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Translated from the Russian by Leonard Stoklitsky
First published 1974
(c) English translation, Mir Publishers, 1974
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
Original title: Экипаж "Меконга"
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Being an account
of the latest fantastic
discoveries, happenings of the
eighteenth century,
mysteries of Matter,
and adventures
on land and at sea
THE MERCURY HEART
NAVAL LIEUTENANT FEDOR MATVEYEV
A HALF-TWIST SPIRAL
IPATY ISLAND
I'll die if I don't see the Caspian.
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT
THE MERCURY HEART
If you wish to subject an unknown substance
to the action of an unknown force you must
first study this substance.
Honore de Balzac -LA PEAU DE CHAGRIN
There is a great temptation to start a novel of adventure with a
shipwreck. Something like this:
"With a sickening crunch the three-masted bark Aretusa, sailing from
the New Hebrides with a cargo of copra, listed heavily to starboard. The
raging sea swept over-"
But we did not yield to the temptation. This true story of ours will
open without a shipwreck. Since we wish, however, to conform throughout to
the dictates of good style, we solemnly promise to arrange one later on.
So much for that.
One fine summer day the m.s. Uzbekistan was approaching a large Caspian
town. The time was shortly after lunch, and the promenade deck was deserted
except for a man in a green check suit. He was taking his ease in a deck
chair, sheltered from the broiling sun by an awning.
Nikolai Opratin, a person destined to play no small role in this story,
was a lean, dapper man in his late thirties. He had an energetic face, with
a bony chin, thin lips and a high brow ending in a carefully concealed bald
patch. His close-shaven cheeks and the aroma of his aftershave lotion
created the impression that he had just stepped out of a barber's chair.
Postprandial naps were a pernicious habit in which Nikolai Opratin did
not indulge. He reclined in his deck chair, gazing at the ship's broad,
foamy wake. On his right he could see the grayish-yellow strip of coastline
rising out of the blue sea. The long hilly island at the entrance to the bay
was already in sight.
The island had been much smaller twenty years ago, Opratin reflected.
Through the centuries the level of the ancient Caspian had often risen and
fallen, sometimes by as much as eighty metres. In recent years it had
dropped greatly. Man, no longer willing to be just a passive observer, had
now set himself the difficult task of raising the level of the Caspian. One
of the ideas suggested was to seal off, with a dam, the Bay of
Kara-Bogaz-Gol, where the hot desert sun evaporates fourteen cubic
kilometres of Caspian water annually. Another was to divert northern rivers
into the Caspian. Under this bold scheme, the Kama, Vychegda and Pechora
rivers were to be pumped across the watersheds and made to flow southwards
into the Volga, which empties into the Caspian Sea.
Even if Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay were cut off from the sea, northern rivers
diverted, and water from Central Asia's great Amu Darya river added, the
level of the Caspian would not rise by the desired three metres before the
year 2000.
That was far too long to wait. Actually, the addition of only one
thousand cubic kilometres of water to the Caspian in the course of one year
would do the trick.
But this was easier said than done. Several thousand giant pumps and a
power station with a capacity of scores of millions of kilowatts would be
required to shift that amount of water from the Black Sea, say, to the
Caspian in one year.
Nikolai Opratin, Candidate of Science (Tech.), had all these figures at
his fingertips because he was the man in charge of the key aspect of a
Caspian-level scheme at the Research Institute of Marine Physics.
Although the level of the Caspian had dropped, the sea was still more
than deep enough for the Uzbekistan. The town came into view, rising slowly
out of the blue bay. Smokestacks and the delicate tracery of TV aerials
could be seen with the naked eye.
The decks now swarmed with passengers. Many were holiday-makers
returning home from a cruise along the Volga.
A trio of sailing enthusiasts leaned on the rail as they discussed the
merits of a white sailboat that was overtaking the ship.
Young men and women in blue jerseys with white numbers on their backs
tirelessly took snapshots of one another.
A husky, well-built man in a striped shirt worn over his trousers
strolled along the deck with his plump wife on his arm. From time to time he
paused to give a young photographer some pointers about which aperture to
set and which shutter speed to use.
"What a pity our holiday is coming to an end, Anatole," a woman
somewhere behind Opratin remarked in a high-pitched voice.
"Thank goodness it's over-that's what I say," a man's voice replied.
"Just think of all the time lost." The voice struck Opratin as familiar. He
turned round to see a slender young blonde in a red sun-dress, and a
middle-aged man in a crumpled pongee suit. The man had a broad,
large-featured face, puffy eyelids and an unruly shock of brown hair.
The couple, deep in conversation, stopped by the rail not far from
Opratin's deck chair.
Opratin rose, straightened his jacket, and walked over to them. "Good
afternoon, Benedictov," he said in a low voice.
The man in the pongee suit stared at him coldly. "Ah, the expert who
writes reviews," he remarked. He reeked of brandy.
"I saw you in the restaurant during lunch but didn't venture to impose
on you," said Opratin. He turned to Benedictov's companion with a slight
bow. "My name is Nikolai Opratin."
"How do you do," she replied. "I'm Rita Benedictov. I've heard about
you."
Opratin lifted the corners of his mouth in a smile. "I don't doubt it.
Nothing very flattering, I'll wager." His tone was half-questioning,
half-affirmative. The young woman merely shrugged. With the sun on her face,
her brown eyes were warm and clear, but there was a hint of melancholy in
them.
"Were you on the Volga cruise too?" she asked.
"No, I came aboard last night at Derbent. Business. By the way, a
curious thing happened to me in Derbent-"
A glance at Benedictov's face told Opratin that he couldn't care less
about anything that had happened at Derbent.
"Tut-tut, he still holds a grudge against me," Opratin thought.
That spring a scientific journal had asked Nikolai Opratin to write a
review of an article submitted for publication by a biophysicist named
Anatole Benedictov. The article had impressed him. Benedictov began by
analysing, in the light of modern physics, the phenomenon of ionophoresis,
known since 1807 when Professor Reiss of Moscow discovered that drops of one
liquid are capable of moving through another liquid. Further, Benedictov
gave an account of his observations of fish having electric organs and cited
interesting information about them. The electric ray, Torpedinidae, for
example, generates 300 volts at eight amperes, and the electric eel,
Electrophorus Electricus, as much as 600 volts.
Benedictov maintained that such fish, Nature's largest living power
generators, created an electric field the action of which makes water pass
through their scales into their bodies. He had planted contacts in fish to
measure differences in the action potential of the skin and the internal
organs, and had concluded that under certain definite electrostatic
conditions liquids penetrate through living tissue. Benedictov put forward
the hypothesis that it would soon be possible to subject fish to special
irradiation that would make them both penetrable and able to penetrate
through solid matter when required. For example, fish would be able to pass
freely through concrete dams on rivers.
In his review Opratin had spoken highly of the fish experiments but had
politely ridiculed the penetrability hypothesis. The editor of the journal
had introduced him to Benedictov. Benedictov had disagreed with Opratin's
conclusions, called the review "narrow-minded", and refused to let his
article be published.
All this had taken place about three and a half months earlier. Now the
author and the reviewer were meeting for a second time.
"There was no need to take offence, Benedictov," Opratin said mildly.
"Your article had a lot of interesting points, as I noted in my review-"
"I didn't take offence," Benedictov interrupted.
"It's just that I don't think you- hm, well, that you know much about
bioelectricity."
Opratin took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. "Let's not
argue about it," he said quietly. "You know more about some things and I
know more about others. Isn't that so?"
"In that case, stick to what you know and don't go poking your nose-"
"Anatole, please," the woman said, putting her hand on her husband's
arm.
"I shouldn't have spoken to him," Opratin thought. "He's all keyed up."
Aloud he said: "I have no intention of interfering in your affairs. I hope
you'll finally realize your hypothesis is groundless. Ionophoresis and
reciprocal penetrability of bodies are immeasurably far apart. Goodbye."
Opratin made a dignified turn but before he had taken two steps
Benedictov called to him. "Look here", he said. "Want a demonstration of
penetrability?"
"Stop it, Anatole," said the woman. "Don't, I beg you."
Benedictov waved her aside. "Look!" He thrust his hand inside his shirt
and drew out a knife.
Opratin took an involuntary step backwards.
The husky man in the striped shirt strode over to Benedictov. "Hey,
none of that! Put that knife away."
Benedictov ignored him. "Here's penetrability for you!" he exclaimed.
He pushed up his left sleeve and slashed his forearm with the knife.
Someone gave a stifled scream. A crowd started to gather.
"See that?" Now Benedictov plunged the knife into his arm. The narrow
blade, on which a wavy pattern was engraved, passed straight through his arm
without even leaving a scratch on it.
The crowd was struck dumb. Benedictov laughed. As he was putting the
knife away the husky man stepped towards him again.
"Give it here," he said. "I'll teach you to frighten people." He made a
grab for the knife but his hand closed over emptiness.
"Keep out of this!" Benedictov shouted. But the man twisted
Benedictov's arm, and the knife dropped to the deck, dangerously near the
edge. Several hands reached for it.
The next instant a slim figure in a sleeveless red dress pushed forward
through the crowd, ducked under the railing and dived down towards the
water, six metres below.
"Man overboard!" someone shouted.
Life preservers plopped into the sea and lifeboat tackle began to
creak. The ship started on a circle that would bring it back to the spot
where the passenger had fallen overboard. But this turned out to be
unnecessary. The white sailboat, then about a hundred metres from the ship,
made a wild turn into the wind. Listing heavily, the boat raced towards the
head bobbing among the waves.
As the crowd looked on, a tall, bronzed young man dived into the sea. A
few minutes later the red sun-dress was to be seen on the deck of the
sailboat.
The Uzbekistan approached the sailboat from the lee side.
"Any help needed?" the officer of the watch called out.
A woman's voice floated up. "No, thanks. They'll take me ashore."
The passengers excitedly discussed the rescue. Cameras were focussed on
the sailboat. Anatole Benedictov, his face white as a sheet, stood apart
from the crowd. He gripped the railing and stared down fixedly at the sea.
When Nikolai Opratin raised his head after looking in vain for the
knife on deck his eyes met the intent gaze of the husky man.
"A tricky little knife," the man remarked. "A pity the fishes will get
it."
Opratin turned away.
TO GO SAILING TOGETHER WITH
THE MAIN CHARACTERS
Now let us turn back the clock a few hours and shift the scene to the
bazaar in that large town on the Caspian Sea.
It was Sunday, and the bazaar was so thickly packed with people that it
could have been described as a dense substance, all the constituent elements
of which were in constant motion. Motivated by the law of supply and demand,
buyers and sellers were attracted to one another like bodies possessing
different electric charges. They moved towards one another, overcoming an
opposing force, namely, different ideas about prices.
Two tall young men strode quickly towards the bazaar. The tow-headed,
blue-eyed man, whose name was Yura Kostyukov and who wore a bright red
short-sleeved shirt and sand-coloured trousers, glanced at his watch.
"It's a quarter to nine already. Val is probably waiting for us at the
yacht club."
"Let her wait," his friend Nikolai Potapkin said. "The worst that can
happen is she'll give you a tongue-lashing." Nikolai had a high forehead,
prominent cheekbones and a shock of dark hair. His grey eyes were calm and
somewhat quizzical. The rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt revealed a pair
of hairy muscular forearms.
The two friends passed through an arched gateway and came out near a
display of paintings, some of them executed on cardboard, some on oilcloth
and some on polythene film. They were the kind of paintings you will see
only at bazaars. Most of them were crude copies of well-known canvases. The
two young men stopped in front of one of them which depicted a plump nude
with pinkish-purple skin reclining on the bright blue surface of a pond
beside a dazzlingly white swan.
"Just look at that," Yura remarked. "What a wealth of colour!"
"It's Leda and the swan, from Greek mythology," said Nikolai.
Yura laughed. "You mean that fat lady is Leda, the Spartan beauty? The
mother of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra? The mother-in-law of King Menelaus
and King Agamemnon?"
"But look at how she's lying on the water," Nikolai said.
At that moment a man in his forties, wearing large, horn-rimmed
eyeglasses, with greying hair, plump tanned cheeks and a small pot-belly,
came up to them.
"Fie," he said in a low voice. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."
The two young men turned round. "Why, it's Boris!" Yura exclaimed.
"Fie," the plump man repeated. Boris Privalov was head of the
department in which the two young men were employed as research engineers.
"Staring at a nude!"
"No- I'm intrigued by the way she's floating on top of the water,"
Nikolai said. "You might think she was lying on a sofa."
Boris Privalov examined the pinkish-purple lady more closely. "H'm,
yes, indeed. An extraordinary case of surface tension. But you didn't come
here to buy a painting, did you?"
"Of course not. We're looking for a pulley-block for our stay-sail
halyard," Yura explained. "We were at the marina, giving the boat a
onceover, and we saw a block had to be replaced. We couldn't find anything
suitable in the store-room there. Dockmaster Mehti said we were getting to
be as finicky as pampered lap dogs. He said that if we didn't like the block
he offered us we could trot down to the bazaar for one. So that's that. Are
you looking for anything in particular?"
Before replying, Privalov glanced about. "No, just browsing, so to
speak."
"Do you suppose it would be possible to build up surface tension
artificially?" Nikolai asked.
"Build it up, you say?"
"Yes." Nikolai put a finger on the blue surface of the water in the
painting. "So that a person could stretch out on the water, the way she's
doing."
"But what for?"
Nikolai lifted his shoulders. "I don't know. It simply occurred to me."
"An interesting point," Privalov said after a pause, during which he
glanced about again. "But first you would have to examine the question of
just what a surface is in general." He looked first at Nikolai, then at
Yura, then began to talk. He loved to discuss scientific problems, and when
some point caught his fancy he could talk about it for hours.
A cluster of people formed around them as first one passer-by stopped
to listen, then a second, then a third.
"Boris! Where've you disappeared to?" a woman's voice called.
Privalov stopped short. "I'm here. Olga," he said to a round-faced,
thick-set woman who was pushing her way towards him through the crowd. "I
ran into a couple of my men-"
"So I see." The woman glanced with distaste at the painting. "How could
you stand here looking at that abomination?"
"Good morning," said Yura, an earnest smile on his face. "You see, it's
really our fault-"
"How do you do," the woman replied. "Come, Boris. I've found a
hand-chased copper jug for your collection-if someone hasn't snatched it up
already."
Privalov nodded to the two young men and followed his wife. But after a
few steps he halted and squatted to examine a pile of metal junk.
"Here's the block you're looking for, boys," he called.
Nikolai came over to him, picked up the block and examined it. "It'll
do," he said.
"Boris!" Privalov's wife called.
"Just a moment." Still squatting on his haunches, Privalov pushed his
glasses up onto his forehead and studied a small bar of rusty iron that he
had picked up. He tapped it with a forefinger.
Nikolai paid for the block. With a wave of his hand the owner of the
pile of junk threw in the bar of rusty iron for the same price. Privalov
wrapped it in a page from a newspaper and put it in his pocket.
"What do you want the piece of iron for?" Yura asked.
"Oh, it just caught my eye. Well, so long, Siamese twins."
"We're thinking of going out in the boat to take a look at the site,"
said Nikolai, lowering his voice.
Privalov's face brightened. "That's a good idea, a wonderful idea, in
fact. I was just- Wait a moment-"
Ho stepped over to his wife and whispered something to her.
"Of course not!" she exclaimed. "What talk can there be about the
pipeline? Today's Sunday and everybody's off."
"Sunday is a working day on the project because the power supply is
better than on weekdays."
"But you wanted to look for some old copper wares, Boris."
"I'll get along meanwhile," Privalov said firmly. "Now don't fret,
Olga. I'm sorry but I must go. I'll be back for dinner."
With a sigh, Olga gazed reproachfully at her husband's back.
Privalov and his young companions left the bazaar, took a trolleybus
and in fifteen minutes reached the marina.
A dark-haired girl in a white blouse and gay-coloured skirt was sitting
on the edge of the pier dangling her tanned legs above the water and reading
a book. When Yura caught sight of the girl he hastened out along the pier
towards her. .
"Hallo there, Val!" he called.
The girl slammed her book shut and sprang to her feet.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" She snatched off her sunglasses
to glare at Yura. "We made a date for eight o'clock and now it's going on
for ten."
"We had an urgent job to do for Mehti," Yura explained. "Val, I want
you to meet Boris Privalov."
Privalov held out his hand. "It's a pleasure," he said. "I've spoken
with you on the phone. You're the girl who rings up Yura, aren't you?"
Val smiled. "Why, yes. But maybe I'm not the only one."
"Of course you're not," Nikolai put in. "Half of the girls in town ring
him up."
"Can I help it if I'm popular?" Yura asked plaintively.
Val gave a giggle and pinched his arm.
They went aboard a sailboat that was tied up at the pier. It had the
name Mekong on its bows.
Why was this Caspian boat named after that great river, 4,500
kilometres long, which flows through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia
and Vietnam?
Well, sailing enthusiasts prefer lyrical names like Orion and Sputnik
to the old-fashioned Swift or Hurricane. The man formerly in charge of this
white sailboat had taken a liking to the Greek word meconium, which conjured
up some sort of mythological picture in his mind. But as soon as he painted
this name on the bows he found himself the butt of curious jokes and
innuendoes. Looking up the word, he learned that it was indeed Greek, but
had nothing to do with mythology at all. He never showed up at the marina
again.
The boat was turned over to Nikolai and Yura. Instead of racking their
brains for a totally new name they simply changed Meconium into Mekong.
The stay-sail halyard block was quickly replaced by the new one. Soon
after, the Mekong, heeling to starboard, was sweeping across the bay towards
the sea.
"Haul the sheets home!" commanded Nikolai, who was the skipper.
Privalov had crewed for them for more than a year but he much preferred to
spend his weekends at home on the sofa with a book. He did not turn up at
the marina very often, although he liked sailing.
After making fast the stay-sail sheet Privalov stretched out on the hot
boards of the deck. How wonderful it was to lie there not thinking about
anything, feeling the sun warm your bare back, watching the city with its
hustle and bustle recede into the distance, and listen to the chatter and
laughter of the two young men and the girl!
How wonderful it would be not to think about anything! But the pipeline
kept intruding.
Quite some time had already passed since a bold project for laying an
underwater pipeline between the mainland and the Neftianiye Reefs, a famous
oilfield in the Caspian Sea, had been developed at Privalov's Oil
Transportation Research Institute. It was an ingenious scheme that involved
winding forty kilometres of pipes onto a gigantic wheel lying in the water
just off the shore and then gradually unwinding the line and towing it to
the Neftianiye Reefs. Meanwhile the oil extracted there was being shipped
out in tankers.
Privalov's plan had been approved, although many people thought it too
risky.
During the past week the pressure of affairs at the Institute had
prevented Privalov from visiting the pipeline site. Running into Yura and
Nikolai at the bazaar had been a piece of luck for him.
A gentle northerly breeze carried the boat smoothly seawards. As he lay
on his chest at the edge of the deck, Privalov reflectively observed the two
resilient bow-waves formed by the boat. The Mekong seemed to be folding the
water apart rather than cutting through it.
The water was resisting. Surface tension. Privalov raised himself on
his elbows and looked at Nikolai seated at the tiller.
"Now listen," he said. "If strong enough, the surface tension of a
liquid could replace a pipe." "I don't get it, Boris," said Nikolai. Yura,
sitting on the other side with Val, moved his head, tightly bound in a red
kerchief, from under the stay-sail and stared inquisitively at Privalov.
"You don't get it?" Privalov reached over to his trousers, brought out
his cigarette case and lit up. "Take an underwater pipeline. The oil is
separated from the sea by the wall of the pipe. If we could make its surface
tension strong enough, oil would flow in a separate stream, its own surface
tension acting as a sort of film, or casing, and then you wouldn't need a
pipe. See?"
"That's fabulous!" Nikolai exclaimed. "A pipe-less pipeline! But how
could you increase the tension?"
Privalov lay back. "It's all out of this world," he said, screwing up
his eyes against the sun.
"Out of this world?"
"Well, yes. Surfaces have specific properties that no one is able to
control. Forget it. The whole thing's just a daydream."
Privalov fell silent. He did not utter another word until their
destination came into sight.
The sailboat rounded the yellow tongue of the cape and headed for
shore. They had to drop anchor about a hundred metres from the beach because
the bay was too shallow for them to proceed any further. Privalov shaded his
eyes with his hand and studied the structures on the beach. They were
surrounded by barbed wire.
"Might think we were in a desert," he muttered. "I had a feeling
there's something wrong. Well, let's take a swim and go back home."
It was mid-afternoon by the time they lifted anchor and set out on the
return trip. Nikolai lay on the deck beside Privalov, his hand on the
stay-sail sheet, watching a big white passenger ship overtake them. Yura was
now at the tiller. Val was perched beside him.
"Yura," she whispered. "Do you know if Nick has a girl friend?"
"Why don't you ask him yourself?"
Val laughed. "Oh, I couldn't. I'm afraid of him." After a pause she
said, "You know my friend Zina, don't you? Let's introduce her to him."
"Better riot," said Yura. "He's very choosy."
Val frowned. "Humph!" she said with a pout.
Yura struck up a song and Nikolai joined in. Sometimes they thought up
their own words to popular songs, and sometimes they set poems to well-known
tunes.
Meanwhile, the ship had drawn abreast of the sailboat. "Look at the
crowd on deck," Nikolai remarked. "Some sort of a brawl, judging by the way
they're milling about."
At that instant a slim figure in red plunged over the side of the ship.
"Veer!" Nikolai shouted.
Yura leaned on the tiller. The blocks creaked and the mainsail
described a wide arc as it swung over to the other side. The boat, listing
heavily to starboard, sped towards the ship.
"Take it, Val! Brace yourself with your feet!" Nikolai gave the girl
the stay-sail sheet and dived into the water.
PASSING
Towards the end of the day Privalov's old friend Pavel Koltukhov, the
Institute's chief engineer, dropped in to see him.
"Looks like smooth sailing at last, Boris," he said, sitting down and
stretching out his legs. "Work will be resumed at the site tomorrow."
"Thank goodness!" Privalov flung himself back in his chair. "Those
self-styled efficiency experts! To claim that it's cheaper to transport oil
by tanker than by pipeline! But they forgot that tankers return empty. They
close their eyes to the cost of taking on ballast water and then discharging
it. To say nothing of the number of stormy days on the Caspian."
Koltukhov nodded his bald head in agreement. Then he stuck a cigarette
between his lips and gave Privalov a sharp glance from beneath beetling
eyebrows.
"You don't have to persuade me a pipeline is better," he said. He
walked over to a big map of the Caspian hanging on the wall.
"Forty kilometres of pipeline," he said. "Three more parallel pipelines
will make it a total of 160 kilometres. A pipeline across the whole of the
Caspian will add another 300 kilometres. We'll be paving the floor of the
Caspian with steel."
"We'll be paving it with millions of roubles too," Privalov added,
joining Koltukhov in front of the map. "Here we are in the twentieth century
and the only way we know of transporting liquids is through pipes, just like
in the first century."
Koltukhov chewed his lip. "Have you read Arshavin's latest article?" he
asked.
"About towing oil across the sea in containers made of thin polythene
film? Yes, I've read it."
"Not a bad idea," Koltukhov remarked. "It's been picked up abroad. So
don't say we don't know how to transport liquid goods."
"There's an idea that keeps preying on my mind." said Privalov. "It
concerns the physics of surfaces. All surfaces possess energy, don't they?
Suppose we found a way of using this energy to alter the properties of
surface tension. I mean, building up surface tension to such a degree that a
stream of oil would be contained in a 'skin' of its own surface."
"Where'd you get that idea?"
"At the bazaar." Privalov told Koltukhov the gist of his talk with the
two young engineers.
"Why, I see you're just an old day-dreamer." Koltukhov gave a short
laugh. "You'll lead those young men of yours astray. I'd advise you not to
read Jules Verne the last thing before going to sleep."
"Oh, all right, all right."
"You're too long in the tooth for that sort of thing, Boris."
"What's age got to do with it? I read what I like, and I like Jules
Verne. He's refreshing."
The telephone rang. Privalov lifted the receiver. "Yes? How do you do.
Certainly you may." He put down the receiver. "Opratin from Marine Physics
is dropping in."
"Oh, our old acquaintance. Do you see much of him?"
"No, not really. I'm better acquainted with the surveyors from that
outfit. They're helping us to lay out the route."
Koltukhov glanced out of the window at the building of the Marine
Physics Institute on the other side of the street. He watched a lean man in
a straw hat step out of the front door and stride quickly across the street.
"Our neighbour's in a hurry," he remarked. "They say he's efficient.
I'll wager he hasn't read Jules Verne since he was a boy."
A few minutes later there was a knock on the door. "Come in," Privalov
said.
Opratin opened the door and, removing his hat, stepped into the room.
He smoothed down his thinning hair. "How have you been keeping?" he
asked Koltukhov. "Haven't seen you for some time. How are things?"
"Not so bad." When talking with visitors Koltukhov liked to give the
impression that he was just a "plain, down-to-earth Voronezh peasant", as he
put it. And he really did come from Voronezh peasant stock. "I spend my time
making the rounds and giving advice."
"Still dabbling in resins and plastics"?
"We executives don't have much time for anything except organizational
matters," Koltukhov said with an apologetic note. "But I do have a cubbyhole
of my own, with mixers, thermostats and a press. Whenever I see a couple of
young men engaged in idle conversation in the corridor I punish them by
recruiting them to help me make a couple of plastic models. Besides, you
know, those resins have an awful smell." After a slight pause he said, "I
hear you had quite an adventure."
Opratin chose to be noncommittal. "Really?"
"Your director told me you fell into a pit in Derbent while on a
business trip and had to prolong your stay there."
A shadow flitted across Opratin's face. "Yes," he said, "I did run into
a bit of unpleasantness."
Koltukhov glanced at his watch. "Well, I'll leave you two together now.
It's time I was off."
He nodded to the two men and walked unhurriedly to the door.
The name of the old Caspian town of Derbent means "Iron Gates". The
town once guarded the narrowest place on a caravan route running between the
mountains and the sea. Nikolai Opratin had been sent there to examine the
ruins of fortress walls in order to obtain more precise information about
the level of the Caspian in ancient times.
On his last day in Derbent Opratin wandered into an old stone quarry on
the deserted shore. While clambering about the quarry he caught his foot in
a fissure. Suddenly the rocks gave way. His heart missed a heat as lie felt
himself falling into nothingness. He landed with a splash in a pool of mud
about a dozen feet below.
He picked himself up and paused to catch his breath. Just a moment ago,
a hot blue sky had stretched above him; now he was surrounded by musty
semi-darkness. He took out his flashlight and swept its beam to right and
left. He saw damp, moss-covered walls.
This prompted the thought that he had probably fallen into the
underground passage that had once connected the Naryn Kale Fortress with the
sea. The passage was mentioned in legends but so far no one had been able to
find it.
The flashlight beam moved downwards. Opratin was a self-possessed man,
but the sight of a human skeleton filled him with horror. He turned to flee
and stumbled into a pool of cold water. This brought him to his senses.
Besides, whom was he fleeing from?
He returned to the skeleton, to which the remnants of clothing still
clung. The poor devil must have fallen into the passage and been crushed by
rocks. Opratin's flashlight picked out a half-rotten sack. He gave the sack
a push with his shoe. A gun fell out of it.
"It's a German pistol, a Luger," Opratin said to himself. "How odd!"
Poking through the contents of the sack he found a portable radio
transmitter, several sticks of dynamite and some cartridges covered with
green mould.
He turned his flashlight back on the skeleton. Something sparkled in
the neck of the torn shirt. Bending down to take a closer look, he saw a
shiny metal chain on which hung a small crucifix and a flat rectangle of
iron with letters on it. Opratin wiped the iron rectangle with a corner of
the sack and read:
A M D G
Below these were smaller letters.
Only a Catholic would wear a crucifix round his neck, Opratin
reflected. How long had the man lain there? Then suddenly he came out of his
reverie. He certainly had no intention of becoming a corpse to keep the
skeleton company. He picked up the pistol, saw that it was in working order,
and fired at the spot of blue sky above his head. Minutes passed, minutes
that seemed hours to Opratin. He fired again. The passage rumbled like an
active volcano, but no sound came from above.
Opratin fired again and again until all the cartridges were gone.
Breathing heavily, he leaned against the damp wall. Despair swept over him.
Suddenly he heard alarmed voices overhead. He shouted. Choking from the
stench of the passage and the smell of gunpowder, he shouted until he was
hoarse. The faint light from above was blotted out by a head that appeared
in the opening.
"Who fired those shots?" a voice demanded from above.
A few minutes later a rope was lowered through the hole and Opratin was
hauled out.
Opratin had to postpone his departure while he answered questions put
by the local authorities and set forth the whole matter in writing. That was
a nuisance, for Opratin hated to waste time.
Nikolai and Yura sat side by side at a desk, bent over a blueprint of
the pipeline route. They were checking the figures indicating the depths.
Valery Gorbachevsky, a young lab technician, glanced at his watch, then
walked over to the mirror and smoothed down his black sideburns and
moustache, meanwhile singing a song about a lad named Chico who came from
Puerto Rico.
"My dear Valery," said Yura, "do you know where Puerto Rico is?"
The lab technician shrugged a shoulder. "Of course. You don't doubt it,
do you?"
"Not very far from Madagascar, isn't it?"
"Well, yes, you could put it like that," Valery said hesitatingly.
"Now you see, my friend, how disastrous it is-" Just then the telephone
rang, and Yura broke off to pick up the receiver.
"The chief wants you, Nikolai. With the route plan."
Nikolai went up to the next floor, taking the steps two at a time, and
entered Privalov's office. Privalov had a visitor, a man in a green suit,
whom Nikolai had never seen before. The visitor gave Nikolai a keen glance,
nodded and said, "My name's Nikolai Opratin."
Nikolai introduced himself and sat down.
"Nikolai Opratin comes from the Institute of Marine Physics across the
street," Privalov said to Nikolai. "He has given me some interesting
information which we will have to take into account. Yes, indeed." Here
Privalov pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and bent over the plan of
the pipeline route. "Now take this shoal that's to be deepened by blasting."
Opratin crossed his legs. "That won't be necessary," he said with a
glance at Nikolai. "I've just told your chief the level of the Caspian will
rise in three years' time. That means there isn't any need to deepen the
route."
"Is your information reliable?"
Opratin smiled. "The most reliable there is."
Privalov leaned back in his chair. His glasses slid down to the tip of
his hose.
"Well, we'll just have to revise our calculations," he said, rubbing
his forehead. "I'd like you to step over to the Institute of Marine Physics
tomorrow, Nikolai. Will that be all right?" he asked, turning to Opratin.
"Certainly. After lunch, preferably."
"Fine. You can't imagine how much worry this pipeline is causing us.
Doubting Thomases are holding up the work. We visited the site last Sunday
and-oh, well, you understand."
Opratin nodded sympathetically. "Yes, I do. By the way, I didn't know
you went in for sailing."
'"Indeed?"
"I saw you in a sailboat last Sunday."
"Where were you?"
"Aboard the Uzbekistan."
"Well, well. Why did you drop a lady overboard?"
Opratin's thin lips spread in a faint smile.
"It wasn't me who dropped her," he said. "There was some sort of row on
deck. I don't know whether she was pushed overboard or just fell in. It
seemed to me she was holding some metal object in her hand."
"A metal object?" Privalov glanced at Nikolai. "Did you see anything
like that when you fished her out of the sea?"
"The only metal I saw was the buckles of her sandals."
Opratin rose. "Anyway, there was something else about that particular
spot besides the rescue of the lady. I saw bubbles rising to the surface.
Could have been natural gas, couldn't it?"
"It could. You ought to inform the gas experts."
"How can I if I don't know the exact spot? It's not like on shore,
where you have landmarks."
"If I remember rightly, the TV tower was straight ahead of us at that
moment," said Nikolai. "The refrigeration plant was at right angles to it.
The No. 18 buoy in the channel was about a hundred metres to the north.
Those points should be enough to find it, I think."
"Thank you," said Opratin. "I'll be expecting you tomorrow." He said
goodbye and left.
They left the Institute together and walked down the street in the
bright sunshine.
"Why do you think she fell overboard, Yura?" Nikolai asked.
Yura grinned. "Beware of women who fall overboard. I shouldn't rescue
them if I were you."
"Oh, shut up," Nikolai growled, and quickened his steps.
The woman in the red sun-dress was not exactly preying on his mind, but
there was something about her narrow, dark-eyed face, framed in fair hair,
that vaguely disturbed him. He had a feeling he had seen that face somewhere
before.
She was, of course, an unusual woman. She had not shown a trace of fear
in the sea. When he swam over to her she had said, "No need to rescue me.
I'm a good swimmer." By that time the sailboat was beside them. Yura had
heeled into the wind so sharply that the starboard side was level with the
water and Nikolai did not even have to help the woman climb into the boat.
She thanked them politely, her gaze on a point somewhere between Privalov
and the mast, wrung out her dripping hair and then went down into the cabin.
Val came out of the cabin with the red sun-dress and hung it up to dry in
the sun.
When the boat reached the marina the woman sprang gracefully onto the
pier. "Please don't trouble yourselves," she said. "I'll get home all right
without any help." Her red dress flashed among the trees on the seaside
promenade and vanished. That was the last they saw of her.
The two men turned oft the bustling avenue into quiet Cooper Lane.
"Will you come in for a while?" Nikolai asked, stopping under an
archway that led into a courtyard.
"Can you lend me something to read?"
"Of course I can."
They crossed the yard diagonally. It was a yard they had known from
childhood, with a glassed-in gallery running the length of the two-storey
house. An outside stairway supported by iron posts, down which it had been
so convenient and pleasant to slide, led up to the top floor. In the cellar
the children used to hunt for buried treasure and hide from pursuit, sending
arrows flying through the air.
Yura and Nikolai had grown up in this wonderful courtyard which could
be turned, in the twinkling of an eye, into a prairie or the deck of a
frigate. Here they had invented their earliest games and read their first
books. They had raced about the yard, shooting arrows from their bows and
lassoing the rubber plants set out for watering.
One of the ground-floor tenants in those days was a sailor. The boys
used to gaze respectfully at his black cap with its gold emblem and the gold
stripes on his sleeve. The sailor would be away for weeks at a lime, leaving
behind, at home, a live turtle and a daughter with freckles and yellow
braids.
Although girls were not invited to play Red Indians, Yura and Nikolai
made an exception in the case of the sailor's daughter. Yellow Lynx, as they
named her, could run like the wind and slide down the stairway posts like a
cat. She did not cry when they pulled her by her braids. She plunged
courageously into courtyard battles, using her fingernails and screaming in
a high, piercing voice.
Besides the live turtle there were other interesting things in the
sailor's flat. A real dirk hung on one wall and a barometer on another. On
the desk, beside a bronze inkwell, lay two pieces of iron with mysterious
letters carved on them. Yellow Lynx and the boys resolved that some day they
would discover the meaning of those mysterious letters.
The sailor and his daughter left for Leningrad early in the spring of
1941. Nikolai copied a picture from a volume of Pushkin's Tales showing a
ship with a huge taut sail decorated with a drawing of the sun, approaching
a wharf on which men in old-fashioned long robes were firing cannons. He
presented it to Yellow Lynx as a farewell gift. They were both about nine
years old at the time.
Soon after, a husky young man by the name of Bugrov, whom the boys
addressed as Uncle Vova, moved into the sailor's flat. He had a blue
motorcycle on which he sometimes took the boys riding. What is more, he
taught them the Greco-Roman style of wrestling. A circus poster on the wall
of the new tenant's room showed him among the other performers, very
handsome and muscular in black tights, his chest bulging.
When the war broke out Uncle Vova locked up his flat and went into the
army. Nikolai's father, who worked at a railway-carriage repair shop, was
also drafted. Yura's father, an oil refinery engineer, was given a draft
deferment.
Now the boys played army scouts and guerrillas. Life was hard,
especially for Nikolai and his mother, who was a nurse and worked day and
night at an army hospital.
Nikolai's father was killed in a battle on the Dnieper River.
After seven years of schooling Nikolai told his mother that he wanted
to go to work. She tried to persuade him to stay in school but he would not
be moved. Yura's father found a job for Nikolai as an apprentice fitter in
the oil refinery's maintenance shop and persuaded him to attend night
school.
Soon after, Yura's family moved to another part of town and Nikolai was
left without a playmate. But this did not matter because he had no time for
play.
Yura felt that fate had been unkind to him for making him sit over his
books all through the war instead of letting him fight the Nazis. Besides,
he envied Nikolai's hands, with their traces of grease and metallic dust.
And so, after finishing the eighth grade at school Yura went to work in the
maintenance shop, side by side with Nikolai. They went through night school
together and then entered the evening department of a college. Shortly after
graduating with degrees in engineering the two young men were assigned to
jobs in the Oil Transportation Research Institute, where they worked under
Boris Privalov.
They crossed the courtyard, climbed the stairs, walked down the
glassed-in gallery and entered Nikolai's room. There, it was pleasantly
cool. Bookshelves lined the wall above Nikolai's desk. A photographic
enlarger stood on the floor in a corner of the room, like a stork on one
Translated from the Russian by Leonard Stoklitsky
First published 1974
(c) English translation, Mir Publishers, 1974
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
Original title: Экипаж "Меконга"
---------------------------------------------------------------
Being an account
of the latest fantastic
discoveries, happenings of the
eighteenth century,
mysteries of Matter,
and adventures
on land and at sea
THE MERCURY HEART
NAVAL LIEUTENANT FEDOR MATVEYEV
A HALF-TWIST SPIRAL
IPATY ISLAND
I'll die if I don't see the Caspian.
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT
THE MERCURY HEART
If you wish to subject an unknown substance
to the action of an unknown force you must
first study this substance.
Honore de Balzac -LA PEAU DE CHAGRIN
There is a great temptation to start a novel of adventure with a
shipwreck. Something like this:
"With a sickening crunch the three-masted bark Aretusa, sailing from
the New Hebrides with a cargo of copra, listed heavily to starboard. The
raging sea swept over-"
But we did not yield to the temptation. This true story of ours will
open without a shipwreck. Since we wish, however, to conform throughout to
the dictates of good style, we solemnly promise to arrange one later on.
So much for that.
One fine summer day the m.s. Uzbekistan was approaching a large Caspian
town. The time was shortly after lunch, and the promenade deck was deserted
except for a man in a green check suit. He was taking his ease in a deck
chair, sheltered from the broiling sun by an awning.
Nikolai Opratin, a person destined to play no small role in this story,
was a lean, dapper man in his late thirties. He had an energetic face, with
a bony chin, thin lips and a high brow ending in a carefully concealed bald
patch. His close-shaven cheeks and the aroma of his aftershave lotion
created the impression that he had just stepped out of a barber's chair.
Postprandial naps were a pernicious habit in which Nikolai Opratin did
not indulge. He reclined in his deck chair, gazing at the ship's broad,
foamy wake. On his right he could see the grayish-yellow strip of coastline
rising out of the blue sea. The long hilly island at the entrance to the bay
was already in sight.
The island had been much smaller twenty years ago, Opratin reflected.
Through the centuries the level of the ancient Caspian had often risen and
fallen, sometimes by as much as eighty metres. In recent years it had
dropped greatly. Man, no longer willing to be just a passive observer, had
now set himself the difficult task of raising the level of the Caspian. One
of the ideas suggested was to seal off, with a dam, the Bay of
Kara-Bogaz-Gol, where the hot desert sun evaporates fourteen cubic
kilometres of Caspian water annually. Another was to divert northern rivers
into the Caspian. Under this bold scheme, the Kama, Vychegda and Pechora
rivers were to be pumped across the watersheds and made to flow southwards
into the Volga, which empties into the Caspian Sea.
Even if Kara-Bogaz-Gol Bay were cut off from the sea, northern rivers
diverted, and water from Central Asia's great Amu Darya river added, the
level of the Caspian would not rise by the desired three metres before the
year 2000.
That was far too long to wait. Actually, the addition of only one
thousand cubic kilometres of water to the Caspian in the course of one year
would do the trick.
But this was easier said than done. Several thousand giant pumps and a
power station with a capacity of scores of millions of kilowatts would be
required to shift that amount of water from the Black Sea, say, to the
Caspian in one year.
Nikolai Opratin, Candidate of Science (Tech.), had all these figures at
his fingertips because he was the man in charge of the key aspect of a
Caspian-level scheme at the Research Institute of Marine Physics.
Although the level of the Caspian had dropped, the sea was still more
than deep enough for the Uzbekistan. The town came into view, rising slowly
out of the blue bay. Smokestacks and the delicate tracery of TV aerials
could be seen with the naked eye.
The decks now swarmed with passengers. Many were holiday-makers
returning home from a cruise along the Volga.
A trio of sailing enthusiasts leaned on the rail as they discussed the
merits of a white sailboat that was overtaking the ship.
Young men and women in blue jerseys with white numbers on their backs
tirelessly took snapshots of one another.
A husky, well-built man in a striped shirt worn over his trousers
strolled along the deck with his plump wife on his arm. From time to time he
paused to give a young photographer some pointers about which aperture to
set and which shutter speed to use.
"What a pity our holiday is coming to an end, Anatole," a woman
somewhere behind Opratin remarked in a high-pitched voice.
"Thank goodness it's over-that's what I say," a man's voice replied.
"Just think of all the time lost." The voice struck Opratin as familiar. He
turned round to see a slender young blonde in a red sun-dress, and a
middle-aged man in a crumpled pongee suit. The man had a broad,
large-featured face, puffy eyelids and an unruly shock of brown hair.
The couple, deep in conversation, stopped by the rail not far from
Opratin's deck chair.
Opratin rose, straightened his jacket, and walked over to them. "Good
afternoon, Benedictov," he said in a low voice.
The man in the pongee suit stared at him coldly. "Ah, the expert who
writes reviews," he remarked. He reeked of brandy.
"I saw you in the restaurant during lunch but didn't venture to impose
on you," said Opratin. He turned to Benedictov's companion with a slight
bow. "My name is Nikolai Opratin."
"How do you do," she replied. "I'm Rita Benedictov. I've heard about
you."
Opratin lifted the corners of his mouth in a smile. "I don't doubt it.
Nothing very flattering, I'll wager." His tone was half-questioning,
half-affirmative. The young woman merely shrugged. With the sun on her face,
her brown eyes were warm and clear, but there was a hint of melancholy in
them.
"Were you on the Volga cruise too?" she asked.
"No, I came aboard last night at Derbent. Business. By the way, a
curious thing happened to me in Derbent-"
A glance at Benedictov's face told Opratin that he couldn't care less
about anything that had happened at Derbent.
"Tut-tut, he still holds a grudge against me," Opratin thought.
That spring a scientific journal had asked Nikolai Opratin to write a
review of an article submitted for publication by a biophysicist named
Anatole Benedictov. The article had impressed him. Benedictov began by
analysing, in the light of modern physics, the phenomenon of ionophoresis,
known since 1807 when Professor Reiss of Moscow discovered that drops of one
liquid are capable of moving through another liquid. Further, Benedictov
gave an account of his observations of fish having electric organs and cited
interesting information about them. The electric ray, Torpedinidae, for
example, generates 300 volts at eight amperes, and the electric eel,
Electrophorus Electricus, as much as 600 volts.
Benedictov maintained that such fish, Nature's largest living power
generators, created an electric field the action of which makes water pass
through their scales into their bodies. He had planted contacts in fish to
measure differences in the action potential of the skin and the internal
organs, and had concluded that under certain definite electrostatic
conditions liquids penetrate through living tissue. Benedictov put forward
the hypothesis that it would soon be possible to subject fish to special
irradiation that would make them both penetrable and able to penetrate
through solid matter when required. For example, fish would be able to pass
freely through concrete dams on rivers.
In his review Opratin had spoken highly of the fish experiments but had
politely ridiculed the penetrability hypothesis. The editor of the journal
had introduced him to Benedictov. Benedictov had disagreed with Opratin's
conclusions, called the review "narrow-minded", and refused to let his
article be published.
All this had taken place about three and a half months earlier. Now the
author and the reviewer were meeting for a second time.
"There was no need to take offence, Benedictov," Opratin said mildly.
"Your article had a lot of interesting points, as I noted in my review-"
"I didn't take offence," Benedictov interrupted.
"It's just that I don't think you- hm, well, that you know much about
bioelectricity."
Opratin took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. "Let's not
argue about it," he said quietly. "You know more about some things and I
know more about others. Isn't that so?"
"In that case, stick to what you know and don't go poking your nose-"
"Anatole, please," the woman said, putting her hand on her husband's
arm.
"I shouldn't have spoken to him," Opratin thought. "He's all keyed up."
Aloud he said: "I have no intention of interfering in your affairs. I hope
you'll finally realize your hypothesis is groundless. Ionophoresis and
reciprocal penetrability of bodies are immeasurably far apart. Goodbye."
Opratin made a dignified turn but before he had taken two steps
Benedictov called to him. "Look here", he said. "Want a demonstration of
penetrability?"
"Stop it, Anatole," said the woman. "Don't, I beg you."
Benedictov waved her aside. "Look!" He thrust his hand inside his shirt
and drew out a knife.
Opratin took an involuntary step backwards.
The husky man in the striped shirt strode over to Benedictov. "Hey,
none of that! Put that knife away."
Benedictov ignored him. "Here's penetrability for you!" he exclaimed.
He pushed up his left sleeve and slashed his forearm with the knife.
Someone gave a stifled scream. A crowd started to gather.
"See that?" Now Benedictov plunged the knife into his arm. The narrow
blade, on which a wavy pattern was engraved, passed straight through his arm
without even leaving a scratch on it.
The crowd was struck dumb. Benedictov laughed. As he was putting the
knife away the husky man stepped towards him again.
"Give it here," he said. "I'll teach you to frighten people." He made a
grab for the knife but his hand closed over emptiness.
"Keep out of this!" Benedictov shouted. But the man twisted
Benedictov's arm, and the knife dropped to the deck, dangerously near the
edge. Several hands reached for it.
The next instant a slim figure in a sleeveless red dress pushed forward
through the crowd, ducked under the railing and dived down towards the
water, six metres below.
"Man overboard!" someone shouted.
Life preservers plopped into the sea and lifeboat tackle began to
creak. The ship started on a circle that would bring it back to the spot
where the passenger had fallen overboard. But this turned out to be
unnecessary. The white sailboat, then about a hundred metres from the ship,
made a wild turn into the wind. Listing heavily, the boat raced towards the
head bobbing among the waves.
As the crowd looked on, a tall, bronzed young man dived into the sea. A
few minutes later the red sun-dress was to be seen on the deck of the
sailboat.
The Uzbekistan approached the sailboat from the lee side.
"Any help needed?" the officer of the watch called out.
A woman's voice floated up. "No, thanks. They'll take me ashore."
The passengers excitedly discussed the rescue. Cameras were focussed on
the sailboat. Anatole Benedictov, his face white as a sheet, stood apart
from the crowd. He gripped the railing and stared down fixedly at the sea.
When Nikolai Opratin raised his head after looking in vain for the
knife on deck his eyes met the intent gaze of the husky man.
"A tricky little knife," the man remarked. "A pity the fishes will get
it."
Opratin turned away.
TO GO SAILING TOGETHER WITH
THE MAIN CHARACTERS
Now let us turn back the clock a few hours and shift the scene to the
bazaar in that large town on the Caspian Sea.
It was Sunday, and the bazaar was so thickly packed with people that it
could have been described as a dense substance, all the constituent elements
of which were in constant motion. Motivated by the law of supply and demand,
buyers and sellers were attracted to one another like bodies possessing
different electric charges. They moved towards one another, overcoming an
opposing force, namely, different ideas about prices.
Two tall young men strode quickly towards the bazaar. The tow-headed,
blue-eyed man, whose name was Yura Kostyukov and who wore a bright red
short-sleeved shirt and sand-coloured trousers, glanced at his watch.
"It's a quarter to nine already. Val is probably waiting for us at the
yacht club."
"Let her wait," his friend Nikolai Potapkin said. "The worst that can
happen is she'll give you a tongue-lashing." Nikolai had a high forehead,
prominent cheekbones and a shock of dark hair. His grey eyes were calm and
somewhat quizzical. The rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt revealed a pair
of hairy muscular forearms.
The two friends passed through an arched gateway and came out near a
display of paintings, some of them executed on cardboard, some on oilcloth
and some on polythene film. They were the kind of paintings you will see
only at bazaars. Most of them were crude copies of well-known canvases. The
two young men stopped in front of one of them which depicted a plump nude
with pinkish-purple skin reclining on the bright blue surface of a pond
beside a dazzlingly white swan.
"Just look at that," Yura remarked. "What a wealth of colour!"
"It's Leda and the swan, from Greek mythology," said Nikolai.
Yura laughed. "You mean that fat lady is Leda, the Spartan beauty? The
mother of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra? The mother-in-law of King Menelaus
and King Agamemnon?"
"But look at how she's lying on the water," Nikolai said.
At that moment a man in his forties, wearing large, horn-rimmed
eyeglasses, with greying hair, plump tanned cheeks and a small pot-belly,
came up to them.
"Fie," he said in a low voice. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."
The two young men turned round. "Why, it's Boris!" Yura exclaimed.
"Fie," the plump man repeated. Boris Privalov was head of the
department in which the two young men were employed as research engineers.
"Staring at a nude!"
"No- I'm intrigued by the way she's floating on top of the water,"
Nikolai said. "You might think she was lying on a sofa."
Boris Privalov examined the pinkish-purple lady more closely. "H'm,
yes, indeed. An extraordinary case of surface tension. But you didn't come
here to buy a painting, did you?"
"Of course not. We're looking for a pulley-block for our stay-sail
halyard," Yura explained. "We were at the marina, giving the boat a
onceover, and we saw a block had to be replaced. We couldn't find anything
suitable in the store-room there. Dockmaster Mehti said we were getting to
be as finicky as pampered lap dogs. He said that if we didn't like the block
he offered us we could trot down to the bazaar for one. So that's that. Are
you looking for anything in particular?"
Before replying, Privalov glanced about. "No, just browsing, so to
speak."
"Do you suppose it would be possible to build up surface tension
artificially?" Nikolai asked.
"Build it up, you say?"
"Yes." Nikolai put a finger on the blue surface of the water in the
painting. "So that a person could stretch out on the water, the way she's
doing."
"But what for?"
Nikolai lifted his shoulders. "I don't know. It simply occurred to me."
"An interesting point," Privalov said after a pause, during which he
glanced about again. "But first you would have to examine the question of
just what a surface is in general." He looked first at Nikolai, then at
Yura, then began to talk. He loved to discuss scientific problems, and when
some point caught his fancy he could talk about it for hours.
A cluster of people formed around them as first one passer-by stopped
to listen, then a second, then a third.
"Boris! Where've you disappeared to?" a woman's voice called.
Privalov stopped short. "I'm here. Olga," he said to a round-faced,
thick-set woman who was pushing her way towards him through the crowd. "I
ran into a couple of my men-"
"So I see." The woman glanced with distaste at the painting. "How could
you stand here looking at that abomination?"
"Good morning," said Yura, an earnest smile on his face. "You see, it's
really our fault-"
"How do you do," the woman replied. "Come, Boris. I've found a
hand-chased copper jug for your collection-if someone hasn't snatched it up
already."
Privalov nodded to the two young men and followed his wife. But after a
few steps he halted and squatted to examine a pile of metal junk.
"Here's the block you're looking for, boys," he called.
Nikolai came over to him, picked up the block and examined it. "It'll
do," he said.
"Boris!" Privalov's wife called.
"Just a moment." Still squatting on his haunches, Privalov pushed his
glasses up onto his forehead and studied a small bar of rusty iron that he
had picked up. He tapped it with a forefinger.
Nikolai paid for the block. With a wave of his hand the owner of the
pile of junk threw in the bar of rusty iron for the same price. Privalov
wrapped it in a page from a newspaper and put it in his pocket.
"What do you want the piece of iron for?" Yura asked.
"Oh, it just caught my eye. Well, so long, Siamese twins."
"We're thinking of going out in the boat to take a look at the site,"
said Nikolai, lowering his voice.
Privalov's face brightened. "That's a good idea, a wonderful idea, in
fact. I was just- Wait a moment-"
Ho stepped over to his wife and whispered something to her.
"Of course not!" she exclaimed. "What talk can there be about the
pipeline? Today's Sunday and everybody's off."
"Sunday is a working day on the project because the power supply is
better than on weekdays."
"But you wanted to look for some old copper wares, Boris."
"I'll get along meanwhile," Privalov said firmly. "Now don't fret,
Olga. I'm sorry but I must go. I'll be back for dinner."
With a sigh, Olga gazed reproachfully at her husband's back.
Privalov and his young companions left the bazaar, took a trolleybus
and in fifteen minutes reached the marina.
A dark-haired girl in a white blouse and gay-coloured skirt was sitting
on the edge of the pier dangling her tanned legs above the water and reading
a book. When Yura caught sight of the girl he hastened out along the pier
towards her. .
"Hallo there, Val!" he called.
The girl slammed her book shut and sprang to her feet.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" She snatched off her sunglasses
to glare at Yura. "We made a date for eight o'clock and now it's going on
for ten."
"We had an urgent job to do for Mehti," Yura explained. "Val, I want
you to meet Boris Privalov."
Privalov held out his hand. "It's a pleasure," he said. "I've spoken
with you on the phone. You're the girl who rings up Yura, aren't you?"
Val smiled. "Why, yes. But maybe I'm not the only one."
"Of course you're not," Nikolai put in. "Half of the girls in town ring
him up."
"Can I help it if I'm popular?" Yura asked plaintively.
Val gave a giggle and pinched his arm.
They went aboard a sailboat that was tied up at the pier. It had the
name Mekong on its bows.
Why was this Caspian boat named after that great river, 4,500
kilometres long, which flows through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia
and Vietnam?
Well, sailing enthusiasts prefer lyrical names like Orion and Sputnik
to the old-fashioned Swift or Hurricane. The man formerly in charge of this
white sailboat had taken a liking to the Greek word meconium, which conjured
up some sort of mythological picture in his mind. But as soon as he painted
this name on the bows he found himself the butt of curious jokes and
innuendoes. Looking up the word, he learned that it was indeed Greek, but
had nothing to do with mythology at all. He never showed up at the marina
again.
The boat was turned over to Nikolai and Yura. Instead of racking their
brains for a totally new name they simply changed Meconium into Mekong.
The stay-sail halyard block was quickly replaced by the new one. Soon
after, the Mekong, heeling to starboard, was sweeping across the bay towards
the sea.
"Haul the sheets home!" commanded Nikolai, who was the skipper.
Privalov had crewed for them for more than a year but he much preferred to
spend his weekends at home on the sofa with a book. He did not turn up at
the marina very often, although he liked sailing.
After making fast the stay-sail sheet Privalov stretched out on the hot
boards of the deck. How wonderful it was to lie there not thinking about
anything, feeling the sun warm your bare back, watching the city with its
hustle and bustle recede into the distance, and listen to the chatter and
laughter of the two young men and the girl!
How wonderful it would be not to think about anything! But the pipeline
kept intruding.
Quite some time had already passed since a bold project for laying an
underwater pipeline between the mainland and the Neftianiye Reefs, a famous
oilfield in the Caspian Sea, had been developed at Privalov's Oil
Transportation Research Institute. It was an ingenious scheme that involved
winding forty kilometres of pipes onto a gigantic wheel lying in the water
just off the shore and then gradually unwinding the line and towing it to
the Neftianiye Reefs. Meanwhile the oil extracted there was being shipped
out in tankers.
Privalov's plan had been approved, although many people thought it too
risky.
During the past week the pressure of affairs at the Institute had
prevented Privalov from visiting the pipeline site. Running into Yura and
Nikolai at the bazaar had been a piece of luck for him.
A gentle northerly breeze carried the boat smoothly seawards. As he lay
on his chest at the edge of the deck, Privalov reflectively observed the two
resilient bow-waves formed by the boat. The Mekong seemed to be folding the
water apart rather than cutting through it.
The water was resisting. Surface tension. Privalov raised himself on
his elbows and looked at Nikolai seated at the tiller.
"Now listen," he said. "If strong enough, the surface tension of a
liquid could replace a pipe." "I don't get it, Boris," said Nikolai. Yura,
sitting on the other side with Val, moved his head, tightly bound in a red
kerchief, from under the stay-sail and stared inquisitively at Privalov.
"You don't get it?" Privalov reached over to his trousers, brought out
his cigarette case and lit up. "Take an underwater pipeline. The oil is
separated from the sea by the wall of the pipe. If we could make its surface
tension strong enough, oil would flow in a separate stream, its own surface
tension acting as a sort of film, or casing, and then you wouldn't need a
pipe. See?"
"That's fabulous!" Nikolai exclaimed. "A pipe-less pipeline! But how
could you increase the tension?"
Privalov lay back. "It's all out of this world," he said, screwing up
his eyes against the sun.
"Out of this world?"
"Well, yes. Surfaces have specific properties that no one is able to
control. Forget it. The whole thing's just a daydream."
Privalov fell silent. He did not utter another word until their
destination came into sight.
The sailboat rounded the yellow tongue of the cape and headed for
shore. They had to drop anchor about a hundred metres from the beach because
the bay was too shallow for them to proceed any further. Privalov shaded his
eyes with his hand and studied the structures on the beach. They were
surrounded by barbed wire.
"Might think we were in a desert," he muttered. "I had a feeling
there's something wrong. Well, let's take a swim and go back home."
It was mid-afternoon by the time they lifted anchor and set out on the
return trip. Nikolai lay on the deck beside Privalov, his hand on the
stay-sail sheet, watching a big white passenger ship overtake them. Yura was
now at the tiller. Val was perched beside him.
"Yura," she whispered. "Do you know if Nick has a girl friend?"
"Why don't you ask him yourself?"
Val laughed. "Oh, I couldn't. I'm afraid of him." After a pause she
said, "You know my friend Zina, don't you? Let's introduce her to him."
"Better riot," said Yura. "He's very choosy."
Val frowned. "Humph!" she said with a pout.
Yura struck up a song and Nikolai joined in. Sometimes they thought up
their own words to popular songs, and sometimes they set poems to well-known
tunes.
Meanwhile, the ship had drawn abreast of the sailboat. "Look at the
crowd on deck," Nikolai remarked. "Some sort of a brawl, judging by the way
they're milling about."
At that instant a slim figure in red plunged over the side of the ship.
"Veer!" Nikolai shouted.
Yura leaned on the tiller. The blocks creaked and the mainsail
described a wide arc as it swung over to the other side. The boat, listing
heavily to starboard, sped towards the ship.
"Take it, Val! Brace yourself with your feet!" Nikolai gave the girl
the stay-sail sheet and dived into the water.
PASSING
Towards the end of the day Privalov's old friend Pavel Koltukhov, the
Institute's chief engineer, dropped in to see him.
"Looks like smooth sailing at last, Boris," he said, sitting down and
stretching out his legs. "Work will be resumed at the site tomorrow."
"Thank goodness!" Privalov flung himself back in his chair. "Those
self-styled efficiency experts! To claim that it's cheaper to transport oil
by tanker than by pipeline! But they forgot that tankers return empty. They
close their eyes to the cost of taking on ballast water and then discharging
it. To say nothing of the number of stormy days on the Caspian."
Koltukhov nodded his bald head in agreement. Then he stuck a cigarette
between his lips and gave Privalov a sharp glance from beneath beetling
eyebrows.
"You don't have to persuade me a pipeline is better," he said. He
walked over to a big map of the Caspian hanging on the wall.
"Forty kilometres of pipeline," he said. "Three more parallel pipelines
will make it a total of 160 kilometres. A pipeline across the whole of the
Caspian will add another 300 kilometres. We'll be paving the floor of the
Caspian with steel."
"We'll be paving it with millions of roubles too," Privalov added,
joining Koltukhov in front of the map. "Here we are in the twentieth century
and the only way we know of transporting liquids is through pipes, just like
in the first century."
Koltukhov chewed his lip. "Have you read Arshavin's latest article?" he
asked.
"About towing oil across the sea in containers made of thin polythene
film? Yes, I've read it."
"Not a bad idea," Koltukhov remarked. "It's been picked up abroad. So
don't say we don't know how to transport liquid goods."
"There's an idea that keeps preying on my mind." said Privalov. "It
concerns the physics of surfaces. All surfaces possess energy, don't they?
Suppose we found a way of using this energy to alter the properties of
surface tension. I mean, building up surface tension to such a degree that a
stream of oil would be contained in a 'skin' of its own surface."
"Where'd you get that idea?"
"At the bazaar." Privalov told Koltukhov the gist of his talk with the
two young engineers.
"Why, I see you're just an old day-dreamer." Koltukhov gave a short
laugh. "You'll lead those young men of yours astray. I'd advise you not to
read Jules Verne the last thing before going to sleep."
"Oh, all right, all right."
"You're too long in the tooth for that sort of thing, Boris."
"What's age got to do with it? I read what I like, and I like Jules
Verne. He's refreshing."
The telephone rang. Privalov lifted the receiver. "Yes? How do you do.
Certainly you may." He put down the receiver. "Opratin from Marine Physics
is dropping in."
"Oh, our old acquaintance. Do you see much of him?"
"No, not really. I'm better acquainted with the surveyors from that
outfit. They're helping us to lay out the route."
Koltukhov glanced out of the window at the building of the Marine
Physics Institute on the other side of the street. He watched a lean man in
a straw hat step out of the front door and stride quickly across the street.
"Our neighbour's in a hurry," he remarked. "They say he's efficient.
I'll wager he hasn't read Jules Verne since he was a boy."
A few minutes later there was a knock on the door. "Come in," Privalov
said.
Opratin opened the door and, removing his hat, stepped into the room.
He smoothed down his thinning hair. "How have you been keeping?" he
asked Koltukhov. "Haven't seen you for some time. How are things?"
"Not so bad." When talking with visitors Koltukhov liked to give the
impression that he was just a "plain, down-to-earth Voronezh peasant", as he
put it. And he really did come from Voronezh peasant stock. "I spend my time
making the rounds and giving advice."
"Still dabbling in resins and plastics"?
"We executives don't have much time for anything except organizational
matters," Koltukhov said with an apologetic note. "But I do have a cubbyhole
of my own, with mixers, thermostats and a press. Whenever I see a couple of
young men engaged in idle conversation in the corridor I punish them by
recruiting them to help me make a couple of plastic models. Besides, you
know, those resins have an awful smell." After a slight pause he said, "I
hear you had quite an adventure."
Opratin chose to be noncommittal. "Really?"
"Your director told me you fell into a pit in Derbent while on a
business trip and had to prolong your stay there."
A shadow flitted across Opratin's face. "Yes," he said, "I did run into
a bit of unpleasantness."
Koltukhov glanced at his watch. "Well, I'll leave you two together now.
It's time I was off."
He nodded to the two men and walked unhurriedly to the door.
The name of the old Caspian town of Derbent means "Iron Gates". The
town once guarded the narrowest place on a caravan route running between the
mountains and the sea. Nikolai Opratin had been sent there to examine the
ruins of fortress walls in order to obtain more precise information about
the level of the Caspian in ancient times.
On his last day in Derbent Opratin wandered into an old stone quarry on
the deserted shore. While clambering about the quarry he caught his foot in
a fissure. Suddenly the rocks gave way. His heart missed a heat as lie felt
himself falling into nothingness. He landed with a splash in a pool of mud
about a dozen feet below.
He picked himself up and paused to catch his breath. Just a moment ago,
a hot blue sky had stretched above him; now he was surrounded by musty
semi-darkness. He took out his flashlight and swept its beam to right and
left. He saw damp, moss-covered walls.
This prompted the thought that he had probably fallen into the
underground passage that had once connected the Naryn Kale Fortress with the
sea. The passage was mentioned in legends but so far no one had been able to
find it.
The flashlight beam moved downwards. Opratin was a self-possessed man,
but the sight of a human skeleton filled him with horror. He turned to flee
and stumbled into a pool of cold water. This brought him to his senses.
Besides, whom was he fleeing from?
He returned to the skeleton, to which the remnants of clothing still
clung. The poor devil must have fallen into the passage and been crushed by
rocks. Opratin's flashlight picked out a half-rotten sack. He gave the sack
a push with his shoe. A gun fell out of it.
"It's a German pistol, a Luger," Opratin said to himself. "How odd!"
Poking through the contents of the sack he found a portable radio
transmitter, several sticks of dynamite and some cartridges covered with
green mould.
He turned his flashlight back on the skeleton. Something sparkled in
the neck of the torn shirt. Bending down to take a closer look, he saw a
shiny metal chain on which hung a small crucifix and a flat rectangle of
iron with letters on it. Opratin wiped the iron rectangle with a corner of
the sack and read:
A M D G
Below these were smaller letters.
Only a Catholic would wear a crucifix round his neck, Opratin
reflected. How long had the man lain there? Then suddenly he came out of his
reverie. He certainly had no intention of becoming a corpse to keep the
skeleton company. He picked up the pistol, saw that it was in working order,
and fired at the spot of blue sky above his head. Minutes passed, minutes
that seemed hours to Opratin. He fired again. The passage rumbled like an
active volcano, but no sound came from above.
Opratin fired again and again until all the cartridges were gone.
Breathing heavily, he leaned against the damp wall. Despair swept over him.
Suddenly he heard alarmed voices overhead. He shouted. Choking from the
stench of the passage and the smell of gunpowder, he shouted until he was
hoarse. The faint light from above was blotted out by a head that appeared
in the opening.
"Who fired those shots?" a voice demanded from above.
A few minutes later a rope was lowered through the hole and Opratin was
hauled out.
Opratin had to postpone his departure while he answered questions put
by the local authorities and set forth the whole matter in writing. That was
a nuisance, for Opratin hated to waste time.
Nikolai and Yura sat side by side at a desk, bent over a blueprint of
the pipeline route. They were checking the figures indicating the depths.
Valery Gorbachevsky, a young lab technician, glanced at his watch, then
walked over to the mirror and smoothed down his black sideburns and
moustache, meanwhile singing a song about a lad named Chico who came from
Puerto Rico.
"My dear Valery," said Yura, "do you know where Puerto Rico is?"
The lab technician shrugged a shoulder. "Of course. You don't doubt it,
do you?"
"Not very far from Madagascar, isn't it?"
"Well, yes, you could put it like that," Valery said hesitatingly.
"Now you see, my friend, how disastrous it is-" Just then the telephone
rang, and Yura broke off to pick up the receiver.
"The chief wants you, Nikolai. With the route plan."
Nikolai went up to the next floor, taking the steps two at a time, and
entered Privalov's office. Privalov had a visitor, a man in a green suit,
whom Nikolai had never seen before. The visitor gave Nikolai a keen glance,
nodded and said, "My name's Nikolai Opratin."
Nikolai introduced himself and sat down.
"Nikolai Opratin comes from the Institute of Marine Physics across the
street," Privalov said to Nikolai. "He has given me some interesting
information which we will have to take into account. Yes, indeed." Here
Privalov pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and bent over the plan of
the pipeline route. "Now take this shoal that's to be deepened by blasting."
Opratin crossed his legs. "That won't be necessary," he said with a
glance at Nikolai. "I've just told your chief the level of the Caspian will
rise in three years' time. That means there isn't any need to deepen the
route."
"Is your information reliable?"
Opratin smiled. "The most reliable there is."
Privalov leaned back in his chair. His glasses slid down to the tip of
his hose.
"Well, we'll just have to revise our calculations," he said, rubbing
his forehead. "I'd like you to step over to the Institute of Marine Physics
tomorrow, Nikolai. Will that be all right?" he asked, turning to Opratin.
"Certainly. After lunch, preferably."
"Fine. You can't imagine how much worry this pipeline is causing us.
Doubting Thomases are holding up the work. We visited the site last Sunday
and-oh, well, you understand."
Opratin nodded sympathetically. "Yes, I do. By the way, I didn't know
you went in for sailing."
'"Indeed?"
"I saw you in a sailboat last Sunday."
"Where were you?"
"Aboard the Uzbekistan."
"Well, well. Why did you drop a lady overboard?"
Opratin's thin lips spread in a faint smile.
"It wasn't me who dropped her," he said. "There was some sort of row on
deck. I don't know whether she was pushed overboard or just fell in. It
seemed to me she was holding some metal object in her hand."
"A metal object?" Privalov glanced at Nikolai. "Did you see anything
like that when you fished her out of the sea?"
"The only metal I saw was the buckles of her sandals."
Opratin rose. "Anyway, there was something else about that particular
spot besides the rescue of the lady. I saw bubbles rising to the surface.
Could have been natural gas, couldn't it?"
"It could. You ought to inform the gas experts."
"How can I if I don't know the exact spot? It's not like on shore,
where you have landmarks."
"If I remember rightly, the TV tower was straight ahead of us at that
moment," said Nikolai. "The refrigeration plant was at right angles to it.
The No. 18 buoy in the channel was about a hundred metres to the north.
Those points should be enough to find it, I think."
"Thank you," said Opratin. "I'll be expecting you tomorrow." He said
goodbye and left.
They left the Institute together and walked down the street in the
bright sunshine.
"Why do you think she fell overboard, Yura?" Nikolai asked.
Yura grinned. "Beware of women who fall overboard. I shouldn't rescue
them if I were you."
"Oh, shut up," Nikolai growled, and quickened his steps.
The woman in the red sun-dress was not exactly preying on his mind, but
there was something about her narrow, dark-eyed face, framed in fair hair,
that vaguely disturbed him. He had a feeling he had seen that face somewhere
before.
She was, of course, an unusual woman. She had not shown a trace of fear
in the sea. When he swam over to her she had said, "No need to rescue me.
I'm a good swimmer." By that time the sailboat was beside them. Yura had
heeled into the wind so sharply that the starboard side was level with the
water and Nikolai did not even have to help the woman climb into the boat.
She thanked them politely, her gaze on a point somewhere between Privalov
and the mast, wrung out her dripping hair and then went down into the cabin.
Val came out of the cabin with the red sun-dress and hung it up to dry in
the sun.
When the boat reached the marina the woman sprang gracefully onto the
pier. "Please don't trouble yourselves," she said. "I'll get home all right
without any help." Her red dress flashed among the trees on the seaside
promenade and vanished. That was the last they saw of her.
The two men turned oft the bustling avenue into quiet Cooper Lane.
"Will you come in for a while?" Nikolai asked, stopping under an
archway that led into a courtyard.
"Can you lend me something to read?"
"Of course I can."
They crossed the yard diagonally. It was a yard they had known from
childhood, with a glassed-in gallery running the length of the two-storey
house. An outside stairway supported by iron posts, down which it had been
so convenient and pleasant to slide, led up to the top floor. In the cellar
the children used to hunt for buried treasure and hide from pursuit, sending
arrows flying through the air.
Yura and Nikolai had grown up in this wonderful courtyard which could
be turned, in the twinkling of an eye, into a prairie or the deck of a
frigate. Here they had invented their earliest games and read their first
books. They had raced about the yard, shooting arrows from their bows and
lassoing the rubber plants set out for watering.
One of the ground-floor tenants in those days was a sailor. The boys
used to gaze respectfully at his black cap with its gold emblem and the gold
stripes on his sleeve. The sailor would be away for weeks at a lime, leaving
behind, at home, a live turtle and a daughter with freckles and yellow
braids.
Although girls were not invited to play Red Indians, Yura and Nikolai
made an exception in the case of the sailor's daughter. Yellow Lynx, as they
named her, could run like the wind and slide down the stairway posts like a
cat. She did not cry when they pulled her by her braids. She plunged
courageously into courtyard battles, using her fingernails and screaming in
a high, piercing voice.
Besides the live turtle there were other interesting things in the
sailor's flat. A real dirk hung on one wall and a barometer on another. On
the desk, beside a bronze inkwell, lay two pieces of iron with mysterious
letters carved on them. Yellow Lynx and the boys resolved that some day they
would discover the meaning of those mysterious letters.
The sailor and his daughter left for Leningrad early in the spring of
1941. Nikolai copied a picture from a volume of Pushkin's Tales showing a
ship with a huge taut sail decorated with a drawing of the sun, approaching
a wharf on which men in old-fashioned long robes were firing cannons. He
presented it to Yellow Lynx as a farewell gift. They were both about nine
years old at the time.
Soon after, a husky young man by the name of Bugrov, whom the boys
addressed as Uncle Vova, moved into the sailor's flat. He had a blue
motorcycle on which he sometimes took the boys riding. What is more, he
taught them the Greco-Roman style of wrestling. A circus poster on the wall
of the new tenant's room showed him among the other performers, very
handsome and muscular in black tights, his chest bulging.
When the war broke out Uncle Vova locked up his flat and went into the
army. Nikolai's father, who worked at a railway-carriage repair shop, was
also drafted. Yura's father, an oil refinery engineer, was given a draft
deferment.
Now the boys played army scouts and guerrillas. Life was hard,
especially for Nikolai and his mother, who was a nurse and worked day and
night at an army hospital.
Nikolai's father was killed in a battle on the Dnieper River.
After seven years of schooling Nikolai told his mother that he wanted
to go to work. She tried to persuade him to stay in school but he would not
be moved. Yura's father found a job for Nikolai as an apprentice fitter in
the oil refinery's maintenance shop and persuaded him to attend night
school.
Soon after, Yura's family moved to another part of town and Nikolai was
left without a playmate. But this did not matter because he had no time for
play.
Yura felt that fate had been unkind to him for making him sit over his
books all through the war instead of letting him fight the Nazis. Besides,
he envied Nikolai's hands, with their traces of grease and metallic dust.
And so, after finishing the eighth grade at school Yura went to work in the
maintenance shop, side by side with Nikolai. They went through night school
together and then entered the evening department of a college. Shortly after
graduating with degrees in engineering the two young men were assigned to
jobs in the Oil Transportation Research Institute, where they worked under
Boris Privalov.
They crossed the courtyard, climbed the stairs, walked down the
glassed-in gallery and entered Nikolai's room. There, it was pleasantly
cool. Bookshelves lined the wall above Nikolai's desk. A photographic
enlarger stood on the floor in a corner of the room, like a stork on one