– It has communication with radio waves?
– Alas, all this the same radio, but applied for destruction.
– And in what all this came to an end?
– It was only the beginning. We tried to apply the air fleet. At that time and our equipment was already highly developed. We had aircrafts operating by the principle of flight of rockets. These vessels could rise above a layer of the air atmosphere, that is it is more than two thousand meters. We hoped to attack the enemy unawares “from the sky”. But the enemy was well prepared. Obviously, on all borders of America from the earth the same invisible, but killing beams were directed up. Hardly our aircrafts made of special metal entered this veil as were burned even not to ashes, and to steam…
And ten hours later terrible disaster rushed over all countries of Europe and Asia. Through the fortieth meridian of northern latitude – across Spain, Italy, the Balkans, Asia Minor, Turkestan, China and the island Nippon in Japan without uniform sound the killing beam which incinerated on the way in a strip hundred kilometers wide all buildings, people, animals, fields, cotton fields, gardens rushed.
– Yes here, look – told Ale.
He approached a distributive board and pressed several buttons with figures, then turned the lever. Light went out, and the screen recovered. I expected to see the movie, but what I saw surpassed all my expectations. It were not “documentary pictures” it there was life. Illusion was full.
Here street of some city…
– Spain – said Ale in low tones.
…All houses along the street obliquely were as though are cut off by some invisible knife which opened internal rooms. Where there passed the awful beam, there were only heaps of ruins, heaps of ashes and garbage. Here and there parts of human bodies rolled. Everything, got to a beam area of coverage, was incinerated. In places the fires burned down. I heard a flame crash, a roar of falling of walls. The escaped mad people wandered among these ruins, vainly trying to find for the family. They sobbed, shouted, sent someone damnations… Here the woman ran with a wild hair and mad eyes.
– Augusto, Augusto! – she shouted. And suddenly, having faced directly me, hysterical laughed loudly…
I heard her laughter, terrible cries of people. The show was tremendous. Involuntarily I turned away.
– Several hours later later accidents are removed – with emotion spoke Ale.
It turned levers, and on the screen the new picture appeared.
– Everything that remained from the Italian town of Marateo of the gulf Polikastra – Ale told.
Several palm trees and heaps of ruins, two swarty, curly children and the old woman in tatters. At one child legs on a knee were annealed. It lay unconscious. The boy is more senior looked at him with silent horror, and the old woman, having inclined over the child, shook the gray-haired ruffled head and howled lingeringly, hysterically as dogs howl… Nearby, with oskalenny teeth and the big glazed-over eyes, the asinine head – one head lay… Leaves of palm trees rustled, stones under the running waves as sad accompaniment to monotonous, tugging at heartstrings, I howl old women rustled… It was too…
– I cannot more – I said in low tones – there is enough!
Ale sighed, turned the lever. The screen went out, and in the room light lit up.
Suppressed just seen, we sat silently.
– I saw these pictures more than once – told at last Ale – but also I cannot still watch them without deep nervousness…
– Yes, it is awful – I answered.
– When our youth sees these pictures, it is lit by such hatred and such thirst of fight that it is difficult to keep her from daredevil acts and the aimless victims. We infrequently show these pictures.
– Tell me, this cinema? – I when nervousness settled a little asked.
– A combination of the sounding cinema and transfer of moving images and sounds on radio. We have a central film archive operating automatically. I put number on this board, the movie necessary to me automatically moves in a movie camera, it begins to work at the screen installed in film archive. Through radio the image and sounds are transmitted to any place.
– Amazingly! And what was farther?
– What could be after everything that you saw? Further persistence from our party could ruin all Europe and Asia. We were forced to stop fight, we will not create equal weapon yet. And our engineers worked over the invention of such weapon much. In this regard we are obliged by much to Li. This is the ingenious young man.
– Li? Assistant to the astronomer Tong? In a blue tunic? Unless it not the girl?
Ale smiled.
– No. This is the young man rather the young man. We grow old not soon. How many, you think, can be to me years?
– Thirty five, the biggest, forty – I told.
– Eighty six – smiling, Ale answered – Li – thirty two, and Ea – twenty five.
I was struck.
– And what was invented by Li?
– He invented means of an obstacle from devil beams. They are not terrible to us any more. It found a secret and productions of devil beams. We were made even by forces.
– And now it is possible to begin fight?
– Not absolutely. Their beams do not punch our invisible armor, and ours – them. We became mutually impregnable for each other, but also only. And still fight continues. Not so long ago by some miracle one more fugitive – the Black made the way to us from America. It worked at coastal obstacles, at east coast of North America. There was a damage of the device radiating protecting beams. Having used it, the Black rushed to the ocean, long floated until it was picked up by any fishing boat, and at last reached our coast. He told that, despite everything cruelty, on unprecedented suppression of workers, in America there is an underground revolutionary work. Revolutionaries got even into the coast guard. We managed to give up them the intercourses. We learned that America, being afraid of our help to their revolutionaries, plans to exterminate us. Having convinced that their beams are harmless to us, the American capitalists decided to send to us spies, having transferred them in the way unknown to us through our air obstacles, to learn our military forces and means, and then to transport here in the same way the agents with destructive beams to destroy “the revolution center” on the place.
– Europe and Asia – good “center”!
– Yes, to destroy a big half of the world. Before it they will not stop! But we are not idle too. Li is close to permission of a task – to find the tool punching all protecting means of Americans.
– But Li is an astronomer?
– The astronomer, the engineer, the artist, the chess player – everything that you want. And in all areas it – the first-class size. Days it gives to the engineering occupations, and works as nights with Tong.
– Also is not tired?
– Li – at least; our youth does not know fatigue. You do not want to sleep?
– I feel perfectly.
– Well,