IV. UPSIDE DOWN
I do not know whether long I was unconscious. My first feeling was that I breathe fresh air again. I opened eyes and very much was surprised, увидав the electric bulb strengthened in the middle of a floor, near the place where I lay.
– Be not surprised – I heard a voice of professor Wagner. – Our floor will become a ceiling soon. How do you feel?
– I thank you, better.
– Well, so get up, it is enough to lie! – And he took me by hand. I flew up up, to a glass ceiling, and very slowly fell down.
– Go, I will acquaint you with my underground apartment – Wagner told.
All room consisted of three rooms: two dark, lit only by electric bulbs, and one big, with a glass ceiling or a floor, I find it difficult to tell. The matter is that we endured, obviously, that moment when the attraction of Earth and centrifugal force made our bodies absolutely weightless.
It extremely complicated our travel on rooms. We did the most extraordinary pirouettes, clung to furniture, made a start, jumped, flew on tables, sometimes helplessly hung in mid-air, giving each other hands. Only several centimeters divided us, but we could not overcome this space while some smart trick did not bring us out of this unstable balance. The things shifted by us flew together with us. The chair «soared» among the room, glasses with water lay sideways, and water almost did not pour out – it gradually flowed round external walls of glass…
I noticed a door to the fourth room. There something hooted, but Wagner did not let me in this room. In it, obviously, there was a mechanism accelerating the movement of Earth.
Soon, however, ours «the interplanetary travel» terminated, and we fell on… a glass ceiling which from now on had to become our floor. It was not necessary to move things: they moved, and the electric lamp strengthened on a ceiling as it is impossible more useful was at us over the head, lighting our room in short nights.
Wagner really provided everything. Our room was well supplied with the air stored in special tanks. We were provided with canned food and water. «That is why the housekeeper did not go to a market» – I thought. Having moved to a ceiling, we went on it as freely, as on a floor though, in usual sense, we went headfirst. But the person gets used to everything. I felt rather well. When I looked down, under legs, through thick, but transparent glass, I saw under myself the sky, and it seemed to me that I stand on the round mirror reflecting in itself this sky.
However the mirror reflected in itself sometimes extraordinary and even terrible things.
The housekeeper declared that she needs to go to the house as she forgot oil.
– How you will go? – I told it. – You fall down down, that is up, faugh, the devil, everything was mixed!
– I will hold brackets in the earth, professor learned me. When we did not turn the heads down yet, we had brackets in that house, in a ceiling, and I learned «to go hands», grabbed them and went on a ceiling.
Professor Wagner provided everything!
I did not expect such heroism from the woman. To risk itself, «to go hands» over a chasm because of some oil!
– But nevertheless it is very dangerous – I told.
– Not as you think – professor Wagner objected. – The weight of our body is still insignificant – it only began to increase from zero, and absolutely small muscular force is necessary to keep. Besides I will accompany it; by the way, I need to take the notebook from the house – I forgot to take it with myself.
– But outside now there is no air?
– I have caps with compressed air which we will put on the head.
And these strange people, having dressed space suits as if they were going to fall by a sea bottom, went to a way. The double door slammed. I heard knock of an external door.
Lying on the glass floor, I pressed the person to thick glass and with nervousness began to watch them. Two persons in round caps, standing head over heels and clinging to the brackets attached to the earth quickly «went hands» to the house. Whether it is possible to imagine something stranger!
«Really, it is not so terrible – I thought. – But nevertheless it is the extraordinary woman. Suddenly it will begin to whirl the head?.» Wagner and the housekeeper proceeded in the same pose on steps on a verandah and passed out of sight.
They appeared back soon.
They already passed halfway as suddenly there was something what I grew cold with. The housekeeper dropped to bank with oil and, wishing to pick up her, broke and departed to a chasm…
Wagner made attempt to save it: he unexpectedly unwound the rope attached to a belt and, having hooked on it for a bracket, rushed after the housekeeper. The unfortunate woman fell quite slowly. And as Wagner a strong push gave to the body more bystry movement, it managed to catch up with it. He already gave to it a hand, but could not get: centrifugal force rejected its flight a little aside. And it separated from it soon… Wagner hung for a while a little on the dismissed rope and began to rise slowly from a sky chasm by the earth…
I saw how the unfortunate woman waved a hand… her body quickly decreased… The come night as a curtain, covered this picture of death…
I shuddered, having imagined her last feelings… What will be with it?. Its corpse which is not decaying in Universe cold will rush eternally forward if some star passing close does not attract this corpse.
I was so busy with the thoughts that did not notice how Wagner entered and fell near me.
– Fine death – he told quietly.
I clenched teeth and did not answer it. In me suddenly hatred to Wagner wakened again.
I with horror looked at the chasm which is spread under my legs and for the first time with extraordinary clarity understood that the sky – not blue space over us, and a chasm… that we «live in the sky», having stuck to a mote, Earth, and with the big right therefore it is possible to call us inhabitants of the sky, «inhabitants of heaven», than inhabitants of Earth. Insignificant inhabitants of heaven! Inclination of Earth, obviously, affected not only our body, but also consciousness, arresting it to Earth. Now this communication tore. I felt fragility of our terrestrial existence… Our consciousness arose together with the earth, in sky chasms, in chasms of infinite space, and in the same place it will die away…
I thought, and before my eyes something extraordinary was created… Stones came off the earth and fell up… The whole blocks of rocks began to come off soon… Day and night were replaced quicker and quicker… The sun rushed on a chasm sky, and there came night, stars rushed with the same mad speed, both again the sun, and again night… Here, in the light of the sun, I see how the fence broke and fell, having opened the horizon. I see the dried sea bottom, the devastated earth… I see that soon the end…
But people still are on Earth… I hear how tells a small loudspeaker of our radio station…
The earth is devastated almost to poles. Everything perishes… It is the last escaped radio station, on Wrangel Island. She gives signals, waits and does not receive the answer… Radio waves fly to dead emptiness… Earth is silent, also the sky is silent.
Days and nights so quickly replace each other that everything merges in a haze… The sun, flying by on the sky, draws a fiery strip against a dark background – together with the last remains of the atmosphere Earth lost the blue bed curtains, light of a heavenly azure… The moon decreased in sizes, Earth cannot hold more the satellite any more, and the moon moves away from Earth…
I feel how thick glasses of our glass floor napruzhitsya,