Читать книгу Classics fantasy – 4 - A. Belyaev - Страница 3

On a long table – a black sphere with a diameter of one and a half meters. Its one side is cut off. The wide window comes to Kola Bay. There masts and pipes of trawlers of fish trust are seen. However nobody looks out of the window. Eyes of all are turned towards a black sphere. Twelve Komsomol members, members of a circle on studying of radio engineering, a close ring surrounded a table. The majority – students of sea technical school, a part – radio operators from trawlers.

Motya Ginzburg, the designer, the inventor and the head of a circle, the radio operator of the trawler “Sergo Ordzhonikidze”, patting a palm on a black metal surface of a sphere, asked with a smile on a clever thin face:

– You see an eyeball…

Kruzhkovtsa laughed:

– Pretty apple!

– What has to be an orbit to contain such apple!

– The sea will be an orbit. There is enough? – Motya asked. – It is a radio eye by means of which we will see what is created in sea depths.

– TV! – one of standing near a table exclaimed.

As a matter of fact, Motya did not invent anything or almost anything. It happened to it to see photos of the American and German TVs adapted for observations at a sea depth. However, it were photos. But the principle of operation of the TV is known. It was necessary to think over independently some design features of the underwater TV. And Motya as if successfully coped with it: the small skilled TV worked regularly. Why not to work also to it, big? It is almost ready. To insert into a round opening a lens, near it – a lamp of searchlights, and all. In a word, hour two installation works, and the TV can be omitted in water.

– To look what becomes at the bottom of the sea? – the first-year student of sea technical school asked.

– Exactly. To look, how are sea crabs – picked up, indulgently smiling, his neighbor who considered himself the person skilled.

– Well, and it is interesting – Ginzburg seriously answered.

– Let’s catch groupers?

– Yes, yes. Today – the first test. The trawler leaves an hour zero-zero. By this time we will manage to finish – Ginzburg answered and ordered: – And well, boys, for work!

Listeners left, and five people, led by Ginzburg, remained and started business.

– And you know who will be with us on trial fishing? – Motya asked the companions. – Blasco Azores, Spanish communist, correspondent. It arrived to us recently to examine new Murmansk.

Azores left hotel of trust at midnight and went on descent to trawling base. The Spaniard shrank in the autumn coat. Icy midday wind hit into a face. The sleet fell.

“Amazing region! – Azores reflected. – Here all on the contrary: “solar nights”, “night days”. In these regions people choose apartments as windows not on the South, and on the North because a north, flying by over a warm current

Gulf Stream, heats up, and southern – it is cooled over an ice plateau of the tundra. Severe land, heavy climate. But you do not feel all this, even you do not notice – the person is so interesting here and put him”.

Below fires of trawling base burned. Highly cases of fish-processing shops rose. Winch chains rattled. The pier had trawlers. One unloaded, others prepared for departure. Conveyors scurried about: to warehouses – with fish, from warehouses – with salt. Azores quickly passed in the end of pier to the big trawler. There was an outflow, and the board of the trawler rocked almost level with pier. Azores ascended aboard and rose to the captain’s cabin. The captain Makovsky welcomed it and asked to pass in the cabin. Azores entered.

The cabin of the captain consisted of two tiny rooms: office bedroom and drawing room. In the first there was a small written little table, above it – a big oil lamp (on a case of damage of electric lighting), and two chairs attached to a floor by chains (on a rolling case). Now chains drooped, and chairs could be moved. In a niche, behind a curtain – a bed, nearby – an entrance to bathing “room” in which, probably, it was hardly possible to take off clothes. In “drawing room” – an angular sofa and a little table before it. On a little table – a tea service, cookies…

The red varnished tree, the shining copper parts, tooled leather, glass, light, heat, heaters, fans… Here it was silent and with 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 saw the inexpressive, blurring spots on a reddish-yellow background of the screen. They moved diversely and dropped out of sight, again appeared. One of them were allocated on the screen dark, others with lighter frame.

– This is fish – Makovsky quietly told.

Azores stared hard at a magic box.

– Well? – the entered Ginzburg asked.

– Look itself – the captain answered.

That only looked and cheerfully told:

– Is.

– But why it is so vague? – Azores asked.

– Because fish it is far from the TV. We, obviously, about contour borders.

Azores already heard the term “jamb okonturivaniye”. When Ginzburg turned away to give the order by phone to the assistants, Azores looked at the screen again and screamed, joyfully surprised. He saw expressive outlines of the fish who flashed sideways and disappeared in the left corner of the screen. After the first the second appeared, then the third image of fish, more and more…

– To lower a trawl!

From the deck the excited voices, noise, a winch roar were distributed. Sailors developed the huge trawl hanging on a mast and lowered it in water. It lasted several minutes. Trawling fishing by means of the TV began.

In forty five minutes the trawl was lifted. He was full of fish and nearly broke from weight. Azores and Ginzburg ran away down, on the deck. Seamen shouted “hurrah” to the inventor.

– To swing, swing! – they shouted. Then seized Motya and threw.

– Devils! Already swings. Still overboard drop! – the happy inventor shouted.

The captain stopped this game, but did not make the prevention for misconduct. He understood mood of crew and itself was glad not less sailors.