Classics fantasy – 4. A. Belyaev
comfort, as in a compartment of pullman cars.
The captain in the cabin disposed. From the coast kicked off. The steamship slowly and carefully began to turn. Azores looked through a big window of a cabin at the coast. Trawlers, the lit windows of the pickling shop, the high, overgrown low birches opposite coast of Kola Bay flashed… Speed of the course increased. Rolling was not.
The captain transferred control to the assistant and came to a cabin. Both are Azores and the captain Makovsky – not bad knew English. As the hospitable owner, the captain gave some tea. The conversation was started. Azores was interested in the underwater TV.
– You saw groupers? – the guest’s captain asked.
– Of course. Big fish with the red eyes which are getting out of orbits – Azores answered.
– And why they red also get out of orbits?
Azores shrugged shoulders. The captain grinned and continued:
– It because grouper very timid fish; having appeared in a trawl, he dies of a fright, and from a fright of an eye at it get out of orbits… I had to hear similar explanations from old fishermen more than once. Certainly, it is the fable. The grouper lives at a depth of many tens of meters. And it began to come across in our trawls only recently when we learned to lower trawls deeply. And here, when the perch is snared and he is quickly pulled out on a surface where pressure is several times lower than for what the perch is adapted, eyes it are poured by blood and leave orbits.
– It is very interesting – Azores noticed – but at what here the TV?
– And here at what. A perch – tasty, useful, fat fish, and it is deeply very difficult to find her! We float by the sea, somewhere under us the most enormous schools of fish – hundreds, thousands of tons float. But we do not see this fish and after many days of heavy swimming often we come back home with empty holds. The people wait from us for fish, and we have a failure behind failure. Frustration of the plan, the administration tears and throws, seamen are nervous…
– But you often lower a trawl and find fish – Azores objected. – I saw what rich catch of the same perches gets to your trawls.
– And how many they do not get, nobody sees it – the captain interrupted. – To one trawler will have the luck to come across a jamb, to another is not present. Game of a blind case. Where it is good? There are days when we tens of times lower a trawl and pull out only seaweed, crabs and stones. The trawl often clings to soil, is torn about sharp stones. We do not see a bottom surface. We catch blindly. However, our scientific researches help us. Perseus surveyed a seabed, studied the course of fish, water temperature at different depths and something other. It helped, but nevertheless the case is not defeated. We live Gulf Stream, and it is whimsical. Sometimes it changes a current a little: sometimes happens warmer, sometimes – colder. And fish visits our coast, disappears, otkochevyvy there where water is warmer. Where last year fish was caught perfectly, today – any catch. And it only because for thousands of kilometers from us, in the Gulf of Mexico, the summer was colder usual or in Iceland the winter became rough. We called to the aid the sonic depth finder and radio lot. The principle of operation of the sonic depth finder is familiar to you? We send under water a sound wave, well, say, explosion of the boss or blow of a bell down. The sound wave reaches a bottom, is reflected and comes back. Knowing sound speed in water, it is possible to determine depth. If the sound comes back quickly, so the sound wave is reflected not by a bottom, but a big congestion of fish. This way is extremely productive and useful, but also it has shortcomings.
Radio lot showing depth on speeds of reflection of a radio beam, and the sonic depth finder everyone “are in own way blind”. To them all the same from what radio beams or a sound wave are reflected. For example, the sonic depth finder showed smaller depth in such place. You think: the sound was reflected from a fish jamb. You will lower a trawl – a uniform small fish. The sound was reflected or from the sunk ship, or from the underwater rock. Other business when we have an opportunity to see what becomes in sea depths. Then we will double, we will treble a catch.
– And the TV will help to reach it?
– We hope.
After tea the captain went to the cabin. Azores remained alone. It began to put the notes in order.
Began to stir the trawler stronger.
“We take to the open sea” – Azores guessed, threw a coat and came to the deck.
Strong wind, sleet, splashes… Strongly swung the trawler.
“And so day and night, in the summer and in the winter, during a calm and during a storm fight against the sea lasts – Azores thought. – It would seem, incredibly hard work. But what at them at all cheerful, cheerful faces! Jokes, laughter, songs…”
The trawler safely cut gray-haired waves, heading for the Bear island. Ginzburg’s assistants in heavy sea boots, in leather jackets ran from a sphere to the captain’s cabin, checking serviceability of wires. The screen of the TV was installed in the captain’s cabin.
Azores approached a sphere.
“Like a stratosphere balloon gondola” – he thought.
– In this sphere there is a radio station? – he asked a question Ginzburg.
– No – that answered. – The image is transferred on wires. In a sphere – batteries of dry elements, accumulators, the clockwork.
– Accumulators for projector lamps?
– Only for a photo cell. Arc lamps of a searchlight will receive energy from power plant of the trawler.
– Means, it is not absolutely a broadcast? – with some disappointment Azores asked.
– And even at all not a broadcast – answered, grinning, Ginzburg.
– Why?
– Because water strongly absorbs radio beams. The radio wave bearing the image dies away, without having reached the surface of the sea. We assume to lower our TV on depth of two hundred-three hundred meters, at most four hundred. At such distance it is easy to manage also wires. It is more reliable and simpler.
At last all preparations were finished. The heavy sphere was carefully fastened to the crane of the steam winch and began to be lowered in water.
– Now it is better to observe not here, and on the TV screen – Ginzburg told the Spaniard.
Azores hurried to the captain’s cabin.
Ginzburg placed the screen in a deep box which so protected it from light that it was possible to watch the screen, without turning off the electric light. Thanks to it the captain could watch both a compass, and the card, and the TV screen.
– However where screen? – Azores was surprised.
It was comprehended by new disappointment when the captain showed it a box, a little more match.
– There’s nothing to be done – the captain told – Ginzburg produced the device by a handicraft method. It is the trial TV. If it equals hopes, then our central radio laboratory will manufacture fine devices. If only… we saw something.
Azores looked in a box, but saw nothing.
– Means, there is no fish – the captain consoled him.
– And it is possible, your underwater eye does not see fish? – Azores asked.
– Perhaps – the captain answered. – But Ginzburg assures that he already saw something on this primitive screen.
Painful, long minutes passed. Azores kept the eyes glued from the screen. Suddenly he exclaimed:
– Look! The screen comes to life!
Makovsky looked and