Classics fantasy – 12

“… but the invention our laboratory of the new compact accumulator opens the big horizons in the most numerous scopes of electric energy including in diving business. Imagine a small box – like match. And here this box which you can easily put in a waistcoat pocket (if you already got a vest) contains the electricity reserve sufficient in order that throughout several days to move the car with speed limit. “Power plant” in several honeycombs of horsepowers is hidden in your waistcoat pocket. You can be lit, be heated by this energy week, can rotate it mill millstones, set machines, tractors in motion. I decided to use the accumulator to diving business. You gave me the idea! I will create absolutely new type of the diving device.

You probably know that the oxygen necessary for breath, in the nature more than is enough. In the atmosphere of its 23%, in crust – 47,2%, and in the seas and oceans – 85,8%, that is are more, than in air and crust, combined. This oxygen should be extracted only from water. And it is possible to take it by means of electrolysis. By means of the accumulator the diver will receive air from sea water, decomposing water electricity. All “laboratory” for getting of oxygen will be located behind the back in a box with size no more marching satchel. But it is not enough. The same accumulator will give current and for a strong lamp in one thousand and more candles. The lamp will be located over the head of the diver and to light to him underwater vicinities on several tens of meters. At last one more. In the satchel you can have not one, but two, three, ten accumulators. You “will soak up” electricity of the whole power plant in accumulators. You will become walking power plant. And you will be able to use electric current in one direction: for rotation of the small screw which will allow you to float with big speed. You understand what prospects of an ego opens? You will become the real sea inhabitant, you will float tens and hundreds of kilometers under water. You will not need to have any base with which you would be connected. If you want, you will be able even to lodge under water. Your plan about underwater agriculture interested my many friends scientists. They consider this plan quite feasible and promising. Now I conduct experiments, I design the new diving device. When everything is ready, I will write to you. Report how there are at you affairs with the organization of underwater plantations. This thought so interested me that, perhaps, I will not keep and I will arrive to you to try my diving suit.

M. Guzik”.

Vanyushka lowered the letter on knees and looked at listeners. On them the letter, probably, made a great impression, especially on Volkov who understood in it much more, than Konobeev. An impression the fact that scientific people know about cultivation of underwater cabbage in Leningrad and that they find this business feasible and good made on Makar Ivanovich. At all the mood was lightened. Konobeev slapped on knees huge lapishcha and told a deaf bass favourite:

– However!. Leaves so – it continued after a pause – that things are shaping up. A stop behind money.

– Makar Ivanych, you said now that nothing will leave this business.

– In Leningrad people more cleverly than our manager sit – Konobeev answered.

– Now it is only necessary to obkhlopotat this business – Vanyushka told. – We will go to Dalkraysoyuz, to Amurselsoyuz we will be pushed, all regional institutions by oblazy. And if here we do not find support, we will reach Moscow. On such business money has to be. And we will find them! In flat cake we will break, and we will get!

Also settled upon that.

From this day began for underwater farmers of “purgatory”.

In one regional establishment they were accepted by the gloomy person wearing spectacles. He listened to them, smoking a cigarette and pinching from time to time a redenky mochalny small beard. Sometimes raised the right eyebrow that at it expressed surprise, sometimes hardly an edge of lips and folds in corners the century considerably grinned. Vanyushka decided to act directly this time and stated all plan about underwater agriculture, about the underwater plantations spread by divers about grandiose figures of production of cabbage. He did not decide to tell only about underwater tractors. But also what he told was enough to force the gloomy person to cheer up. At the end of Vanyushki’s report the gloomy person showed even the curve teeth bared by a smile. It is necessary to do it justice, he was able to listen.

When Vanyushka ended, wiped the sweated forehead and took seat on a chair as the defendant, the told last word, the gloomy person, without ceasing to smile, corrected points and told:

– So! – The voice it with hoarseness did not foretell anything good. – Grandiosely! Perfectly! – It dragged on a cigarette and, having changed tone on a business tongue twister, unexpectedly began to pour words as peas: – But whether it is necessary to make all this underwater fuss, my dear? Whether you what space is occupied by the Far East region know? – The gloomy person rose and pointed to the map hanging on a wall. – Here, admire!

– Saw! – not really kindly Vanyushka answered.

The gloomy person looked on him strictly as the teacher on the pupil who interrupts the teacher and continued:

– The Far East occupies the space in two million seven hundred seventeen thousand seven hundred square kilometers. You understand what is a large object? For an example it is possible to tell that on the surface of the Far East region Italy, Belgium, Romania, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Denmark, France, Germany keep within moreover there will be a surplus almost in half a million square kilometers. And in all region it is less population, than in one Moscow! If density of Dalkraya was such as, say, in Poltavshchyna, that is about seventy five people per square kilometer, then in our free places it would be possible to place hundred seventy eight million five hundred sixty thousand people – it is more, than in all USSR! Is where to disperse! Lands plenty. We still far did not develop this huge site of the terrestrial land. Plow, spread plantations, you sit down kitchen gardens how many for your soul it is necessary. Arrange state farms, collective farms, farms. Whether it is simpler, than to climb under water to spread a sea cabbage? – And the gloomy person victoriously looked at Vanyushka over points. Vanyushka did not give up.

– But unless it contradicts one another? – he asked. – Let whom want plows the earth, and we want to plow an ocean floor because it will give us export goods, currency. We wish to use natural wealth of edge. We…

But the person wearing spectacles was against “fantastic projects”.

Friends left with anything. How many still such debates, skirmishes, a talk they before, at last, the necessary sums were released had to conduct! Worker correspondents wrote correspondence, rustled, “brawled”. Volkov and Vanyushke had to visit even Moscow.

Chapter 6

IN “MORE-OKIYANE”

The most difficult and boring period of the organization came to an end. Further business began. In May there arrived Guzik with several diving suits. This arrival was the whole event in life of underwater farmers. Test of devices was coming. Guzik, Volkov, Konobeev and Vanyushka left on the boat. The ocean was quiet, weather excellent.

Friends had a cheerful, joyful mood. Having settled down on the deck of the boat, Guzik showed devices and offered explanations:

– This – a “summer” suit. It is arranged as the Japanese diving suits for small, rather, depth – meters to seventy. Summer I call it because all it consists only of a nanosnik with points, a lamp yes of a satchel laboratory where the accumulator turns sea water into oxygen. Having put on such mask the person and having bound a satchel for a back, it is possible to fall by a bottom naked that, of course, is pleasant only in warm season when also ocean water is warm. In such “suit” from a nose and points you will have full freedom of movement. It is very valuable to underwater works. These devices I brought a couple so far, but it is possible to make them much in a short space of time.

– Let’s outdo Japanese! – cheerfully Vanyushka told, trying on a mask. – Well! Very well! – he laughed loudly, glancing at himself in a small pocket mirror. Konobeev stretched a lapishcha to the second device. But Makar Ivanovich was waited by disappointment. The rubber nanosnik covered only the tip of his nose – the myasist Makar Ivanovich’s nose was very big yes.

– Not with your nose a diver to be, Makar Ivanych! – Vanyushka joked. – To seven god bore this nose, to one got. However, if to cut off from kilograms, then, maybe, and will enter.

– However there is nothing to scoff – Makar Ivanovich sensitively answered. – And there is nothing bad. It is told: the nosovity, the krasovity.

– Do not mourn, Makar Ivanovich. I to you will make the device by the special order. Rubber also will be enough for your nose – Guzik calmed the old man.

And the announced Vanyushka already sverzitsya overboard in the mask, dived, but came up outside soon, having nearly choked. He did not get used to inhale oxygen a nose yet, and to exhale carbonic acid a mouth. It was necessary to get used to the device.

– You will manage to swallow sea water still! – Guzik shouted to it. – Climb, listen further!

Vanyushka was lifted aboard.

– Harafo, only water in a mouth climbs! – Vanyushka told.

– It is a “winter” suit – Guzik continued the explanations. – It is, actually, usual diving inert, except for the fact that supply with oxygen comes from own “gas generator”. But here, however, there is one more small improvement – he modestly declared. – In matter – a suit lining – there are metallic threads which are connected to the accumulator. Threads can heat up and give heat. In such suit it is possible, without being afraid to catch cold, to fall to ice waves of the Ledovity ocean or to rise by height in ten thousand kilometers over the Earth’s surface.

At last the last – the rigid device for underwater depths – was continued by Guzik. – In it it is possible to plunge on three hundred meters and more. It is supplied with especially strong lamps. I do not know whether this device is required to you. Already “and depth of fifty meters the bottom opustevat, and at a depth of four hundred – there are no large seaweed. Sea flora is concentrated on the narrow strip going not further in one hundred and fifty nautical miles from the coast. And all infinite extent of a bottom of the seas is farther and deeper is the desert deprived of any vegetation.

– Yes, but the rigid device can be necessary for us for the research purposes. Eventually the ocean floor is studied far not fully – Volkov objected.

That time on a bottom of the sea Volkov and Vanyushka plunged, and cob-nosed Konobeev only with envy looked at them and grunted with such upset look that Guzik felt sorry for the old man, and he promised to produce a nanosnik in the handicraft method here, on the place, in the temporary laboratory.

And already in the following trip Konobeev with pleasure pulled a black rubber tire on the pear-shaped nose. In big points, with a huge black nose, with a gray-haired small beard and long moustaches it looked extraordinary comical.

– Directly water! – Vanyushka shouted, rolling with laughter.

– Even more important, the Neptune – sea god! – Volkov responded, echoing Vanyushke.

– Neptune Ivanych! Great!

And followed Konobeev this “Neptune Ivanych”.

* * *

Fishermen and hunters live in the world of a case, good luck, risk, an adventure, surprise. It leaves a special mark on their psychology. The everyday situation deprived of sharp experiences, surprises and risk seems to them boring and fresh. They need an eternal game with fire, dangers; they need novelty and sharpness of impressions. Such is there was also an old man Konobeev. Hunting feelings and instincts over the years did not die away, and inflamed in it stronger. His gray eyes under shaggy black eyebrows came to life, lit up sparks when he had to fight against waves or a wild animal. And now the new pleasure, untried feeling, perhaps, the whole chain of new adventures was necessary to it. Poor Marfa Zakharovna! It was waited by new tests, a new strip of loneliness. When it was asked where the husband, she only hopelessly waved a hand.

Konobeev should fall by an ocean floor, that ocean which ruthlessly absorbed fishermen, their networks and production; to go on a visit to fishes, to look how they live-live there. In a diving half mask Konobeev felt like the fantastic sea tsar. Guzik, worrying a little, explained to the old man as it is necessary to inhale and exhale air, but Konobeev waved away with such look as if it all life went in this half mask and was born at an ocean floor.

– However I will not choke! – he spoke. – Here only one is bad: it is impossible to smoke there. Make favor, Mikol, think up somehow that I with a tube could go. – Guzik, laughing, promised to think up.

Konobeev well remembers how he for the first time in a shirt and ports (so the old man considered more decently – he did not recognize pants) fell by an ocean floor. Water was cool and pleasantly pricked the tempered body, forcing to move quicker, as on a frost. With breath Makar Ivanovich is an excellent swimmer and nyrets – coped soon, starting up a stream of bubbles through a mouth. During a calm from a surface it was easy to determine by these bubbles where there is a diver.

Having plunged into the mysterious twilight of a seabed, Makar Ivanovich from pleasure sniffed and walked in depth. Lit a lamp. On light was going to look at incredible quantity of fishes on an unprecedented show. They were curious not less people.

“Fishes, fishes, how many! – Konobeev thought, coming to fishing delight and being enough them directly with hands. – What disappointment, did not occupy network! However now you will not leave me!” – And he walked on the underwater wood of seaweed, surrounded with hordes of the fishes shining sides at turn as silver knives. It was so amusing, extraordinary and beautifully that Konobeev suddenly, having forgotten where he is, began to guffaw with all the might lungs, having started up so many bubbles on a surface that sitting on the boat seriously were disturbed for the old man. However, bubbles soon began to appear regularly, but they were removed further and further. They died it is visible soon.

Konobeev for the first time walked several hours in a row, almost till the sunset. Returned excited, shining.

– Well and life under water, however! – he told. – And why people on the earth live, but not in the sea-okiyane?