“You mean, no one has come back yet?”
“No one.”
“And nothing else has happened?”
“Nothing. Our people finished the examination ninety minutes ago, didn’t find anything substantial, and went home to do the lab work. They left me to keep everyone out, and I’ve spent the time repairing the zero-T cabin.”
“Have you fixed it?”
“More yes than no.”
The cottages of Little Pesha were ancient, built in the last century, utilitarian architecture, in toxically bright colors — from old age. Each cottage was surrounded by impenetrable currant bushes, lilacs, strawberries. And right beyond the semicircle of houses was the forest, the yellow trunks of gigantic airs, the crown gray-green in the fog, and above them, rather high up, the crimson disk of the sun in the northeast…
“What lab work?” Toivo asked.
“Well, there are a lot of clues… That disgusting stuff crawled out of that cottage, I guess, and spread in all directions…” Basil began pointing. “On the bushes, the grass, and on some of the verandas there’s dried slime, scales, clumps at something…”
“What did you see yourself?”
“Nothing. When we got here, it was like it is now, except there was fog on the river.”
‘Then there are no witnesses?”
“At first, we thought everyone had run off. Then we learned that in that house there, the end one on the bank, there is a very elderly woman doing one, thank you, who never thought about running away…”
“Why not?” Toivo asked.
“No idea!” Basil replied, raising his eyebrows and spreading out his hands. “Can you imagine, total panic, everyone scattering, the door pulled off the hinges of the zero-cabin, and she doesn’t give a damn… We fly in, start up our whole battle campaign, sabers unsheathed, bayonets plugged in, and she comes out on her porch and demands severely that we be more quiet, because we’re keeping her up with our noise!”
“Had there been panic?” Toivo asked.
“And how!” Basil said, palm outstretched. “There were eighteen people here when it all began. Nine ran off on their gliders. Five escaped through the zero-cabin. And three ran off into the woods, and got lost; we were lucky to find them. So don’t have any doubts about it, there was panic… There was panic, and there were monsters, and they left traces. Now, why the old lady didn’t get scared, that we don’t know. She’s strange, that old lady. I heard her tell the commander: ‘You got here too late, boys. You can’t help them now. They’re all dead.’ “
Toivo asked: “What did she have in mind?”
“I don’t know,” Basil said grumpily. “I told you, she’s strange.”
Toivo looked at the toxic pink cottage that contained the old lady. The garden was well tended. There was a glider parked next to the cottage.
“I don’t recommend disturbing her,” Basil said. “Let her wake up on her own, and then you can talk —”
At that moment, Toivo felt something behind him and turned sharply. A pale face with wide-open, frightened eyes peered out of the club’s door. The stranger was silent for a few seconds; then his bloodless lips moved, and he said in a hoarse voice:
“A silly story, isn’t it?”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Basil said kindly, moving toward the man with his hands upturned and open. “Please forgive me; you can’t come in here. Emergency squad.”
The stranger nevertheless stepped across the threshold and stopped.
“I’m not trying,” he said, and coughed. “But circumstances… Tell me, did Grigory and Elya come back yet?”
He looked unusual enough. He was wearing a heavy coat with fur inside and outside, and beneath its tails you could see his richly embroidered fur boots. The coat was unbuttoned at the chest, revealing a colorful summer shirt of micromesh, which were popular in those days with inhabitants of the steppe zone. He looked forty or forty-five; his face was simple and nice, but too pale, either out of fear or embarrassment.
“No, no,” Basil replied, coming up close to him. “No one’s come back. We’re examining the area, and we’re not letting anyone in…”
“Wait, Basil,” Toivo said. “Who are Grigory and Elya?” he asked the stranger.
“I think I’m in the wrong place again,” the stranger said with despair, and looked over his shoulder into the depths of the pavilion where the zero-T-cabin glowed. “Excuse me, is this … hm… Oh, Lord, I forgot again… Little Pesha? Or isn’t it?”
“It’s Little Pesha,” Toivo said.
“Then you must know … Grigory Alexandrovich Yarygin… As I understand it, he lives here every summer.” Pointing, he suddenly cried out happily; ‘There it is, that cottage! That’s my raincoat on the veranda!”
Everything was cleared up. The stranger was a witness. His name was Anatoly Sergeyevich Krylenko, and he was a zoo technician; he did work in the steppe zone — in the Azgir agrocomplex. Yesterday, at the annual exhibition of innovations in Arkhangelsk, he bumped completely by accident into his old school friend, Grigory Yarygin, whom he hadn’t seen in some ten years. Naturally, Yarygin dragged him off to his place, here, in this… ah, forgot it again… oh, yes,, to Little Pesha. They spent a lovely evening yesterday, the three of them, Yarygin, his wife Elya, and Krylenko, went out in the boat, walked in the woods, and got back around ten, to that cottage over there, had dinner, and settled down with tea on the veranda. It was still very light, children’s voices carried from the river, and it was warm. The arctic strawberries smelled terrific. And then, suddenly, Anatoly Sergeyevich Krylenko saw eyes…
In this most important part of his story, Anatoly Sergeyevich grew incomprehensible, to put it mildly. He seemed to be trying to recall a horrible, complicated dream.
The eyes were staring from the garden … they were moving closer and stayed in the garden… Two huge, nauseating eyes… Something kept dripping on them… And on the left, to the side, was a third… or three?… And something kept falling, falling, Ailing through the railing of the veranda and was creeping up the steps… And it was impossible to move. Grigory disappeared somewhere; he couldn’t see Grigory. Elya was somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t see her either. He could hear her screaming hysterically… or laughing… Then the door flew open. The room was about waist-deep in writhing jellied carcasses, and the eyes of the carcasses were outside, behind the bushes…
Anatoly Sergeyevich realized that the scariest part was just beginning. He pulled his feet out of the sandals that were stuck to the floor, jumped over the table, fled into the woods, and ran around the house… No, he didn’t run around the house, he had jumped into the woods but ended up in the square… He ran wherever his feet took him, and suddenly saw the club pavilion, and through the open door he saw the violet flash of zero-T, and he realized that he was saved. He burst into the cabin like a bomb and began pushing buttons and keys at random, until the machine worked…
The tragedy ended there, and the comedy began. The zero-transporter threw Anatoly Sergeyevich out in the settlement of Roosevelt on the Island of Peter the Great. That’s in the Bellingshausen Sea, 49 below, wind speed 18 meters per second, and the settlement was almost empty, winter-like.
Of course, the automatic machinery was on in the polar-bear club; it was warm and cozy, and a brilliant rainbow of bottles glimmered in the bar, intended to light up the darkness of the polar nights. Anatoly Sergeyevich, in his light shirt and shorts, still wet from the tea and the horror, got the rest he needed and came to his senses. And when he came to his senses, the first thing he felt, as was to be expected, was unbearable shame. He realized that he had fled in panic like the lowliest coward… He had read about such cowards in historical novels. He remembered that he had abandoned Elya and at least one other woman, whom he had noticed in passing in the neighboring cottage. He remembered the children’s voices on the river and realized that he had abandoned those children, too. A desperate urge to action overwhelmed him. But here’s the amazing part: the urge did not arise immediately, and secondly, once it did arise, he remained for a rather long time in unbearable horror at the thought of returning there, to the veranda, to the field of vision of those nightmarish dripping eyes, to the revolting jellied carcasses…
A noisy group of glaciologists burst into the club and found Anatoly Sergeyevich gloomily wringing his hands: he still had not made up his mind to do anything. The glaciologists heard him our in total sympathy and immediately and enthusiastically decided to return to the horrible veranda with him. But then they discovered that Anatoly Sergeyevich not only did not know the zero-index of the village but had forgotten its name. He could tell them only that it was not far from the Barents Sea, on the banks of a small river, in the zone of arctic firs. Then the glaciologists dressed Anatoly Sergeyevich in clothes more suitable to the local climate and, through the howling blizzard and monstrous snowdrifts, led him to the settlement headquarters accompanied by gigantic beast-like hounds… And at headquarters, at the BVI terminal, one of the glaciologists had the very sobering thought that this was no joke. The monsters must have escaped from some bestiary, or — horrible thought! — from some lab constructing biomechanisms. In any case, amateur activity was uncalled for, boys; we have to notify the emergency squad.