Читать книгу WRESTLING MATCH. Space history - В. Спейс - Страница 2

A quick review of the results did not give. The reasons for the sudden cessation of communication with the Earth could not be found. The ship, driven by autopilot, was moving at a calculated rate to the asteroid Patroclus.

– «And maybe the unit of the radio is out of order.» – I thought the astronaut, snapping the toggle switch of a spare radio station. Noise and crackle of the air in the headphones and nothing else. Leonid turned on the emergency communication system with the Earth – unsuccessfully. The link has disappeared for unknown reasons. Anxiety

a cold touch touched the tips of my toes, crawled under the protection of the suit. Cold sweat dripped on his forehead. The astronaut inhaled the full lungs of the air-oxygen mixture and exhaled with a noise. Feel better a little. Thoughts spun around what happened. I checked the autopilot again and again, snapped the seat belt locks and floated over the seat. He was unconsciously attracted to the «window». Yielding entirely to this feeling, Leonid swam to the glass window. Behind the «window» a yellow glow reigned, entirely covered with black dots. The astronaut blinked his eyelashes in surprise. A deep wrinkle on the forehead smoothed for a moment, from what he saw, then re-designated the section of black thick eyebrows. Eyes focused on vision.

– «Scary, something. Is it really a hallucination?»

He raised his hands to the glass of the spacesuit, intending to rub his eyes. Dry blow of gloves on the transparent glass of the spacesuit brought Leonid back to reality. The glow of the space behind the porthole did not disappear, and the black dots remained firmly in their places.

– «All the way around, the stars – darkness, darkness – yellow light. What is it?»

He asked himself the same question a thousand times. The glow of the space behind the porthole did not disappear, and the black dots remained firmly in their places!

– «It’s all the other way around! It’s all the other way around!!! What is it?»

In the meantime, the ship’s systems flawlessly performed their functions. Devices in the normal course deviations no. In place of the fear infused banal anger. And it is necessary for this to happen at the very time when traces of the activity of intelligent beings were revealed.

And now we must return, interrupt the expedition and go home.

– «What to do, the phenomenon is incomprehensible to me, whether it is a deviation of the mental order, which is excluded, or of cosmic origin, the Earth will probably order to return, and the point!!!»

Leonid swam to the chair. With a jerk, he threw the body into a comfortable seat in front of the ship’s control console. With a sharp movement he snapped the seat belt locks, clutching himself to the chair. He sat for a minute, weighing all the pros and cons of what had happened. Then reluctantly, the right hand reached for the handle of the ship’s left hand control.

quick and accurate movement turned off the autopilot. The ship shook slightly – a sure sign of manual control. Leonid began to turn on the brake engine systems one by one, skillfully maneuvering the jet propulsion, changing the direction of flight…

The ship was moving toward Earth. Communication still did not work. Behind the porthole, the space was still burning with a yellow glow.

After orienting the spacecraft in space, the cosmonaut set the course for the autopilot and switched on its systems. Now the spacecraft will land at the cosmotron, from where it took off. After five hours of flight, the Krazimov was looking for a pilot navigation system near-earth station-pier, where the ships were refueled

fuel and went long distances to the stars. But, the locator screen was empty. Leonid irritably turned off the video review. The screen went blank.

– «Apparently all the radio wave equipment does not work. Then how does the ship withstand the course?»

Again an incomprehensible contradiction of the phenomenon. Leonid, utterly exhausted by mental confusion, closed his eyes. The measured buzz of the instruments reassured, gave confidence. The mental equilibrium gradually returned to him. Leonid decided to wait for a meeting with the Earth.

In moments of impatience. In moments of waiting for a speedy resolution, time is especially slow and painful. Seconds turn into hours, minutes into eternity.

In order to somehow divert his impatience, Leonid began to remember the whole a complex of works carried out by him on the study of small planets. Stage by step, he restored in memory a chain of components into a single integrity, from which the outlines of the disappeared planet appeared. And here’s the final touch – was the civilization or not? This question hung in the air unresponsive. The expedition did not take place. Thoughts persistently returned to reality, consciousness fixed the time since the appearance of the phenomenon – six hours.

– «How slowly time flows. Before landing still, the same?».

He remembered Sobinov.

«Leonia, I categorically insist on my participation in the flight.» He said before the start. His gray eyes stared at the relentless commander with persistence. Leonid was firm: «You know that this is dangerous. Well, let me die, you can complete

started by Understand you, stubborn!».

Krazimov hardly persuaded the assistant to stay and, apparently, acted fairly.

A sigh of investment broke out from the mouth of an astronaut. He caught himself thinking that memories took the form of confession in front of his conscience. A bad sign. No, Krazimov was not superstitious, but somewhere in the depths of his heart a treacherous feeling of doom was beating. Trying to get rid of him, he began to recall funny incidents from his life, the history of loved ones and friends…

Time has «sped up» its run. The tired consciousness took memories with a balsam of sedatives, and the cosmonaut imperceptibly fell asleep. He dreamed of blue sky expanses … «Here, high in the sky, he soars on a light hang-glider. Near the stork, far below the Earth. The bird, spread its wings wide, swaying slightly, swims away into the distance. Leonid changed the angle of flight and rushed after. Stork approached. The spread wings are already clearly visible, the wind is lost in them and from this «angry», it whistles in feathers more and more… The hang-glider rushes onto a white lively lump with a huge colored cloth.» The heart turned away with effort, slightly hitting the bird’s wing. The stork glanced in dismay at the saw and -. «Do not worry, silly creature, I will not hurt you!». said the pilot with tenderness. A sudden rush of an oncoming stream threw a stork on a hang glider. In an instant she was frightened, breaking her wings, huddled against the fabric. Leonid was horrified to see how rapidly the Earth was approaching … «He jumped awake. Unusual silence reigned around. His ears were ringing from rapidly circulating blood. The cold blinking of the color scale of the indicator lights on the devices calmed him a little. Reality screwed into the consciousness of this ringing with silence, he finally realized that he had landed, and all the navigation systems of the ship were automatically turned off. In the excitement, he tore off his headset, threw off the tenacious ligature of the seat belts. Now only gravity kept it. he walked toward the porthole as quickly as he could. The bright light of the sun splashed into his eyes, blinded him for a moment. smoked. From the charred trunks the wind carried smoke and steam over the tops of giant ferns and horsetails, as well as from the opposite «window.» He was extremely excited and rushed to the exit. I was looking forward to how slowly the hatch of the automatic transitional pressure chamber closed behind it.

Finally, when the bright rays of the sun gushed through the doors of the exit hatch, he realized himself…

– «Headset?». But the air of the camera instantly mixed with the atmosphere rich in thick aromas emitted by an abundance of bright huge and diverse flowers of bizarre forms that are seen here and there, hiding the panorama of the primeval forest. Leonid was already breathing this fragrant infusion of a strange atmosphere, noticing only that the stuffiness squeezed his chest, that he was breathing with difficulty and that consciousness would not leave him, and he resolutely stepped onto the retractable ramp. Clumsily down. At the foot of the ship, I looked around, eagerly grabbing the open mouth with tart intoxicating odors. His temples pounded. Catching his breath, he moved to the nearest plants that had survived the jet stream of the landing engines. The giant horsetail rose high, like a ten-story house. The impression was as if Leonid had diminished in scale, one hundred to one, and now all the grass had turned into a giant jungle. The unfamiliar vegetation and atmosphere created the impression of an alien planet. But This feeling passed with a detailed inspection of the primeval forest. So it is, the plants correspond to the era of the Mesozoic era on Earth.

– «Is it possible that I was in the epoch that was on the Earth forty million years ago?!!!»

Terrible thoughts began to swarm in the astronaut’s consciousness, tormented by conjectures, interfering, concentrating, interfering with the realization and appreciation of what happened.

«Some kind of absurdity! Where does this forest come from? Where does all this come from?!» Confused thoughts. Leonid frantically began to recollect flight by stage, stage by stage. The flight was normal, there were no failures and failures of the ship’s systems, everything seemed to be normal, and he was fine. A glance slid across the shield of individual medical control on the left sleeve of a spacesuit. The pressure is slightly higher than normal, the pulse is one hundred and twenty beats per minute, the body temperature is normal. The body is overloaded, but there are no changes in it. He again returned mentally to the analysis of flight. How did you find an inexplicable phenomenon?!

– «Oh, yes, during communication with the Earth! And before that? Yes, it seems, it was during sleep. So it is, he slept according to the schedule, there was an hour of rest.» – Leonid looked up. Through the crowns of greenery, the sky appeared in tattered lead clouds, there were distant peals of thunder. Thunderstorm was approaching. Gusts of wind had already burst into the tops of heavy primeval ferns and howled there. Their thick trunks, like the columns of the Egyptian temple, stretched towards the sky. Somewhere nearby there was a crash of a falling primeval tree.

– «That seems to be the way coal is formed.» – Leonid thought. «Maybe this is some kind of lethargic dream?» He touched the glove to his cheek and pinched himself painfully. Completely crushed by what was happening, he glanced gloomily toward the ship.

A strange numbness enveloped his whole being. He was like a robot: without thoughts, without feelings, without desires. He went to the ladder without understanding why it is doing. In the meantime, among the support posts of the ship, it was already waiting for him to lurk huge, reptile, sheltered, as with armor, with thick sheets of scales. The astronaut’s sudden collision with this monster plunged him into a stupor. Fear gripped the movement, and the sense of approaching death paralyzed, making it impossible to assess the situation. Meanwhile, a row of yellow foul-smelling fangs with thick filaments of poisonous saliva hanging down, a multi-toned forge hammer, slammed a centimeter from poor Leonid’s head. Instinctively, he pulled his head into his shoulders and automatically took a step to the side. But, bound by a bulky spacesuit and an atmosphere that was inadequate for breathing, fell to the ground, covering his head with his hands. He heard the earth tremble under the power of his bony paws, how, after suffocating, the animal bent over him and

closed his eyes in anticipation of the inevitable. The first seconds flew like a whirlwind, but there was no getting rid of the realities of the nightmare. He still heard the terrible roar of the lizard, he felt how, in impotent rage, the animal threw the clods of earth mixed with the torn roots of plants in claws, but was invulnerable. He sat down on the ground in surprise, to immediately cover his head with his hands, defending himself from the terrible mouth that was spread over him, which had seized his upper body in an instant. There was a clear clang of fangs locked in furious rage. Cold body swept, but the sensation of pain was not. The gnashing of canines was heard in the chest area, but there was not even a tickling hint of touch. Leonid grew bolder and carefully opened his eyes. The enraged animal attacked him, plunging the sharp hooks of the teeth into the spacesuit and body. The astronaut, suddenly realized that he was invulnerable, that the prehistoric world does not perceive him as a material whole. He felt unwell, he rose to his feet under the mad gnash and clang of the teeth of a foul mouth and long and hard to vomit until he felt some relief. Then, slowly, trying not to look at the assembled flock of mixed prehistoric monsters that had already begun to «sort things out» among themselves, they dragged themselves to the ship directly through ghostly visions. It was only near the ramp that he suddenly found that his feet, shod in his spacesuit shoes, were buried ankle-deep in the sand, not feeling his resistance, as if he were walking on the hard asphalt surface of the spaceport. At the bottom of the stairs lay a charred fragment of the trunk. Having touched it with the hand, there is no sensation of the object. The hand slid inside the barrel as in the air.

– «I am in a ghostly world!» Thought with curiosity. «Maybe I have been at home for a long time already?!…»

Inspired by the hope of the impossible, he climbed into the ship’s command compartment, having previously been disinfected in the transition box and left there a spacesuit and overalls. Sitting in the armchair in a light cotton jumpsuit, began to analyze the situation.

– «In my position, a drowning man clutching at a straw, so am I»

It was clear that the version: «… Maybe I’m already at home?!…» is meaningless. Here something is wrong, then you should thoroughly understand what is happening. Encouraged by the upcoming search for the causes of the phenomenon, Leonid first decided to sleep properly. But the terrible roar of the beast behind the hull of the ship prevented concentration. He hesitated for a moment, then turned on the laser protection imitating the glare of a burning forest in a raging conflagration. Following this came the sound of breaking branches and trunks of the primeval forest. Beasts are invulnerable to the beam, but frightened by bright flashes of a laser gun rushed away from a mysterious and outlandish creature, frozen in the middle of the clearing and so viciously glittering with its only and terrible «eye».

When the ringing silence reigned, Leonid was forgotten restlessly.