Classics fantasy – 9. A. Belyaev

old men-bashtanniki grumbled.

      The Kamyshin station is to the full filled with the arriving freights: wood, by cars, rails. Crept away with snakes on building of a narrow-gage railway. Fervently cuckoos shout, dragging for themselves tails of trolleys with sand, the earth, a stone. Zalyazgali iron jaws excavators. Zachvakali, drags breathed heavily, cranes creak.

      Day and night there is a work. Brightly fires of lamps and searchlights disperse a gloom.

      It is not slept to old men residents of Kamyshin. Will leave the house and long look at fires reflected in waters of the wide river and it seems to them that they got to other, terrible and unclear world where huge iron monsters creep, move necks more long than a cable column, champ mouths in which the bull and with horns will pass. And people – small, fussy – look after these unknown monsters.

      Mikheyev almost does not sleep and eats on a clothes line. It is happy. The dream of his life was fulfilled. To the desert war is declared, he is a commander-in-chief at the front, the fire captain on “the fire of the earth”. He runs day and night bare-headed. Its bald head is red from the sun, wind and nervousness. The pointed nose was even more pointed, eyes flare. It all is heated by inspiration fire.

      Runs on the coast, swings hands. After it, hardly keeping up, the lanky young engineer walks.

      – Liquid air – here my secret! – Mikheyev shouts, without turning around to the engineer. – The device to Linda which is a little altered by me. Pressure – two hundred twenty atmospheres… We carry out liquid air on pipes and we release directly in water. It freezes water.

      And before caissons we will receive a strong ice wall in the hot summer. Under its protection it will be easy for us to work.

      It is better, than the temporary crossing points applied on Dneprostroy… What do you lag behind? Rather, rather!.

      Work is humming in three changes. One change sends another calls to a competition. Day and night cuckoos have something in common. Cars roar, people rush about.

      – As on the fire! – residents of Kamyshin speak.

      – The fire also is; the earth burns, it is necessary to extinguish!

      Dashingly Gleb Kalgan works with the artel. Sons of young people were outdone by the old man. And will graduate from artel work, at night-midnight take the networks occupied with themselves – and in boats. The river pulls, fish pulls.

      And here among the old man bitterness pours out, facilitates heart, to the brim crowded with rage.

      – Wait a moment! Will prop up a water dam autumn, here we also will gasp the artel to them on to help. One is bad – work at night, fires burn. Well and we will contrive somehow. To notice for the main thing where is thinner.

      – Not there! Not there, devils, devils! Not there, rebyatushka! – Mikheyev’s voice reaches from the island Shishkin.

      – See, vostronosy devil! – Gleb grumbles. – To Ugomon on him is not present! Well, take a walk, shout a bit. Let’s calm also you.

      – The uncle Gleb – the young fisherman says suddenly. – And I met Kuzma yesterday. About cement works gadded. There, likely, it was attached.

      Gleb frowned.

      – Prickly it is necessary to be on guard this ruff. Will inform. All business will fail if slightly that will notice. Yes, can, for this purpose and came to building, maybe, overheard then… at night?.

      – The uncle Gleb, and why pipes lay?

      – Among summer water gas is wanted to be frozen. Frozen there was a wish for pike perches. Well, only unrealizable this business: before people did not reach yet that summer for the winter to overturn.

      The message that “Volga will be frozen” quickly flew about building. The Kamyshin old residents were shocked.

      – It is visible, not all nonsense that old women stir. In the summer ice to hold down the river – unless not the same miracle how the sea to dry up it and fire to kindle?

      – Pomorozit water-melons! Though throw баштан yes leave up hill and down dale…

      After all hoped: not to create a miracle to the person!

      But these hopes did not come true: froze vostronosy Volga. However, not all, but all it was also not necessary to it. And before caissons water froze, became an ice wall. Not that residents of Kamyshin, and and seasonal workers did not trust the eyes, a hand felt ice. Real, without fake. Cold and strong!

      Day after day people win meter from the river behind meter. Lower wooden boxes caissons on a bottom, build concrete cubes bull-calves. Water directs in flights, boiling and worrying. Level of the semi-dammed Volga increases, and the autumn high water from above approaches. Concrete bulls, links of a chain which has to hold down Volga are ready almost everything. It is necessary to finish the last, to block iron boards, and Volga, having met an obstacle, will turn the plentiful waters, will move to the Zavolzhye steppes to extinguish “the fire of the earth”.

      But it is necessary to wait an autumn high water, and it this year unknown: the whole summer and fall went pouring rains.

      Water arrives every day, muddy, dark, gloomy. Storms, fights about concrete bulls. Dry leaves, herbs, bushes, branches, the whole trees – everything that was taken by the river on the way – stuck around ledges of bulls, litter coast.

      But thousands of builders day and night forge chains for the river.

      Kuzma Sysoyev works at building together with the wife. It became as though still prickly. Lost weight, acquired a beard. Day works, and does not sleep at night, turns as if he is pricked by dry bones.

      – What you do not sleep? – the wife grumbles.

      Kuzma in the dark sighs.

      – Gleb damned does not give to rest with the artel…

      Yesterday there were I to a barrage at night, and it goes about a pipe with air, sniffs up. And change not it. What there it is necessary to it? Uvidal me – was washed away.

      – And you what business? – the wife grumbles. – Watch yourself. Here winter is at hand, and you still a fur coat yes did not receive valenoks. Others received long ago.

      – Tomorrow it is necessary vostronosy to tell – Kuzma continues, thinking of the.

      – And long ago it is time – the wife calms.

      Suddenly the beep, faltering, alarm, tears night calm to parts. Alarm…

      Kuzma ran out on the street.

      That for weather damned! Wind knocks down, the rain whips, the river hoots. Workers run.

      Shout, noise not to understand in what business.

      – Why alarm? – Kuzma asks.

      – Accident. The pipe with liquid air does not work, melted ice, the caisson fills in – someone answers on the run.

      Kuzma quickens the pace. The river ate an ice wall and presses a caisson. Here flashed as though the gray-haired head of Gleb and disappeared.

      “It… Precisely his hands business” – Kuzma thinks.

      The person in an old thick cloth coat without cap runs on the edge of a caisson. Vostronosy. Shouts, swings hands. To a pipe got, potters.

      – You leave – shout to it. – Water will fill in.

      Where there! Mikheyev sees nothing, does not hear. “If only liquid air went”.

      And water is higher and higher, just about will fill in a caisson. Water knocks Mikheyev down, but he creeps again, clings to a pipe…

      And suddenly crash, noise; a white cloud, hissing and whistling, fills a caisson. The pipe broke, and liquid air went directly to Mikheyev.

      Mikheyev