A. Belyaev - Classics fantasy – 5

– Yes, my friend – addressed Lesley Johnson – not one you test isolation from this new world. I was mistaken in many calculations.

I decided to subject myself to anabiosis to have an opportunity to observe the heavenly phenomena which occur in several decades. I wanted to resolve the scientific task most difficult for those times. And what? Now all these tasks are resolved long ago. The science made enormous discoveries, revealed during this time such secrets of the sky about which we did not dare and to dream!

I lagged behind… I infinitely lagged behind – with grief he added after a pause and sighed. – But nevertheless I, seem to me, is happier than you! There – and he pointed to a dome – time is estimated in millions of years. That our centuries mean to stars… You never, Johnson, observed the star sky in the telescope?

– Not before was – Johnson waved a hand.

– See the Moon on our eternal satellite! – And Lesley spent Johnson to the telescope.

Johnson looked in the telescope and involuntarily screamed from surprise. Lesley laughed and told with pleasure of the expert:

– Yes, such tools did not know our time!.

Johnson saw the Moon as though it was from it at distance of several kilometers.

Huge craters lifted the tops, the black, gaping cracks plowed deserts.

Light, bright to pain, and deep shadows gave to a picture extraordinary relief look. It seemed, it is possible to give a hand and to take one of moonstones.

– You see, Johnson, to Long such what it was and thousands years ago. On it nothing changed… For eternity seventy five years – are less, than one moment. Let’s live for eternity if the destiny tore off us of the present! Let’s plunge into anabiosis, into this dream without dreams that, wakening once a century to observe what is created on Earth and in the sky.

In two hundred-three hundred years we, perhaps, will observe life of animals, plants and people on planets… Through thousands of years we will get into the mysteries of the most remote times. And we will see the new people less similar on present, than monkeys on people…

Perhaps, Johnson, future inhabitants of our planet will reduce us on degree of the lowest beings, will shun relationship with us and even to deny this relationship? Let so. We are not sensitive. But we will see such things of which the people who are becoming obsolete the term put by it life do not dare to dream… Unless for the sake of it you should not live, Johnson?

At our request me and Mere is subjected to anabiosis again. You want to join us?

– Again? – with horror Johnson exclaimed. But after long silence he deafly said, having hung the head:

– All the same…

– Fatally wounded lion fell upon me and died. All poured by its and blood, weakened by wounds and fight, I choked under a shaggy belly of a dead animal. Only in the morning companions found me and hardly live took from under a corpse of a lion and brought round. But nevertheless I am grateful to it: if it so well did not cover me, I would be torn to pieces by the hyenas who ran together to the battlefield. That is why I also told that the dead can save life live – finished the story Is wild.

– An interesting case – Mike told, throwing dry branches in a fire.

– Yes, but there are cases better – Nick responded, and his face came up from a gloom, having sparkled glasses of points. – If you are still located to listen, I will tell you an interesting case of hunting for a tiger.

– Are not located at all – Mike muttered.

But Nick probably did not catch and, having drawn near is closer to a fire, briskly told:

– There now and perfectly. It was I do not remember in which year: in the nineteenth…

– Or in the twenty ninth.

– Do not disturb, Mike. You do not want to listen, you can go to bed. And so, it was in the nineteenth or twentieth year» I traveled around Africa and decided to hunt on a tiger.

– On a tiger, in Africa? – with doubt Dick asked.

– Do not disturb it, It is wild – melancholic Mike told, clapping the lit-up rod on a fire.

– Yes, on a tiger, in Africa. What here improbable?

– I spoke to you, Is wild, do not disturb it. The tiger was a traveler too. He came from Asia, jumped through the Red Sea to take a walk in Africa, and by the way decided to get acquainted with Nick.

– I sat in the wood – Nick continued. – There was a bright moonlight night. The sky blue to blackness, and on it stars about a plate. In the silence of the night I heard careful, furtive steps of an animal and squeezed more strong my skorostrelny rifle «фильд No. 2», forty-eight-charging – the invention of my friend Richard Fild. Heard about it? Cannot be! Where you were? The invention to them did the gun «фильд No. 1» then to noise for the whole world. He, you see aimed to invent the gun of extraordinary force which had to operate nearly with energy of disintegration of atoms.

Mike poorly moaned.

– I was at its first experience with «fildy No. 1». We went with it to the island Stek-Skerri [75] and decided to make test of the gun in the deserted area, on the ocean coast. Fild set the object at height of a breast of the person and shot. I expected a thunder, but heard only whistle. I did not manage to take several steps to look on a target as suddenly Fild fell with easy groan, being covered with blood. Someone’s bullet pierced it through. Ahead of us was nobody. Survey of a wound, wider on a breast, than in a back, convinced me finally that the criminal shot behind. At Fild as all outstanding people, had envious persons and enemies.

«What bastard was able to do it!» – I indignantly exclaimed, lifting my poor friend.

«Be more careful in expressions – Filvd answered with a weak voice. – Really you do not understand that I nearly killed myself?»

«How it could be? Ricochet? The bullet returned back?»

«On the contrary, it flew all forward, with lightning speed flew about the globe and struck me behind…»

I was so stunned that, having put on wounded Fild’s earth, began to become straight slowly. At this moment at me the hat which is brought down by someone’s invisible hand fell. I lifted it and saw that the hat is shot. The bullet made one more flight around the globe and nearly killed me.

«What will be now?» – I perplexed asked, being hasty settled on the earth.

«Nasty – Fild answered. – The bullet has to strike everything on the way and many troubles will do. I did not calculate force of my gun. Now the bullet will rush around Earth as the small satellite until friction force about air gradually reduces its speeds; then it falls to the Ground».

«But really it punched everything that was on its way: trees, at home, rocks?»

«Obviously» – Fild answered, fainting from blood loss.

Fild was right. The bullet really did many troubles. It pierced thousands of people on the way, killing one to death, crippling others. And only frightened others: smashed a cup in hands of some old woman who was peacefully sitting at a fireplace or punched a hat, as at me.

In the woods the bullet killed a set of animals, and its way was noted by corpses which lay as the beads passed by an invisible thread. The globe was as if divided into two half by an invisible barrier through which it was impossible neither to pass, nor to pass.

It was necessary to put a fencing on all way of flight of a bullet. For iron and highways carried out in the place of their crossing by «a deadly ring» tunnels or built bridges. But it was especially bad at the sea. Red protective buoys specified the forbidden place. The ocean steamship message happened to change of passengers who were transported under the dangerous place on submarines… In a word, the bullet gave awfully much a lot of trouble. At scientists the heads swelled, engineers went as mads, inventing means against a bullet. What only they did not think out! Obstacles from concrete, steel boards, and the bullet as if did not notice these obstacles and had no intention to slow down flight. Eventually it was decided how doctors speak, «to be osumkovat»: concluded in metal tubes all its trajectory – all way of its county. Then someone suggested to fill a tube with water or oil to increase resistance. Poured. But from friction liquid evaporated, and pipes burst, and a bullet – though that! From it alloy it was cast.

– What did all this come to an end in? – Dick became interested.

– Only one Fild could help a trouble, and he helped as soon as became independent after wound. «Like cures like – he told. – It is necessary to send a counter bullet».

– Well?

– Well also sent. The bullet crashed into a bullet, and the bullet passed through a bullet, having shattered into the smallest parts. These parts flying in opposite directions would be dangerous too. But, fortunately, from blow both bullets changed flight, and splinters were carried away in heavenly space towards Big Dipper.

– Also wounded her in a paw? – seriously Mike asked. – But you, apparently, began to tell about hunting for the «African» tiger, and terminated hunting for Big Dipper. What did your hunting for a tiger terminate in?

– The gun misfired, I rushed on a tiger and tore to pieces it to pieces – Nick angrily answered.

– Collecting exactly at noon on this glade.

Joseph Morel nodded to two satellites, corrected a road bag behind the back and, wagging with a net for catching of insects, went deep into a thicket.

It were possession of palm trees, ferns and lianas.

Morello carelessly sang a cheerful song, sharp-sightedly peering through glasses of points at greenish twilight of the rainforest. The young scientist was in the best mood. He was lucky in life. Morel was not forty more years old, and he already had professor’s rank. Its work about spiders received an award, and now it received a scientific business trip to Brazil, in the low-studied riverheads of Amazon, this paradise for entomologists.

«The science knows two hundred thousand species of insects. Charlz Read assumes that their not less than ten million. Every year not less than six and a half thousand new types are described. It will be not bad if six thousand more opened by Joseph Morel increase this year. What magnificent monument from insects will be erected to himself by Morel!» – professor was carried away in ambitious dreams. And his dreams were quite feasible. In this wood there would be enough material not for one «monument». Motley pieces of future greatness of Morel in the form of beautiful multi-colored butterflies rushed before it as snow flakes. It was only necessary to aggregate these flakes sparkling all colors of the rainbow – and scientific immortality of Morel is provided. His sharp-sighted eye of the scientist already noticed several unusual forms of butterflies, but Morel did not hurry. Among this inexhaustible wealth he was able to afford luxury to be legible. Besides he was interested in spiders more, and here they met a little.

The more went deep the Morello into a thicket, the shadows became more dense, the wood is more silent. Huge trunks of palm trees as columns, left highly up, closing light of the sun the weaved leaves. Vegetable parasites – orchids and bromeliya stuck to shaggy trunks of palm trees. And below young palm trees and ferns scattered the fanlike leaves, forming a dense underbrush. And from a palm tree to a palm tree, from a trunk to a trunk were stretched as snakes, uzlasty lianas – these wire entanglements of rainforests. In places the bright yellow beam of the sun cut through the greenish twilight of the wood, and in gold of beams the red wing of a parrot flashed, diamond sparkled flown by a humming-bird, the flame lit an orchid flower.