hazy glow reigned around it.
Leonid opened his eyes. For a minute, sitting in the chair, he wondered where he was and what was happening to him. When the dream finally left him, and the mind was involved in the work, he rose impetuously and headed for the shower compartment.
He carefully shaved, took a shower and, combing his wet hair, went out into the tightness of the command compartment. The confined space was cool. Automatically turned on microclimate automation. It became warmer. Lightning flashed in the porthole, accompanied by the «cannonade» of thunder, leaving behind a yellow glow of space. The primeval forest was sinking, disappearing from above, below are still seen thick fern trunks, washed by streams of rainwater, which arose with biting streams from the yellow glow.
– «It is night in the courtyard!» A thought flashed through sadness. «The yellow mist is darkness, and blackness is light!»
These signs of a strange World crashed into consciousness, like an alphabet, like a key that opens the door to its secrets. And as if following these signs, the glance began to distinguish among the bizarre vegetation of a chain of black dots.
– «True primitive fireflies?!
Externally, the points looked like street lamps. The heart suddenly jumped in the chest with a bird that flew into a cage. The yellow glow, with the approaching darkness, intensified, acquiring bright colors, in which the «ragged» remnants of the forest disappeared, giving way to the pale outlines of the buildings. Among the scattered buildings with flat roofs, three were ingrown into the ground not far away. Aside from the town of buildings on the square, paved with hexagonal concrete slabs, three cigar-shaped hulks were visible.
– «My God! This is the native cosmotron!» – Leonid rushed to the exit and soon he was standing on the concrete floor.
Near the spacecraft was a service bus, people were swarming. Without hesitation, Krazimov ran to the open doors of the bus. My heart was frantically pounding in my chest for excitement and thirst to draw attention to myself as soon as possible, to get rid of an impending nightmare as soon as possible. At the foot of the car, he stopped breathing heavily. Leonid leaned on the wall of the bus, but the hand, not feeling the supporting surface, pulled the whole body behind him, and the astronaut crashed into the concrete wall. He suddenly realized that the world that remained outside of his feelings, which he sees, does not know about its existence. Contrary to common sense, he suddenly jumped to his feet, not turning on the sharp pain in his right knee, in a frenzied annoyance of anger began to put «blows» on the phantom bus, on people who, blithely speaking, filled the empty seats. He did not immediately realize that two of the laggards did not laugh. One of them with big gray expressive eyes and an energetic face was Sobinov, his assistant, the other chief designer of the automatic stations department.
«You see, Kolya,» said Sobinov to his companion, «I cannot answer anything concretely, but the flash happened so unexpectedly.»
– «But after all there is a clear space, not a single asteroid in a radius of Kilometers from five hundred!»
– «I know, I know, and nevertheless the ship disappeared, it was incinerated, they didn’t even find fragments, as if Leonid Krazimov never existed.»
Reading lips over the conversation of friends, Leonid shouted to the full power of his voice, knocking himself on the chest:
– Yes, here he is! I!!! I! It’s me!!! Friends, where are you?!!!
But Sobinov and his companion quietly sat down in a ghost bus and, «having showered» Leonid with exhaust gases, the smell of which he did not feel, drove off.
Tears of resentment welled up in his eyes, a strangled breath squeezed.
Exhausted, Leonid slowly sank into the warmth of summer heat, as he thought, was concrete. He sat for so long, not noticing the passage of time, not feeling being…
And only in the ship, in the familiar, sensed environment, did the thoughts gradually become clear. He thought over his mysterious disappearance, over his present position and his future fate.
Unnoticed, little by little, crept up a slight hunger and made itself felt. Merry gamma of colored light bulbs and hunger, and buzzing devices, led Leonid in relative peace. In a familiar setting, he began to recover…
«It’s necessary to have a bite!» From this thought, somehow it became cozy at home and peace finally reigned in the shower. In the shower, under the water jets, the «brutal» appetite developed so that at the very last minute, calculated on shower, he caught himself.
– «It would be necessary to save water, use every drop.» Then he remembered that the life support systems of the ship purify the water, forming a closed loop. He smiled to himself, wiping off a strong trained body. And, getting dressed, went down to the food compartment, and finally began to eat.
Having satisfied hunger, sadness fell on him with a new force. Loneliness as your load. Sitting in the command compartment, in the commanding chair in front of the control panel is one among the ghostly being and there is no way to return friends, to return the lost familiar world. With his eyes full of desperate longing, Leonid examined the beautiful contours of the instruments, inscribed with jeweler precision in the semicircular spacecraft control panel. The measured blinking of control bulbs, creating a garland of colorful lights, like fireflies, winked cheerfully and cheerfully to each other, soothed and brought Leonid’s thoughts scattered about what was going on in relative order.
Emotional stress of loneliness gradually passed. I remembered the heroes in such situations from the books they read and movies. And the first – Robinson Crusoe. But the situation in which the hero of the book found himself was much better. In any case, she gave a chance to return to the abandoned world. But what should he do? Leonid again with
warmth in his eyes examined the cramped cabin. Consciousness suggested that, compared with Robinson Crusoe, he has everything necessary for existence. The fact that the hero Daniel Defoe was doing for the extraction of food, he, Leonid, got even with an excess. He has food, drink, a roof, clothes, and even books recorded on DVD discs. He does not have a world in which remained close, friends, work. In the new situation, Leonid decided to act taking into account all the realities and first of all to undertake the search for contact…
Time ran in orderly rows of numbers. Mechanically, my hand reached for the transmitter. A click – and the distant noises of the ether filled the cabin space…
With greediness, every rustle, crackle, rustle of ether absorbed in hearing. For a moment it seemed that someone had said a word, a whole phrase, but, listening attentively to the space, he understood that this was only a deception.
To no avail cracked the air for two whole hours. It’s unbearable to listen to hopeless chatter in headphones. Tired, leaning back in his chair, turned off the radio. Eyes slowly closed. There were no thoughts. I wanted to sleep…
Chapter three
He dreamed of friends. Sobinov sat in a dressing-gown and slippers, sitting at the kitchen table and reading a newspaper. My wife was bustling at the stove. The table of contents, written in bold capital letters: «CATASTROPH».
Vision strained, read a few lines: «The death of Leonid Krazimov drew a line under the dangerous expeditions into space. It’s time to put an end to the reckless victims in the age of robotics
