Classics fantasy – 11. A. Belyaev

A botanical garden under glass? – Ignat asked.

      – Only not under glass. We already developed the project, in the plan it stood on the second turn. Now we were convinced that it is a question of prime importance, and decided to begin work, without postponing. We will build the underground resort. The resort in which it will be possible to spend all free time, to bathe, lie on the beach under bright beams of “sun”.

      – Resort underground! How many time you will pick the earth that your resort was a little bit more mole hole? Whether it is simpler to make a greenhouse?

      – Ingenious Ignat, but did not guess. We want to use the huge underground mines formed after coal gasification.

      – Who knew that you managed to exhaust so much coal from the earth?

      – Well, Jim, undertake this work and finish it. If you also grieve and be torn after that to the South, we will not hold you. We just also decided to direct all melancholiacs to this work like you… But I warn that now this place – our future tropics – perhaps, gloomier, than the winter tundra.

      – And it is quite good. When you leave it, and the tundra will seem to you more beautiful – Ignat noticed.

      Jim still continued to pinch strings.

      – We go with me now and Ignat – Kolosova continued. – Let’s sweep on a snowmobile on the ice road.

      – Ignat got up and, without telling the word, took away a guitar from Jim and pulled down to it a cap.

      Then he quickly began to put on.

      – To go so to go as the parrot when his cat pulled from a cage told. You will get, Jim, in these claws – you will not escape.

      Jim burst out laughing, looked at Kolosova and too began to put on.

      In a minute they already quickly went on the city.

      Here and suburb. A number of lamps costs an equal system as sentry protection. Behind city boundaries ice garages are visible. Brightly windows of the station shine. From the station run away afar as two silver strips, wide ice roads. Close – several access roads connected to garages.

      – And it that for a hillock? – Ignat asked, pointing to the hill of the frozen earth towering behind the station.

      – We build a dam of frozen soil – Kolosova answered. – We dam the small small river. There will be an excess tank of water. I said that with water at us it is bad.

      – And in the summer artificial refrigerators you will preserve your dam against thawing?

      – No, the cheapest way and more simply – Kolosova answered. – The body of a dam becomes covered by an insulating layer – peat – centimeters on twenty. From above – beddings of sand and dead wood to protect from access of warm summer water. Here generally and all. Such dam will cost cheaper concrete…

      – And permafrost can be useful on something! – Ignat suddenly burst out laughing. Kolosova bewildered looked at it. – I remembered our conversation with Jim – Ignat explained. – We should conduct with you, Verochka, a talk on warmer subjects not to freeze our friend at all.

      The belief answered with a smile. Possibly, Ignat already told it about Jim’s nedoumeniye.

      – Well that, we will speak about the hot underground resort where there will be cozy corners under the blossoming oleanders.

      When approached the station, Ignat attentively examined a way. It was on half-meter above the soil and had a tray appearance. On curves of edge of a tray strongly rose that owing to the developing centrifugal force a snowmobile did not descend from a way.

      – However this road expensively has to cost, especially if to mean that it should be built annually.

      – Certainly, we were only able to afford such luxury possessing a sufficient stock of the electric power. Now, all enterprises are still not built, we have even some excess of energy.

      – You receive this energy for the account of gasification of coal, of course. But when we will build the temperature station, energy will be even more – Ignat told.

      – By then also the power line connecting polar stations to the general network will be ended. And everything will go to the general copper. Then, of course, we will not begin to spend energy for these local ice roads. By then the coast of the North Sea will be surrounded with a threefold belt – air, marine and terrestrial transport. The first power line is already laid from Igarka. And as for difficulties of laying of the ice road, they are already not so big. Here, look at this car.

      Behind an extreme hangar there was a huge catarpillar. From its sides the levers terminating in the bent blades are attached. Above ladle. Behind the construction reminding the small tender towered. Under the tender two ovoid shaft were seen.

      – There is a car doing the ice road. It goes forward, levers fall, blades on the run take snow and throw in a ladle. Snow gets to a copper where it is kindled by the electric furnace. Buassye’s accumulators are located behind, in the tender. Water follows here, behind the tender. Thus, this car, moving forward with a speed of ten-fifteen kilometers per hour, reserves the ready ice road. However, not absolutely ready. At the first pass the tray appears yet not sufficient thickness and there are no zakraina. Thickness and zakraina are increased by special cars at a secondary and third pro-race, and the speed of cars every time increases. Generally, per day it is possible to carry out about hundred kilometers of a way.

      If snow cover is equal and has sufficient thickness, then there is no need to row up snow and to turn it into water. It is enough to pass on such “tank” – and back skating rinks will squeeze out an ice tray in snow. Two-three route trips – and trays become ideally smooth. Now on this line a snowmobile plies. Their skis are put at a small angle, according to curvature of cross section of a tray.