves of a buckthorn. The captain glances at a compass, but Foma Gruzdev has compasses: he looks at boughs of trees, at trunks, on a grass and there is more surely, than Simakov armed with a compass.
At last travelers got out to a big glade. The first that they saw here, there was a kite of an extraordinary form soaring highly over the wood.
