o add?" "Why, everything that happened to me and Vano. What we found out about the rose clouds, and what we discovered when we developed the film." "And how do you suppose a story like that should be written?" asked Zernov. "With psychological nuances, an analysis of sensations, with insinuations and so forth? Unfortunately, I'm no good at that, I'm not a writer. I don't think you could do it even with your imagination and your weird hypotheses. Now to put all that into telegraph code would be more like 'notes from an insane asylum'." "We could add a scientific commentary," I persisted. "On the basis of what kind of experimental data? What have we got except visual observations? Your film? But it hasn't even been developed." "What could it be, really?" "Well, what would you suggest? What, in your opinion is a rose 'cloud'?" "An organism." "Living?" "Undoubtedly. A living thinking organism of a physico-chemical structure unknown to us. A kind of bio-suspension or bio-gas. Academician Kolmogorov postulated the possibility of the existence of thinking mould. One could imagine, with the same degree of probability, a thinking gas, a thinking colloid, or a thinking plasma. Change of colour is a protective reaction or the colouring of emotions: surprise, interest, anger. Changes in shape suggest motor reactions, the ability to manoeuvre in aerial space. When a person walks, he moves his hands, bends his feet and so on. The 'cloud' stretches out, bends its edges, folds up into a bell." "What are you talking about?" asked Martin. I translated for him. "It bubbles when it breathes and throws out tentacles when it attacks," he added. "That makes it a beast, doesn't it?" asked Zernov. "A beast," Martin confirmed. Zernov was not asking idle questions. Each one of them was directed at a specific target, one that was not clear to me. He seemed to be checking us and himself and was not hurrying with any conclusions. "All right," he said, "then answer this: How does that beast duplicate human beings and machines? And why does he want to do it? Also, why does it destroy the models after running them in a bit with human beings?" "I don't know," I answered honestly. "The 'cloud' synthesizes all kinds of atomic structures, that is clear. But the mystery is why it does so and why it destroys them." Tolya, who had not been communicative for some time and for some unknown reason, put in a word at this point: "I think the question is not posed in the proper form. How does it duplicate? Why? It doesn't duplicate anything. It is simply an involved illusion dealing- with sensory perceptions. It is not the subject matter of physics but of psychiatry." "And my wound is also an illusion?" Vano asked offended. "You hurt yourself, the rest is illusions. Actually, I don't see why Anokhin has given up his original hypothesis. Of course, this is a weapon. I wouldn't take it upon myself to say whose-he threw a glance at Martin-but it is undoubtedly a weapon. A sophisticated and, what is most important, a purposeful weapon. Psychiatric waves that split the consciousness." "And ice," I said. "Why ice?" "Because the ice had to be broken up in order to get the 'Kharkovchanka' machine out." "Look over there to the right!" Vano cried out. What we saw through the port window stopped the argument instantaneously. Martin put the brakes on. We hurriedly got into our jackets and jumped out of the machine. I began taking pictures on the run because this promised to be one of the most remarkable of all my film strips. This was a miracle indeed, a picture from another world of extraterrestrial life. There were no clouds, no snow. Nothing interfered. The sun hung just above the horizon giving all the strength of its light to the emerald-blue chunk of ice that towered above us. An ideally smooth cut through the multi-metre tower seemed to be pure glass. No human being, no machine could be seen anywhere. Only gigantic rose-coloured disks-I counted ten or more-that delicately and soundlessly cut the ice like butter. Imagine cutting butter with a hot knife. This was it. No friction, a smooth, smooth cut with a slight fringe melting round the walls. That was exactly what was happening here, as the rose knife produced the hundred-metre walls of ice. It was in the shape of an irregular oval or trapezium with rounded angles; in area it must have been over a hundred square metres. At least that was my rough guess. But very thin, only about two or three centimetres. The familiar "cloud" had obviously flattened out, elongated and converted into an enormous cutting instrument operating with amazing speed and precision. Separated by a distance of half a kilometre, two such knives were cutting the ice wall perpendicular to the base. Two others were cutting from below in regular coincident movements of a pendulum. Another set of four were engaged close by, and a third group, that I couldn't see any more, was operating deep inside the ice. Soon the second one and the one next to us disappeared in the ice-like a Gulliver Travels circus. All of a sudden, it pushed up into the air a perfectly blue parallelepiped of ice, a glass bar nearly a kilometre in length, geometrically flawless. It rose slowly and floated upwards lightly and without a thought, like a toy balloon. Only two "clouds" participated in this operation. They contracted and turned dark, converting into the familiar saucers, turned skywards not earth-wards-two incredible red giant flowers on invisible expanding stems. They did not appear to be supporting the floating bar, for it rose above them at a decent distance and was in no way connected or fastened. "How does it hold up?" Martin asked in surprise. "On a shock wave? What force must the wind have?" "That's not the wind," said Tolya picking out his English words carefully. "That's a field. Antigravitation." He threw an imploring glance at Zernov. "A field of force," Zernov explained. "Remember the G-loading, Martin, when you and I tried to approach the airplane? Then it strengthened gravitation, now it is obviously neutralizing it." At that moment yet another kilometre-long bar of ice rose from the surface of the ice plateau, thrown into space by an invisible titan. It rose much faster than its predecessor and soon caught up with them at the altitude of ordinary polar flights. One could clearly see how the ice bars approached in the air, docked alongside one another, and merged into one broad bar that hung motionless in the air. This was immediately followed by a third, that lay down on top, then a fourth, to balance the plate. It grew thicker with every fresh bar: the "clouds" required three to four minutes to cut it out of the thick continental ice and raise it into the sky. As new bars came off, the ice wall receded into the distance, and with it the rose clouds too, which appeared to dissolve and vanish in the snowy distance. As before, two red roses hung in the sky and above them the enormous crystal cube with bright sunlight filtering through. We stood speechless, enchanted by this picture that was almost musical in its tones. A peculiar kind of gracefulness and plasticity of the rose-coloured disc-knives, their coordinated rhythmical motions, the upward flight of the blue ice bars that formed a gigantic cube in the sky-all this was music to our ears, a soundless music of the mysterious spheres. We did not even notice -only my cine camera recorded it-how the diamond cube of sunlight began to diminish in size as it rose higher and higher, and finally vanished way up beyond the cirrus cloudlets. The two command "flowers" also vanished. "A thousand million cubic metres of ice," groaned Tolya. I looked at Zernov. Our eyes met. "That's your answer to the main question, Anokhin," he said. "Where did the ice wall come from and why there is so little snow under foot. They are removing the ice shield of the Antarctic." Chapter VIII. THE LAST DUPLICATE The official report of our expedition was: Zernov's statement on the phenomenon of the rose "clouds", my story about doubles (or duplicates) and a preview of the film I had taken. But Zernov had different plans from the very beginning of the meeting. No materials for the scientific report except personal impressions and the film taken by the expedition, he explained; he added that the astronomical observations that he had familiarized himself with at Mirny do not yield any grounds for definite conclusions. The appearance of enormous accumulations of ice in the atmosphere at a variety of altitudes was registered, it turns out, both by Soviet and foreign observatories in Antarctica. However, neither visual observations or special photographs permit establishing either the quantity of these quasi-celestial bodies or the direction of their flight. One can therefore speak only of impressions and conjectures that sometimes go by the name of hypotheses. But since the expedition returned three days ago and people are by habit garrulous and curious, everything seen by the members of the expedition is now known far beyond the limits of Mirny. It would naturally be best to engage in conjectures after viewing the film, since there will be more than enough material for such guesswork. I do not know whom Zernov had in view when he mentioned talkativeness, but Vano and Tolya and I did much to excite the men and rumours of my film had even gotten across the continent. A Frenchman and two Australians and a whole group of Americans together with the retired Admiral Thompson, who has long since exchanged his admiral's galloons and shoulder straps for a fur jacket and polar sweater arrived to see the film. They had already heard about the film and eagerly awaited it, expressing all manner of suppositions. The film, even if I do say so, turned out to be exciting. Our second cinema operator, Zhenya Lazebnikov, looked at the developed film and howled out with envy: "That's the end. You're famous now. Not even Evans ever dreamt of a piece like this. You've got both hands on the Lomonosov Prize right now." Zernov did not comment, but leaving the laboratory, he asked: "Aren't you a little bit afraid, Anokhin?" "Why should I be?" I countered in surprise. "You can't image the sensation this is going to create." I had felt something like that when we viewed the film at the base. Everybody was there who could make it, they sat and stood till there wasn't any more room to sit or stand. The silence was that of an empty church. Once in a while a rumble of amazement and almost terror, when even the old-timers of polar exploration used to quite a bit gave in. The scepticism and disbelief that some had received our stories with disappeared on the instant after pictures of two "Kharkovchanka" vehicles with identically dented front windows and the rose cloud floating above them in the pale blue sky. The frames were excellent and precisely conveyed the colour: the "cloud" on the screen went red, violet, changed shape, turned up in the form of a flower, boiled and gobbled up the huge machine with all its contents. The picture of my double did not cause excitement at first and was not convincing, for they simply took it for me myself, though I pointed out straightway that to film myself and in motion too and from different angles was simply impossible even for a Grand Master documentalist. But what really compelled them to believe in duplicate human beings were the pictures of Martin's double on the snow-I succeeded in getting him close up-and then the real Martin and Zernov approaching the site of the catastrophe. The hall buzzed with excitement and when the crimson flower threw out a snake-like tentacle and the dead Martin vanished into its flared maw, somebody even cried out in the darkness. But the most striking effect, the deepest impression was made by the concluding part of the film, its ice symphony. Zernov was right, 1 greatly underestimated the sensation. But the viewers gave it its due. The showing was hardly over when voices were heard demanding a second showing. This time the silence was total: not a single exclamation resounded in the hall, nobody coughed, no one exchanged a single word with his neighbour, even whispering could not be heard. The silence continued even when the lights went on. The people were still in the grip of events and were released only by the voice of the oldest of the old-timers, the doyen of the corps of wintering-over men, Professor Kedrin, who said: "All right, now tell us, Boris, what you think about it. That will be better because we still have to think things over." "I've already said that we have no material witnesses," Zernov replied. "Martin was not able to get a sample: the 'cloud' did not allow him to approach. On the ground, too, we could not get close enough and were pressed to the ground as if our bodies were filled with lead. This means that the 'cloud' can set up a gravitational field. Added confirmation is the ice cube in the air that we saw. Martin's plane was probably landed and our tractor pulled out of the crevice in the same fashion. The following inferences may be classed as beyond question: the 'cloud' readily changes its shape and colour. This you have seen. It creates any temperature regime needed: hundred-metre-thick ice can be cut only by using very high temperatures. It floats in the air like a fish in water and can change direction and speed instantaneously. Martin claims that the 'cloud' he saw escaped from him at hypersonic speed. His 'colleagues' obviously went slow simply to create a gravitational barrier around the airplane. The ultimate conclusion can only be that the rose 'clouds' have nothing whatsoever to do with meteorological phenomena. This 'cloud' is either a living thinking organism or a bio system with a specific programme. Its principal tasks are to remove and transport into space enormous masses of continental ice. And incidentally for some unknown reason and in some unknown way it synthesizes (I would rather say duplicates or models) any thing it encounters (atomic structures such as human beings, machines and other things) and then destroys them. The American Admiral Thompson asked Zernov the first question: "There is one thing that is not clear to me from your report, and that is, whether these creatures are hostile or not towards human beings." "I do not think so. They destroy only the copies they themselves have created." "Are you positive?" "But you've just seen that yourself," Zernov replied in surprise. "I would like to know whether you are sure that the destroyed creatures are definitely copies and not the people themselves? If the copies are identical with the human beings, then who will prove to me that my pilot Martin is indeed my pilot Martin and not his atomic model?" The exchange was in English but many in the hall understood or translated for their neighbours. Nobody smiled, the question was indeed terrifying. Even Zernov seemed at a loss as he searched for an answer. I pulled down Martin who had jumped up and said: "I can assure you, Admiral, that I am indeed I, the photography man of the expedition, Yuri Anokhin, and not a cloud-created model. When I shot the film, my double retreated to the Sno-Cat as if hypnotized. You could see that on the screen. He told me that somebody or something was forcing him to return to the cabin. Apparently he was already prepared for elimination." I watched the glistening spectacles of the Admiral and almost burst with anger. "That is possible," he said, "though it is not very convincing. I have a question for Martin. Please stand up, Martin." The pilot rose to his full two-metre height of a veteran basketball player. "Yes, sir. I wiped out the copy with my own two hands." The Admiral smiled. "Now suppose the copy finished you off?" He moved his lips a bit before adding: "You attempted to shoot when you thought about the aggressive intentions of the 'cloud', right?" "Yes, I did, sir. Two bursts with tracer bullets." "Any results?" "No, sir, no results. Like a shot gun against an avalanche of snow." "Now suppose you had a different weapon? Say a flame thrower or napalm?" "I do not know, sir." "Would it have refused to clash?" "I do not think so, sir." "Sit down, Martin. Don't be offended, I am only trying to clarify some of the details of Mr. Zernov's report that worry me. Thank you for your explanations, gentlemen." The persistence of the Admiral untied all tongues. Questions followed one another as fast as they could be answered, like at a press conference. "You said that ice masses are being transported into space. Do you mean the atmosphere or outer space?" "If it is into atmospheric space, I don't see the purpose. What is there to do with ice in the atmosphere?" "Will humanity allow for this mass-scale plundering of ice?" "Does anyone need glaciers here on the earth?" "What will happen to a continent freed from ice? Will the level of the ocean rise?" "Will the climate change?" "Not all at once, comrades," Zernov implored rising his arms. "One at a time. Into what space? I assume it is cosmic space. Glaciers are only needed in the terrestrial atmosphere for glaciologists. Generally speaking, I thought scientists were people with higher education. But judging from the questions, I am beginning to doubt the axiomatic nature of that proposition. How can the water level in the ocean increase if there is no increase in water? That's school geography, and the same goes for the climate question too." "What, in your opinion, is the presumed structure of the 'cloud'? To me it seemed to be a gas." "A thinking gas," someone giggled. "From what textbook is that?" "Are you a physicist?" Zernov asked. "Well, assuming that I am." "Suppose you write a textbook." "Unfortunately, I have no experience in the show business. But my question is serious." "And I'm serious in my answer. I do not know the structure of the 'cloud'. It might even be that the physico-chemical structure is totally unknown to our science. I think that it is more of a colloidal structure than gaseous." "Where do you think it came from?" The correspondent of "Izvestia" I knew got "P-, "In some kind of a science fiction novel I read about visitors from Pluto. Incidentally, in the Antarctic too. Do you really take that as a serious possibility?" "I don't know. While I'm on the subject, I never said anything about Pluto." "It may not be Pluto, what I meant was from outer space as such. From some kind of stellar system. Why should they be coming to the earth for ice? To the outskirts of our Galaxy. There is certainly enough ice in the Universe, one could try some place a bit closer." "Closer to what?" Zernov asked and smiled. I admired him. He still retained some humour and calm even under this veritable barrage of questions. He had not made a scientific discovery, but was only an accidental witness to a unique, unexplained phenomenon, about which he hardly knew more than those who had seen the film. For some reason they kept forgetting that and he patiently responded to every remark. "Ice is water," he said in the tone of a tired teacher winding up a lesson. "It is a compound that is not so often met with even in our own stellar system. We do not know whether there is water on Venus, there is very little on Mars and none whatsoever on Jupiter or Uranus. And of course there is not so very much terrestrial ice in the Universe. If I err, the astronomers will correct me, but it seems to me that cosmic ice is merely frozen gases: ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen." "Why doesn't anyone ask about duplicates, doubles?" I whispered and immediately got myself into a lot of work. Professor Kedrin recalled me: "I have a question for Anokhin. Did you converse with your duplicate? And I wonder what about?" "Yes, we did, we talked about a variety of things," I said. "Did you notice any difference, purely external, say, in fine points, in hardly noticeable details? I refer to differences between the two of you." "None in the least. Our blood was even the same." Then I told them about the microscope. "How about memory? Recalling things from childhood and later. Did you check that?" I related everything about memory. What I couldn't understand was what he was trying to get at. But he .explained himself: "The question that Admiral Thompson asked, is a disturbing one, frightening even, and it should put us on our guard. If duplicates of human beings are going to put in appearances in the future and if, say, duplicates appear that are not destroyed, then how are we to distinguish between a person and his model? What is more, how will they themselves distinguish each other? I believe that is a matter not so much of absolute identity, but of the confidence of each that precisely he is the real person and not the synthesized one." I recalled my own arguments with my ill-fated double and was completely lost. Zernov saved me. "A curious item," he said, "the doubles always appear following one and the same dream. The person seems to be immersed in a red or crimson (violet sometimes) cold jelly-like substance that is always very thick. This undisclosed substance fills the person up completely, all his internal organs, all vessels. I cannot assert definitely that the filling takes place, but the person seems to be convinced of it. He lies totally incapable of moving, as if paralysed, and begins to experience sensations akin to those of one hypnotized: as if someone invisible were probing his mind, going through 'every cell of his brain. Then the crimson darkness vanishes, his mind clears and his movements come back. He believes that he has had an absurd and horrible dream. In a short time, the double is at large. But after waking up, the person has had time to do something and to say something, to think something. The double does not know this. When Anokhin woke up he found two vehicles and not one, both with the same dent in the front window and with the same welded piece of metal on the tractor tread. For his double, this was a discovery. He only remembered what Anokhin remembered prior to immersion in the crimson work. There were similar discrepancies in the other cases as well. After waking up, Dyachuk shaved and cut himself. His double appeared without the cut. Chokheli went to sleep drunk from the glass of alcohol he had swallowed, but he got up sober, with a clear mind. Now the duplicate appeared before him drunk, he could hardly stand up, his eyes were misty, actually he was in a state of delirium tremens. I think that in the future it will be precisely this period of action of the person immediately after waking up from the 'crimson dream' that will help, in doubtful cases, to distinguish the original from the copy if other ways have not been found by then." "Did you also have a dream of that nature?" someone asked in the hall. "Yes, I did." "But you did not have a double?" "That is exactly what is worrying me. Why I turned out to be the exception." "You were not an exception," Zernov's own voice answered him. The speaker stood behind the others, nearly in the doorway, dressed somewhat differently from Zernov. The other one had on a splendid grey suit, while this one had on an old dark-green sweater, the one Zernov always wore on expeditions. But Zernov's padded pants and Canadian fur boots, which I envied during our trips, completed the dress of the stranger. Yet he was hardly a stranger, when you come to think of it. Even I, who had spent so many days alongside Zernov, could not distinguish one from the other. Zernov was on the stage, but in the doorway stood a precise, perfect copy. That is definite. The hall gasped, somebody stood up, looking from one to the other in bewilderment, someone else stood with his mouth open. Kedrin, with puckered eyebrows, concentrating, examined the double with interest; a snake-like snigger appeared on the lips of the American Admiral; he was obviously pleased at the unexpected confirmation of his idea. It seemed to me that Zernov himself was rather pleased too, the doubts and fears of whom had so suddenly been brought to consummation. "Come over here," he said almost gaily, "I've been waiting for just such a meeting. Let's have a talk. It'll be of interest not only to us." Zernov's double unhurriedly walked over to the stage accompanied by inquisitive eyes full of excitement and interest that are accorded only rare celebrities. He turned around, pulled up a chair and sat down near the table at which Zernov had been carrying on a running commentary of the film. The spectacle somehow seemed very natural: here were twin brothers meeting after a long separation. The only difference was that everyone knew that there had been no separation and these were no brothers. Simply one of the two was a miracle beyond the comprehension of human beings. But which one? Now I realized what Admiral Thompson meant. "Why didn't you show up during the trip? I was expecting it," said Zernov Number One. Zernov Number Two, perplexed, just shrugged his shoulders. "I remember everything prior to that rose-coloured dream. Then there is a hiatus, a gap. Then here I am entering this hall, and listening and watching and it seems to me that I have begun to understand things." He looked at Zernov and smiled ironically. "How much alike we are, after all!" "I foresaw that," said Zernov shrugging. "But I didn't. If we had met like Anokhin and his double, I would not have given away the priority. Who would have proven that you are the real one and I am only a reproduction? The point is that I am you, I remember all my (or your)-now I don't even know which-life, right down to the most minute detail, even better than you perhaps: most likely a synthesized memory is fresher. Anton Kuzmich-he turned to the audience-do you remember our conversation just before departure? Not about the problems of experimentation, just the words we exchanged. Do you remember?" Professor Kedrin was definitely perplexed: "I don't remember." "I don't either," said Zernov. "You knocked your cigarette holder on a packet of cigarettes," said Zernov Number Two without the slightest touch of superiority, " and you said 'I want to give up smoking, Boris. Beginning with tomorrow, that's definite'." Laughter broke out because Professor Kedrin was munching a cigarette that had already died out. "I have a question," it was Admiral Thompson. "I would like to ask Mr. Zernov in the green sweater. Do you remember our meeting at MacMurdo?" "Of course," said Zernov the Second in English. "And the souvenir that you liked so much?" "Of course," Zernov Two answered. "You presented me with a fountain pen with your initials in gold. I have it in my room, in the pocket of my summer jacket." "My summer jacket," Zernov corrected him sardonically. "You would not have convinced me of it if I had not seen your film. Now I know: I did not return with you on the tractor, I did not meet the American pilot, and the death of his double I only saw in the film. I expect the same end for myself, I foresee it." "Perhaps you are an exception," said Zernov, "it may be that you will be granted existence." Now I saw the difference between them. One spoke calmly without losing any of his composure, the other was all wound up inside and tense. Even his lips trembled, as if it were difficult for him to say what his mind was thinking. "You yourself do not believe in it," he said, "we are created as an experiment and are eliminated as a product of the experiment. Why, is not known to anyone, you or me. I remember Anokhin's story via your memory, via our combined memory, that is how and why I remember it." He looked at me and inside I shuddered as I met the so familiar look. "When the cloud started to descend, Anokhin told his double to run. The double refused, he could not, he said, for something was ordering him to remain. And he returned to the cabin to die: we all saw that. The difference is that you can stand up and leave, whereas I cannot do that. Something has already ordered me not to move." Zernov extended his hand and it came up against an invisible barrier. "Nothing can be done," sadly smiled Zernov the Double. "It's a field, I'm using your terminology, since like you I know no other. The field has already been set up. I'm in it like in a spacesuit." Somebody sitting nearby also tried to touch the synthesized man but couldn't because his hand encountered compressed air as hard as wood. "It is terrible to know of your own end and not to have any way of putting it off," said Zernov's counterpart. "After all, I am a man and not just a biological mass. I so terribly want to live-" The horrible silence pressed down on the hall. Someone was breathing heavily like an asthmatic. Somebody else had covered his eyes with his hand. Admiral Thompson had taken off his glasses. I screwed up my eyes. Martin's hand that had been on my knee trembled. "Look up!" he cried. I looked up and froze stiff: there was a violet pulsating trunk-like affair dropping down the ceiling to the Zernov sitting perfectly still in the green sweater. Its funnel widened and frothed, unhurriedly but firmly, like an empty hood, and covered up the man beneath it. A minute later we saw something like a jelly stalactite violet in colour that merged with a similar stalagmite. The base of the stalagmite rested on the stage near the table, the stalactite flowed out of the ceiling through the roof and the almost three metres of snow covering it. In another half minute the frothing edge of the trunk, or pipe, began to turn upwards and in the empty rosiness of its inside we no longer could see either chair or man. In another minute, violet foam had gone through the roof as if something immaterial, without damaging either the plastic or the thermal insulation. "That's all," said Zernov rising to his feet. "Finis, as the ancient Romans used to say."  * PART TWO. THE CREATION OF THE WORLD Chapter IX. "THE END OF THE 'TITANIC'" In Moscow I had hard luck. I had got through the fierce Antarctic winter without even having sneezed in sixty degrees below zero, but back here in Moscow I came down with a cold in the autumn slush when the thermometer had hardly dropped to zero outside the window. True, by next Tuesday the doctor said I'd be up and around and my own self again, but Sunday morning I was still lying with mustard plasters on my back and unable to go downstairs for the newspapers. Tolya Dyachuk brought me the papers. He was my first visitor Sunday morning. And though he did not take any part in our fussing with the rose clouds and immediately returned to his weather-forecast institute and his charts of the winds and cyclones, I was sincerely happy that he did come. The anxious events that we had both gone through just a month before were still deeply felt. And Tolya was an easy-going convenient guest. One could be totally silent in his presence and think one's own thoughts without any risk of offending him, and his jokes and exaggerations would never offend his host. So the guest ensconced himself in a chair near the window and strummed on the guitar purring to himself one of his own compositions while the host lay patiently enduring the stings of the mustard and recalling his last day at Mirny and the try-out of the new helicopter that had just arrived from Moscow. Kostya Ozhogin had arrived at Mirny with a fresh group of polar workers and had only the faintest idea about the rose clouds. Our acquaintance began as he begged me to show him at least a little bit of my film. I showed him a whole reel. He responded by offering me a seat in the new high-speed helicopter during a trial run out over the ocean. The next morning-my last at Mirny-he came over and told me in secret about some kind of "very terrible thing". His helicopter had been out on the ice all night, about fifty metres from the edge, where the ship "Ob" was moored. Here is the way he described it: "We were celebrating a bit, had been drinking, not much, and before going to bed I went out to take a look at the machine. There were two there, one next to the other. I figured another one had been unloaded and went back to sleep. In the morning there was only one again. So I asked the engineer where the other one had gone, and he burst out laughing. 'Hey, you drank too much, you were seeing double. How much did you guys put away?' " I was rather suspicious about the true criminals of this splitting, but I didn't say anything. What I did was I brought along my camera, I had a hunch it might come in useful. Which it did. We were about three-hundred metres above the ocean at the very edge of the ice. We could clearly see the unloaded boxes and machines, the small pieces of broken ice at the shore and the blue icebergs out in the pure water. The biggest towered up a few kilometres from the coast line, but did not float or bob on the waves-it was sitting firmly in the water fixed securely to the bottom. We called it 'The End of the Titanic' in memory of the famous liner that collided with a colossal iceberg at the beginning of the century. This one was even larger. Our glaciologists calculated that it was roughly three thousand square kilometres in area. That was the goal of the Disney characters that had stretched out single file across the sky. I began to film without waiting for a close approach. They were flying at the same altitude as we were, they were rose-coloured without a single spot and resembled dirigibles at the tail end of a column. From the front they were like boomerangs or swept-back airplane wings. "Shall we turn back?" said Ozhogin in a whisper. "We can put on speed." "Why?" I sniggered. "You can't get away from them anyway." I could sense the tension in Ozhogin's muscles, but I didn't know whether it was due to fear or excitement. He asked: "Are they going to start splitting?" "No, they're not going to." "How do you know?" "Because they duplicated your helicopter last night, you yourself saw it," I replied. He didn't say anything. Meanwhile the column had approached the iceberg. Three rosy dirigibles hung in the air, getting redder and opening up their familiar saucer-like stemless poppies, motionless at the corners of an enormous triangle over the island of ice; then the swept-wing boomerangs plunged downwards. They went into the water like fish, no splash, no sound, only white spurts of steam encircled the iceberg. Probably the temperature gradient between the new substance and the water was too great. Then all was calm. The poppies flowered over the island and the boomerangs, disappeared. I waited patiently while the helicopter slowly circled over the iceberg a bit below the poppies hanging in the sky. "What's going to happen now?" Ozhogin asked hoarsely. "Is this the end?" "I don't think so," I replied cautiously. About ten minutes must have passed. Suddenly the mountain of ice shook mightily and then slowly rose out of the water. "Let's go," I yelled to Kostya. He understood and swung our plane to the side, away from the dangerous orbit. The bluish hunk of ice, scintillating in the sun, had already risen above the water. It was so large that it was difficult to find any comparison. Imagine an enormous mountain cut off at the base and rising upwards like a toy balloon. It gleamed and glistened shimmering in a million colours of molten sapphires and emeralds sprinkled all over it. This was a scene you could sell your soul to the devil for. I was the king. Only Ozhogin and I and the astronomers of Mirny witnessed this incomparable spectacle. A miracle of ice rose out of the water, came to a halt over the three crimson poppies and then hurtled off into the depths of cosmic space. The "boomerangs" slithered out of the water in a jet of steam and turned towards the continent in regular order. The route lay through the foam of cumulus clouds. Like horsemen they galloped. Horsemen! The simile came later, and it was not concocted by me but right now I heard it from Tolya strumming on his guitar. "Do you like it?" he asked. "Like what?" "The song, naturally," he explained. "What song," I still couldn't get it all straight. "So you weren't listening," he sighed. "Exactly what I thought. I'll have to sing it again." He started up in his long drawn out talk-sing voice, like a chansonnier without a voice that hangs onto the microphone for dear life. I didn't know then what an envious fate awaited this composition of accidental celebrity. "Horsemen from nowhere, what's that? A dream? A myth? All of a sudden, while awaiting a wonder ... the world froze silently still. And over the rhythmical drone and pulse of the world, horsemen from nowhere pranced by ... True, the idea is not new and the theme of the tragedy is simple. Hamlet again solving the eternal problem. Who are they? Human beings? Gods? The snow melts slowly, and again the Earth is anxious, there is no breathing spell-" He paused for a moment and then continued in a major key. "Who will recognize them? And will we be able to grasp them? It is late, my friend, it is late, and there is no one we can blame. Only the difficult thing to grasp, my friend, is that there they are again-the horsemen from nowhere prancing by in ordered array." He sighed and glanced in my direction waiting for some sign of appreciation. "Not so bad," I said, "As a song goes, but-" "But what?" he queried guardedly. "Where does the Spanish sadness come from? Why the pessimism?" And I started, 'It is late, my friend, it is late,' "Why late? And what is late? And what's this about blame? Are you sorry about the ice, or the doubles? Better take off this mustard plaster, it's not burning any more." Tolya peeled it off my suffering back and said: "Incidentally, they've been seen in the Arctic too." "That must be terrifying, those horsemen from nowhere." "You said it. In Greenland they've been cutting up ice too. Telegrams have come in." "So what, it might get warmer, that's all." "But what if they take all the ice there is on the Earth? In the Arctic, the Antarctic, in the mountains and the oceans?" "You ought to know, you're the climatologist. I guess we'll be able to fish for sardines in the White Sea and plant oranges in Greenland." "In theory," Tolya sighed. "Who can predict what will really happen? Nobody. It's not the ice that worries me. You read what Thompson has to say. TASS has given it in full." He pointed to a bunch of papers. "Getting panicky?" "That's not the word!" "He was nervous enough there in Mirny, remember?" "Yea, he's a tough nut. He'll keep things mixed up for quite some time. For both sides. By the way, he was the one who used the phrase Lysov-sky coined: 'horsemen from nowhere'.