Classics of a fantasy. A. Belyaev
addressing already Vinkler, Zander continued:
– I think, to our Hans Finger will be reasonably useful to live
month – another in a glass sphere. Observations will not take away from it too
it is a lot of time, and there it will be able to increase the mathematical knowledge. Without
mathematicians in our business it is impossible to step also to a step.
Zander talked some more minutes to Vinkler about affairs and got up.
The audience was ended.
– Well? Did not expect such bath? – Vinkler when they left from asked
houses. – You should sit in solitary confinement.
Month-other in solitary confinement! This prospect at all not
smiled to Hans. He wanted to get acquainted somewhat quicker with the city, from it
strange laboratories, extraordinary constructions. It not all
saw.
– To all time will come, – Vinkler consoled it. – Today you will carry out
put more “on freedom”, tomorrow, well, since morning you will bypass, you will examine
what did not see yet: laboratory where experience action of various
substances, other laboratory in which ways of cooling are tested
working part of the rocket – walls snuffled or дюз. For tomorrow it is enough.
– What will I do in the conclusion?
– Oh, your existence will be very peculiar! You on yourself have to
you will be to test and on you it will be checked whether the person can exist
in the conditions of artificially created circulation of substances. As soon as you
you will enter a sphere and you will receive the necessary explanations, a hermetic door
will slam for you. But there is phone, and we will be with you
to keep in contact. You will take with yourself necessary books, textbooks,
notebooks.
– But what I will eat there?
– Perhaps, you should sit a little on vegetarian food. You
you will eat those plants and fruits which grow in
to sphere greenhouse. To your services there will be an electric stove, a teapot.
– And water?
– Tomorrow you on everything will receive the answer. All allocations of your organism
will be processed. Allocations of intestines will go to fertilizers;
allocations of a bladder, having passed through the soil, through plants, gases,
refrigerators, filters, will turn into the purest water. Water will be given also
the cooled breath gases emitted by you, plants and “companions on
to the conclusion” – animals. You will have to look after and behind them – to feed,
to give to drink. Plants will give oxygen, they will absorb exhaled by you
and animals carbonic acid. In a word, if calculations are right, you will have in
sphere all necessary. I will visit you. If you it is nasty itself
you will feel, we will stop experience. Create to yourself the notebook or
notebook in which write down the major formulas, data from the theory
jet flights, help data, calculations. It is Zander’s council. Such
the notebook very much will help you.
Hans nodded and asked:
– By the way, tell whose portrait hangs in Zander’s office? His father?
Vinkler burst out laughing.
– Yes, in some way father. It is also the famous scientist-self-educated person
Tsiolkovsky, patriarch of a zvezdoplavaniye. Not “father”, and rather “grandfather”
his numerous followers: Roberta Esnopeltri, Robert
Goddard, Herman Obert, Walter Gomann, Tuberculine test, Debus and our Leo
Zander. I already spoke to you about this remarkable person. Modest
the provincial teacher, he managed to rise by “space” height
theoretical thought. This Columbus of the star worlds theoretically planned in
the main all next way of creation of interplanetary messages. Laid
to people road to the sky. In one thousand nine hundred third it published
work in which stated all theoretical calculations of space flights;
but the Russian imperial government helped nothing to it.
– So it is its works stand on the shelf under a portrait?
– Yes. Zander does not leave them.
This day ended with an effective show: from the mountain platform,
turned to the ocean, the first trial was started up in twelve o’clock in the morning
the rocket without people, with recording automatic devices. It had
two meters of height it was also strengthened almost steeply, with an easy inclination in
side of the ocean.
At experience there were Zander, Vinkler, Hans, Blotton and a little
the engineers working with Zander. Approximately a rocket deviation from a vertical
it was almost not noticeable, and Blotton told:
– And suddenly it will fall to us on the head? Zander, smiling, answered:
– It is a lot of years ago, in the seventeenth century, the monk Mersen and
the military Pti conducted such experiment: they delivered to a down vertically as
it seemed to them, and shot, observing whether the kernel on the earth will return. They
several times repeated this dangerous experiment. But as at them it did not appear
there is enough art to force a kernel to hit them directly the head,
they considered themselves to have the right to conclude that it hung in mid-air where and
long time will stay, undoubtedly. Not only at that time, but also now
it is seldom possible to find the gun which is perfectly calibrated for such experience
and it is difficult to establish it absolutely vertically. Well, and now depart.
I launch the rocket.
All departed and became silent waiting. In the dark sky stars flickered.
The new moon shone almost over the head, and it seemed that the rocket
goes to a lunar travel. Burst explosion. Thunder peals,
reflected by rocks, shook air. The fiery strip cut through
space. For a moment the mountain platform as though contacted the sky
golden bridge. Then the comet created by people picked up the tail,
turned into an asterisk and grew dim in height. Zander looked on
the dial of a chronometer and, counting seconds, spoke:
– Upper bound of the troposphere… Went beyond a stratosphere…
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