Читать «Машина ужаса (Фантастические произведения)» онлайн - страница 326

Eitel could not, for some time, explain to himself the meaning of the fantastic tales the young engineer had been telling him.

“You mean to say, that the air is burning over there?” he queried, bewildered, wiping his forehead.

“Not burning,” nervously replied Hinez, twitching and twisting, as if on springs, “not burning, but destroying itself. Its atoms, broken up and exploded into their infinitesimally small bulkiness by your father, are drifting with their fragments, with such rapidity, that they are gradually destroying the neighboring atoms, thereby freeing the dormant energy that is hidden within them; they, scattered into hundreds of fragments, in their turn destroy new layers of gas, thus, a terrific gangrene is gradually hemming in more and more volumes of ether…”

“Does this presage anything serious?” asked Eitel confusedly.

“This presages a world conflagration!”

"But isn’t it possible to stop that wandering sphere, somehow? Extinguish its growing flame, or — whatever you call it?”

“That’s just where the fear lies — it is impossible, absolutely impossible, at least, in the present state of science. This process is homogeneous with the phenomenon of radioactivity and upon them we can exert no influence whatever. They are absolutely beyond our control.”

The poor brain of the soldier was tangled hopelessly in the wild perspectives.

Hinez was right. On the same day, Friday evening, the first news was received from the east about the appearance of a large exhibition of ball lightning and, as described by an eyewitness, it moved in a direction towards the Polish border. The phenomenon resembled a fiery ball, five feet in diameter; it flew slowly with the wind, close to the ground. At night it emitted a dazzling bright radiance; in the daytime, it seemed like an incandescent flaming cloud. The nature of the strange appearance, doubtless, was electrical. Upon its approach, the work of the telephone and telegraph stations ceased completely; in places of weak insulation and upon the apparatus, sparks poured down in showerlike fashion; compass needles turned in all directions, as in time of severe magnetic storms.

In general, it was very difficult to pass any judgment upon the details, but from the information thus far received, it was deducible that a danger of an unknown nature was actually threatening. The path of the sphere’s movement was a streak of growing destruction. Fields and meadows stretched in wide burned- down ribbons; wherever it encountered forests, fires flashed up and long red flames rose high into the sky. Several villages were completely wiped out.

To keep silent and conceal the truth was impossible. The Sunday newspapers were filled with alarming dispatches, articles and questions addressed to the scientific societies and individual specialists working in the fields of electro-chemistry and radioactivity.

Despite the fact that it was a holiday, a special meeting of all the professors of the Institute was called, and the most prominent representatives of scientific thought, that were in Berlin at that time, were also invited. Amongst them was Hinez — tired, emaciated and apparently grown older by many years. Deriugin, who had been working on some questions, on the solution of which now depended the fate of mankind, perhaps, was there also. The thought was wild and absurd; it sounded like a fairy-tale; yet, despite it, the chairman, opening the meeting, introduced that first. Never before had the walls of this meeting hall, within which a majestic spirit of sober discussions and cold understanding, always reigned, heard similar orations. The fantasy and the fairy-tale combined with reality; mathematic formulae and apocalyptic predictions were all blended into a strange chaos. But the most terrible thing of all was, that the meeting at once declared its complete incompetence for solving the problems they were confronted with. Man was impotent. The spirit he provoked turned against him and threatened complete annihilation. The meeting suddenly became pervaded with inexplicable alarm, and with a painful feeling of hopelessness; there seemed to be no way out of it.