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of how our visitors from other worlds live, of whether they are immortal or
simply long-living; then for how long and how far away from us? How do they
reproduce, how is their life organized biologically, socially, and in what
medium-liquid or gaseous-do they develop; perhaps they do not need any
medium and live as blobs of energy isolated from the external medium by
fields of force. I appeal to your imagination, gentlemen: try to answer!
{Noise in the hall, applause). That is a vote of confidence, I take it, and
the science-fiction man can continue, is that right?"
I notice how the chairman involuntarily looks at his watch and his hand
reaches for the bell button. But a roar of clapping and shouts in a variety
of languages of "let him speak" bring him to a halt and he does not press
the button.
"Speaking here, Boris Zernov mentioned the human being and the bee as
an instance of two incompatible forms of life. Let us whip up our
imagination. Let us switch the example around. We have an encounter of, say,
a supercivilization of bees and a human civilization lagging behind by
millennia. Observers have already noted a certain functional difference in
the behaviour of our cosmic visitors: they cut ice, others transport it out
into space, a third kind establishes the atomic scheme of the model, and a
fourth type creates the model. Accordingly, there are differences in the
structural forms of the constructors: one kind stretches out like a band
saw, others blow up into an enormous flower-like something, still others
emerge as a red fog, and still others condense into a cherry-like jelly. The
question now arises: are we not dealing with a swarm, a highly developed
swarm of beings with their specific functional development? Incidentally,
life in a beehive is organized somewhat differently from the dwelling houses
on Park Avenue in New City or in Moscow's Cheryomushki district. Both as to
work and rest. But do they need rest? Have they any feeling for beauty? Have
they music, say? What do they do for sports? That's what I ask. Try to
answer those questions. It's like chess, like going through variants.
Difficult of course. But that is precisely what a grandmaster does.
"What strikes me as strange is why the grandmasters of science have not
yet asked themselves the most important thing of all: the reason for these
spacelings coming to visit us (agitation in the hall). Everyone has the
answer, I know, even two answers. Some-about 90%-are sure that they came to
earth for terrestrial ice, which might be a unique type as far as isotopic
composition goes in adjacent space. The minority, led by Thompson, believe
that this is a reconnaissance expedition with aggressive aims for the
future. Personally, I believe that the scouting took place earlier, we
simply missed it. This time, it is a powerfully equipped expedition
(apprehensive silence in the auditorium, only the buzzing of journalists'
tape-recorders is heard), but not of conquerors, gentlemen. They are
colleagues studying a form of life with which they are not acquainted.
(Shouts of: "But the ice?"). Wait a minute, you'll have your ice. That is a
sideline operation. The important thing is we ourselves. The highest form of
protein life based on water. Something seems to be hampering them here on
Earth in their study of this life. Perhaps the environment but maybe fear of
upsetting it. What is there to be done? Start with God, with the creation of
the world. (More noise in the hall, and shouts of "Shut up, blasphemer"). I
am no more a blasphemer than the father of cybernetics, Wiener. In his day,
there were those who screamed: 'This is of the devil!' He encroaches on the
second commandment! 'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.. ..'
And now you are building robots and dreaming of an electronic brain. The
idea of constructing a model of our life in all its richness and complexity
is natural for these beings, for what is cognition if not modelling by means
of thought? And the transition from mental model-building to material
modelling is only one step of progress. There will come a time and we will
be doing that. Some even say when: next century. So why shouldn't some
supercivilization of cosmic beings have attained that much earlier, say by
one thousand years?"
The writer fell silent, took a gulp of soda water and stood thinking.
The audience waited. No one coughed, no one got uneasy, no one whispered. I
was never present at a lecture that was listened to with such reverent
attention. He was silent, and his glance, as if severed from everything
about him, seemed to be groping for some distant-distant thing, inaccessible
to all except him.
Then he started again ever so softly, though no one missed even so much
as the intonation: "If it is possible to build a model of life, it is
possible to carry it away; record it and then set it up somewhere else in
one's own vicinity and establish a nutrient medium for its development. What
is needed for this purpose? An artificial satellite, an asteroid, a planet,
a model of the terrestrial atmosphere and of solar radiation. But
principally water, water and more water, without which protein-based life is
an impossibility. Therein lies the meaning of transporting terrestrial ice
in quantities sufficient for supplying a whole planet. It is then that deep
within our galaxy (or perhaps even some other galaxy) there will emerge a
new world, not a repetition but a similarity, and one with the most subtle
kinship, for all the models of these spacepeople are flawless and precise
{Remark: "A cosmic zoo with humanlike at larger). Quite naturally, there
will be such as the person who just spoke {laughter). But I would correct
him, not a zoo but a laboratory. Or, to be more exact, a scientific
institute where human life would, in all its complexity of psychic, social
and everyday aspects, become the subject of a profound, careful and
considerate study. It would of course be studied. That was the purpose of
making experiments, but it would be studied and not meddled with, studied in
development and in motion forward and grasped in motion. And if once this
motion were comprehended, there might be some way of refining and
accelerating it. I think I've said all I need to. That is my hypothesis.
Object if you wish. Like any hypothesis newly born of the imagination, it
can of course be readily refuted. Yet I am pleased to think that somewhere
in the depths of the universe there lives and moves a piece of our life,
even though only a modelled, synthesized piece, but created for a great
idea-the closer understanding of two civilizations that are at present very
far removed from one another, the basis for this better understanding having
been laid here on the Earth. And if the space people return, they will
return with an understanding of us, they will be enriched by such a
comprehension, we will have given them something, and they will know what
need be given us on this mutual pathway towards perfection."
The writer bent forward slightly in a bow and left the lectern. Silence
followed in his wake, a silence much more eloquent than any storm of
applause.
We cut out something like a foxhole at the very edge of the plateau of
ice that had apparently been cut by a gigantic knife. The shiny pale blue
section that reflected just as blue a sky with not a cloud in sight fell
from the height of a five-storey house. Actually, this was not a cut but a
gouge, a broad excavation of about three hundred metres in diameter that
stretched beyond the horizon. Its ideally even and straight structure
resembled the bed of an artificial canal prior to entry of water. The empty
canal cut in a mass of ice came right up to a violet spot.
In the solid wall of cold blue fire it darkened like an entrance way or
an exit. Not only a snow tractor, even an icebreaker of medium proportions
could freely pass through it without touching the uneven pulsating sides. I
aimed my camera and spent a few tens of metres of film on it and then
switched out. The spot was like any other, no miracles!
But the wall of blue fire far exceeded all the wonders of the world.
Picture to yourself the bluish flame of an alcohol lamp illuminated further
from behind by the steady rays of the sun hanging just above the horizon.
The brilliant fire growing blue in the light, next to it another one, and at
a short distance the snaking outline of a third, then a fourth, and they all
merge into a Hat even flame in contact with one another along the faces of
some kind of marvellous flaming crystal. Now enlarge that a thousand-fold.
The flames race up a kilometre in height, bend inwards somewhere in the pale
blue sky, the facets blending into a giant crystal that does not reflect but
captures the full beauty of this subdued sky, morning and sun. It was a
mistake when someone called it an octahedron. First of all, it is flat at
the bottom like the plateau on which it stands; secondly, it has numerous
facets, not alike and not symmetric, but fanciful crystalline surfaces
beyond which a marvellously beautiful blue gas flows and flames.
"I can't tear my eyes off it," said Irene when we approached the
skating rink of blue flame. We came to within thirty metres, but couldn't
get any closer because one's body grows heavier and heavier. A vertigo
grasps you as if you are standing on a high precipice. The Niagara falls is
magnificent, but this is beyond all comparison. It's hypnotizing.
I tried to look at the violet spot. It was fairly common even trivial-a
sort of lilac satin drawn taut over an uneven frame.
"Could that be the entrance way?" Irene mused aloud. "The door to a
wonder."
I recalled yesterday's conversation between Thompson and Zernov.
"I told you it was the entrance way. Smoke, gas, all that sort of
stuff. They passed through it single-file. I saw it myself. And now we've
passed through."
"Not you, but a directed shock-wave."
"What's the difference? I have demonstrated to them that humans are
capable of thinking and of drawing conclusions."
"A mosquito finds an opening in a net and bites. What kind of proof is
that of any ability to think and draw conclusions?"
"You know, I'm fed up with this talk about mosquito civilizations. We
are a true civilization and not one of bugs and ants. And I think that they
comprehend as much. And that is already contact."
"Too costly. One person has paid with his life."
"That was an elementary accident. Perhaps the wiring was wet or
something like that. A lot of things happen. A worker with high explosives
is no gardener. I say that Hanter died due to his own lack of caution, he
could have jumped into the crevice; there was time enough. Then the
reflected shock-wave would have passed over him."
"They've reflected it again."
"The second one. The first got through, don't forget. But Hanter could
have made a second mistake by not calculating the direction properly."
"It would be more correct to say that they themselves calculated both
the force of the charge and the direction of the wave. And deflected it."
"Let's try something else."
"What for instance? They are not sensitive either to beta or gamma
rays."
"How about a laser or a jet of water? An ordinary hydraulic excavator.
In itself, any change of means of penetration to the violet spot and beyond
would, in our view, make them sit up and think. And that means contact. Or
at least the preliminaries of contact."
Thompson's new weapon was brought almost up to the very "spot"; they
were separated by no more than fifteen metres. The force field was not
apparent even in this microregion. From my photography site on top of the
plateau, the hydraulic excavator resembled a grey cat readying itself for a
jump. Its streamlined metallic surfaces shimmered dully on the background of
snow. The English mechanic was making a last check on some kind of clutch
and contacts. Two steps from him was an indentation cut in the ice the size
of a human being.
Irene was not with me. After the death of the demolition worker she
refused to be present at "suicides" organized and paid for by a maniac whose
place is in an insane asylum. The "maniac" himself, together with Zernov and
other advisers, delivered the signals from their headquarters by telephone.
The headquarters was located a short distance from me on the plateau in a
hut made of thermally insulated blocks. A corrugated metal tank rose up
alongside. Big chunks of ice were fed to this tank and the melt water
entered a hydraulic excavator. Technically speaking, the expedition was
conceived and executed flawlessly.
I too was ready with my camera aimed. Ready! Shoot! A flash of the
pencil-thin jet pierced the gaseous curtain of the "spot" without
encountering any resistance, and then vanished beyond it, as if severed at
the base. Half a minute later, the ultra-high-speed jet shifted, slashed
through the violet mirage at an angle and vanished again. Even in a
high-power pair of binoculars I could not detect the slightest change in the
structure surrounding the "spot", either in the diverging rings, or in the
turbulent or luminary flows, which might have been produced by the impact of
the hydrojet in an allied medium.
This did not last more than two minutes. Then, of a sudden, the "spot"
slowly crawled upwards, like a fly on a blue curtain. The hydrojet met the
scintillating blue, did not pass through it, but split into two parts, like
a jet of water from a fire hydrant crashing into a window. That very instant
the water built up into a whirling twister that was not deflected to the
side, but curled downwards to the ground. I am not positive about the
accuracy of my description. Specialists who later viewed the film found some
regularities in the motion of spray, but that's the way I saw it.
I continued photographing for a while, and then quit, figuring that for
science that would be enough and for the general public, more than enough.
But at that instant the water jet was switched off: Thompson, apparently,
had realized the experiment was pointless. Meanwhile, the "spot" crawled
upwards, ever upwards, until it vanished at aircraft altitude beyond the
curve of the enormous blue tongues curled inwards.
That was the most impressive thing I observed in Greenland-out of a
great number of impressive items. First the marvellous airport at
Copenhagen, the multilayered Danish sandwiches aboard the plane, and the
colours of Greenland as we approached from the air-the perfectly white ice
plateau to the north, the black level stretch off to the south, from which
fresh ice had been excavated, the dark red promontories of the coastal
mountain ridges and the blue of the sea that blended into the dull green of
the fjords. After that came a coastwise voyage on a schooner northwards to
Umanak. That's where Wegener's* (* A German expedition which in 1930-1931
explored the thickness of the ice cover in the central and northern regions
of the continent. Wegener died a tragic death during his last wintering over
season.) famous expedition started out on its last lap.
Already on the schooner "Akiuta" we found ourselves in an atmosphere of
general turbulence and unaccountable exhilaration that gripped the entire
crew, from the captain to the cook. Since we did not know a single
Scandinavian language, we wouldn't have learned a thing if our only
companion, Dr. Karl Petersen from the Danish polar station in Godhaven, did
not turn out to be a very communicative person with an excellent knowledge
of English.
"Have you ever seen our fjords before?" he asked over a cup of coffee
in the mess room. "No? The wind drives the sea ice even in July. There have
been ice fields up to three and even five kilometres across. In Godhaven,
half the harbour is covered with ice the year around. Caravans of icebergs
descend from the glaciers of Uperniwik and farther north. The whole of
Baffin Bay has been clogged up with them like a traffic jam on a highway. No
matter where you look, there are always two or three in your field of view.
That was before. Now, not a single one about in a whole day of sailing. And
notice how warm it is. Both the water and the air. Have you noticed how
upset the crew is? They're talking of going into commercial fishing. Herring
and cod are now coming from Norwegian waters in huge schools. From the air,
they say, you can even see them near the eastern fjords. Do you picture it
on the map? What is our eastern shoreline? Jammed both winter and summer
because all the Russian Arctic ice gathers there. Where is the Arctic ice
today? On Sirius? The 'horsemen' have fished it all out clean. Incidentally,
why are they called 'horsemen'? Those that have seen them say they're more
like balloons or dirigibles. I haven't had any luck that way, haven't seen
any at all. Perhaps they'll put in an appearance during our trip, or maybe
at Umanak."
But we did not encounter any of them either during the trip or at
Umanak. They appeared here before when they began excavating glacial ice
that was descending into the waters of the bay. Then they left behind them
an ideal canal bed cut out of the ice about three hundred kilometres long
back into the interior of the continental plateau. As if they knew that they
were going to follow their route from Umanak, where Wegener's expedition
crawled along on sleighs over gravel frozen into the ice. We had at our
disposal a marvellous highway of ice, broader than any speedway in the
world, and a crosscountry vehicle on caterpillar tread ordered from
Dusseldorf. Our crew was Antarctic, but the vehicle was smaller than the
"Kharkovchan-ka" and neither as speedy or as tough.
"There'll be trouble enough with it, you'll see. One hour of travel,
two of waiting," said Vano, who had just received a radiogram from
Thompson's headquarters stating that two other Sno-Cats of the expedition
that had started out 24 hours ago had not yet arrived at their destination.
This is driving us mad. There's nothing to buy here. Syrup in place of
sugar. Lucky, we brought flying boots, otherwise you'd have to wear
camiki-Eskimo footwear of dogfur-with grass. Every previous Greenland
expedition had worn those unpleasant boots. Vano was completely indifferent
to the surrounding scenery painted so remarkably by Rockwell Kent. Tolya
even looked at Irene reproachfully for her admiration of the Gothic in the
Umanak mountains and of the colours of the Greenland summer, which for some
reason reminded us of Moscow summers in the countryside.
"Clear as daylight," Tolya explained, "the line of cyclones has
shifted, no snow. July winds. Don't whine Vano, we'll get there without
mishap."
But adventures began hardly three hours after we got started. We were
stopped by a helicopter sent by Thompson. The Admiral was in need of
advisers and wanted to speed up Zernov's arrival. Martin piloted the
helicopter.
What he related was fantastic even for us who were used to the
mysterious doings of the "horsemen from nowhere".
On this helicopter, Martin made a survey of the latest trick of the
cosmic visitors-blue protuberances merging at high altitudes in the form of
a multi-facet roof. As always, the rose clouds appeared suddenly and from
nowhere, as it seemed. They passed over Martin without paying any attention
to him and vanished in the violet crater somewhere near the edge of the
cover. That is where Martin headed his craft.
He landed on a violet pad and did not find any support. The helicopter
kept on descending, freely penetrating the lilac-grey cloudy medium. For
about two minutes visibility was nil, and then Martin's machine found itself
hovering over a city, a large modern city but with a limited horizon. The
blue cupola of the sky covered it, as it were, like a hood. There was
something familiar in the city, as far as Martin could see. He descended a
bit and then piloted his craft along the central street that cut the city in
two from one end to the other and recognized it at once-Broad-way. This
seemed so preposterous that he rubbed his eyes. No, this was Broadway all
right. Forty-second street over there, then the station. A bit closer was
Times Square, to the left the canyon of Wall Street. He could even make out
the church, the famous millionaire church. Martin was able to pick out
Rockerfeller Centre and the Huggenheim Museum and the enormous towering
Empire State Building. From the observation platform, tiny figures of
tourists were waving handkerchiefs, down in the streets below were
multicoloured automobiles crawling along like ants. Martin turned in the
direction of the sea, but something prevented him from advancing. Then it
dawned on him that it was not he who was piloting his craft-invisible eyes
and hands were doing the job for him. For another three minutes or so he was
taken over the river, which appeared to be cut by the cupola of the sky.
Inside, the blue radiance gave the appearance of a summer sky illuminated by
a sun that had just sunk below the horizon. Then he was over Central Park,
had almost reached Harlem, but at that moment he was being pushed upwards
through a denseless lilac-coloured cork into the natural atmosphere of the
earth. That is how he got back into the normal sky together with his craft,
above the city now hidden in a blue flame. At once, he sensed that the
helicopter was in his control and ready for action. Martin then went in for
a landing at the site of the camp of the expedition.
We listened avid for information and did not interrupt with a single
word. Then Zernov, after some thought, asked:
"Have you reported to the Admiral?" "No, I haven't. He's queer enough
as it is." "Are you positive you saw everything well? No mistake? Nothing
confused?"
"You can't mistake New York. But why New York? They never even came
close to it. Anyone ever read about a red fog in New York?" "Maybe they did
it at night." I suggested. "Why?" objected Zernov. "We already know of
models built up from visual samples, from imprints of the memory. Do you
know the city in detail?" he asked Martin.
"I was born there."
"How many times have you walked the streets?"
"Thousands of times."
"That's it. You walked about, observed and got accustomed. Your eye
recorded and your memory stored away the recordings. They went through the
recordings, selected the ones they wanted and reproduced them."
"Does that mean that that is my New York, the way I saw it?"
"I'm not positive, they might have modelled the psyche of a number of
New Yorkers, including yours too. Kind of a jigsaw puzzle. Large numbers of
little pieces of cardboard are put together to form a picture, a portrait, a
scene. And that's the way they did it: thousands of visual impressions are
assembled into something that actually exists, but as viewed and remembered
by different people in different situations. I think that the Manhattan
reconstructed in the blue laboratory of the cosmic-men is not exactly the
true Manhattan. In some way it must differ from the real thing. In details,
in points of view. The visual memory rarely portrays things exactly as they
are, it creates. And the collective memory is still more material for
creativity. Jigsaw puzzle creativity."
"I'm not a scientist, sir," said Martin, "but that is surely
impossible. Science is not capable of explaining it."
"Science..." and Zernov sniggered. "Our science here on earth does not
yet allow for the possibility of a repeated creation of the world. But in
the distant, the far distant, future it will finally provide for such a
possibility."
After Martin's story, everything appeared to me routine and common
until I saw and filmed the blue protuberances and the violet spot. The fresh
wonder of the cosmic people was just as extraordinary and inexplicable as
all the earlier ones had been. Those were the thoughts that clamoured for my
attention as I returned to the camp.
As I approached, Irene came running all excited.
"Yuri, Thompson wants to see you, hurry up. The Admiral has called all
the members of the expedition. A Council of War."
We were the last to arrive and immediately sensed the atmosphere of
curiosity and apprehension. The urgent, extraordinary nature of the meeting
as it came straightway after the experiment indicated that Thompson was
undecided. He who was so used to making decisions alone was now overanxious
to get a collective view. He now wanted the opinion of as many people as
possible.
The meeting was conducted in English. Those who didn't understand sat
closer to their neighbours for a running translation.
"The experiment has been a success," Thompson began without any
introductory words. "They have already gone over to the defensive. The
violet entrance way has been shifted to the upper facets of the cupola. In
this connection I will try to use something new. From above and from the
air."
"A bomb?" someone put in.
"And what if it is?"
"You haven't got any nuclear ones," Zernov remarked coldly. "And you
haven't any conventional high explosives either. The best you can do is a
plastic bomb to blow up safes or cars. Whom do you think you will frighten
with such toys?"
The Admiral shot a brief glance at him and parried:
"I am not speaking of bombs."
"I advise you to tell him, Martin," said Zernov.
"I know," the Admiral put in. "Directed hallucinations. Hypnomirage.
We'll try someone else, not Martin."
"We have only one pilot, sir."
"I do not intend to risk the helicopter. I need parachutists. And not
simple ones, but..." he screwed up his mouth looking for the right word,
"say, ones that have already had dealings with the spacemen."
We exchanged glances. Zernov was out because he was no sportsman. Vano
had hurt his hand during the last trip. I had parachuted twice in my life,
but without any pleasure either time.
"I would like to know whether Anokhin would be able to perform that
operation," Thompson said.
I was angry.
"It isn't a matter of being able to, but one of wanting to, Admiral."
"You mean that you do not have that desire?"
"You guessed it, sir."
"How much do you want, Anokhin? A hundred? Two hundred?"
"Not a cent. I do not get pay for the work I do in the expedition,
Admiral."
"It's all the same, you obey the rulings made by your superior."
"According to regulations, Admiral, I photograph what I consider
necessary and provide you with one copy of the photo. What is more, a
cameraman does not necessarily need to know how to jump with a parachute."
Thompson again screwed up his mouth and asked:
"Maybe someone else will do it?"
"The only jumping I ever did was in an amusement park in Moscow, from a
tower," Dyachuk said in Russian, looking at me reproachfully, "but I'll risk
it."
"I will too," Irene added.
"Don't try to outdo all the big boys," I cut in. "This is no operation
for girls."
"Nor for cowards either."
"What's the talk about?" Admiral Thompson asked after patiently waiting
for our dialogue to end.
I got in ahead of Irene:
"About forming a special unit, Admiral. Two of us will jump: Dyachuk
and Anokhin. Anokhin will be in charge. That's all."
"I see I was not mistaken," the Admiral smiled. "You are a man with
character, just what we need. Okay. Martin will pilot the plane." He looked
round the room. "That will be all, gentlemen."
Irene rose and at the exit turned round:
"You are not only a coward but a provoker too."
"Thanks."
I did not want to argue, but what I definitely did not want to do was
to allow her to get into what might possibly be another St. Disier.
We were briefed before the flight as follows:
"The aircraft will ascend to two thousand metres. It will come in from
the northeast and will descend to the target to an altitude of two hundred
metres, right over the entrance. There is no danger. The only thing under
you will be a stopper made of air. Everything will be all right as soon as
you get through it. Martin did not freeze and he was able to breathe
comfortably, so I think you will too. Good luck."
The Admiral looked each one of us over and, as if in some doubt, added:
"If anyone is afraid, he can refuse. I do not insist." I looked at
Tolya. And he looked at me.
"Getting nervous," Tolya said in Russian. "He's already relieving
himself of the responsibility. How are you?"
"And you?"
"Ironclad."
The Admiral listened to the unfamiliar language and did not utter a
word.
"We exchanged some impressions," I said dryly. "We're ready for the
mission."
The aircraft rose from the plateau of ice and headed east gaining
altitude. It skirted the pulsating protuberances. Then banked and took a
sharp turn back, falling all the time. Down below was a boiling blue sea
that did not heat. The violet entrance way was clearly visible-a
lilac-coloured patch on blue velvet-and seemed as flat and as hard as the
ground. For a moment it was frightening-jumping from such a low altitude. We
wouldn't be able to collect our bones afterwards, as the phrase goes.
"Don't be afraid," said Martin. "You won't get bumped. It's rather like
the foam on beer, and coloured too."
We jumped. First Tolya and then I followed. Both parachutes opened up
without mishap, Tolya's a rainbow of colours underneath me. I saw him go
into the violet crater and slip through as if it were a swamp-first Tolya
and then his colourful umbrella. For another moment it was again
frightening. What was beyond the murky gaseous shutter-ice, darkness, death
from impact or lack of air? I was still guessing when I plunged into
something dark and not very perceptible, something without temperature,
without odour. Only the lilac colour turned a familiar red. Absence of
sensitivity to the medium passed into body sensations as well-I couldn't see
my body nor feel it, as if I had dissolved in the gas. The sensation I had
was that only my mind, not my body, only my consciousness was floating in
this incomprehensible crimson foam. There was nothing at all about, no
parachute, no shroud lines, no body, nothing, I wasn't even there.
Then all of a sudden, as if struck in the eye- the blue sky and a city
below. At first indistinct and then barely distinguishable in the haze; then
the city came closer and we could see it more clearly. Why did Martin call
it New York? I was never there, and had not seen it from an airplane, but I
did have an idea of what it should look like. This one was quite different,
no Statue of Liberty, no Empire State Building, no skyscrapers, no
canyon-like streets. No, this was definitely no Bagdag over the Subway that
O'Henry had described, no City of the Yellow Devil penned by Gorky, and no
Iron Mirgorod as described by the poet Yesenin. This was a different city,
and one much more familiar to me, though I still couldn't make it out. But I
had the feeling that I would in just a minute, just a minute!
And I did. Beneath me was an enormous letter A, constructed in
three-dimensional space. The lacework of the Eiffel Tower could be seen
rising into the sky. Away from it to the right and left was the twisting and
turning-greenish hand of the Seine River, a mix of sparkling silver and
green lawns in the sun. The green rectangle of the Tuileries Park was sure
proof that this was real and not illusory green. To many, rivers seen at a
height appear to be blue, but to me they are green. This green Seine twisted
to the right to the Ivry and to the left to the Boulogne. I immediately felt
where the Louvre could be, and the turn of the river and the island Cite.
The Palace of Justice and the Notre Dame cathedral appeared from above like
two stone cubes in hazy outline, but I recognized them. I even glimpsed the
Arch of Triumph on the famous square from which a dozen streets radiate.
"How was it that Martin had gotten things so wrong?" I asked myself. I
am no expert on Paris and had seen it from an airplane only once, but I
concentrated as I observed the city before landing. And the same day I went
over what I had seen by telling Irene my impressions as we walked about the
town. We didn't have time to cover much ground and see so very much, but
what we did I firmly fixed in my memory. Then an idea came to me: "Perhaps
Martin was not mistaken after all. He simply saw New York and I was
witnessing Paris. In both cases, it was ahypno-mirage, as Thompson had
termed it. But why did these beings need to impose all manner of
hallucinations? Based on place of birth? That is where the strongest
memories are sited, yet I was not born in Paris, but in Moscow, and what I
see is the Eiffel Tower and not the Kremlin. It might be that the "clouds"
choose what has been recalled from the recent past; yet Martin, so he says,
hasn't been in New York a good ten years. What was the logic behind these
two different movies they had us view? And again doubts plagued me: maybe,
after all, this is no film, no mirage or hallucination. Could it be that in
this enormous laboratory whole cities are actually reproduced, cities that
had made great impressions on the cosmic beings. And how are they
reproduced, materially or mentally? And for what purpose? Is it to
comprehend the city as a structural form of our being? As a social unit of
our society? Or simply as a living and multifaceted, vibrant chunk of human
life?
"It's all crazy," said Tolya.
I turned around and saw him hanging next to me, two metres away, on the
taut shroud lines of his parachute. Hanging it was, not falling, or floating
or being carried by the wind; simply fixed motionless in that strange
unmoving air. Not the slightest breeze, not a single cloudlet in the sky.
Only pure ultramarine of the heavens and beneath us a familiar city. There
we were at an altitude of a kilometre and a half, suspended inexplicably
from rigidly fixed shroud lines, motionless. We were in air, for we breathed
freely, at least as freely as Camp Eleven near the summit of Mt. Elbrus.
"Martin gave us the wrong impression," Tolya added.
"No, he didn't," I said. "He was telling the truth."
"Then he made a mistake."
"I don't think so."
"Then what do you see?" Tolya was worried.
"What do you see?"
"Why, the Eiffel Tower, naturally. I can surely recognize that."
So Tolya was looking at Paris. The hypothesis of hypnohallucination
specifically tailored to the subject under study had to go.
"Still this is not Paris. It's not the real thing," said Tolya.
"Nonsense."
"Where do you find mountains in Paris? The Pyranees are far enough away
and the Alps too. So what are those?"
Turning to the right I saw a chain of wooded slopes rising to
snow-capped rocky reddish peaks:
"Those might be Greenland hills," I suggested.
"We're inside a cupola. There are no mountains round about. Did you see
any snow-capped peaks? There aren't any left anywhere on the Earth."
I took another glance at the mountains. Between us and the cupola lay a
blue strip of water. Was it a lake or a sea?
"What's that game called?" Tolya asked suddenly.
"What game?"
"You know, when you piece together pictures and things."
"Oh, a jigsaw puzzle."
"How many employees were there in the hotel, not counting the
visitors?" Tolya began to muse. "About thirty. Now were they all Parisians?
There must have been a few from Grenoble. Or from some place where there are
mountains and the sea. Everyone has his own Paris and an added piece of his
hometown. Now if all that is put together it will not produce a model.
Anyway, not a true one."
He repeated Zernov's idea, but I was still doubtful. Then it's a game
of building blocks. Today we build, tomorrow we disassemble. Today it's New
York and tomorrow it's Paris. Today Paris with Mont Blanc and tomorrow with
Fujiyama. Why not? Surely what has been created on the earth by nature and
man is not the limit of perfection. Could it not be that a fresh creation of
things would improve matters? Could it be that this laboratory is searching
for the typical in terrestrial life? Maybe the typical is here being
verified and tested? It could easily be that what for us is a mix-up is for
them the goal they are seeking.
Finally, I was thoroughly confused. The bulging parachute hung above me
like the roof of a street cafe. The only thing lacking were tables and
bottles of lemonade. I noticed it was hot. There was no sun, but it was
stiflingly hot.
"Why don't we fall?" Tolya asked suddenly.
"Didn't you ever finish school or did they kick you out of the fifth
grade?"
"No, really, I'm serious."
"And I am too. You've heard of weightlessness, haven't you?"
"One floats in a state of zero gravity, here I can't even move. And the
parachute is stiff as a piece of wood. What's holding it?"
"Not what, but who."
"Why?"
"Just being polite. Hospitable hosts are giving a lesson in manners to
unwanted guests."
"Then what's Paris here for?"
"It might be the geography they like."
"Yes, but if we suppose they are reasonable. .." Tolya exploded.
"I like your 'if'."
"Quit the joking, I'm serious. They must have some purpose."
"That's right. They record our responses and this conversation too, for
instance." .
"You're impossible," was Tolya's concluding remark and then-we were
jerked from our position by a gust of wind and found ourselves flying over
Paris.
At first we descended some two hundred metres. The city was close and
every detail clear-cut. We could see black smoke with greyish streaks
billowing out of factory stacks. Big barges on the Seine and motor boats of
all colours plying the waters. A worm crawling along the Seine turned into a
train approaching the Gare de Lyon, and the roiling blur on the streets
turned into a colourful mosaic of summer suits and dresses. Then we were
thrown upwards and the city began to recede and melt in the distance. Tolya
went up higher and vanished together with his parachute in the
lilac-coloured plug. In another two or three seconds I whirled into it too.
Then the two of us, like dolphins, swished over the facets of the blue
cupola. In the process, neither of our parachutes changed its shape at all,
as if unseen and unperceivable air currents were carrying us along to the
white sheet of the glacier.
We landed more slowly than in an ordinary parachute descent, but Tolya
fell and was dragged along the ice. While I was getting out of my shroud
lines, Thompson and the others from the camp were already approaching. His
jacket was unbuttoned, he was in boots that he hadn't had time to lace up,
without a hat-he looked the perfect hockey coach.
"How was it?" he asked imperiously.
I never liked that tone.
"Everything's normal," I said.
"Martin signalled that you both had emerged from the plug."
I shrugged. Why had they kept Martin in the air? How could he have
helped us if we had emerged from the plug in a difficult situation?
"What's it like there?" Thompson asked finally.
"Where?"
(You'll have to wait, Mister, you're going to have to wait.)
"You know where, come on, out with it."
"Yes, I do at that."
"Well?"
"It's a jigsaw puzzle."
We returned to Umanak. That is, our Antarctic expedition plus the
engineering and scientific personnel of the expedition and two tractor
vehicles-our quarters-and a caravan of sleighs with all the equipment. The
helicopter had already returned to the Arctic Base in Thule, and our
commander together with the apparatus that could be put on board an airplane
had already taken off for Copenhagen.
That is where the last press conference took place at which he refuted
all his official and private statements about the successes of the
expedition. In the radio shack we tape-recorded for posterity that gloomy
exchange of questions and answers from Copenhagen. We cut out all the noise
and laughter and remarks and left only the backbone of queries and replies.
"Perhaps the Commander will first start out with an official
statement."
"It will be brief. The expedition was a failure. We were unable to
bring to successful completion a single scientific experiment. I was not
able to determine either the physical or chemical nature of the blue light,
nor was I able to find out anything beyond it. I refer to the space enclosed
by the protuberances."
"Why?"
"The force field surrounding the region of the luminescence proved
impenetrable to our technical facilities."
"You speak of the facilities available to the expedition, but is it
impenetrable to all the potentialities of terrestrial science?"
"I do not know."
"Reports have appeared in the press, however, concerning the
possibility of penetrating it."
"What exactly do you mean?"
"The 'violet spot'."
"We saw several such 'spots'. It's true that they are not protected by
a field of force."
"Did you try to enter them?"
"Yes, we did. And we couldn't do it. In the first case, a directed
shock wave, in the second an ultra-high-speed water jet."
"What were the results?"
"No results at all."
"How did one of the members of the expedition perish?"
"That was a simple case of negligence. We took into account the
possibility of a reflected wave and warned Hanter. Unfortunately, he did not
take advantage of available covering."
"We have heard that the pilot of the expedition was able to get inside
the cupola. Is that true?"
"Yes, it is."
"Why does he refuse to speak? Open up the secret."
"There is no secret. It is simply that I have not allowed any release
of information concerning our work." "We don't understand why. Please
explain."
"Until the expedition is dismissed, I alone am responsible for all the
information."
"Who, besides Martin, was able to get beyond the limits of the blue
light."
"Two Russians, the cameraman and the meteorologist."
"How did they do it?"
"By parachute."
"How did they get back."
"The same way."
"Parachutes are for jumping downwards, not upwards. Did they use a
helicopter?"
"No, they did not make use of the helicopter. The force field stopped
them, ejected them and landed them."
"What did they see?"
"Ask them when the expedition has been dismissed. I am sure that all
that they saw was a hypnotic mirage."
"For what purpose?"
"To embarrass and frighten mankind. To instil the idea of the immense
capacity of their technology and science. To a certain extent, I was
convinced by Zernov's speech at the Paris Congress. All of their
superhypnosis is a manner of contact, but the contact of future colonizers
with future slaves."
"Were the pilot and parachutists also embarrassed and frightened?"
"I'm not so sure. Those boys are tough."
"Do they concur in your opinion?"
"I have not insisted that they do."
"We've heard that the pilot saw New York and the Russians saw Paris.
Some say that that is a true model, like Sand City."
"You've already heard my opinion. What is more, the area of the blue
light is, after all, not large enough to build two cities like New York and
Paris in it."
ZERNOV COMMENTS: "The Admiral has misrepresented the facts somewhat. It
is not a question of construction, but of reproduction of visual images that
the cosmic men were able to record. It's like a montage photograph. Certain
things are selected, reviewed and fitted together. It was simply that our
boys and Martin had the luck to get into the laboratory through the back
door, so to speak."
That's the way we passed the time on the way to Umanak. It was the most
remarkable road in the world. We haven't got the machines that could produce
such a smooth surface. Still, the tractor vehicle came to halt because one
of the treads needed fixing and the engine began to act up. Vano did not
simply long-living; then for how long and how far away from us? How do they
reproduce, how is their life organized biologically, socially, and in what
medium-liquid or gaseous-do they develop; perhaps they do not need any
medium and live as blobs of energy isolated from the external medium by
fields of force. I appeal to your imagination, gentlemen: try to answer!
{Noise in the hall, applause). That is a vote of confidence, I take it, and
the science-fiction man can continue, is that right?"
I notice how the chairman involuntarily looks at his watch and his hand
reaches for the bell button. But a roar of clapping and shouts in a variety
of languages of "let him speak" bring him to a halt and he does not press
the button.
"Speaking here, Boris Zernov mentioned the human being and the bee as
an instance of two incompatible forms of life. Let us whip up our
imagination. Let us switch the example around. We have an encounter of, say,
a supercivilization of bees and a human civilization lagging behind by
millennia. Observers have already noted a certain functional difference in
the behaviour of our cosmic visitors: they cut ice, others transport it out
into space, a third kind establishes the atomic scheme of the model, and a
fourth type creates the model. Accordingly, there are differences in the
structural forms of the constructors: one kind stretches out like a band
saw, others blow up into an enormous flower-like something, still others
emerge as a red fog, and still others condense into a cherry-like jelly. The
question now arises: are we not dealing with a swarm, a highly developed
swarm of beings with their specific functional development? Incidentally,
life in a beehive is organized somewhat differently from the dwelling houses
on Park Avenue in New City or in Moscow's Cheryomushki district. Both as to
work and rest. But do they need rest? Have they any feeling for beauty? Have
they music, say? What do they do for sports? That's what I ask. Try to
answer those questions. It's like chess, like going through variants.
Difficult of course. But that is precisely what a grandmaster does.
"What strikes me as strange is why the grandmasters of science have not
yet asked themselves the most important thing of all: the reason for these
spacelings coming to visit us (agitation in the hall). Everyone has the
answer, I know, even two answers. Some-about 90%-are sure that they came to
earth for terrestrial ice, which might be a unique type as far as isotopic
composition goes in adjacent space. The minority, led by Thompson, believe
that this is a reconnaissance expedition with aggressive aims for the
future. Personally, I believe that the scouting took place earlier, we
simply missed it. This time, it is a powerfully equipped expedition
(apprehensive silence in the auditorium, only the buzzing of journalists'
tape-recorders is heard), but not of conquerors, gentlemen. They are
colleagues studying a form of life with which they are not acquainted.
(Shouts of: "But the ice?"). Wait a minute, you'll have your ice. That is a
sideline operation. The important thing is we ourselves. The highest form of
protein life based on water. Something seems to be hampering them here on
Earth in their study of this life. Perhaps the environment but maybe fear of
upsetting it. What is there to be done? Start with God, with the creation of
the world. (More noise in the hall, and shouts of "Shut up, blasphemer"). I
am no more a blasphemer than the father of cybernetics, Wiener. In his day,
there were those who screamed: 'This is of the devil!' He encroaches on the
second commandment! 'Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.. ..'
And now you are building robots and dreaming of an electronic brain. The
idea of constructing a model of our life in all its richness and complexity
is natural for these beings, for what is cognition if not modelling by means
of thought? And the transition from mental model-building to material
modelling is only one step of progress. There will come a time and we will
be doing that. Some even say when: next century. So why shouldn't some
supercivilization of cosmic beings have attained that much earlier, say by
one thousand years?"
The writer fell silent, took a gulp of soda water and stood thinking.
The audience waited. No one coughed, no one got uneasy, no one whispered. I
was never present at a lecture that was listened to with such reverent
attention. He was silent, and his glance, as if severed from everything
about him, seemed to be groping for some distant-distant thing, inaccessible
to all except him.
Then he started again ever so softly, though no one missed even so much
as the intonation: "If it is possible to build a model of life, it is
possible to carry it away; record it and then set it up somewhere else in
one's own vicinity and establish a nutrient medium for its development. What
is needed for this purpose? An artificial satellite, an asteroid, a planet,
a model of the terrestrial atmosphere and of solar radiation. But
principally water, water and more water, without which protein-based life is
an impossibility. Therein lies the meaning of transporting terrestrial ice
in quantities sufficient for supplying a whole planet. It is then that deep
within our galaxy (or perhaps even some other galaxy) there will emerge a
new world, not a repetition but a similarity, and one with the most subtle
kinship, for all the models of these spacepeople are flawless and precise
{Remark: "A cosmic zoo with humanlike at larger). Quite naturally, there
will be such as the person who just spoke {laughter). But I would correct
him, not a zoo but a laboratory. Or, to be more exact, a scientific
institute where human life would, in all its complexity of psychic, social
and everyday aspects, become the subject of a profound, careful and
considerate study. It would of course be studied. That was the purpose of
making experiments, but it would be studied and not meddled with, studied in
development and in motion forward and grasped in motion. And if once this
motion were comprehended, there might be some way of refining and
accelerating it. I think I've said all I need to. That is my hypothesis.
Object if you wish. Like any hypothesis newly born of the imagination, it
can of course be readily refuted. Yet I am pleased to think that somewhere
in the depths of the universe there lives and moves a piece of our life,
even though only a modelled, synthesized piece, but created for a great
idea-the closer understanding of two civilizations that are at present very
far removed from one another, the basis for this better understanding having
been laid here on the Earth. And if the space people return, they will
return with an understanding of us, they will be enriched by such a
comprehension, we will have given them something, and they will know what
need be given us on this mutual pathway towards perfection."
The writer bent forward slightly in a bow and left the lectern. Silence
followed in his wake, a silence much more eloquent than any storm of
applause.
We cut out something like a foxhole at the very edge of the plateau of
ice that had apparently been cut by a gigantic knife. The shiny pale blue
section that reflected just as blue a sky with not a cloud in sight fell
from the height of a five-storey house. Actually, this was not a cut but a
gouge, a broad excavation of about three hundred metres in diameter that
stretched beyond the horizon. Its ideally even and straight structure
resembled the bed of an artificial canal prior to entry of water. The empty
canal cut in a mass of ice came right up to a violet spot.
In the solid wall of cold blue fire it darkened like an entrance way or
an exit. Not only a snow tractor, even an icebreaker of medium proportions
could freely pass through it without touching the uneven pulsating sides. I
aimed my camera and spent a few tens of metres of film on it and then
switched out. The spot was like any other, no miracles!
But the wall of blue fire far exceeded all the wonders of the world.
Picture to yourself the bluish flame of an alcohol lamp illuminated further
from behind by the steady rays of the sun hanging just above the horizon.
The brilliant fire growing blue in the light, next to it another one, and at
a short distance the snaking outline of a third, then a fourth, and they all
merge into a Hat even flame in contact with one another along the faces of
some kind of marvellous flaming crystal. Now enlarge that a thousand-fold.
The flames race up a kilometre in height, bend inwards somewhere in the pale
blue sky, the facets blending into a giant crystal that does not reflect but
captures the full beauty of this subdued sky, morning and sun. It was a
mistake when someone called it an octahedron. First of all, it is flat at
the bottom like the plateau on which it stands; secondly, it has numerous
facets, not alike and not symmetric, but fanciful crystalline surfaces
beyond which a marvellously beautiful blue gas flows and flames.
"I can't tear my eyes off it," said Irene when we approached the
skating rink of blue flame. We came to within thirty metres, but couldn't
get any closer because one's body grows heavier and heavier. A vertigo
grasps you as if you are standing on a high precipice. The Niagara falls is
magnificent, but this is beyond all comparison. It's hypnotizing.
I tried to look at the violet spot. It was fairly common even trivial-a
sort of lilac satin drawn taut over an uneven frame.
"Could that be the entrance way?" Irene mused aloud. "The door to a
wonder."
I recalled yesterday's conversation between Thompson and Zernov.
"I told you it was the entrance way. Smoke, gas, all that sort of
stuff. They passed through it single-file. I saw it myself. And now we've
passed through."
"Not you, but a directed shock-wave."
"What's the difference? I have demonstrated to them that humans are
capable of thinking and of drawing conclusions."
"A mosquito finds an opening in a net and bites. What kind of proof is
that of any ability to think and draw conclusions?"
"You know, I'm fed up with this talk about mosquito civilizations. We
are a true civilization and not one of bugs and ants. And I think that they
comprehend as much. And that is already contact."
"Too costly. One person has paid with his life."
"That was an elementary accident. Perhaps the wiring was wet or
something like that. A lot of things happen. A worker with high explosives
is no gardener. I say that Hanter died due to his own lack of caution, he
could have jumped into the crevice; there was time enough. Then the
reflected shock-wave would have passed over him."
"They've reflected it again."
"The second one. The first got through, don't forget. But Hanter could
have made a second mistake by not calculating the direction properly."
"It would be more correct to say that they themselves calculated both
the force of the charge and the direction of the wave. And deflected it."
"Let's try something else."
"What for instance? They are not sensitive either to beta or gamma
rays."
"How about a laser or a jet of water? An ordinary hydraulic excavator.
In itself, any change of means of penetration to the violet spot and beyond
would, in our view, make them sit up and think. And that means contact. Or
at least the preliminaries of contact."
Thompson's new weapon was brought almost up to the very "spot"; they
were separated by no more than fifteen metres. The force field was not
apparent even in this microregion. From my photography site on top of the
plateau, the hydraulic excavator resembled a grey cat readying itself for a
jump. Its streamlined metallic surfaces shimmered dully on the background of
snow. The English mechanic was making a last check on some kind of clutch
and contacts. Two steps from him was an indentation cut in the ice the size
of a human being.
Irene was not with me. After the death of the demolition worker she
refused to be present at "suicides" organized and paid for by a maniac whose
place is in an insane asylum. The "maniac" himself, together with Zernov and
other advisers, delivered the signals from their headquarters by telephone.
The headquarters was located a short distance from me on the plateau in a
hut made of thermally insulated blocks. A corrugated metal tank rose up
alongside. Big chunks of ice were fed to this tank and the melt water
entered a hydraulic excavator. Technically speaking, the expedition was
conceived and executed flawlessly.
I too was ready with my camera aimed. Ready! Shoot! A flash of the
pencil-thin jet pierced the gaseous curtain of the "spot" without
encountering any resistance, and then vanished beyond it, as if severed at
the base. Half a minute later, the ultra-high-speed jet shifted, slashed
through the violet mirage at an angle and vanished again. Even in a
high-power pair of binoculars I could not detect the slightest change in the
structure surrounding the "spot", either in the diverging rings, or in the
turbulent or luminary flows, which might have been produced by the impact of
the hydrojet in an allied medium.
This did not last more than two minutes. Then, of a sudden, the "spot"
slowly crawled upwards, like a fly on a blue curtain. The hydrojet met the
scintillating blue, did not pass through it, but split into two parts, like
a jet of water from a fire hydrant crashing into a window. That very instant
the water built up into a whirling twister that was not deflected to the
side, but curled downwards to the ground. I am not positive about the
accuracy of my description. Specialists who later viewed the film found some
regularities in the motion of spray, but that's the way I saw it.
I continued photographing for a while, and then quit, figuring that for
science that would be enough and for the general public, more than enough.
But at that instant the water jet was switched off: Thompson, apparently,
had realized the experiment was pointless. Meanwhile, the "spot" crawled
upwards, ever upwards, until it vanished at aircraft altitude beyond the
curve of the enormous blue tongues curled inwards.
That was the most impressive thing I observed in Greenland-out of a
great number of impressive items. First the marvellous airport at
Copenhagen, the multilayered Danish sandwiches aboard the plane, and the
colours of Greenland as we approached from the air-the perfectly white ice
plateau to the north, the black level stretch off to the south, from which
fresh ice had been excavated, the dark red promontories of the coastal
mountain ridges and the blue of the sea that blended into the dull green of
the fjords. After that came a coastwise voyage on a schooner northwards to
Umanak. That's where Wegener's* (* A German expedition which in 1930-1931
explored the thickness of the ice cover in the central and northern regions
of the continent. Wegener died a tragic death during his last wintering over
season.) famous expedition started out on its last lap.
Already on the schooner "Akiuta" we found ourselves in an atmosphere of
general turbulence and unaccountable exhilaration that gripped the entire
crew, from the captain to the cook. Since we did not know a single
Scandinavian language, we wouldn't have learned a thing if our only
companion, Dr. Karl Petersen from the Danish polar station in Godhaven, did
not turn out to be a very communicative person with an excellent knowledge
of English.
"Have you ever seen our fjords before?" he asked over a cup of coffee
in the mess room. "No? The wind drives the sea ice even in July. There have
been ice fields up to three and even five kilometres across. In Godhaven,
half the harbour is covered with ice the year around. Caravans of icebergs
descend from the glaciers of Uperniwik and farther north. The whole of
Baffin Bay has been clogged up with them like a traffic jam on a highway. No
matter where you look, there are always two or three in your field of view.
That was before. Now, not a single one about in a whole day of sailing. And
notice how warm it is. Both the water and the air. Have you noticed how
upset the crew is? They're talking of going into commercial fishing. Herring
and cod are now coming from Norwegian waters in huge schools. From the air,
they say, you can even see them near the eastern fjords. Do you picture it
on the map? What is our eastern shoreline? Jammed both winter and summer
because all the Russian Arctic ice gathers there. Where is the Arctic ice
today? On Sirius? The 'horsemen' have fished it all out clean. Incidentally,
why are they called 'horsemen'? Those that have seen them say they're more
like balloons or dirigibles. I haven't had any luck that way, haven't seen
any at all. Perhaps they'll put in an appearance during our trip, or maybe
at Umanak."
But we did not encounter any of them either during the trip or at
Umanak. They appeared here before when they began excavating glacial ice
that was descending into the waters of the bay. Then they left behind them
an ideal canal bed cut out of the ice about three hundred kilometres long
back into the interior of the continental plateau. As if they knew that they
were going to follow their route from Umanak, where Wegener's expedition
crawled along on sleighs over gravel frozen into the ice. We had at our
disposal a marvellous highway of ice, broader than any speedway in the
world, and a crosscountry vehicle on caterpillar tread ordered from
Dusseldorf. Our crew was Antarctic, but the vehicle was smaller than the
"Kharkovchan-ka" and neither as speedy or as tough.
"There'll be trouble enough with it, you'll see. One hour of travel,
two of waiting," said Vano, who had just received a radiogram from
Thompson's headquarters stating that two other Sno-Cats of the expedition
that had started out 24 hours ago had not yet arrived at their destination.
This is driving us mad. There's nothing to buy here. Syrup in place of
sugar. Lucky, we brought flying boots, otherwise you'd have to wear
camiki-Eskimo footwear of dogfur-with grass. Every previous Greenland
expedition had worn those unpleasant boots. Vano was completely indifferent
to the surrounding scenery painted so remarkably by Rockwell Kent. Tolya
even looked at Irene reproachfully for her admiration of the Gothic in the
Umanak mountains and of the colours of the Greenland summer, which for some
reason reminded us of Moscow summers in the countryside.
"Clear as daylight," Tolya explained, "the line of cyclones has
shifted, no snow. July winds. Don't whine Vano, we'll get there without
mishap."
But adventures began hardly three hours after we got started. We were
stopped by a helicopter sent by Thompson. The Admiral was in need of
advisers and wanted to speed up Zernov's arrival. Martin piloted the
helicopter.
What he related was fantastic even for us who were used to the
mysterious doings of the "horsemen from nowhere".
On this helicopter, Martin made a survey of the latest trick of the
cosmic visitors-blue protuberances merging at high altitudes in the form of
a multi-facet roof. As always, the rose clouds appeared suddenly and from
nowhere, as it seemed. They passed over Martin without paying any attention
to him and vanished in the violet crater somewhere near the edge of the
cover. That is where Martin headed his craft.
He landed on a violet pad and did not find any support. The helicopter
kept on descending, freely penetrating the lilac-grey cloudy medium. For
about two minutes visibility was nil, and then Martin's machine found itself
hovering over a city, a large modern city but with a limited horizon. The
blue cupola of the sky covered it, as it were, like a hood. There was
something familiar in the city, as far as Martin could see. He descended a
bit and then piloted his craft along the central street that cut the city in
two from one end to the other and recognized it at once-Broad-way. This
seemed so preposterous that he rubbed his eyes. No, this was Broadway all
right. Forty-second street over there, then the station. A bit closer was
Times Square, to the left the canyon of Wall Street. He could even make out
the church, the famous millionaire church. Martin was able to pick out
Rockerfeller Centre and the Huggenheim Museum and the enormous towering
Empire State Building. From the observation platform, tiny figures of
tourists were waving handkerchiefs, down in the streets below were
multicoloured automobiles crawling along like ants. Martin turned in the
direction of the sea, but something prevented him from advancing. Then it
dawned on him that it was not he who was piloting his craft-invisible eyes
and hands were doing the job for him. For another three minutes or so he was
taken over the river, which appeared to be cut by the cupola of the sky.
Inside, the blue radiance gave the appearance of a summer sky illuminated by
a sun that had just sunk below the horizon. Then he was over Central Park,
had almost reached Harlem, but at that moment he was being pushed upwards
through a denseless lilac-coloured cork into the natural atmosphere of the
earth. That is how he got back into the normal sky together with his craft,
above the city now hidden in a blue flame. At once, he sensed that the
helicopter was in his control and ready for action. Martin then went in for
a landing at the site of the camp of the expedition.
We listened avid for information and did not interrupt with a single
word. Then Zernov, after some thought, asked:
"Have you reported to the Admiral?" "No, I haven't. He's queer enough
as it is." "Are you positive you saw everything well? No mistake? Nothing
confused?"
"You can't mistake New York. But why New York? They never even came
close to it. Anyone ever read about a red fog in New York?" "Maybe they did
it at night." I suggested. "Why?" objected Zernov. "We already know of
models built up from visual samples, from imprints of the memory. Do you
know the city in detail?" he asked Martin.
"I was born there."
"How many times have you walked the streets?"
"Thousands of times."
"That's it. You walked about, observed and got accustomed. Your eye
recorded and your memory stored away the recordings. They went through the
recordings, selected the ones they wanted and reproduced them."
"Does that mean that that is my New York, the way I saw it?"
"I'm not positive, they might have modelled the psyche of a number of
New Yorkers, including yours too. Kind of a jigsaw puzzle. Large numbers of
little pieces of cardboard are put together to form a picture, a portrait, a
scene. And that's the way they did it: thousands of visual impressions are
assembled into something that actually exists, but as viewed and remembered
by different people in different situations. I think that the Manhattan
reconstructed in the blue laboratory of the cosmic-men is not exactly the
true Manhattan. In some way it must differ from the real thing. In details,
in points of view. The visual memory rarely portrays things exactly as they
are, it creates. And the collective memory is still more material for
creativity. Jigsaw puzzle creativity."
"I'm not a scientist, sir," said Martin, "but that is surely
impossible. Science is not capable of explaining it."
"Science..." and Zernov sniggered. "Our science here on earth does not
yet allow for the possibility of a repeated creation of the world. But in
the distant, the far distant, future it will finally provide for such a
possibility."
After Martin's story, everything appeared to me routine and common
until I saw and filmed the blue protuberances and the violet spot. The fresh
wonder of the cosmic people was just as extraordinary and inexplicable as
all the earlier ones had been. Those were the thoughts that clamoured for my
attention as I returned to the camp.
As I approached, Irene came running all excited.
"Yuri, Thompson wants to see you, hurry up. The Admiral has called all
the members of the expedition. A Council of War."
We were the last to arrive and immediately sensed the atmosphere of
curiosity and apprehension. The urgent, extraordinary nature of the meeting
as it came straightway after the experiment indicated that Thompson was
undecided. He who was so used to making decisions alone was now overanxious
to get a collective view. He now wanted the opinion of as many people as
possible.
The meeting was conducted in English. Those who didn't understand sat
closer to their neighbours for a running translation.
"The experiment has been a success," Thompson began without any
introductory words. "They have already gone over to the defensive. The
violet entrance way has been shifted to the upper facets of the cupola. In
this connection I will try to use something new. From above and from the
air."
"A bomb?" someone put in.
"And what if it is?"
"You haven't got any nuclear ones," Zernov remarked coldly. "And you
haven't any conventional high explosives either. The best you can do is a
plastic bomb to blow up safes or cars. Whom do you think you will frighten
with such toys?"
The Admiral shot a brief glance at him and parried:
"I am not speaking of bombs."
"I advise you to tell him, Martin," said Zernov.
"I know," the Admiral put in. "Directed hallucinations. Hypnomirage.
We'll try someone else, not Martin."
"We have only one pilot, sir."
"I do not intend to risk the helicopter. I need parachutists. And not
simple ones, but..." he screwed up his mouth looking for the right word,
"say, ones that have already had dealings with the spacemen."
We exchanged glances. Zernov was out because he was no sportsman. Vano
had hurt his hand during the last trip. I had parachuted twice in my life,
but without any pleasure either time.
"I would like to know whether Anokhin would be able to perform that
operation," Thompson said.
I was angry.
"It isn't a matter of being able to, but one of wanting to, Admiral."
"You mean that you do not have that desire?"
"You guessed it, sir."
"How much do you want, Anokhin? A hundred? Two hundred?"
"Not a cent. I do not get pay for the work I do in the expedition,
Admiral."
"It's all the same, you obey the rulings made by your superior."
"According to regulations, Admiral, I photograph what I consider
necessary and provide you with one copy of the photo. What is more, a
cameraman does not necessarily need to know how to jump with a parachute."
Thompson again screwed up his mouth and asked:
"Maybe someone else will do it?"
"The only jumping I ever did was in an amusement park in Moscow, from a
tower," Dyachuk said in Russian, looking at me reproachfully, "but I'll risk
it."
"I will too," Irene added.
"Don't try to outdo all the big boys," I cut in. "This is no operation
for girls."
"Nor for cowards either."
"What's the talk about?" Admiral Thompson asked after patiently waiting
for our dialogue to end.
I got in ahead of Irene:
"About forming a special unit, Admiral. Two of us will jump: Dyachuk
and Anokhin. Anokhin will be in charge. That's all."
"I see I was not mistaken," the Admiral smiled. "You are a man with
character, just what we need. Okay. Martin will pilot the plane." He looked
round the room. "That will be all, gentlemen."
Irene rose and at the exit turned round:
"You are not only a coward but a provoker too."
"Thanks."
I did not want to argue, but what I definitely did not want to do was
to allow her to get into what might possibly be another St. Disier.
We were briefed before the flight as follows:
"The aircraft will ascend to two thousand metres. It will come in from
the northeast and will descend to the target to an altitude of two hundred
metres, right over the entrance. There is no danger. The only thing under
you will be a stopper made of air. Everything will be all right as soon as
you get through it. Martin did not freeze and he was able to breathe
comfortably, so I think you will too. Good luck."
The Admiral looked each one of us over and, as if in some doubt, added:
"If anyone is afraid, he can refuse. I do not insist." I looked at
Tolya. And he looked at me.
"Getting nervous," Tolya said in Russian. "He's already relieving
himself of the responsibility. How are you?"
"And you?"
"Ironclad."
The Admiral listened to the unfamiliar language and did not utter a
word.
"We exchanged some impressions," I said dryly. "We're ready for the
mission."
The aircraft rose from the plateau of ice and headed east gaining
altitude. It skirted the pulsating protuberances. Then banked and took a
sharp turn back, falling all the time. Down below was a boiling blue sea
that did not heat. The violet entrance way was clearly visible-a
lilac-coloured patch on blue velvet-and seemed as flat and as hard as the
ground. For a moment it was frightening-jumping from such a low altitude. We
wouldn't be able to collect our bones afterwards, as the phrase goes.
"Don't be afraid," said Martin. "You won't get bumped. It's rather like
the foam on beer, and coloured too."
We jumped. First Tolya and then I followed. Both parachutes opened up
without mishap, Tolya's a rainbow of colours underneath me. I saw him go
into the violet crater and slip through as if it were a swamp-first Tolya
and then his colourful umbrella. For another moment it was again
frightening. What was beyond the murky gaseous shutter-ice, darkness, death
from impact or lack of air? I was still guessing when I plunged into
something dark and not very perceptible, something without temperature,
without odour. Only the lilac colour turned a familiar red. Absence of
sensitivity to the medium passed into body sensations as well-I couldn't see
my body nor feel it, as if I had dissolved in the gas. The sensation I had
was that only my mind, not my body, only my consciousness was floating in
this incomprehensible crimson foam. There was nothing at all about, no
parachute, no shroud lines, no body, nothing, I wasn't even there.
Then all of a sudden, as if struck in the eye- the blue sky and a city
below. At first indistinct and then barely distinguishable in the haze; then
the city came closer and we could see it more clearly. Why did Martin call
it New York? I was never there, and had not seen it from an airplane, but I
did have an idea of what it should look like. This one was quite different,
no Statue of Liberty, no Empire State Building, no skyscrapers, no
canyon-like streets. No, this was definitely no Bagdag over the Subway that
O'Henry had described, no City of the Yellow Devil penned by Gorky, and no
Iron Mirgorod as described by the poet Yesenin. This was a different city,
and one much more familiar to me, though I still couldn't make it out. But I
had the feeling that I would in just a minute, just a minute!
And I did. Beneath me was an enormous letter A, constructed in
three-dimensional space. The lacework of the Eiffel Tower could be seen
rising into the sky. Away from it to the right and left was the twisting and
turning-greenish hand of the Seine River, a mix of sparkling silver and
green lawns in the sun. The green rectangle of the Tuileries Park was sure
proof that this was real and not illusory green. To many, rivers seen at a
height appear to be blue, but to me they are green. This green Seine twisted
to the right to the Ivry and to the left to the Boulogne. I immediately felt
where the Louvre could be, and the turn of the river and the island Cite.
The Palace of Justice and the Notre Dame cathedral appeared from above like
two stone cubes in hazy outline, but I recognized them. I even glimpsed the
Arch of Triumph on the famous square from which a dozen streets radiate.
"How was it that Martin had gotten things so wrong?" I asked myself. I
am no expert on Paris and had seen it from an airplane only once, but I
concentrated as I observed the city before landing. And the same day I went
over what I had seen by telling Irene my impressions as we walked about the
town. We didn't have time to cover much ground and see so very much, but
what we did I firmly fixed in my memory. Then an idea came to me: "Perhaps
Martin was not mistaken after all. He simply saw New York and I was
witnessing Paris. In both cases, it was ahypno-mirage, as Thompson had
termed it. But why did these beings need to impose all manner of
hallucinations? Based on place of birth? That is where the strongest
memories are sited, yet I was not born in Paris, but in Moscow, and what I
see is the Eiffel Tower and not the Kremlin. It might be that the "clouds"
choose what has been recalled from the recent past; yet Martin, so he says,
hasn't been in New York a good ten years. What was the logic behind these
two different movies they had us view? And again doubts plagued me: maybe,
after all, this is no film, no mirage or hallucination. Could it be that in
this enormous laboratory whole cities are actually reproduced, cities that
had made great impressions on the cosmic beings. And how are they
reproduced, materially or mentally? And for what purpose? Is it to
comprehend the city as a structural form of our being? As a social unit of
our society? Or simply as a living and multifaceted, vibrant chunk of human
life?
"It's all crazy," said Tolya.
I turned around and saw him hanging next to me, two metres away, on the
taut shroud lines of his parachute. Hanging it was, not falling, or floating
or being carried by the wind; simply fixed motionless in that strange
unmoving air. Not the slightest breeze, not a single cloudlet in the sky.
Only pure ultramarine of the heavens and beneath us a familiar city. There
we were at an altitude of a kilometre and a half, suspended inexplicably
from rigidly fixed shroud lines, motionless. We were in air, for we breathed
freely, at least as freely as Camp Eleven near the summit of Mt. Elbrus.
"Martin gave us the wrong impression," Tolya added.
"No, he didn't," I said. "He was telling the truth."
"Then he made a mistake."
"I don't think so."
"Then what do you see?" Tolya was worried.
"What do you see?"
"Why, the Eiffel Tower, naturally. I can surely recognize that."
So Tolya was looking at Paris. The hypothesis of hypnohallucination
specifically tailored to the subject under study had to go.
"Still this is not Paris. It's not the real thing," said Tolya.
"Nonsense."
"Where do you find mountains in Paris? The Pyranees are far enough away
and the Alps too. So what are those?"
Turning to the right I saw a chain of wooded slopes rising to
snow-capped rocky reddish peaks:
"Those might be Greenland hills," I suggested.
"We're inside a cupola. There are no mountains round about. Did you see
any snow-capped peaks? There aren't any left anywhere on the Earth."
I took another glance at the mountains. Between us and the cupola lay a
blue strip of water. Was it a lake or a sea?
"What's that game called?" Tolya asked suddenly.
"What game?"
"You know, when you piece together pictures and things."
"Oh, a jigsaw puzzle."
"How many employees were there in the hotel, not counting the
visitors?" Tolya began to muse. "About thirty. Now were they all Parisians?
There must have been a few from Grenoble. Or from some place where there are
mountains and the sea. Everyone has his own Paris and an added piece of his
hometown. Now if all that is put together it will not produce a model.
Anyway, not a true one."
He repeated Zernov's idea, but I was still doubtful. Then it's a game
of building blocks. Today we build, tomorrow we disassemble. Today it's New
York and tomorrow it's Paris. Today Paris with Mont Blanc and tomorrow with
Fujiyama. Why not? Surely what has been created on the earth by nature and
man is not the limit of perfection. Could it not be that a fresh creation of
things would improve matters? Could it be that this laboratory is searching
for the typical in terrestrial life? Maybe the typical is here being
verified and tested? It could easily be that what for us is a mix-up is for
them the goal they are seeking.
Finally, I was thoroughly confused. The bulging parachute hung above me
like the roof of a street cafe. The only thing lacking were tables and
bottles of lemonade. I noticed it was hot. There was no sun, but it was
stiflingly hot.
"Why don't we fall?" Tolya asked suddenly.
"Didn't you ever finish school or did they kick you out of the fifth
grade?"
"No, really, I'm serious."
"And I am too. You've heard of weightlessness, haven't you?"
"One floats in a state of zero gravity, here I can't even move. And the
parachute is stiff as a piece of wood. What's holding it?"
"Not what, but who."
"Why?"
"Just being polite. Hospitable hosts are giving a lesson in manners to
unwanted guests."
"Then what's Paris here for?"
"It might be the geography they like."
"Yes, but if we suppose they are reasonable. .." Tolya exploded.
"I like your 'if'."
"Quit the joking, I'm serious. They must have some purpose."
"That's right. They record our responses and this conversation too, for
instance." .
"You're impossible," was Tolya's concluding remark and then-we were
jerked from our position by a gust of wind and found ourselves flying over
Paris.
At first we descended some two hundred metres. The city was close and
every detail clear-cut. We could see black smoke with greyish streaks
billowing out of factory stacks. Big barges on the Seine and motor boats of
all colours plying the waters. A worm crawling along the Seine turned into a
train approaching the Gare de Lyon, and the roiling blur on the streets
turned into a colourful mosaic of summer suits and dresses. Then we were
thrown upwards and the city began to recede and melt in the distance. Tolya
went up higher and vanished together with his parachute in the
lilac-coloured plug. In another two or three seconds I whirled into it too.
Then the two of us, like dolphins, swished over the facets of the blue
cupola. In the process, neither of our parachutes changed its shape at all,
as if unseen and unperceivable air currents were carrying us along to the
white sheet of the glacier.
We landed more slowly than in an ordinary parachute descent, but Tolya
fell and was dragged along the ice. While I was getting out of my shroud
lines, Thompson and the others from the camp were already approaching. His
jacket was unbuttoned, he was in boots that he hadn't had time to lace up,
without a hat-he looked the perfect hockey coach.
"How was it?" he asked imperiously.
I never liked that tone.
"Everything's normal," I said.
"Martin signalled that you both had emerged from the plug."
I shrugged. Why had they kept Martin in the air? How could he have
helped us if we had emerged from the plug in a difficult situation?
"What's it like there?" Thompson asked finally.
"Where?"
(You'll have to wait, Mister, you're going to have to wait.)
"You know where, come on, out with it."
"Yes, I do at that."
"Well?"
"It's a jigsaw puzzle."
We returned to Umanak. That is, our Antarctic expedition plus the
engineering and scientific personnel of the expedition and two tractor
vehicles-our quarters-and a caravan of sleighs with all the equipment. The
helicopter had already returned to the Arctic Base in Thule, and our
commander together with the apparatus that could be put on board an airplane
had already taken off for Copenhagen.
That is where the last press conference took place at which he refuted
all his official and private statements about the successes of the
expedition. In the radio shack we tape-recorded for posterity that gloomy
exchange of questions and answers from Copenhagen. We cut out all the noise
and laughter and remarks and left only the backbone of queries and replies.
"Perhaps the Commander will first start out with an official
statement."
"It will be brief. The expedition was a failure. We were unable to
bring to successful completion a single scientific experiment. I was not
able to determine either the physical or chemical nature of the blue light,
nor was I able to find out anything beyond it. I refer to the space enclosed
by the protuberances."
"Why?"
"The force field surrounding the region of the luminescence proved
impenetrable to our technical facilities."
"You speak of the facilities available to the expedition, but is it
impenetrable to all the potentialities of terrestrial science?"
"I do not know."
"Reports have appeared in the press, however, concerning the
possibility of penetrating it."
"What exactly do you mean?"
"The 'violet spot'."
"We saw several such 'spots'. It's true that they are not protected by
a field of force."
"Did you try to enter them?"
"Yes, we did. And we couldn't do it. In the first case, a directed
shock wave, in the second an ultra-high-speed water jet."
"What were the results?"
"No results at all."
"How did one of the members of the expedition perish?"
"That was a simple case of negligence. We took into account the
possibility of a reflected wave and warned Hanter. Unfortunately, he did not
take advantage of available covering."
"We have heard that the pilot of the expedition was able to get inside
the cupola. Is that true?"
"Yes, it is."
"Why does he refuse to speak? Open up the secret."
"There is no secret. It is simply that I have not allowed any release
of information concerning our work." "We don't understand why. Please
explain."
"Until the expedition is dismissed, I alone am responsible for all the
information."
"Who, besides Martin, was able to get beyond the limits of the blue
light."
"Two Russians, the cameraman and the meteorologist."
"How did they do it?"
"By parachute."
"How did they get back."
"The same way."
"Parachutes are for jumping downwards, not upwards. Did they use a
helicopter?"
"No, they did not make use of the helicopter. The force field stopped
them, ejected them and landed them."
"What did they see?"
"Ask them when the expedition has been dismissed. I am sure that all
that they saw was a hypnotic mirage."
"For what purpose?"
"To embarrass and frighten mankind. To instil the idea of the immense
capacity of their technology and science. To a certain extent, I was
convinced by Zernov's speech at the Paris Congress. All of their
superhypnosis is a manner of contact, but the contact of future colonizers
with future slaves."
"Were the pilot and parachutists also embarrassed and frightened?"
"I'm not so sure. Those boys are tough."
"Do they concur in your opinion?"
"I have not insisted that they do."
"We've heard that the pilot saw New York and the Russians saw Paris.
Some say that that is a true model, like Sand City."
"You've already heard my opinion. What is more, the area of the blue
light is, after all, not large enough to build two cities like New York and
Paris in it."
ZERNOV COMMENTS: "The Admiral has misrepresented the facts somewhat. It
is not a question of construction, but of reproduction of visual images that
the cosmic men were able to record. It's like a montage photograph. Certain
things are selected, reviewed and fitted together. It was simply that our
boys and Martin had the luck to get into the laboratory through the back
door, so to speak."
That's the way we passed the time on the way to Umanak. It was the most
remarkable road in the world. We haven't got the machines that could produce
such a smooth surface. Still, the tractor vehicle came to halt because one
of the treads needed fixing and the engine began to act up. Vano did not