Aleksandr Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Horsemen from Nowhere --------------------------------------------------------------- Translated from the Russian by George Yankovsky Aleksandr Abramov, Sergej Abramov "VSADNIKI NIOTKUDA" ¡ horsmen1.txt MIR PUBLISHERS Moscow 1969 OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2 ¡ http://home.freeuk.com/russica2 --------------------------------------------------------------- "Horsemen From Nowhere" is a science-fiction story about the arrival on earth of mysterious rose-coloured "clouds" from deep space. Members of the Soviet Antarctic expedition are the first to meet them in a series of inexplicable events. The "clouds" are seen to be removing the Antarctic ice-cap and carrying it off into space. They are capable of reproducing any kind of atomic structure, and this goes for human beings as well. The heroes of the story meet their "counterparts", come upon a duplicated airliner, journey through a modelled city, and fight Gestapo policemen that have been reconstructed from the past by these same mysterious "clouds". Scientists are not able to explain why terrestrial life is being modelled. All attempts to contact the space beings fail. In the end, however, Soviet scientists penetrate the enigma of the rose clouds and establish contact with a highly developed extragalactic civilization. ___________________________________________________  * PART ONE. THE ROSE CLOUD Chapter I. A CATASTROPHE The snow was fluffy and soft, not at all the compacted, sand-paper-like crystalline neve of the polar wastes. The Antarctic summer was mild, and the gay frost that tweaked the ears ever so slightly created an atmosphere of Sunday hiking back home in Moscow. Our thirty-five-ton snow tractor was gliding along at a marvellous clip, but in winter even the airplane skis could hardly tear away from the supercooled ice crystals. Vano was a skilled driver and didn't bother to put the brakes on even in the case of suspicious humps and bumps of ice. "Take it easy, there, Vano," Zernov shouted from the navigator's cabin adjacent to the driver. "There might be crevasses." "Where do you see cracks?" was Vano's mistrustful response, as he peered through dark glasses into the stream of blindingly brilliant light that flooded the cabin through the front window. "This isn't a road, this is a highway, the Rustaveli Boulevard in Tbilisi. You can take it from me, that's definite. Really, I mean it." I climbed out of the radio-room and pulled down the retracted seat next to Vano. For some reason, I turned round to look at the desk in the salon where Tolya Dyachuk was doing some meteorological work. I shouldn't have. "We are now witnessing the birth of a new kind of chauffeur," said Tolya with a disgusting giggle. And since I disdained to reply, he added: "Vanity is killing you, Yura. Aren't two specialities enough for you?" Each of us in the expedition combined two, sometimes three, professions. Zernov, for example, was the glaciologist, but he could handle the work of geophysicist or seismologist as well. Tolya Dyachuk combined the duties of meteorologist, doctor and cook. Vano was the mechanic and driver of the huge tractor specially designed for work in polar regions; what is more, he could repair anything from a broken tractor tread to a temperamental electric hotplate. I was in charge of photography, movies and also the radio. What attracted me to Vano was not any desire to increase my range of specialities but his own love for this gigantic Kharkov tractor vehicle. When I first saw it from the airplane as we were landing, it appeared to me like a red dragon from a fairy tale; but close up, with its metre-wide tractor tread jutting out and its enormous square eyes-windows-gave the impression of a creature from another world. I had driven motor cars and heavy lorries and, with Vano's permission, had tried the tractor on the icy land floe near Mirny, but yesterday was windy and sombre-I didn't risk it. But today was crystal clear. "Let me take a try, Vano," I said, and didn't allow myself to look back. "Just for half an hour." Vano was getting up when Zernov shouted: "Come on now, no experiments in driving. You, Chokheli, are responsible for the running condition of the machine. You, Anokhin, put on your goggles." There was nothing to do but comply. Zernov was chief and he was demanding and unyielding. Of course it was definitely dangerous without goggles to look into the myriads of scintillations produced by a cold sun on sheets of snow. Only near the horizon did it darken somewhat as the plateau merged with the smeared-out ultramarine of the sky. Nearby even the air sparkled white. "Look over there to the left, Anokhin," Zernov continued. "The side window gives a better view. Nothing unusual?" What I saw off to the left, at a distance of about fifty metres, was an absolutely vertical wall of ice. It was higher than any buildings I knew of. Even the New York skyscrapers would hardly have come up to its top fluffy edge. Brilliantly shining with all colours of the rainbow, it was like a ribbon of diamond dust. It was darker at the bottom where layers of packed snow had already frozen into a darkish hard neve. Lower still, there was a break in the enormous thickness of ice, as if a gargantuan knife had sliced through it. Here it was bluish in the sunlight, like the sky reflected in a giant mirror. At the very bottom, however, the wind had built up a long two-metre high snowdrift-a nice fluffy fringe to match the same one way up at the top of the wall of ice. The wall extended on and on without end, tapering off in the distant snowy reaches of space. Only the mighty giants of fairy tales could, it seemed, have erected it here in this icy fastness to protect no one knew what from no one knew whom-a fortress of ice. Of course, ice in the Antarctic-no matter what its shapes and forms-could hardly impress anyone. Which is just what I said to Zernov, for 1 couldn't see what was so attractive to the glaciologist. "A plateau of ice, Boris Arkadievich. Perhaps a shelf glacier?" "Old timer," Zernov said ironically, hinting at my second trip to the South Pole. "Do you know what a shelf is? You don't? A shelf is a continental bar. A shelf glacier slides down into the ocean. Now this is not a glacial precipice and we are not in the ocean." He was silent for a moment and then added thoughtfully. "Please, stop, Vano. Let's take a closer look. This is an interesting phenomenon. Put something on, boys, it's no place for light sweaters." Close up, the wall was still more beautiful. An unbelievably blue bar, a chunk of frozen sky cut off near the horizon. Zernov was silent. Either the magnificence of the spectacle awed him, or its inexplicability. He peered for the longest time into the snowy line at the topmost fringe of the wall, and then for some reason looked down at his feet, stamped the snow, then kicked it about. We watched him but could not figure it out. "Just look at this snow we are standing on," he said suddenly. We stamped the snow a bit like he had done, and found a solid sheet of ice below the thin layer of snow. "A real skating rink," said Dyachuk. "An ideal plane, probably Euclid himself helped to make it." But Zernov was serious. He continued thoughtfully, "We are standing on ice. There is not more than two centimetres of snow. Now look at the wall. Metres thick. Why? The climate here is the same, the same winds, the same conditions for accumulation of snow. Anyone got any bright ideas?" Nobody answered. Zernov continued thinking aloud. "The structure of the ice is apparently the same. The surface too. I get the impression of an artificial cut. And if. you brush off the centimetre-thick layer of snow under foot, we get the same artificial cut. Now that doesn't make sense at all." "Everything is nonsense in the realm of the snow queen," I put in for what it was worth. "Why queen and not king?" Vano queried. "You explain it to him, Tolya," I said, "you're the map specialist. We've got Queen Mary Land, Queen Maud Land, and then in the other direction Queen Victoria Land." "Simply Victoria," Tolya added correcting me. "Listen, you erudite of Weather Forecasts, she was the Queen of England. Incidentally, in this same field of forecasting, wasn't it here on this wall that the snow queen played with Caius? And wasn't it here that he cut his cubes and fashioned them into the word 'eternity'?" Dyachuk grew cautious, ready for a trap. "Hey, who's this Caius guy?" "Oh, for heaven's sake," I sighed, "why didn't Hans Christian Andersen deal in weather forecasts? Do you know the difference between you and him? The colour of the blood. His is blue." "The octopus has blue blood if you want to know." Zernov was not listening. "Are we roughly in the same region?" he asked suddenly. "What region, Boris Arkadievich?" "Where the Americans observed those clouds." "No, quite a bit to the west," put in Dyachuk. "I've checked by the map." "I said 'roughly'. Clouds usually move, you know." "Ducks too," wisecracked Tolya. "You don't believe me, Dyachuk?" "Of course not. It isn't even funny: clouds that are neither cumulus nor cirrus. Actually, there aren't any at all right now." He looked up at the open sky. "Perhaps orographic. They're lens-like in shape with an extra layer on top. And rose-coloured due to the sunlight. But these are dense, a greasy rose colour and something like raspberry jelly. A lot lower than cumulus clouds, not exactly bags blown up by the wind, but something in the nature of uncontrolled dirigibles. Nonsense!" These were obviously the mysterious rose-coloured clouds that the Americans at MacMur-do had radioed about. Clouds like rose dirigibles had passed over the island of Ross, were seen on Adelie Land and in the vicinity of the shelf glacier Shackleton, and an American pilot was reported to have collided with them some three hundred kilometres from Mirny. Kolya Samoilov received the radiogram that the American radio operator sent out: "I saw them myself, the devil take them. Racing along just like a Disney film." At Mirny, on the whole, the men were very sceptical about the rose clouds and only a few took the thing seriously. George Bruk, chief merry maker, kept at the phlegmatic old-timer seismologist: "Now you've surely heard of the flying saucers, haven't you?" "Suppose I have." "And about the banquet at MacMurdo?" "So what?" "Did you see the 'Life' reporter off to New York?" "What are you getting at, anyway?" "Well, rose-coloured ducks went along with him and all the sensational news too." "Lay off, will you. You're getting to be a pain you know where." George lay off with a smirk and set out for some other victim. He passed me up, considering perhaps that the chances of success were small. I was having lunch with glaciologist Zernov, who was only eight years my senior but was already a professor. Really, no matter how you look at it, to be a full doctor of science at thirty-six is something to envy, though these sciences did not seem so important to me-I'm closer to the humanities. I didn't believe they could mean so much to human progress. And I said as much to Zernov on one occasion. His answer was: "You probably don't know how much snow and ice there is on the earth. Take the Antarctic alone: the ice cap here in winter covers up to twenty-two million square kilometres; add to that 11 million in the Arctic, then Greenland, and the coast of the Arctic Ocean. Then put in all the snow-topped peaks and glaciers, not counting all the rivers that freeze over in winter. How much will that come to? About one third of the land area of the globe. The continent of ice is twice that of Africa. Which is not so insignificant when it comes to human progress." I swallowed all that ice and any condescending desire to learn anything during my stay here in Antarctica. But after that, Zernov took a kindly attitude towards me and on the day of the report of "rose clouds", at lunch, he invited me on a trip into the interior of the continent. "Oh, a distance of three hundred kilometres or so," he added. "What for?" "We'd like to make a check on the American phenomenon. It's a highly unlikely thing; that's what everyone thinks. But still it's something to look into. For you in particular. You will use coloured film since the clouds are rose-coloured." "That's nothing at all," I put in. "The most ordinary kind of optical effect." "I don't know. I wouldn't want to refute it outright. The report states that the colour appears to be independent of any illumination. True, we could presume an admixture of some aero-sole of terrestrial origin or, say, meteoritic dust from outer space. If you want to know, my interest lies elsewhere. " "And what's that?" "The state of the ice in that area." I didn't ask why at the time, but I recalled the matter when Zernov was thinking out loud near the mysterious wall of ice. He was obviously connecting the two phenomena. In the tractor I moved up to Dyachuk's work desk. "It's a puzzling wall and a definitely strange cut," I mused. "How did they do it, with a saw of some kind? But then where do the clouds come in?" "Why do you insist on linking them up?" Tolya asked in surprise. "It's not me, it's Zernov. Why did he recall the clouds when he was quite definitely thinking about the glacier?" "You're just making things more complicated. The glacier is unusual, to say the least, but what has that to do with the clouds? The glacier doesn't generate them." "But suppose it does." "There is no suppose to it. Give me a hand here with the breakfast, if you have nothing better to do. What do you think, omelette out of egg powder or one of these tins?" I didn't have time to answer. Something struck us with a terrible blow and we tumbled to the floor. "Are we really flying? From the mountain or into a crevasse?" was all I could think. That very second a terrific blow from the front struck the tractor and threw it backwards. I was tossed to the opposite wall. Something cold and heavy banged against my head, and I went out cold. Chapter II. DUPLICATES I came to, but in a way I did not regain consciousness because I continued to lie there without moving and with not even enough strength to open my eyes. Consciousness crept back slowly, or was it a sort of subconsciousness? Vague feelings, hazy sensations took hold of me, and my thoughts-which were just as indeterminate and nebulous-attempted to define them. I was weightless, and I appeared to be floating or sailing or hanging not even in the air but in empty space, in a kind of colourless tepid colloidal solution, thick and yet imperceptible at the same time. It penetrated into my pores, my eyes and mouth and filled my stomach and lungs, washing through my blood, or perhaps even took its place and began to course through my body. A strange impression grasped me-that something invisible was peering intently at and through me, investigating with concentrated curiosity every blood vessel, every nerve fibre, down to the very cells of my brain. I did not experience either fear or pain, I slept and didn't, and dreamt incoherently and formlessly, yet at the same time I was positive that this was no dream at all. When I finally regained consciousness, everything about me was just as bright and quiet as usual. I opened my eyes with great difficulty and with a sharp piercing pain in my temples. Right in front of me I saw a smooth, reddish tree-trunk tower upwards. Was this a Eucalyptus tree or a palm tree? Or perhaps a pine whose top I could not see. I could not turn my head. My hand hit upon something hard and cold, a stone perhaps. I pushed it and it rolled into the grass soundlessly. My eyes sought the green grass of the Moscow Zoo, but the colour was ochre instead. And from above, from the window or from the sky, came a brilliant stream of white light that suggested both a limitless expanse of snowy wastes and the blue brilliance of a wall of ice. Everything became clear at once. Overcoming the pain, I got to my feet and then sat down to survey my surroundings. I recognized things now: the brownish lawn was simply the linoleum and the reddish pole was the foot of the table, and the stone that I pushed was my camera. It had probably hit me on the head when the vehicle plunged downwards. Where was Dyachuk? I called him, but no answer came. Zernov did not respond, neither did Chokheli. The silence was more complete than that of a room in which you are working and where you can hear all kinds of sounds-the dropping of water, the squeaking of the floor, the tick-tock of a clock or the buzzing of a fly-this was a total silence where only my own voice could be heard. I brought my wrist-watch to my ear-it was going. And the time was twenty minutes after twelve. With great effort I rose to my feet and, holding onto the wall, found my way to the navigator's seat. It was empty, even the gloves and binoculars had vanished from the desk and Zernov's fur jacket was not thrown over the back of the chair. Zernov's log book was absent. Vano had likewise disappeared together with mittens and jacket. I looked through the front window; the outside glass was bent inwards. Beyond I could see smooth diamond-like snow, as if there had not been any accident at all. But my memory persisted and the headache I had was definitely real. In the mirror I could see caked blood on my forehead. I probed around a bit and found that the bone was all right, only the skin had been cut by the edge of the camera. This meant that something had indeed taken place. Maybe everybody was nearby in the snow? I looked in the drying room for the sky clamps: there were no skis. Also absent were the duraluminum emergency sleighs. All the jackets and caps, except mine, had vanished. I opened the door and jumped down onto the ice. It was bluish and bright under the slight layer of fluffy snow that the wind was blowing every which way. Zernov was right when he spoke of the mysteriously thin layer of snow in the deep interior of the polar continent. Of a sudden, everything became clear. Right next to our "Kharkovchanka" vehicle was another one, big and red and all covered with snow. It had obviously caught up with us from Mirny or was on its way to Mirny. And it had helped us out of our trouble. That was it. Our tractor had fallen into a crevasse: about ten metres from here I could see the tracks going downwards, then the dark opening of a well with a firn-like crust covering the crack. The boys from the other tractor had probably seen our fall, which most likely had been a lucky one in which we had got caught in the mouth of the fissure, and had pulled us and the machine out. "Hello, there, anybody in the. tractor?" I yelled and went around the front end. There was not a single face in any one of the four windows and no voice at all. I began to study the other machine and found that our sister vehicle had exactly the same bent-in glass in the front window. Then I looked at the left-hand tread. Our machine had a clear-cut mark: one of the steel cleats had been welded on and therefore differed definitely from the others. Now this tread had the same tell-tale mark. These were no twins from the same factory but duplicates that repeated every single detail. Opening the door of the other machine, the duplicate, I trembled fearing the worst. True enough. The entrance passage was empty, no skis, no sleighs, only my fur jacket hanging on the hook. My jacket, that was it: torn and with sewn-up left-hand sleeve, the fur worn off the cuffs and two dark oily spots on the shoulder-I had once picked it up with oily fingers. I entered the cabin in haste and fell against the wall so as not to collapse, for my heart was about to stop. On the floor, near the table, in a brown shirt and padded trousers, with face against the leg of the table and dried up blood on the forehead and one hand holding onto the camera was ME. Was this a dream? I had not yet awakened? I was looking at myself by a second vision? I pinched the skin on my hand. It hurt. It was clear that I was awake and not sleeping. Well, then I must have gone crazy. But from books I had read I knew that mad people never realize they have gone mad. Then what is this all about? Hallucinations? A mirage? I touched the wall; it was real enough. That meant that I myself was not an apparition, a phantom lying consciousless at my own feet. Sheer madness. I recalled the words of the mysterious snow maiden. Then maybe, after all, there is a snow maiden, and miracles do happen, and phantom duplicates of people, and science is simply nonsense and self-consolation. What was there to do? Should I run to the duplicate tractor and wait to go out of my mind completely? Then I recalled the dictum that if what you see contradicts the laws of nature, then you are to blame, you err and not nature. My fear disappeared, only confusion and anger remained. I even gave the lying man a kick. He moaned and opened his eyes. Then he rose on his elbow just as I had done and looked around with a dull gaze. "Where is everybody?" he asked. I did not recognize the voice-perhaps mine in a tape-recording. But he was really me, this phantom, if he thought exactly the way I had when I regained consciousness! "Where are they?" he repeated and then yelled "Tolya! Dyachuk!" No response. It had been the same with me. "What's happened?" he asked. "I don't know," I answered. "It seemed to me that the machine fell into a crevasse, and we must have been knocked about against some wall of ice. I fell... and then... everything fell. Or did it?" He did not recognize me. "Vano!" he cried, rising. Then silence again. Everything that had occurred fifteen minutes ago was strangely being repeated. Reeling, he reached the navigator's room and touched the empty seat of the driver, then he went into the drying room, found-like I had-that there were no skis or sleighs and then remembered me and returned. "Where are you from?" he asked peering at me more intently and suddenly leapt back covering his face with his hand. "This can't be! What's happening? Am I asleep?" "That's exactly what I said... at first," I answered. I was no longer afraid. He sat down on the porolone settee. "Please excuse me, but you look exactly like me, in the mirror. Are you a spectre?" "No, you can touch me and find out." "But then who are you?" "I'm Yuri Anokhin, the cameraman and radio operator of the expedition," I said firmly. He jumped up. "No, I am Yuri Anokhin, the cameraman and radio operator of the expedition," he cried out and sat down again. Now both of us were silent, examining one another; one was calmer, for he knew a little bit more and had seen more; the other with a glint of madness in his eyes, repeating, perhaps, all my thoughts-those that had come to mind when I had first seen him. Yes, there were two men in this cabin breathing in the same heavy rhythm- two identical human beings. Chapter III. THE ROSE CLOUD How long this lasted I do not know. Finally he spoke up. "I don't understand anything." "Me too." "A man cannot split into two men." "That's exactly what I figured." He gave some thought to that. "Maybe there is a snow maiden after all?" "You're repeating," I said. "I have already thought about that. And that science is nonsense and self-consolation." He smiled slightly embarrassed, as if rebuked by his senior. Actually, I was his senior. But then he corrected himself immediately: "That's a joke. This is some kind of physical and psychic mystification. What kind exactly, I cannot make out yet. But there is an illusion. There is something not real. You know what? Let's go see Zernov." He understood me almost without speaking- he was my reflection. And our thoughts ran to the same thing: did our microscope survive the shock? It had, it turned out, and was in its place in the cabinet. The slides were also intact. My duplicate (or counterpart) took them out of the box. We compared our hands: even the corns and handnails were the same. "We'll check and see," I said. Each one of us pricked his finger and smeared the blood on the slides; then took turns looking through the microscope. The blood was identical in both cases. "The same material," he said with a smirk, "a copy." "You're the copy." "No, you are." "Wait a minute," I stopped him, "Who invited you to go on this expedition?" "Why, Zernov, of course." "And what was the purpose?" "You're just asking so that you can later repeat the same thing." "No, not at all. I can tell you. Because of the rose-coloured clouds, isn't that so?" He squinted, recalling something, and then asked cunningly: "What school did you finish?" "Institute, not school." "No, I'm asking about school. The number. What number was it, have you forgotten?" "You're the one who has forgotten. I finished School No. 709." "Well, okey. But who sat next to you on the left?" "Now, listen. Why are you examining me?" "Just a check up, that's all. You might have forgotten Lena, you see. Incidentally, she got married shortly afterwards." "Yes, she married Fibikh," I said. He sighed. "Your life coincides with mine." "Still, I'm convinced that you are the copy, a spectre and a bit of witchcraft." I wound up getting angrier all the time. "Who was first to wake up? I was. And who first saw two tractors? Me again." "Why two?" he asked suddenly. That's when I began to laugh triumphantly. My priority was now complete and confirmed. "For the simple reason that there is another one alongside it. The real one. Take a look." He pressed against the side window and, perplexed, looked at me. Then without a word he put on a copy of my jacket and went out onto the ice. The identically welded piece of tread and the identically bent glass of the window made him frown. Cautiously, he looked into the entrance way, went on into the navigator's room and then returned to the table with my camera. He even examined it. "A real sister," he said gloomily. "As you see, she and I were born a bit earlier." "All you did was wake up earlier," he added frowning, "and no one knows which one of us is the real one. Actually, I do know." "Suppose he's right, after all?" I thought to myself. "Just suppose the duplicate and phantom are not he at all, but me? After all, who can determine a thing like that if our fingernails have the same markings and our schoolmates are the same? Even our thoughts are duplicated, even feelings if the stimuli from without are the same." We looked at each other as if into a mirror. Just imagine a thing like that happening! "You know what I'm thinking about right now?" he said suddenly. "Yes, I do," I answered. "Let's see." I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking about the very same thing. If there are two tractors on the ice and it is not known which of them fell into the crack in the ice, then why are the same windows in both broken? And if both of them fell through, how did they get out? We stopped our conversation and both ran to the opening in the ice crust. We stretched out on the ice and crawled right up to the edge of the precipice, and then all was clear. Only one of the machines had fallen in because there was only one set of tracks. It had got caught about three metres from the edge of the precipice, between the two walls that came close together at this point. We could also see little steps made in the ice probably by Vano or Zernov, depending on who succeeded first in getting to the surface. This obviously meant that the second "Kharkovchanka" machine appeared already after the fall of the first. But then who pulled the first one out? It couldn't get out of the crevice by itself definitely. I took another glance into the precipice. It was black, deep, menacing and bottomless. I picked up a piece of ice that had broken off the edge- probably a chunk knocked out by the hack used to cut the steps-and tossed it down. It straightway vanished from view but I did not hear any sound of its hitting something. Then an idea flashed through my mind: maybe give this fellow-duplicate of mine a push? Run up to him and trip him into the precipice?... "Don't think you'll be able to do it," he said. I was dumbfounded at first and only later caught on. "You were thinking of the same thing?" "Of course." "Let's fight, then. Perhaps one of us will kill the other." "And suppose both are killed?" We stood opposite one another, angry, all keyed up, throwing absolutely identical shadows on the snow. Then suddenly all this struck us both as being funny. "This is a farce," I said. "We'll get back to Moscow and they'll show us around in a circus. Two-Anokhin-Two." "Why a circus? In the Academy of Sciences. A new phenomenon, something like the rose clouds." "Which don't exist." "Take a look." He pointed to the sky. In the hazy blue in the distance billowed a rose-coloured cloud. All alone, no companions, no satellites, just like a spot of wine on a white tablecloth. It floated very slowly and low, much below storm clouds, and did not at all look like a cloud. I would sooner have compared it to a dirigible. It even resembled more a piece of dark rose-coloured dough rolled out on the table or a large kite floating lazily in the sky. Jerking along, pulsating, it moved sideways to the earth as if alive. "A jellyfish," my counterpart said, repeating my own thoughts on the subject, "a live rose jellyfish. Without tentacles." "Quit repeating my nonsense. That's a substance and not a creature." "You think so?" "Just the way you do. Take a better look." "But why does it jerk so?" "It's billowing because it's a gas or water vapour. Perhaps dust, on the other hand," I added not very sure of myself. The crimson kite came to halt right overhead and began to descend. It was some five hundred metres distance from us, hardly more. The shimmering edges of it turned downwards and grew dark. The kite was turning into a bell. "Oh, what a nut!" I exclaimed remembering my camera. "This is just what ought to be photographed!" I rushed to my "Kharkovchanka" vehicle, checked to see that the camera was in working order and the colour-film spool in place. All that took but a minute. I began to shoot right through the open door, and jumping down onto the ice I ran around the two machines and found another angle for some more shots. Only then did I notice that my alter ego stood without camera and was watching my movements in a detached, lost sort of fashion. "Why aren't you taking pictures?" I yelled without taking my eye off the viewfinder. He did not answer at once and when he did it was strangely slow. "I dooon't know. Something is-is-is bothering me." "What's all this about?" ".. .don't know." I looked intently at him and even forgot about the threat from the sky. This finally was a real difference! We weren't, after all, so completely the same. He was experiencing something I did not feel. Something was hampering his movements, yet I was free. Without thinking twice I snapped him and the duplicate tractor as well. For an instant I even forgot about the rose cloud but he reminded me. "It's diving." The crimson bell was no longer slowly descending, it was falling, plunging downwards. I instinctively jumped to the side. "Run," I cried. My new twin finally moved a bit, but he did not run. Very strangely, he walked backwards to his own vehicle. "Where are you going? Are you crazy?" The bell enveloped him and he did not even answer. I again looked into the viewfinder and hurried to take these important shots. Fear had even left me because what I was photographing now was something truly nonterrestrial. No cameraman had ever taken pictures like these before. The cloud grew smaller in size and darker still. Now it was like an upturned saucer for an enormous tropical plant. It was no more than six to seven metres from the ground. "Look out!" I cried. I had suddenly forgotten that he too was a phenomenon and not a living being, and in one gigantic unimaginable effort I jumped to his aid. I couldn't have helped him anyway, it turned out, but the jump cut the distance between us by one half. In one more jump I might have caught him. But something intervened and would not let me; it even sent me reeling backwards, as if by a shock wave or a gust of hurricane wind. I nearly fell, but still held on to my camera. The giant flower had already reached the earth and its purple-red petals, pulsating in a wild fashion, covered over both duplicates, the vehicle and me. Another second and they touched the snow-covered ice. Now, alongside my tractor towered a mysterious crimson hill. It appeared to steam and boil and bubble, and was all shrouded in the rippling colours of a crimson-like haze. Golden sparks scintillated as if flashes of electric discharges. I continued to take pictures, all the while attempting to get as close as possible. Another step, yet another, . .. and my feet grew heavy, still heavier as if tied to the icefield. An invisible magnet in them drew me down, as it were -not a step more. And I stopped. The hillock became just the slightest bit brighter, the dull dark red brightened to a crimson and then it all shot straight upwards. The upturned saucer expanded, its rosy edges slowly turned upwards. The bell was again transformed into a kite, a rose-coloured cloud, a blob of gas billowing in the wind. It did not pick anything up from the earth, no condensations or nebulous formations were at all noticeable in its interior. But down below stood my "Kharkovchanka" on the icefield, all alone. Its mysterious double had vanished instantaneously, just as it had appeared. Only the snow revealed traces of the wide treads, but the wind blew and they were soon covered over with an even coat of fluffy snow. The "cloud" too disappeared somewhere beyond the edge of the wall of ice. I looked at my watch. Thirty-three minutes had passed since, on coming to my senses, I had checked the time. I experienced an unusual feeling of relief from the knowledge that something terrible indeed, something totally unexplainable had gone out of my life. More terrible actually because I had already begun to get used to the inexplicability, as a mad man gets used to his madness. The delirium evaporated together with the rose gas, the invisible barrier also vanished that did not allow me to approach my duplicate. Now I was able to go up to my machine and I sat down on the iron step. I did not stop to think that I would freeze to the metal as the temperature continued to drop. Now nothing concerned me except the thought of accounting in some way for that half hour of nightmare. For the second time, the third time and the tenth time I dropped my head to my hands and asked aloud: "What actually did take place after the accident?" Chapter IV. BEING OR SUBSTANCE? The answer was: "The most important thing is that you are alive, Anokhin. Really, I feared for the worst." I raised my head-in front of me stood Zernov and Tolya. Zernov did the questioning, while Tolya stamped his skis and knocked the snow about with his sticks. Stout and shaggy with a soft down of hair on his face instead of our unshaven bristles, he seemed to have lost his sceptical mockery and looked with boyish eyes all excited and happy. "Where did you people come from?" I asked. I was so tired and worn out that I didn't even have strength enough to smile. "Oh, right nearby," Tolya chirped, "a couple of kilometres at the most. We've got a tent there, too." "Wait a minute, Dyachuk," Zernov put in, "there's time for that. How do you feel, Anokhin? How did you get out? How long ago?" "So many questions," I said. My tongue was as unruly as that of a drunkard. "Let's start in some order, from the end, say. How long ago did I get out? I don't know. How? Don't know again. How do I feel? More or less normal, as far as I can make out. No fractures, no bumps." "Your morale?" Finally I smiled, but it came out rather grim and insincere because Zernov immediately asked again: "Do you really think that we simply left you in the lurch?" "No, not for a minute," I said, "but a series of bizarre events took place that I can't account for." "That I see," Zernov said looking over our ill-fated vehicle. "A tough machine it turned out to be. Just bent in a few spots. Who was it that pulled you out?" I shrugged. "There are no volcanoes here. No pressure from below to eject you. So somebody must have done the job." "I don't know what happened," I said. "I just found myself on the plateau here." "Boris Arkadievich!" Tolya cried. "There's only one machine. The other one must have simply left. That's what I said, a Sno-Cat or a tractor. They did it with steel cables, that's all." "Pulled it out and left," said Zernov doubtfully. "And left Anokhin behind, without giving him any aid. Very strange, very strange indeed." "Perhaps they figured he was out for good. That he was dead. But maybe they'll be back. They might have a site nearby. And a doctor too." I was fed up with those nonsensical imaginings of Tolya. He was hopeless whenever wound up. "Shut up for a while, will you!" I put in, making a wry face. "In this case, ten tractors wouldn't have been able to do anything. And there weren't any cables either. And the second vehicle did not go away, it vanished." "So there was a second one after all?" Zernov asked. "Yes, there was." "But what does 'vanished' mean? Did it perish?" "To a certain extent. That's a long story, actually. There was a duplicate of our 'Kharkovchanka' machine. Not just a copy, but a duplicate, a phantom, a spectre. But a real spectre, an actual one." Zernov listened attentively and with interest . without saying anything. There was nothing in his eyes that said: crazy, out of your head, you need psychiatric treatment. But Dyachuk was constantly ready with a term or two, and aloud he said: "You're something like Vano. Miracles are all you two can see. He came running crazy-like and yelling. 'There are two machines and two Anokhins!' And his teeth were chattering." "You would have crawled on all fours if you had seen the wonders that I did," I put in cutting him short, "there was no imagination in this case because there were two vehicles and two Anokhins." Tolya moved his lips but said nothing and looked at Zernov; Zernov turned aside for some reason. And in place of an answer he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the door behind me: "Is everything intact there?" "I think so, though I didn't check to find out," I replied. "Then let's have some breakfast. No objections? We haven't had anything to eat since then." I under