Classics fantasy – 11. A. Belyaev

example, of the railway buildings lying on the route of the Great Siberian way is constructed in permafrost strip. And repair of these buildings destroyed by permafrost manages if I am not mistaken, millions in five in a year.

      – But why it occurs?

      – Very simply – Ignat answered. – Our izba or to a witness mark was constructed on the frozen soil. Unpleasant property of permafrost – its water tightness. From here also all tricks which are caused by permafrost to builders result. Ground waters are clamped in rather thin layer of earth. From above – the soil which is freezing together in the winter, and from below – permafrost layer. This layer gives quicksands and landslides in the summer. In the winter – it is even worse. As winter frosts it is more and more, expose to frost the top layer of earth, ground waters which are between this top layer and lower, merzlotny below and below, contract stronger. There is a huge pressure – to two thousand kilograms per square centimeter. Water breaks through the top frozen layer in the thinnest or weak point. And a weak point – the made most winter-proof. You heated the furnace, the soil under a floor got warm, ground waters broke, filled the house up to the top, and the house turned into a continuous piece of ice. I was told about such comical case on the Yakut and Amur highway when the barrel put in the fall upside down was a heater. There came frosts, the soil around a barrel began to freeze through quite strongly. And under a barrel still rather warm air remained, and there frost penetration went more slowly. Pressure difference turned out. Ground waters broke and filled a barrel from below. Sometimes these waters form huge hillocks of a pucheniye, up to ten meters high and fifty meters wide. Permafrost – our enemy with whom we conduct persistent fight.

      Ignat and Jim dried up stockings, fur boots. Ignat looked in a window. The watchman, apparently, reported already the accident. Near icy witness marks there were several people. The old man wearing spectacles, dressed in a big fur-coat to toe, pottered with the camera. The woman, also in a fur-coat stood nearby. Natives swung mittens and spoke about something.

      – Let’s go, we will look what they do there.

      – What, unsuccessfully slept? – Pelkin asked, approaching them. – It at us happens. It is visible, very much you heated.

      The photographer who appeared the meteorologist Verkhovsky grumbled: the device refused to work.

      – The lock does not act on cold – he said. – It is necessary to warm up. – Someone ran behind chips and spread out a fire. Verkhovsky, holding the device over a flame, prepared. The woman in a fur-coat pressed a pocket small lamp. Dazzling light of extraordinary force flashed.

      – Belief! – Bugaev screamed.

      – Ignat!

      The bright flash of magnesium blinded Jim. He heard as snow under Ignat’s legs began to creak.

      – Why you did not report about the arrival? – Vera asked.

      Jim understood that the girl who was him in dazzling flash of magnesium also was “the snow queen” – the engineer Vera Kolosova.

      15. Father Frost

      – This the real ice city – Ignat exclaimed.

      Jim with surprise looked at an unprecedented show. On the bank of the frozen sea there was the whole town of dome-shaped ice houses. Lit with bright electric light, they had an extraordinary appearance as if houses of the fantastic city of the unknown planet. Ice houses-kupoly had no windows. Several steps cut from huge bricks of ice conducted to a low and narrow door. Between houses people in fur clothes wandered and dogs ran. At the sight of strangers of a laika began a bark, but immediately waved tails.

      – Where here Verkhovsky’s house? – Ignat asked the counter Eskimo.

      – Father Frost? – the Eskimo smiled and pointed to the ice dome differing in nothing from others.

      Jim and Ignat approached to the door. It was veiled by cervine skins from within.

      – There is no electric call – Ignat told, inspecting a door. – To knock on an ice wall – will not hear. It is necessary to enter without report. – And he tried to raise a skin. But it was densely attached.

      – Now I will open – Verkhovsky’s voice was heard. The edge of a skin rose. Having bent, Ignat and Jim entered the dwelling. They were met by the owner, the meteorologist Verkhovsky. Having looked at his big gray-haired beard, Ignat grinned and told:

      – You here Father Frost are called. It for your gray-haired beard?

      – And not only for a beard – the old scientist similar to toy fir-tree Father Frost answered. – I fight against a frost here and I operate it on a potreba of the person. You sit down, guests you will be, I will tell.

      On it there was a jersey, leather trousers and pima. Guests looked round. The interior of the ice house was so original, as well as its appearance.

      – As if under a dome of observatory you are – Ignat noticed.

      – This modernized “needle” – the Eskimo dwelling – Father Frost told – in a most up-to-date way equipped.

      The modern equipment consisted in electric lighting, an electric oven, a plate. On a wooden floor there was a dining table with three chairs. At an entrance door – “kitchen”. Along vaulted walls the table ring having a gap only at a door for pass in the room lasted. On a table – books, meteorological devices, heaps of papers, magazines. Over this infinite table there was an iron rod on which it is possible to move an electric bulb to any place.

      – And electric kitchen at you what for? Unless you not in the public dining room have dinner?

      – You will sometimes be earned, there is no wish to go, I prepare houses – the meteorologist answered. – Here a ventilation outlet, you see? And light-, and warmly, and air good.

      And Verkhovsky told a story of the ice city.

      – I arrived with the first party of builders here. It was necessary to live in tents. It was in the summer. We were brought here by the ice breaker. In the afternoon in tents was even hot, at night coldishly. But also in the summer sometimes the snowball dropped out. After us there had to arrive the steamship with food and forest construction material. But jammed it. Our ice breaker went to revenue It made the way through heavy ices very slowly. And the winter was on a nose. It was necessary to undertake something not to appear in tents to winter frosts. But what you will undertake here? The strip of the woods lies far in the south. We had several trucks, saws, axes. Counted – not to manage to cut down, take out, construct. While thought-guessed, the frost knocked. The coast froze, the rivers froze. Here the thought also came to my mind: it is necessary to build houses of ice. – Verkhovsky waved a hand on a ceiling. – As though simple piece, and it is not so simple to put such house. I set our architects – Verochka Kolosova and her assistants – for drawings and calculations. It was necessary to draw precisely a figure of each ice “brick” from which then it would be possible to put these vaulted houses.

      For them it was the task like that which was resolved by the famous Italian architect Brunelleski when he projected a dome Florentine “дуомо” – a cathedral. But, however, nothing – coped our Brunelleski. To tell the truth, the first a needle left such that Eskimos, likely, would laugh. It is good that material painfully pliable. There you will chop off, there you will fill in with water, a frost will take – that your concrete. Remarkable material. And here, on our happiness, and Eskimos came. And what you think? This builders! Did of house snow on own arshin – a palm yes a mitten. One Eskimo cuts out a form of bricks on snow, other of these bricks builds the snow house. The house directly in the eyes grows. Whether you trust, for half an hour on the house did. Inside a scraper will scratch, will level – and it is ready. The stove bench snow will be built, on it skins outlined. The door is closed by an ice block. Will light three-four