Your Wagner».
To breed ostriches! It is, of course, a joke. Perhaps, from such jokes of professor taken seriously and added with imagination there were also apocryphal stories about its inventions…
IV. CHELOVEK-TERMO
Rubtsov is I. Ilya Ilyich. Twenty four years old. It is ruddy, cheerful, mobile. Companions call me the Siskin.
Companions are Pronin Ivan and Dashkevich Kazimir, it Kazya. Pronin is similar to me, he is also young, cheerful and mobile. And Dashkevich is not even always similar to himself. It as spring weather: a rain, snow, the sun, clouds, warmly, it is cold – only little by little. Казя – high, thin, angular. It is healthy, but is hypochondriac and often finds in itself (himself) nonexistent diseases.
The destiny abandoned us very far – on islands of Novaya Zemlya. We worked as radio operators at the meteorological station. For me Novaya Zemlya was the newest. For Dashkevich news of Novaya Zemlya is considerably obsolete. Kaza was bothered by monotonous «film sessions» of the polar lights, frosts, winters without the sun bothered.
– There is enough, three years has on duty – he said – and that will do! With the first steamship I leave from here. And if some hydroplane incidentally visits us, by all means I will depart. I am sick. I am absolutely broken. Me is in a fever. At me all body as though aches…
– As though you «were friendly embraced by a polar bear». Heard. Do not repeat, Kazya! – Pronin told. – You turn sour the third day. Go to professor Wagner, he, likely, will cure you.
– Wagner is not a physician – Kazya answered.
– Professor Wagner is the Encyclopaedist, comprehensive mind. Go to it, and it will very quickly cure your disease. Here the Siskin will see off you.
Dashkevich indecisively looked at me, sighed and told:
– Nurses are not necessary for me. I will reach also… And well as Wagner will banish me! Will tell: I to you not the doctor…
Pronin grabbed Dashkevich’s cap and pulled down to him on the head. At the same time I threw to Kaza shoulders with a fur-coat, Pronin opened a door, and we pushed out our companion on a forty-degree frost. Having finished this philanthropic act, we took seat for devices and went deep into work. I accepted, and Pronin sent meteorological bulletins.
There passed hour, and Dashkevich still did not come back. Professor Wagner lived near us, in only ten minutes of walking. It would be time to return to Dashkevich. I already began to worry. Also Pronin worried.
– A hard case – he told. – Wagner, obviously, finds it difficult to make the diagnosis. It is visible, our Kazya seriously ached…
At this time the frozen door awfully cracked, began to creak and opened. Puffs of vapor for a moment filled all room, and when they dissipated, we saw our friend who left a frosty cloud as Venus from sea foam. We attentively looked at each other: Dashkevich on us – with mysterious humour, we on it – interrogatively.
At last Pronin did not sustain and asked:
– Was?
Dashkevich with the same mysterious smile silently nodded.
– Cured?
Dashkevich did not answer. His face was very red, and he quickly and often breathed. Obviously, his fever amplified. Even it seemed to me that from it radiates with heat, as from our iron oven when it is heated.
– Perelechil me professor Wagner! – with laughter Dashkevich answered and quickly passed to the room.
– Nasty! – Pronin said in low tones. – If Wagner did not help, then Dashkevich not to survive…
We went deep into work. Suddenly the door from Dashkevich’s room opened and it left him, but… in what look! It was in a sports beskostyum. All red as if just took a steam bath in a bath to the seventh sweat, Dashkevich quickly passed through the room, without paying to us any attention, opened a door… and came to a forty-degree frost.
It was ridiculous, unexpected and terrible. Dashkevich’s act was equivalent to suicide. Several minutes it will freeze to itself (himself) hands and legs and will fatally chill lungs. Poor Kazya, he could make it only delirious! However that we sit? It is necessary to run to the aid, while the getting is good! I quickly rose and began to put on the fur-coat. For nervousness could not get a hand to a sleeve in any way. Pronin already put on and helped me.
– Rather, rather!
We ran out for a door.
There was a light moonlight night. From the house the road went down, to the small lake from which we took ourselves water. On this road we saw an extraordinary phenomenon.
On the road the huge sphere from puffs of vapor slowly slid. On a frost of couples turned into hoarfrost which made as if an external mobile cover of a sphere. Moonlight was reflected in the sparkling crystals of hoarfrost and gave iridescent auras. Behind a sphere the tail from snow flakes lasted. It was possible to think that on the road the small planetka who came on a silver platter together with the atmospheric attire slides. But we understood at once what the planetka is: the strange phenomenon left clear and quite deep prints of bare human feet on snow. It was our Kazya shrouded in a cloud of steam who brought down from his body excited with fever.
«Perhaps, this steam – I thought – protects Dashkevich’s body from burning action of cold a little, is perfect the same as the atmosphere protects Earth from action of absolute cold of interstellar depths. But whether for a long time his internal heat can be enough for Kaza? It will disappear from his body before Kazya reaches the lake».
– Казя! Казя! Stop! – we shouted, pursuing the cloud sliding on the road.
We could not consider Kazyu in this cloud of steam.
Dashkevich answered nothing to us, but quickened the pace. Small blizzards began to spin behind it. He already ran up to the coast of the lake, stepped into ice, stopped and suddenly desperately cried. Over the place where it stood, the whole column of steam rose. We ran on shout, entered dairy steam and is careful, blundered about to that place from where Dashkevich’s voice was heard. This voice reached from below.
– Devil take it, ice thawed under legs! – Kazn shouted. – I failed and now I cannot get out. When I grab the edge of ice, ice thaws and turns into water…
I made out a vague spot of the Kaziny head and grabbed at random a hand. Yes, it was the hand if only I did not grab for burning головню: heat of this hand was felt even through my fur mitten. «However what temperature of his body has to be?» – with surprise I thought.
We pulled out our friend on the coast. From an ice bathtub on a forty-degree frost! But unfortunate Kazya delirious and fire of fever did not feel cold and danger. It was stirred up as the bear who got out of water and ran from us along the lake. It was easy for it to run. He ran on the trampled-down road with a speed of a dog, we in our fur suits could not catch up with him. The shining sphere of our «steam» friend sparkled on a hillock soon and disappeared.
What to do? To run after Dashkevich? But we could not leave radio station for a long time. In our work and so there was a break. We decided that one of us has to go to work, and another will be engaged in searches of the