Страница:
Zernov asked. "You must have been taking some pictures."
"Yes, I photographed everything I could, the clouds, the double machine
and my counterpart. I shot for about ten minutes."
Tolya blinked his eyes, but was still ready to argue, not at all about
to give in.
"It's still a question what we'll see when he develops it."
"You'll see in just a minute," came Zernov's voice from his quarters.
"Look out the window."
Coming towards us at half a kilometre altitude was a tightly wound up
crimson pancake. The sky was already covered over with white fleecy wisps of
cloud, and on their background it appeared to be less of a cloud. As before,
it resembled a coloured sail or an enormous kite. Dyachuk cried out and ran
to the doorway, we followed. The "cloud" passed over us without changing
course, heading for the north to the turning of the ice wall. "Towards our
tent," Tolya murmured and stepped towards me.
"I'm sorry, Yuri," he said and extended his hand, "I'm the poor fool
this time."
I was in no mood to celebrate my victory.
"That's not even a cloud," he continued thoughtfully, summarizing
certain ideas that had been worrying him. "What I mean is the ordinary kind
of condensation of water vapour. These are not droplets and they're not
crystal either. At first glance, at any rate. And why does it hug so close
to the ground, and that strange colour? A gas, it can hardly be a gas. It's
not dust either. If we had an aircraft I'd take a sample."
"They'd be eager to let you have some," I remarked recalling the
invisible barrier and my attempts to get through it with my camera. "It
presses down to the ground mighty hard, I thought the soles of my shoes were
magnetic."
"Do you think it's something living?"
"Might be."
"A creature of some kind?"
"That's hard to say, it might even be a substance." I recalled my
conversation with my double and added: "Probably controllable."
"How?"
"You ought to know, you're a meteorologist,"
"But are you sure it has some connection with meteorology?"
I said nothing. And when we returned to the cabin, Tolya suddenly
expressed a really crazy idea.
"Suppose those are some kind of inhabitants of the ice continent
unknown to science?"
"Brilliant," I said. "In the spirit of Conan Doyle. Courageous
explorers discover lost world on Antarctic plateau. And you're Lord Roxton?"
"There's nothing funny in that. What's your hypothesis if you've got
one?"
Stung, I said the first thing that came to mind.
"Cybernetic robots most likely."
"Where from?"
"Oh, from Europe or from the United States. Just tests that's all."
"But for what purpose?"
"Oh, say, for excavation purposes and the hoisting of big loads. The
'Kharkovchanka' machine was an ideal item for experimentation. That's why
they hauled it up."
"But what sense is there in duplicating it?"
"It might be that these are some kind of ingenious devices for
reproduction of atomic structures, whether protein or crystalline."
"Yes, but the purpose. What's the idea? I don't get it."
"According to the findings of Bodwin, an underdeveloped cerebellum
reduces one's ability to comprehend by 14 to 23 per cent. Give that some
thought and I'll be waiting. There's another element of the hypothesis and a
significant one."
Tolya was so eager to figure this out that he swallowed Bodwin and the
percentage without a word.
"I give up," he said. "What element?"
"The counterparts or doubles," I pointed out. "You were on the right
track when you spoke of self-hypnosis. But only on the track. The truth lies
in a different direction and on another route. It's not self-hypnosis, but
intervention in the processing of information. Actually, there were no
duplicates at all, no second vehicle, no second Anokhin, no duplicate
clothing and things, like say my jacket or camera. The 'cloud' reorganized
my psychic state and created a dichotomous perception of the world. And as a
result, a splitting of the personality, a twilight state of the soul."
"Still and all, your hypothesis lacks the most important thing: it does
not account for the physico-chemical nature of these devices, nor does it
explain the technical workings or the purpose in making them and using
them."
To call my ravings a hypothesis was of course sheer nonsense, to say
the least. I concocted it on the spur of the moment and persisted in
developing it only out of stubbornness. It was perfectly clear to me myself
that it accounted for nothing, and, what is most important, it did not
answer the question of why it was necessary to eliminate the doubles that
had existed only in my imagination or why I was not allowed to approach the
mysterious laboratory. Of course everything depended on the developed film.
If the cine eye caught what I saw, then my hypothesis was hardly more than a
Joke.
"Boris Arkadievich, we need help," Tolya implored.
"In what?" Zernov said. He obviously hadn't been listening. "Anokhin
has a fine imagination, it's a wonderful quality for painters and
scientists."
"He's got a hypothesis."
"Every hypothesis requires verification."
"But every hypothesis has a limiting probability."
"The limit of Anokhin's," Zernov agreed, "is in the state of the ice of
this region. It cannot explain why and for whom all these tens and perhaps
hundreds of cubic kilometres of ice are."
We didn't grasp the meaning and so Zernov patiently and condescendingly
explained.
"Before the accident I called your attention to the flawless profile of
the wall of ice that starts god knows where and stretches for I don't know
how long. To me it seemed to be an artificial cut. And under foot the cut
was just as artificial. Even at that time I noticed how insignificant the
density and thickness of the snow cover was. I can't help but feel that a
few kilometres from here we might find a similar wall parallel to this one.
It's sheer conjecture of course. But if it's right, then what kind of force
could have extracted and transported such a layer of ice? A cloud? Perhaps.
After all, we do not know its capabilities. But of European or American
origin?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Then you tell me, Anokhin, what were
these millions of tons of ice for and where have they disappeared to?"
"But was this an excavation, Boris Arkadievich? You say there are two
borders to an extracted layer. Why?" I exclaimed, "Where are the transverse
cuts? Besides it is more natural to perform the excavation in the form of a
crater."
"That is, if you are not concerned about movements over the continent.
Apparently, they did not want to interfere in such movements. Why? The time
has not yet come for conclusions, but I think that they are not hostile; on
the contrary, they appear to be friendly. Then look at it this way: for whom
is it more natural to excavate ice precisely in that fashion and not
otherwise? For us? We would have put up a fence around the site, nailed up
directions and instructions, announced the business over the radio. But
suppose they couldn't or didn't want to?"
"Who are these 'they'?"
"I am not making any hypotheses," Zernov answered dryly.
I took along my cine camera on our journey to the tent but no "cloud"
put in an appearance. At our little council we decided to move to the cabin
of the tractor, make the necessary repairs and then move on. We received
permission to continue the search for the rose clouds. Just before our
discussion, I connected Zernov with Mirny. He reported the accident briefly,
mentioned the "clouds" we had seen and also the first movies I had taken of
them. He did not say anything- about duplicates and the other mysteries.
"Too early," he said to me.
They selected a nice site at a distance of a quarter of an hour on skis
with a wind at our back. The tent was up in the cave, which was protected
from the wind from three sides. However, the cave itself produced a strange
impression: a cube of ice had been carefully cut out and had left perfectly
smooth walls, as if they had been planed by hand. No icicles, no accretions
of ice. Zernov, without saying a word, punched the tip of his ski stick into
a geometrically regular cut of ice, as if to say that nature had nothing to
do with that.
We didn't find Vano in the tent, but everything was in disorder-an
upturned stove and the box with briquettes, skis thrown about, and the
leather coat of the driver at the entrance way. This was surprising and
suggested danger. Without taking off our skis we went in search of Chokheli
and found him right near the ice wall. He was lying in the snow with only a
sweater on. His unshaven face and black cap of hair were covered with a thin
fluffy layer of snow. In one hand, thrown to the side, he clenched a knife
with traces of caked frozen blood. On the snow near his shoulder was a
spread-out rose-coloured spot. The snow about had been stamped on, and as
far as we could make out, the tracks were those of Vano, for he wore
enormous-size boots.
He was alive. When we raised him, he moaned but did not open his eyes.
Being- the strongest, I lifted him onto my back. Tolya supported him from
behind. In the tent we carefully removed the sweater and found the wound to
be quite superficial. There was little loss of blood and the blood on the
knife was most likely that of his opponent. We were not so much afraid of
the loss of blood as of overcooling. We did not know how long he had lain on
the ice. But luckily it wasn't very cold and he was tough. We rubbed the boy
with alcohol and, pulling open his clenched teeth, we poured some inside.
Vano coughed, opened his eyes and muttered something-in his native Georgian.
"Don't move," we cried, bundling him up in the sleeping bag like a
mummy.
"Where is he?" Vano asked suddenly, coming to. This time he spoke
Russian.
"Who? Who are you talking about?"
He did not respond, his strength was giving out and he began to rave.
It was impossible to make anything out of the gibberish of mixed Russian and
Georgian words.
"The snow maiden," was what I heard, at least that is what I thought I
heard.
"He's delirious," Dyachuk said grieved.
Only Zernov was calm.
"That guy's cast iron," it was said of Vano, but it could have been
said of Zernov himself.
We decided to wait till evening before starting on our journey, all the
more so since both day and evening were just as light. And Vano needed some
sleep too: the alcohol was beginning to take action. A strange torpitude
took hold of us as well. Tolya grunted, climbed into his sleeping bag and
was soon asleep. Zernov and I tried our best to stay awake, smoke a
cigarette, but finally gave up. We spread out our sponge mat and slithered
into our sleeping bags.
"We'll take an hour off and then start on the trip."
"Okay, boss, one hour of sleep."
There was silence.
For some reason, neither he nor I expressed any ideas about what had
happened to Vano. As if in conspiracy we refrained from any commentary,
though I am sure we were both thinking about the same thing. Who was Vano's
enemy and where did he come from in this polar desert? Why was Vano
undressed and outside the cave, he had not even had time to put on his
leather coat. This means the fight began in the tent. What came before that?
And why the blood-covered knife in Vano's hand? This was surprising
especially since Chokheli never used weapons, despite his excitable nature,
unless truly forced to it. What made him do it-did he try to defend someone
or was it simply a marauding attack? But that is certainly funny, robbers
beyond the Antarctic circle where friendship is the law of every encounter.
But perhaps he was a criminal escaping justice. Again obvious nonsense. No
government would exile anyone to the Antarctic and to try to escape to this
icy continent by one's self would be practically impossible. But it might be
that Vano's opponent was a shipwrecked sailor who had gone mad from
unbearable aloneness. But we had not heard of any shipwrecks near the
Antarctic coasts. And of course how could he have found his way so far into
the interior of the icy continent? Zernov was most probably asking himself
those very same questions. But he kept silent and so did I.
It was not cold in the tent, for the stove was still giving off some
warmth, and it was not dark. The light coming through the mica windows did
not really illuminate the objects within, but it was enough to distinguish
them in the dim twilight. However, gradually or at once-I did not notice how
or when-the twilight did not exactly get denser or darker but somehow turned
violetish, as if someone had dissolved a few grains of manganate. I wanted
to get up, and push Zernov and call him, but I couldn't-something was
pressing on my throat, something pressed me to the ground, just as had
happened in the "Kharkovchanka" when I regained consciousness. But at that
time it seemed to me that somebody was looking through me, filling me full
and merging with every cell of my body. Now, if to use the same picturesque
code, somebody had looked into my brain and then let go, enveloping me in a
violet cocoon. I could look but I didn't see anything. I could think about
what was occurring but I could not understand it at all. I could breathe and
move but only within my cocoon. The slightest penetration into the violet
gloom called forth a response like that of an electric shock.
I do not know how long that continued, for I didn't look at my watch.
But the cocoon suddenly opened up and I saw the walls of the tent and my
comrades asleep in the same dim, but no longer violet, twilight. Something
hit me and I climbed out of the sleeping bag, picked up my camera and rushed
out. Snow was coming down, the sky was covered over with turbulent cumulus
clouds. Only somewhere in the zenith did the familiar rose-coloured spot
fleet by. It flashed across and vanished. But perhaps that was all a dream.
When I returned, Tolya, yawning broadly, was seated on the sleigh and
Zernov was slowly climbing out of his sleeping bag. He glanced at me, at my
cine camera and, as is usual with him, said nothing. Dyachuk said through
his yawn:
"What an awful dream I had, comrades! As if I was asleep, and not
asleep. I wanted to sleep, yet I couldn't fall asleep for anything. I was
just lying there in forgetfulness and couldn't see anything, no tent,
nobody. Then something sticky, dense and thick like jelly plumped onto me.
It wasn't warm, it wasn't cold, I just couldn't feel. It filled me up right
to the ears, complete, as if I were dissolved, like in a state of
weightlessness, you float or hang in space. And I didn't see myself or feel
anything. I was there and yet I wasn't at all. Boy, that's funny, isn't it?"
"Curious it certainly is," said Zernov and turned away.
"Didn't you see anything?" I asked.
"And you?"
"Not now, but in the cabin, just before I woke up I felt exactly the
way Dyachuk did. Weightlessness, no sensations, no dream, no reality."
"Mysteries, all of them," Zernov muttered. "Whom have you found,
Anokhin?"
I turned round. Throwing back the canvas door of the tent, obviously
right behind me, came a robust man in a cap with high standing artificial
fur and in a nylon fur jacket with a zipper. He was tall, broad in the
shoulders and unshaven and appeared to be terribly frightened. What could
have frightened this athlete is hard to imagine.
"Anyone speak English here?" he asked, chewing and stretching the words
as he spoke.
"Not one of my teachers ever had a pronunciation like that. A
southerner, probably from Alabama or Tennessee," I thought.
Zernov spoke the best English among us and so he answered:
"Who are you and what do you want?" "Donald Martin!" he yelled. "Flier
from MacMurdo. Got anything to drink? As strong as you've got." He drew the
edge of his palm across his throat. "Very necessary."
"Give him some spirits, Anokhin," said Zernov.
I poured out a glass and gave it to him. Though very unshaven, he
couldn't have been older than me. He took the whole almost at a single
swallow, coughed, his throat constricted and his eyes filled with blood.
"Thank you, sir," he said finally when he could catch his breath. Then
he started to tremble. "I had to make a forced landing, sir."
"Skip the 'sir'," said Zernov, "I'm not your superior. My name is
Zernov. Zernov," he repeated each syllable. "Where did you land?"
"Not far from here. Almost alongside."
"Without mishap?"
"No fuel, and the radio's on the bum."
"Then you can stay here. And you can help us move over to the tractor."
Zernov stopped, trying to get the proper English pronunciation, and, seeing
that the American wasn't sure, he added: "Oh, there's place enough and we
have a radio set."
The American continued to hesitate, as if not decided yet that he would
speak, then he pulled himself up and in military fashion said:
"Please arrest me, sir. I have committed a crime."
Zernov and I exchanged glances. Perhaps the thought of Vano occurred to
us at the same time.
"What kind of a crime?" Zernov asked guardedly.
"I think that I have killed a man."
Zernov walked over to Vano who was all covered up. He threw back the
fur from his face and sharply asked the American:
"Is this the man?"
Martin cautiously and, what appeared to me to be in a frightened
manner, approached and said rather unconvincingly:
"Nnnoo."
"Take a better look," said Zernov still more sharply.
The flier shook his head uncomprehendingly.
"Not at all like him, sir. Mine is in the plane, and what is more," he
added with care, "I still don't know whether he's a human being or not."
At that moment Vano opened his eyes. He glanced at the American who
stood near him, his head rose above the pillow and then he fell back again.
"That's ... not me," he said and closed his eyes.
"He's still delirious," Tolya signed.
"Our comrade is wounded. Somebody attacked him. We do not know who it
was," Zernov explained to the American. "And so when you said ..." he
delicately dropped the subject.
Martin pulled over Tolya's sleigh and sat down, covering his face with
his hands and teetered back and forth as if in unbearable pain.
"I don't know whether you'll believe me or not, it's all so unusual and
unlike the truth," he started to relate. "I was flying a oneseater, a little
Lockheed, a former fighter plane, you know the kind. It even has a double
machine-gun for circular fire. One doesn't need it here, naturally, but the
rules state that you have to keep the gun in order, just in case. And there
was a case only it didn't work out. Have you people ever heard of rose
clouds?" he asked suddenly, and without waiting for an answer he continued,
a cramp deforming his mouth for a moment. "I caught up with them about an
hour and a half after take-off."
"Them?" I asked incredulously. "There were several?"
"A whole squadron. They were flying low, about two miles below me,
large rose jellyfish. Maybe a dark red, crimson, say. I counted seven of
different shapes and hues from the pale rose of not-yet-ripe raspberry to a
flaming garnet. Now the colour was changing all the time, getting darker or
thinning out as if diluted with water. I cut speed and plunged, calculating
on getting a sample. I have a special container under the undercarriage. But
it didn't work, the medusas escaped. I caught up with them but they escaped
again, without any effort, as if they were playing hide and seek. And when I
increased my speed they rose and scudded away above me. Light large and
flat, like a kid's balloon. But are they fast, why they'd outstrip a
four-engine Boeing. They led me on as if they were living beings. Only a
living being can act that way when it feels danger. And so I thought, if
that's the case, they themselves may become dangerous. I figured I ought to
get away. But they appeared to guess my manoeuvre. Three crimson jellyfish
rushed out at a terrific speed and swinging round without cutting speed they
plunged for me. I didn't even have time to yell, the plane was enveloped in
a fog, not even a fog, something slime like, thick and slippery. That's when
I lost control completely-speed, control and visibility. I couldn't even
move my foot or hand. I figured that's the end. The plane wasn't falling, it
was sliding downwards like a glider. Then it landed and I didn't even notice
how it landed. The sensation was like sinking into a reddish slime, choked
but not dead. I looked around; snow everywhere and a plane next to mine, a
copy of my little Lockheed. I got out and went up to it, and coming out of
the cabin was another great big guy like me. I don't know, he looked
familiar. Couldn't figure it out. So I asked him: "Who are you?" "Donald
Martin," he says. Looking at him was like looking in a mirror. "And you?"
"No, I said, I'm Donald Martin." He struck out at me, I ducked and sent a
left to the jaw. He fell and hit his head against the door, an awful bang!
There he was lying still. I gave him a kick, but he didn't move. Then I
shook him. His head just dangled. I dragged him over to my plane and thought
I'd get him to the base for help, but when I checked the gas, there wasn't a
drop. So I went to radio the news but the set wouldn't work. I must have
gone out of my head then, because I just jumped out and ran for all I was
worth, no direction, no aim, I just ran, because I couldn't stand the crazy
house any longer. I even forgot how to pray, all I could say was Jesus
Christ. Then I saw your tent and here I am."
Listening to him I recalled my own trials and tribulations and now
began to realize what had happened to Vano. What Tolya was thinking, with
his eyes bulging out, was hard to say; he was probably doubting and double
checking every word Martin uttered. He was about to start with questions in
his school English, but Zernov got in ahead of him:
"You remain here with Vano, Dyachuk, and Anokhin and I'll go with the
American. Let's go, Martin," he added in English.
Instinct or premonition-I don't know what psychologists would call
it-told me to take my cine camera, and I was thankful for that subconscious
idea. Even Tolya looked surprised-the body for the inspector or the
behaviour of the murderer at the sight of the body? The pictures I took were
different, however, and I began to shoot as we approached the site of
Martin's accident. There were no longer two planes, but one-Martin's own
silver canary, his polar veteran with swept wings. But right next to it the
familiar (to me) bubbling crimson hillock. It smoked, changed shades of
colour and pulsated in a strange manner, as if it were indeed breathing.
White elongated flashes broke out from time to time like sparks in welding.
"Don't go near," I warned Martin and Zernov as they ran past me.
But the upturned flower had already extended its invisible shield.
Martin who was in the lead strangely slowed down, and Zernov simply went
down on his knees. But both of them pushed forward overcoming the force that
pulled them groundwards.
"Jesus!" yelled Martin turning to me, and he fell to the ground.
Zernov retreated, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
Meanwhile I was shooting all of this; I moved round the crimson hillock
and bumped into the murdered man, or perhaps Martin's double who was only
wounded. He was lying in the same nylon jacket with synthetic fur covered
over with a fluff of snow some three to four metres from the airplane where
Martin had dragged him.
"Come on over here, here he is!" I cried. Zernov and Martin ran over
towards me, rather they seemed to skate over to me, balancing with their
hands, as one does when walking on ice without skates. Here too, the big
flakes of snow had powdered the smooth thickness of ice.
Then something utterly new happened that neither I nor my camera had
ever recorded. A crimson petal separated itself from the vibrating flower,
darkened, curled up in the air and stretching out into a living
four-metre-long snake with open jaws covered the body lying before us. For a
moment or two this snake-like tentacle sparkled and boiled and then tore off
the ground and in its enormous two-metre maw we saw nothing-only a violet
emptiness of an unnaturally stretched-out bell that before our very eyes
changed shape from cone to rippling petal. Then it merged with the cupola.
The only thing left on the snow was a trace-a formless silhouette of the man
that had just lain here.
I continued filming all this in a hurry to catch the latest
transformations. It had begun. The whole flower had now detached itself from
the ground, and as it rose the rim curved upwards. The bell, spread out in
the air, was likewise empty: we could clearly see that there was nothing
whatsoever inside, we saw the rose coloured interior and the delicate
expanding edges. It would now turn into a rose "cloud" and vanish beyond the
other real clouds. And on the ground there would be only one airplane and
one pilot. That is exactly what took place.
Zernov and Martin stood silent, stunned, just like I was the first time
that morning. I think Zernov had already come close to deciphering the
puzzle which to me was still only a faint glimmer of a possibility. It did
not shine, it only suggested the outlines of a fantastic but still logically
admissible picture. Martin was simply crushed not so much by the horror of
what had occurred but by the single thought that this was only the fruit of
a disturbed imagination. He obviously wanted to ask about something, his
terrified look restlessly flitted from me to Zernov until, finally, Zernov
smiled as if to say, go ahead. And Martin put the question.
"Who was it I killed?"
"We can take it that it wasn't anybody," Zernov smiled again.
"But that was a real live man," Martin repeated.
"Are you sure?" Zernov asked.
Martin was confused.
"I don't know."
"That's just it. I would say temporarily alive. The same force created
it and wiped it out."
"But why?" I asked cautiously.
He answered with exasperation-not like him at all.
"You think I know more than you do? Let's develop the film and see."
"And you think we'll understand then?" I no longer tried to hide the
irony.
"It might be," he said deep in thought.
Then he went out ahead without even inviting us to come along. We
exchanged glances and followed together.
"What's your name?" Martin asked familiarly taking me by the arm. He
must have seen we were of the same age.
"Yuri."
"Yuri, Yuri. Mine's Don. Do you think that thing was alive?"
"Yes, I have an inkling it was."
"Something local?"
"Don't think so. No expedition has ever encountered anything like it."
"Then where did it come from?"
"You'll have to ask somebody smarter than me, I don't know."
He was already getting under my skin. But he didn't seem offended.
"What do you think it is, jelly or gas?"
"You tried to take a sample, you should know."
He laughed.
"I wouldn't advise anyone to try. I wonder why it didn't just gobble me
up there in the air? It swallowed me and then spit me out."
"I suppose it didn't find you very tasty."
"Did he swallow him up?"
"I don't know."
"But you saw what happened."
"I saw it cover him up, but I didn't see it swallow him. Rather it
dissolved or evaporated the thing."
"What kind of temperature is needed?"
"Did you try to measure it?"
Martin even stopped, struck by the enigma.
"To melt a plane like that? In three minutes? Ultradurable duraluminum,
by the way."
"Are you sure it was duraluminum and not a hole of a doughnut?"
He didn't understand and I didn't try to explain; from there on we
didn't exchange a word till we got to the tent. Here too things were
happening. I was struck by the strange pose Tolya had taken, doubled up on
the box of briquettes and clicking his teeth from horror or from the cold.
The stove had already cooled off, but it didn't seem to be very cold in the
tent.
"What's the trouble, Dyachuk?" Zernov asked. "Heat up the stove if
you're cold."
Tolya did not answer; like one hypnotized, he Sat down near the stove.
"Going nuts a little bit," said Vano from under his fur protection. He
seemed to be gay enough.
"We had some visitors too," he added and nodded in the direction of
Tolya.
"There wasn't anyone here. Speak for yourself!" he shrieked and turned
to us. His face was twisted, distorted, almost about to cry.
Vano put his finger to his head as if to say we're all crazy. "We're a
bit upset. Okay, tell your own story," he said to Tolya and turned away. "I
myself was damn upset, Yuri, when I saw two copies of you. I couldn't stand
it and ran like hell. Jesus it was awful, terrifying. I took a gulp of
spirits and covered up with the coat. Wanted to go to sleep, but I couldn't.
I don't know, I was asleep, maybe I wasn't, but I had an awful dream. A long
one, mixed up, terrible and funny. It seems I was eating a jelly, dark, not
red, but violet. An awful lot of it, so much in fact that it filled me right
up to the ears. I don't remember how long that lasted. But as soon as I
opened my eyes, I saw that everything was empty, cold, and you weren't here.
Then suddenly he entered. My own self, like in a mirror, only without jacket
and in socks."
Martin listened attentively. Though he did not understand the
conversation in Russian, he guessed that the talk was about something that
definitely interested him as well. I took pity on him and translated the
gist. He was at me all the while Vano related his story, asking for a faster
translation. But I couldn't go that fast and only later did I relate the
whole of Vano's story. Unlike us, Vano immediately detected a difference
between himself and the guest. The drunken state had long since passed, and
fear as well, only his head continued to throb; the man who entered looked
at him with bull-like eyes, dull dazed eyes. "Quit this nonsense," he yelled
in Georgian, "I'm not afraid of snow maidens, I make mince meat out of
them!" The funniest thing was that Vano himself had thought about that in
the same terms when Zernov and Tolya had left. If someone were about, he
would definitely have got into a fight. That one started to, but Vano, sober
now, grabbed his jacket and ran out of the tent, realizing at once that it
was better to stay as far away as possible from such visitors. But Vano did
not stop to think that his very appearance contradicted all the familiar
laws of nature. What he needed was an open space to manoeuvre in the
impending battle. His double had already whipped out the famous hunting
knife Vano always carried with him to the envy of all drivers in Mirny. The
original knife was in Vano's pocket, but he did not give any thought to that
bit of strangeness either, he simply whipped it out when the drunken phantom
struck the first blow. Vano barely escaped a wound-the knife went through
the jacket. Vano threw it at his pursuer and got as far as the wall, where
it turned to the north. The second blow reached him, but luckily it was a
glancing stroke that his sweater softened. The third one Vano was able to
repulse by knocking the man down. What followed he did not remember. A
bloody blackness fell over him and some kind of force, like a shock wave,
threw him to the side. When he woke up he was in the tent on a cot bed
wrapped up in furs and absolutely sound in body. But the miracles continued.
This time it was Dyachuk who had a duplicate.
Vano did not succeed in finishing the sentence -Tolya threw the
briquette (he was stoking the stove) and jumped up with a hysterical cry:
"Stop this craziness! Do you hear?"
"You're nuts," Vano said.
"Well, damn it, I'm not alone in this. You're crazy too. You're all
mad. There wasn't anybody here except me. And nobody was split up either.
You people are out of your minds!"
"That's enough, Dyachuk," Zernov cut him short. "Behave yourself. You
are a scientist and not a circus performer. If you can't control your
nerves, you shouldn't have come here in the first place."
"So I'll leave," Tolya growled, in a much lower tone this time:
Zernov's words had sobered him up a bit. "I'm not Scott or Amundsen. I've
had enough of these white dreams, and I'm not heading for any nut house
either."
"What's the trouble with him?" Martin whispered.
I explained:
"If it weren't for the fuel, I'd quit too," he said. "Too many miracles
happening around here."
We never found out what happened to Tolya, but it was most likely
comical. Vano brushed the matter aside with:
"If he doesn't want to speak, leave him alone. Both of us were
frightened out of our wits. I don't go in for gossip." He did not make fun
of Tolya, though the latter was ready for a quarrel any time.
Martin and I, under Vano's supervision, replaced the dented plastic of
the window. He couldn't do it himself because of the wound on his hand. It
was also decided that Martin and I would take turns helping out with the
driving. Now nothing else kept us there. Zernov considered the expedition at
an end and was in a hurry to get back to Mirny. I had a feeling he wanted to
get away from his double, he was the only one who hadn't ' experienced this
unpleasant duplication. In direct : violation of the cast iron regime of
work and rest that he himself had set up, Zernov did not sleep all night
after we had switched over to the cabin of the tractor. I woke up a few
times in the night and saw his night-light on: he was obviously reading and
trembled at every suspicious noise.
We didn't speak any more about doubles, but in the morning after
breakfast, when we finally got under way, his face seemed to brighten up.
Martin was driving, Vano sat next to him on the drop-down seat and gave
instructions in sign language. I knocked out a radiogram to Mirny and
exchanged jokes with Kolya Samoilov who was on duty at the radio station,
and I took down the weather report. It was just right for our return: clear,
slight wind, a tiny frost of only two or three degrees below zero Celsius.
But the silence in the cabin hung heavy, like the aftermath of a
quarrel, so I began:
"I have a question, Boris Arkadievich; Why don't we radio a few
details."
"What would you like to add?"
"Why, everything that happened to me and Vano. What we found out about
the rose clouds, and what we discovered when we developed the film."
"And how do you suppose a story like that should be written?" asked
Zernov. "With psychological nuances, an analysis of sensations, with
insinuations and so forth? Unfortunately, I'm no good at that, I'm not a
writer. I don't think you could do it even with your imagination and your
weird hypotheses. Now to put all that into telegraph code would be more like
'notes from an insane asylum'."
"We could add a scientific commentary," I persisted.
"On the basis of what kind of experimental data? What have we got
except visual observations? Your film? But it hasn't even been developed."
"What could it be, really?"
"Well, what would you suggest? What, in your opinion is a rose
'cloud'?"
"An organism."
"Living?"
"Undoubtedly. A living thinking organism of a physico-chemical
structure unknown to us. A kind of bio-suspension or bio-gas. Academician
Kolmogorov postulated the possibility of the existence of thinking mould.
One could imagine, with the same degree of probability, a thinking gas, a
thinking colloid, or a thinking plasma. Change of colour is a protective
reaction or the colouring of emotions: surprise, interest, anger. Changes in
shape suggest motor reactions, the ability to manoeuvre in aerial space.
When a person walks, he moves his hands, bends his feet and so on. The
'cloud' stretches out, bends its edges, folds up into a bell."
"What are you talking about?" asked Martin.
I translated for him.
"It bubbles when it breathes and throws out tentacles when it attacks,"
he added.
"That makes it a beast, doesn't it?" asked Zernov.
"A beast," Martin confirmed.
Zernov was not asking idle questions. Each one of them was directed at
a specific target, one that was not clear to me. He seemed to be checking us
and himself and was not hurrying with any conclusions.
"All right," he said, "then answer this: How does that beast duplicate
human beings and machines? And why does he want to do it? Also, why does it
destroy the models after running them in a bit with human beings?"
"I don't know," I answered honestly. "The 'cloud' synthesizes all kinds
of atomic structures, that is clear. But the mystery is why it does so and
why it destroys them."
Tolya, who had not been communicative for some time and for some
unknown reason, put in a word at this point:
"I think the question is not posed in the proper form. How does it
duplicate? Why? It doesn't duplicate anything. It is simply an involved
illusion dealing- with sensory perceptions. It is not the subject matter of
physics but of psychiatry."
"And my wound is also an illusion?" Vano asked offended.
"You hurt yourself, the rest is illusions. Actually, I don't see why
Anokhin has given up his original hypothesis. Of course, this is a weapon. I
wouldn't take it upon myself to say whose-he threw a glance at Martin-but it
is undoubtedly a weapon. A sophisticated and, what is most important, a
purposeful weapon. Psychiatric waves that split the consciousness."
"And ice," I said.
"Why ice?"
"Because the ice had to be broken up in order to get the
'Kharkovchanka' machine out."
"Look over there to the right!" Vano cried out.
What we saw through the port window stopped the argument
instantaneously. Martin put the brakes on. We hurriedly got into our jackets
and jumped out of the machine. I began taking pictures on the run because
this promised to be one of the most remarkable of all my film strips.
This was a miracle indeed, a picture from another world of
extraterrestrial life. There were no clouds, no snow. Nothing interfered.
The sun hung just above the horizon giving all the strength of its light to
the emerald-blue chunk of ice that towered above us. An ideally smooth cut
through the multi-metre tower seemed to be pure glass. No human being, no
machine could be seen anywhere. Only gigantic rose-coloured disks-I counted
ten or more-that delicately and soundlessly cut the ice like butter. Imagine
cutting butter with a hot knife. This was it. No friction, a smooth, smooth
cut with a slight fringe melting round the walls. That was exactly what was
happening here, as the rose knife produced the hundred-metre walls of ice.
It was in the shape of an irregular oval or trapezium with rounded angles;
in area it must have been over a hundred square metres. At least that was my
rough guess. But very thin, only about two or three centimetres. The
familiar "cloud" had obviously flattened out, elongated and converted into
an enormous cutting instrument operating with amazing speed and precision.
Separated by a distance of half a kilometre, two such knives were
cutting the ice wall perpendicular to the base. Two others were cutting from
below in regular coincident movements of a pendulum. Another set of four
were engaged close by, and a third group, that I couldn't see any more, was
operating deep inside the ice. Soon the second one and the one next to us
disappeared in the ice-like a Gulliver Travels circus. All of a sudden, it
pushed up into the air a perfectly blue parallelepiped of ice, a glass bar
nearly a kilometre in length, geometrically flawless. It rose slowly and
floated upwards lightly and without a thought, like a toy balloon. Only two
"clouds" participated in this operation. They contracted and turned dark,
converting into the familiar saucers, turned skywards not earth-wards-two
incredible red giant flowers on invisible expanding stems. They did not
appear to be supporting the floating bar, for it rose above them at a decent
distance and was in no way connected or fastened.
"How does it hold up?" Martin asked in surprise. "On a shock wave? What
force must the wind have?"
"That's not the wind," said Tolya picking out his English words
carefully. "That's a field. Antigravitation." He threw an imploring glance
at Zernov.
"A field of force," Zernov explained. "Remember the G-loading, Martin,
when you and I tried to approach the airplane? Then it strengthened
gravitation, now it is obviously neutralizing it."
At that moment yet another kilometre-long bar of ice rose from the
surface of the ice plateau, thrown into space by an invisible titan. It rose
much faster than its predecessor and soon caught up with them at the
altitude of ordinary polar flights. One could clearly see how the ice bars
approached in the air, docked alongside one another, and merged into one
broad bar that hung motionless in the air. This was immediately followed by
a third, that lay down on top, then a fourth, to balance the plate. It grew
thicker with every fresh bar: the "clouds" required three to four minutes to
cut it out of the thick continental ice and raise it into the sky. As new
bars came off, the ice wall receded into the distance, and with it the rose
clouds too, which appeared to dissolve and vanish in the snowy distance. As
before, two red roses hung in the sky and above them the enormous crystal
cube with bright sunlight filtering through.
We stood speechless, enchanted by this picture that was almost musical
in its tones. A peculiar kind of gracefulness and plasticity of the
rose-coloured disc-knives, their coordinated rhythmical motions, the upward
flight of the blue ice bars that formed a gigantic cube in the sky-all this
was music to our ears, a soundless music of the mysterious spheres. We did
not even notice -only my cine camera recorded it-how the diamond cube of
sunlight began to diminish in size as it rose higher and higher, and finally
vanished way up beyond the cirrus cloudlets. The two command "flowers" also
vanished.
"A thousand million cubic metres of ice," groaned Tolya.
I looked at Zernov. Our eyes met.
"That's your answer to the main question, Anokhin," he said. "Where did
the ice wall come from and why there is so little snow under foot. They are
removing the ice shield of the Antarctic."
The official report of our expedition was: Zernov's statement on the
phenomenon of the rose "clouds", my story about doubles (or duplicates) and
a preview of the film I had taken. But Zernov had different plans from the
very beginning of the meeting. No materials for the scientific report except
personal impressions and the film taken by the expedition, he explained; he
added that the astronomical observations that he had familiarized himself
with at Mirny do not yield any grounds for definite conclusions. The
appearance of enormous accumulations of ice in the atmosphere at a variety
of altitudes was registered, it turns out, both by Soviet and foreign
observatories in Antarctica. However, neither visual observations or special
photographs permit establishing either the quantity of these quasi-celestial
bodies or the direction of their flight. One can therefore speak only of
impressions and conjectures that sometimes go by the name of hypotheses. But
since the expedition returned three days ago and people are by habit
garrulous and curious, everything seen by the members of the expedition is
now known far beyond the limits of Mirny. It would naturally be best to
engage in conjectures after viewing the film, since there will be more than
enough material for such guesswork.
I do not know whom Zernov had in view when he mentioned talkativeness,
but Vano and Tolya and I did much to excite the men and rumours of my film
had even gotten across the continent. A Frenchman and two Australians and a
whole group of Americans together with the retired Admiral Thompson, who has
"Yes, I photographed everything I could, the clouds, the double machine
and my counterpart. I shot for about ten minutes."
Tolya blinked his eyes, but was still ready to argue, not at all about
to give in.
"It's still a question what we'll see when he develops it."
"You'll see in just a minute," came Zernov's voice from his quarters.
"Look out the window."
Coming towards us at half a kilometre altitude was a tightly wound up
crimson pancake. The sky was already covered over with white fleecy wisps of
cloud, and on their background it appeared to be less of a cloud. As before,
it resembled a coloured sail or an enormous kite. Dyachuk cried out and ran
to the doorway, we followed. The "cloud" passed over us without changing
course, heading for the north to the turning of the ice wall. "Towards our
tent," Tolya murmured and stepped towards me.
"I'm sorry, Yuri," he said and extended his hand, "I'm the poor fool
this time."
I was in no mood to celebrate my victory.
"That's not even a cloud," he continued thoughtfully, summarizing
certain ideas that had been worrying him. "What I mean is the ordinary kind
of condensation of water vapour. These are not droplets and they're not
crystal either. At first glance, at any rate. And why does it hug so close
to the ground, and that strange colour? A gas, it can hardly be a gas. It's
not dust either. If we had an aircraft I'd take a sample."
"They'd be eager to let you have some," I remarked recalling the
invisible barrier and my attempts to get through it with my camera. "It
presses down to the ground mighty hard, I thought the soles of my shoes were
magnetic."
"Do you think it's something living?"
"Might be."
"A creature of some kind?"
"That's hard to say, it might even be a substance." I recalled my
conversation with my double and added: "Probably controllable."
"How?"
"You ought to know, you're a meteorologist,"
"But are you sure it has some connection with meteorology?"
I said nothing. And when we returned to the cabin, Tolya suddenly
expressed a really crazy idea.
"Suppose those are some kind of inhabitants of the ice continent
unknown to science?"
"Brilliant," I said. "In the spirit of Conan Doyle. Courageous
explorers discover lost world on Antarctic plateau. And you're Lord Roxton?"
"There's nothing funny in that. What's your hypothesis if you've got
one?"
Stung, I said the first thing that came to mind.
"Cybernetic robots most likely."
"Where from?"
"Oh, from Europe or from the United States. Just tests that's all."
"But for what purpose?"
"Oh, say, for excavation purposes and the hoisting of big loads. The
'Kharkovchanka' machine was an ideal item for experimentation. That's why
they hauled it up."
"But what sense is there in duplicating it?"
"It might be that these are some kind of ingenious devices for
reproduction of atomic structures, whether protein or crystalline."
"Yes, but the purpose. What's the idea? I don't get it."
"According to the findings of Bodwin, an underdeveloped cerebellum
reduces one's ability to comprehend by 14 to 23 per cent. Give that some
thought and I'll be waiting. There's another element of the hypothesis and a
significant one."
Tolya was so eager to figure this out that he swallowed Bodwin and the
percentage without a word.
"I give up," he said. "What element?"
"The counterparts or doubles," I pointed out. "You were on the right
track when you spoke of self-hypnosis. But only on the track. The truth lies
in a different direction and on another route. It's not self-hypnosis, but
intervention in the processing of information. Actually, there were no
duplicates at all, no second vehicle, no second Anokhin, no duplicate
clothing and things, like say my jacket or camera. The 'cloud' reorganized
my psychic state and created a dichotomous perception of the world. And as a
result, a splitting of the personality, a twilight state of the soul."
"Still and all, your hypothesis lacks the most important thing: it does
not account for the physico-chemical nature of these devices, nor does it
explain the technical workings or the purpose in making them and using
them."
To call my ravings a hypothesis was of course sheer nonsense, to say
the least. I concocted it on the spur of the moment and persisted in
developing it only out of stubbornness. It was perfectly clear to me myself
that it accounted for nothing, and, what is most important, it did not
answer the question of why it was necessary to eliminate the doubles that
had existed only in my imagination or why I was not allowed to approach the
mysterious laboratory. Of course everything depended on the developed film.
If the cine eye caught what I saw, then my hypothesis was hardly more than a
Joke.
"Boris Arkadievich, we need help," Tolya implored.
"In what?" Zernov said. He obviously hadn't been listening. "Anokhin
has a fine imagination, it's a wonderful quality for painters and
scientists."
"He's got a hypothesis."
"Every hypothesis requires verification."
"But every hypothesis has a limiting probability."
"The limit of Anokhin's," Zernov agreed, "is in the state of the ice of
this region. It cannot explain why and for whom all these tens and perhaps
hundreds of cubic kilometres of ice are."
We didn't grasp the meaning and so Zernov patiently and condescendingly
explained.
"Before the accident I called your attention to the flawless profile of
the wall of ice that starts god knows where and stretches for I don't know
how long. To me it seemed to be an artificial cut. And under foot the cut
was just as artificial. Even at that time I noticed how insignificant the
density and thickness of the snow cover was. I can't help but feel that a
few kilometres from here we might find a similar wall parallel to this one.
It's sheer conjecture of course. But if it's right, then what kind of force
could have extracted and transported such a layer of ice? A cloud? Perhaps.
After all, we do not know its capabilities. But of European or American
origin?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Then you tell me, Anokhin, what were
these millions of tons of ice for and where have they disappeared to?"
"But was this an excavation, Boris Arkadievich? You say there are two
borders to an extracted layer. Why?" I exclaimed, "Where are the transverse
cuts? Besides it is more natural to perform the excavation in the form of a
crater."
"That is, if you are not concerned about movements over the continent.
Apparently, they did not want to interfere in such movements. Why? The time
has not yet come for conclusions, but I think that they are not hostile; on
the contrary, they appear to be friendly. Then look at it this way: for whom
is it more natural to excavate ice precisely in that fashion and not
otherwise? For us? We would have put up a fence around the site, nailed up
directions and instructions, announced the business over the radio. But
suppose they couldn't or didn't want to?"
"Who are these 'they'?"
"I am not making any hypotheses," Zernov answered dryly.
I took along my cine camera on our journey to the tent but no "cloud"
put in an appearance. At our little council we decided to move to the cabin
of the tractor, make the necessary repairs and then move on. We received
permission to continue the search for the rose clouds. Just before our
discussion, I connected Zernov with Mirny. He reported the accident briefly,
mentioned the "clouds" we had seen and also the first movies I had taken of
them. He did not say anything- about duplicates and the other mysteries.
"Too early," he said to me.
They selected a nice site at a distance of a quarter of an hour on skis
with a wind at our back. The tent was up in the cave, which was protected
from the wind from three sides. However, the cave itself produced a strange
impression: a cube of ice had been carefully cut out and had left perfectly
smooth walls, as if they had been planed by hand. No icicles, no accretions
of ice. Zernov, without saying a word, punched the tip of his ski stick into
a geometrically regular cut of ice, as if to say that nature had nothing to
do with that.
We didn't find Vano in the tent, but everything was in disorder-an
upturned stove and the box with briquettes, skis thrown about, and the
leather coat of the driver at the entrance way. This was surprising and
suggested danger. Without taking off our skis we went in search of Chokheli
and found him right near the ice wall. He was lying in the snow with only a
sweater on. His unshaven face and black cap of hair were covered with a thin
fluffy layer of snow. In one hand, thrown to the side, he clenched a knife
with traces of caked frozen blood. On the snow near his shoulder was a
spread-out rose-coloured spot. The snow about had been stamped on, and as
far as we could make out, the tracks were those of Vano, for he wore
enormous-size boots.
He was alive. When we raised him, he moaned but did not open his eyes.
Being- the strongest, I lifted him onto my back. Tolya supported him from
behind. In the tent we carefully removed the sweater and found the wound to
be quite superficial. There was little loss of blood and the blood on the
knife was most likely that of his opponent. We were not so much afraid of
the loss of blood as of overcooling. We did not know how long he had lain on
the ice. But luckily it wasn't very cold and he was tough. We rubbed the boy
with alcohol and, pulling open his clenched teeth, we poured some inside.
Vano coughed, opened his eyes and muttered something-in his native Georgian.
"Don't move," we cried, bundling him up in the sleeping bag like a
mummy.
"Where is he?" Vano asked suddenly, coming to. This time he spoke
Russian.
"Who? Who are you talking about?"
He did not respond, his strength was giving out and he began to rave.
It was impossible to make anything out of the gibberish of mixed Russian and
Georgian words.
"The snow maiden," was what I heard, at least that is what I thought I
heard.
"He's delirious," Dyachuk said grieved.
Only Zernov was calm.
"That guy's cast iron," it was said of Vano, but it could have been
said of Zernov himself.
We decided to wait till evening before starting on our journey, all the
more so since both day and evening were just as light. And Vano needed some
sleep too: the alcohol was beginning to take action. A strange torpitude
took hold of us as well. Tolya grunted, climbed into his sleeping bag and
was soon asleep. Zernov and I tried our best to stay awake, smoke a
cigarette, but finally gave up. We spread out our sponge mat and slithered
into our sleeping bags.
"We'll take an hour off and then start on the trip."
"Okay, boss, one hour of sleep."
There was silence.
For some reason, neither he nor I expressed any ideas about what had
happened to Vano. As if in conspiracy we refrained from any commentary,
though I am sure we were both thinking about the same thing. Who was Vano's
enemy and where did he come from in this polar desert? Why was Vano
undressed and outside the cave, he had not even had time to put on his
leather coat. This means the fight began in the tent. What came before that?
And why the blood-covered knife in Vano's hand? This was surprising
especially since Chokheli never used weapons, despite his excitable nature,
unless truly forced to it. What made him do it-did he try to defend someone
or was it simply a marauding attack? But that is certainly funny, robbers
beyond the Antarctic circle where friendship is the law of every encounter.
But perhaps he was a criminal escaping justice. Again obvious nonsense. No
government would exile anyone to the Antarctic and to try to escape to this
icy continent by one's self would be practically impossible. But it might be
that Vano's opponent was a shipwrecked sailor who had gone mad from
unbearable aloneness. But we had not heard of any shipwrecks near the
Antarctic coasts. And of course how could he have found his way so far into
the interior of the icy continent? Zernov was most probably asking himself
those very same questions. But he kept silent and so did I.
It was not cold in the tent, for the stove was still giving off some
warmth, and it was not dark. The light coming through the mica windows did
not really illuminate the objects within, but it was enough to distinguish
them in the dim twilight. However, gradually or at once-I did not notice how
or when-the twilight did not exactly get denser or darker but somehow turned
violetish, as if someone had dissolved a few grains of manganate. I wanted
to get up, and push Zernov and call him, but I couldn't-something was
pressing on my throat, something pressed me to the ground, just as had
happened in the "Kharkovchanka" when I regained consciousness. But at that
time it seemed to me that somebody was looking through me, filling me full
and merging with every cell of my body. Now, if to use the same picturesque
code, somebody had looked into my brain and then let go, enveloping me in a
violet cocoon. I could look but I didn't see anything. I could think about
what was occurring but I could not understand it at all. I could breathe and
move but only within my cocoon. The slightest penetration into the violet
gloom called forth a response like that of an electric shock.
I do not know how long that continued, for I didn't look at my watch.
But the cocoon suddenly opened up and I saw the walls of the tent and my
comrades asleep in the same dim, but no longer violet, twilight. Something
hit me and I climbed out of the sleeping bag, picked up my camera and rushed
out. Snow was coming down, the sky was covered over with turbulent cumulus
clouds. Only somewhere in the zenith did the familiar rose-coloured spot
fleet by. It flashed across and vanished. But perhaps that was all a dream.
When I returned, Tolya, yawning broadly, was seated on the sleigh and
Zernov was slowly climbing out of his sleeping bag. He glanced at me, at my
cine camera and, as is usual with him, said nothing. Dyachuk said through
his yawn:
"What an awful dream I had, comrades! As if I was asleep, and not
asleep. I wanted to sleep, yet I couldn't fall asleep for anything. I was
just lying there in forgetfulness and couldn't see anything, no tent,
nobody. Then something sticky, dense and thick like jelly plumped onto me.
It wasn't warm, it wasn't cold, I just couldn't feel. It filled me up right
to the ears, complete, as if I were dissolved, like in a state of
weightlessness, you float or hang in space. And I didn't see myself or feel
anything. I was there and yet I wasn't at all. Boy, that's funny, isn't it?"
"Curious it certainly is," said Zernov and turned away.
"Didn't you see anything?" I asked.
"And you?"
"Not now, but in the cabin, just before I woke up I felt exactly the
way Dyachuk did. Weightlessness, no sensations, no dream, no reality."
"Mysteries, all of them," Zernov muttered. "Whom have you found,
Anokhin?"
I turned round. Throwing back the canvas door of the tent, obviously
right behind me, came a robust man in a cap with high standing artificial
fur and in a nylon fur jacket with a zipper. He was tall, broad in the
shoulders and unshaven and appeared to be terribly frightened. What could
have frightened this athlete is hard to imagine.
"Anyone speak English here?" he asked, chewing and stretching the words
as he spoke.
"Not one of my teachers ever had a pronunciation like that. A
southerner, probably from Alabama or Tennessee," I thought.
Zernov spoke the best English among us and so he answered:
"Who are you and what do you want?" "Donald Martin!" he yelled. "Flier
from MacMurdo. Got anything to drink? As strong as you've got." He drew the
edge of his palm across his throat. "Very necessary."
"Give him some spirits, Anokhin," said Zernov.
I poured out a glass and gave it to him. Though very unshaven, he
couldn't have been older than me. He took the whole almost at a single
swallow, coughed, his throat constricted and his eyes filled with blood.
"Thank you, sir," he said finally when he could catch his breath. Then
he started to tremble. "I had to make a forced landing, sir."
"Skip the 'sir'," said Zernov, "I'm not your superior. My name is
Zernov. Zernov," he repeated each syllable. "Where did you land?"
"Not far from here. Almost alongside."
"Without mishap?"
"No fuel, and the radio's on the bum."
"Then you can stay here. And you can help us move over to the tractor."
Zernov stopped, trying to get the proper English pronunciation, and, seeing
that the American wasn't sure, he added: "Oh, there's place enough and we
have a radio set."
The American continued to hesitate, as if not decided yet that he would
speak, then he pulled himself up and in military fashion said:
"Please arrest me, sir. I have committed a crime."
Zernov and I exchanged glances. Perhaps the thought of Vano occurred to
us at the same time.
"What kind of a crime?" Zernov asked guardedly.
"I think that I have killed a man."
Zernov walked over to Vano who was all covered up. He threw back the
fur from his face and sharply asked the American:
"Is this the man?"
Martin cautiously and, what appeared to me to be in a frightened
manner, approached and said rather unconvincingly:
"Nnnoo."
"Take a better look," said Zernov still more sharply.
The flier shook his head uncomprehendingly.
"Not at all like him, sir. Mine is in the plane, and what is more," he
added with care, "I still don't know whether he's a human being or not."
At that moment Vano opened his eyes. He glanced at the American who
stood near him, his head rose above the pillow and then he fell back again.
"That's ... not me," he said and closed his eyes.
"He's still delirious," Tolya signed.
"Our comrade is wounded. Somebody attacked him. We do not know who it
was," Zernov explained to the American. "And so when you said ..." he
delicately dropped the subject.
Martin pulled over Tolya's sleigh and sat down, covering his face with
his hands and teetered back and forth as if in unbearable pain.
"I don't know whether you'll believe me or not, it's all so unusual and
unlike the truth," he started to relate. "I was flying a oneseater, a little
Lockheed, a former fighter plane, you know the kind. It even has a double
machine-gun for circular fire. One doesn't need it here, naturally, but the
rules state that you have to keep the gun in order, just in case. And there
was a case only it didn't work out. Have you people ever heard of rose
clouds?" he asked suddenly, and without waiting for an answer he continued,
a cramp deforming his mouth for a moment. "I caught up with them about an
hour and a half after take-off."
"Them?" I asked incredulously. "There were several?"
"A whole squadron. They were flying low, about two miles below me,
large rose jellyfish. Maybe a dark red, crimson, say. I counted seven of
different shapes and hues from the pale rose of not-yet-ripe raspberry to a
flaming garnet. Now the colour was changing all the time, getting darker or
thinning out as if diluted with water. I cut speed and plunged, calculating
on getting a sample. I have a special container under the undercarriage. But
it didn't work, the medusas escaped. I caught up with them but they escaped
again, without any effort, as if they were playing hide and seek. And when I
increased my speed they rose and scudded away above me. Light large and
flat, like a kid's balloon. But are they fast, why they'd outstrip a
four-engine Boeing. They led me on as if they were living beings. Only a
living being can act that way when it feels danger. And so I thought, if
that's the case, they themselves may become dangerous. I figured I ought to
get away. But they appeared to guess my manoeuvre. Three crimson jellyfish
rushed out at a terrific speed and swinging round without cutting speed they
plunged for me. I didn't even have time to yell, the plane was enveloped in
a fog, not even a fog, something slime like, thick and slippery. That's when
I lost control completely-speed, control and visibility. I couldn't even
move my foot or hand. I figured that's the end. The plane wasn't falling, it
was sliding downwards like a glider. Then it landed and I didn't even notice
how it landed. The sensation was like sinking into a reddish slime, choked
but not dead. I looked around; snow everywhere and a plane next to mine, a
copy of my little Lockheed. I got out and went up to it, and coming out of
the cabin was another great big guy like me. I don't know, he looked
familiar. Couldn't figure it out. So I asked him: "Who are you?" "Donald
Martin," he says. Looking at him was like looking in a mirror. "And you?"
"No, I said, I'm Donald Martin." He struck out at me, I ducked and sent a
left to the jaw. He fell and hit his head against the door, an awful bang!
There he was lying still. I gave him a kick, but he didn't move. Then I
shook him. His head just dangled. I dragged him over to my plane and thought
I'd get him to the base for help, but when I checked the gas, there wasn't a
drop. So I went to radio the news but the set wouldn't work. I must have
gone out of my head then, because I just jumped out and ran for all I was
worth, no direction, no aim, I just ran, because I couldn't stand the crazy
house any longer. I even forgot how to pray, all I could say was Jesus
Christ. Then I saw your tent and here I am."
Listening to him I recalled my own trials and tribulations and now
began to realize what had happened to Vano. What Tolya was thinking, with
his eyes bulging out, was hard to say; he was probably doubting and double
checking every word Martin uttered. He was about to start with questions in
his school English, but Zernov got in ahead of him:
"You remain here with Vano, Dyachuk, and Anokhin and I'll go with the
American. Let's go, Martin," he added in English.
Instinct or premonition-I don't know what psychologists would call
it-told me to take my cine camera, and I was thankful for that subconscious
idea. Even Tolya looked surprised-the body for the inspector or the
behaviour of the murderer at the sight of the body? The pictures I took were
different, however, and I began to shoot as we approached the site of
Martin's accident. There were no longer two planes, but one-Martin's own
silver canary, his polar veteran with swept wings. But right next to it the
familiar (to me) bubbling crimson hillock. It smoked, changed shades of
colour and pulsated in a strange manner, as if it were indeed breathing.
White elongated flashes broke out from time to time like sparks in welding.
"Don't go near," I warned Martin and Zernov as they ran past me.
But the upturned flower had already extended its invisible shield.
Martin who was in the lead strangely slowed down, and Zernov simply went
down on his knees. But both of them pushed forward overcoming the force that
pulled them groundwards.
"Jesus!" yelled Martin turning to me, and he fell to the ground.
Zernov retreated, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
Meanwhile I was shooting all of this; I moved round the crimson hillock
and bumped into the murdered man, or perhaps Martin's double who was only
wounded. He was lying in the same nylon jacket with synthetic fur covered
over with a fluff of snow some three to four metres from the airplane where
Martin had dragged him.
"Come on over here, here he is!" I cried. Zernov and Martin ran over
towards me, rather they seemed to skate over to me, balancing with their
hands, as one does when walking on ice without skates. Here too, the big
flakes of snow had powdered the smooth thickness of ice.
Then something utterly new happened that neither I nor my camera had
ever recorded. A crimson petal separated itself from the vibrating flower,
darkened, curled up in the air and stretching out into a living
four-metre-long snake with open jaws covered the body lying before us. For a
moment or two this snake-like tentacle sparkled and boiled and then tore off
the ground and in its enormous two-metre maw we saw nothing-only a violet
emptiness of an unnaturally stretched-out bell that before our very eyes
changed shape from cone to rippling petal. Then it merged with the cupola.
The only thing left on the snow was a trace-a formless silhouette of the man
that had just lain here.
I continued filming all this in a hurry to catch the latest
transformations. It had begun. The whole flower had now detached itself from
the ground, and as it rose the rim curved upwards. The bell, spread out in
the air, was likewise empty: we could clearly see that there was nothing
whatsoever inside, we saw the rose coloured interior and the delicate
expanding edges. It would now turn into a rose "cloud" and vanish beyond the
other real clouds. And on the ground there would be only one airplane and
one pilot. That is exactly what took place.
Zernov and Martin stood silent, stunned, just like I was the first time
that morning. I think Zernov had already come close to deciphering the
puzzle which to me was still only a faint glimmer of a possibility. It did
not shine, it only suggested the outlines of a fantastic but still logically
admissible picture. Martin was simply crushed not so much by the horror of
what had occurred but by the single thought that this was only the fruit of
a disturbed imagination. He obviously wanted to ask about something, his
terrified look restlessly flitted from me to Zernov until, finally, Zernov
smiled as if to say, go ahead. And Martin put the question.
"Who was it I killed?"
"We can take it that it wasn't anybody," Zernov smiled again.
"But that was a real live man," Martin repeated.
"Are you sure?" Zernov asked.
Martin was confused.
"I don't know."
"That's just it. I would say temporarily alive. The same force created
it and wiped it out."
"But why?" I asked cautiously.
He answered with exasperation-not like him at all.
"You think I know more than you do? Let's develop the film and see."
"And you think we'll understand then?" I no longer tried to hide the
irony.
"It might be," he said deep in thought.
Then he went out ahead without even inviting us to come along. We
exchanged glances and followed together.
"What's your name?" Martin asked familiarly taking me by the arm. He
must have seen we were of the same age.
"Yuri."
"Yuri, Yuri. Mine's Don. Do you think that thing was alive?"
"Yes, I have an inkling it was."
"Something local?"
"Don't think so. No expedition has ever encountered anything like it."
"Then where did it come from?"
"You'll have to ask somebody smarter than me, I don't know."
He was already getting under my skin. But he didn't seem offended.
"What do you think it is, jelly or gas?"
"You tried to take a sample, you should know."
He laughed.
"I wouldn't advise anyone to try. I wonder why it didn't just gobble me
up there in the air? It swallowed me and then spit me out."
"I suppose it didn't find you very tasty."
"Did he swallow him up?"
"I don't know."
"But you saw what happened."
"I saw it cover him up, but I didn't see it swallow him. Rather it
dissolved or evaporated the thing."
"What kind of temperature is needed?"
"Did you try to measure it?"
Martin even stopped, struck by the enigma.
"To melt a plane like that? In three minutes? Ultradurable duraluminum,
by the way."
"Are you sure it was duraluminum and not a hole of a doughnut?"
He didn't understand and I didn't try to explain; from there on we
didn't exchange a word till we got to the tent. Here too things were
happening. I was struck by the strange pose Tolya had taken, doubled up on
the box of briquettes and clicking his teeth from horror or from the cold.
The stove had already cooled off, but it didn't seem to be very cold in the
tent.
"What's the trouble, Dyachuk?" Zernov asked. "Heat up the stove if
you're cold."
Tolya did not answer; like one hypnotized, he Sat down near the stove.
"Going nuts a little bit," said Vano from under his fur protection. He
seemed to be gay enough.
"We had some visitors too," he added and nodded in the direction of
Tolya.
"There wasn't anyone here. Speak for yourself!" he shrieked and turned
to us. His face was twisted, distorted, almost about to cry.
Vano put his finger to his head as if to say we're all crazy. "We're a
bit upset. Okay, tell your own story," he said to Tolya and turned away. "I
myself was damn upset, Yuri, when I saw two copies of you. I couldn't stand
it and ran like hell. Jesus it was awful, terrifying. I took a gulp of
spirits and covered up with the coat. Wanted to go to sleep, but I couldn't.
I don't know, I was asleep, maybe I wasn't, but I had an awful dream. A long
one, mixed up, terrible and funny. It seems I was eating a jelly, dark, not
red, but violet. An awful lot of it, so much in fact that it filled me right
up to the ears. I don't remember how long that lasted. But as soon as I
opened my eyes, I saw that everything was empty, cold, and you weren't here.
Then suddenly he entered. My own self, like in a mirror, only without jacket
and in socks."
Martin listened attentively. Though he did not understand the
conversation in Russian, he guessed that the talk was about something that
definitely interested him as well. I took pity on him and translated the
gist. He was at me all the while Vano related his story, asking for a faster
translation. But I couldn't go that fast and only later did I relate the
whole of Vano's story. Unlike us, Vano immediately detected a difference
between himself and the guest. The drunken state had long since passed, and
fear as well, only his head continued to throb; the man who entered looked
at him with bull-like eyes, dull dazed eyes. "Quit this nonsense," he yelled
in Georgian, "I'm not afraid of snow maidens, I make mince meat out of
them!" The funniest thing was that Vano himself had thought about that in
the same terms when Zernov and Tolya had left. If someone were about, he
would definitely have got into a fight. That one started to, but Vano, sober
now, grabbed his jacket and ran out of the tent, realizing at once that it
was better to stay as far away as possible from such visitors. But Vano did
not stop to think that his very appearance contradicted all the familiar
laws of nature. What he needed was an open space to manoeuvre in the
impending battle. His double had already whipped out the famous hunting
knife Vano always carried with him to the envy of all drivers in Mirny. The
original knife was in Vano's pocket, but he did not give any thought to that
bit of strangeness either, he simply whipped it out when the drunken phantom
struck the first blow. Vano barely escaped a wound-the knife went through
the jacket. Vano threw it at his pursuer and got as far as the wall, where
it turned to the north. The second blow reached him, but luckily it was a
glancing stroke that his sweater softened. The third one Vano was able to
repulse by knocking the man down. What followed he did not remember. A
bloody blackness fell over him and some kind of force, like a shock wave,
threw him to the side. When he woke up he was in the tent on a cot bed
wrapped up in furs and absolutely sound in body. But the miracles continued.
This time it was Dyachuk who had a duplicate.
Vano did not succeed in finishing the sentence -Tolya threw the
briquette (he was stoking the stove) and jumped up with a hysterical cry:
"Stop this craziness! Do you hear?"
"You're nuts," Vano said.
"Well, damn it, I'm not alone in this. You're crazy too. You're all
mad. There wasn't anybody here except me. And nobody was split up either.
You people are out of your minds!"
"That's enough, Dyachuk," Zernov cut him short. "Behave yourself. You
are a scientist and not a circus performer. If you can't control your
nerves, you shouldn't have come here in the first place."
"So I'll leave," Tolya growled, in a much lower tone this time:
Zernov's words had sobered him up a bit. "I'm not Scott or Amundsen. I've
had enough of these white dreams, and I'm not heading for any nut house
either."
"What's the trouble with him?" Martin whispered.
I explained:
"If it weren't for the fuel, I'd quit too," he said. "Too many miracles
happening around here."
We never found out what happened to Tolya, but it was most likely
comical. Vano brushed the matter aside with:
"If he doesn't want to speak, leave him alone. Both of us were
frightened out of our wits. I don't go in for gossip." He did not make fun
of Tolya, though the latter was ready for a quarrel any time.
Martin and I, under Vano's supervision, replaced the dented plastic of
the window. He couldn't do it himself because of the wound on his hand. It
was also decided that Martin and I would take turns helping out with the
driving. Now nothing else kept us there. Zernov considered the expedition at
an end and was in a hurry to get back to Mirny. I had a feeling he wanted to
get away from his double, he was the only one who hadn't ' experienced this
unpleasant duplication. In direct : violation of the cast iron regime of
work and rest that he himself had set up, Zernov did not sleep all night
after we had switched over to the cabin of the tractor. I woke up a few
times in the night and saw his night-light on: he was obviously reading and
trembled at every suspicious noise.
We didn't speak any more about doubles, but in the morning after
breakfast, when we finally got under way, his face seemed to brighten up.
Martin was driving, Vano sat next to him on the drop-down seat and gave
instructions in sign language. I knocked out a radiogram to Mirny and
exchanged jokes with Kolya Samoilov who was on duty at the radio station,
and I took down the weather report. It was just right for our return: clear,
slight wind, a tiny frost of only two or three degrees below zero Celsius.
But the silence in the cabin hung heavy, like the aftermath of a
quarrel, so I began:
"I have a question, Boris Arkadievich; Why don't we radio a few
details."
"What would you like to add?"
"Why, everything that happened to me and Vano. What we found out about
the rose clouds, and what we discovered when we developed the film."
"And how do you suppose a story like that should be written?" asked
Zernov. "With psychological nuances, an analysis of sensations, with
insinuations and so forth? Unfortunately, I'm no good at that, I'm not a
writer. I don't think you could do it even with your imagination and your
weird hypotheses. Now to put all that into telegraph code would be more like
'notes from an insane asylum'."
"We could add a scientific commentary," I persisted.
"On the basis of what kind of experimental data? What have we got
except visual observations? Your film? But it hasn't even been developed."
"What could it be, really?"
"Well, what would you suggest? What, in your opinion is a rose
'cloud'?"
"An organism."
"Living?"
"Undoubtedly. A living thinking organism of a physico-chemical
structure unknown to us. A kind of bio-suspension or bio-gas. Academician
Kolmogorov postulated the possibility of the existence of thinking mould.
One could imagine, with the same degree of probability, a thinking gas, a
thinking colloid, or a thinking plasma. Change of colour is a protective
reaction or the colouring of emotions: surprise, interest, anger. Changes in
shape suggest motor reactions, the ability to manoeuvre in aerial space.
When a person walks, he moves his hands, bends his feet and so on. The
'cloud' stretches out, bends its edges, folds up into a bell."
"What are you talking about?" asked Martin.
I translated for him.
"It bubbles when it breathes and throws out tentacles when it attacks,"
he added.
"That makes it a beast, doesn't it?" asked Zernov.
"A beast," Martin confirmed.
Zernov was not asking idle questions. Each one of them was directed at
a specific target, one that was not clear to me. He seemed to be checking us
and himself and was not hurrying with any conclusions.
"All right," he said, "then answer this: How does that beast duplicate
human beings and machines? And why does he want to do it? Also, why does it
destroy the models after running them in a bit with human beings?"
"I don't know," I answered honestly. "The 'cloud' synthesizes all kinds
of atomic structures, that is clear. But the mystery is why it does so and
why it destroys them."
Tolya, who had not been communicative for some time and for some
unknown reason, put in a word at this point:
"I think the question is not posed in the proper form. How does it
duplicate? Why? It doesn't duplicate anything. It is simply an involved
illusion dealing- with sensory perceptions. It is not the subject matter of
physics but of psychiatry."
"And my wound is also an illusion?" Vano asked offended.
"You hurt yourself, the rest is illusions. Actually, I don't see why
Anokhin has given up his original hypothesis. Of course, this is a weapon. I
wouldn't take it upon myself to say whose-he threw a glance at Martin-but it
is undoubtedly a weapon. A sophisticated and, what is most important, a
purposeful weapon. Psychiatric waves that split the consciousness."
"And ice," I said.
"Why ice?"
"Because the ice had to be broken up in order to get the
'Kharkovchanka' machine out."
"Look over there to the right!" Vano cried out.
What we saw through the port window stopped the argument
instantaneously. Martin put the brakes on. We hurriedly got into our jackets
and jumped out of the machine. I began taking pictures on the run because
this promised to be one of the most remarkable of all my film strips.
This was a miracle indeed, a picture from another world of
extraterrestrial life. There were no clouds, no snow. Nothing interfered.
The sun hung just above the horizon giving all the strength of its light to
the emerald-blue chunk of ice that towered above us. An ideally smooth cut
through the multi-metre tower seemed to be pure glass. No human being, no
machine could be seen anywhere. Only gigantic rose-coloured disks-I counted
ten or more-that delicately and soundlessly cut the ice like butter. Imagine
cutting butter with a hot knife. This was it. No friction, a smooth, smooth
cut with a slight fringe melting round the walls. That was exactly what was
happening here, as the rose knife produced the hundred-metre walls of ice.
It was in the shape of an irregular oval or trapezium with rounded angles;
in area it must have been over a hundred square metres. At least that was my
rough guess. But very thin, only about two or three centimetres. The
familiar "cloud" had obviously flattened out, elongated and converted into
an enormous cutting instrument operating with amazing speed and precision.
Separated by a distance of half a kilometre, two such knives were
cutting the ice wall perpendicular to the base. Two others were cutting from
below in regular coincident movements of a pendulum. Another set of four
were engaged close by, and a third group, that I couldn't see any more, was
operating deep inside the ice. Soon the second one and the one next to us
disappeared in the ice-like a Gulliver Travels circus. All of a sudden, it
pushed up into the air a perfectly blue parallelepiped of ice, a glass bar
nearly a kilometre in length, geometrically flawless. It rose slowly and
floated upwards lightly and without a thought, like a toy balloon. Only two
"clouds" participated in this operation. They contracted and turned dark,
converting into the familiar saucers, turned skywards not earth-wards-two
incredible red giant flowers on invisible expanding stems. They did not
appear to be supporting the floating bar, for it rose above them at a decent
distance and was in no way connected or fastened.
"How does it hold up?" Martin asked in surprise. "On a shock wave? What
force must the wind have?"
"That's not the wind," said Tolya picking out his English words
carefully. "That's a field. Antigravitation." He threw an imploring glance
at Zernov.
"A field of force," Zernov explained. "Remember the G-loading, Martin,
when you and I tried to approach the airplane? Then it strengthened
gravitation, now it is obviously neutralizing it."
At that moment yet another kilometre-long bar of ice rose from the
surface of the ice plateau, thrown into space by an invisible titan. It rose
much faster than its predecessor and soon caught up with them at the
altitude of ordinary polar flights. One could clearly see how the ice bars
approached in the air, docked alongside one another, and merged into one
broad bar that hung motionless in the air. This was immediately followed by
a third, that lay down on top, then a fourth, to balance the plate. It grew
thicker with every fresh bar: the "clouds" required three to four minutes to
cut it out of the thick continental ice and raise it into the sky. As new
bars came off, the ice wall receded into the distance, and with it the rose
clouds too, which appeared to dissolve and vanish in the snowy distance. As
before, two red roses hung in the sky and above them the enormous crystal
cube with bright sunlight filtering through.
We stood speechless, enchanted by this picture that was almost musical
in its tones. A peculiar kind of gracefulness and plasticity of the
rose-coloured disc-knives, their coordinated rhythmical motions, the upward
flight of the blue ice bars that formed a gigantic cube in the sky-all this
was music to our ears, a soundless music of the mysterious spheres. We did
not even notice -only my cine camera recorded it-how the diamond cube of
sunlight began to diminish in size as it rose higher and higher, and finally
vanished way up beyond the cirrus cloudlets. The two command "flowers" also
vanished.
"A thousand million cubic metres of ice," groaned Tolya.
I looked at Zernov. Our eyes met.
"That's your answer to the main question, Anokhin," he said. "Where did
the ice wall come from and why there is so little snow under foot. They are
removing the ice shield of the Antarctic."
The official report of our expedition was: Zernov's statement on the
phenomenon of the rose "clouds", my story about doubles (or duplicates) and
a preview of the film I had taken. But Zernov had different plans from the
very beginning of the meeting. No materials for the scientific report except
personal impressions and the film taken by the expedition, he explained; he
added that the astronomical observations that he had familiarized himself
with at Mirny do not yield any grounds for definite conclusions. The
appearance of enormous accumulations of ice in the atmosphere at a variety
of altitudes was registered, it turns out, both by Soviet and foreign
observatories in Antarctica. However, neither visual observations or special
photographs permit establishing either the quantity of these quasi-celestial
bodies or the direction of their flight. One can therefore speak only of
impressions and conjectures that sometimes go by the name of hypotheses. But
since the expedition returned three days ago and people are by habit
garrulous and curious, everything seen by the members of the expedition is
now known far beyond the limits of Mirny. It would naturally be best to
engage in conjectures after viewing the film, since there will be more than
enough material for such guesswork.
I do not know whom Zernov had in view when he mentioned talkativeness,
but Vano and Tolya and I did much to excite the men and rumours of my film
had even gotten across the continent. A Frenchman and two Australians and a
whole group of Americans together with the retired Admiral Thompson, who has