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Eric rubbed his own face. His knuckles came away black as a lamp wick. Whenever summertime lightning hit the forest, fires dragged sooty palls across the Road. Which was worse: the flood and gooey mud before---or this dirty dusty smoking heat? Both were vile---And no matter how many trees burned to a crisp, it never seemed to diminish by one jot the endless ranks of pines reeking of resin, of larches and firs, and those gloomy birches which were darker than the birches of Russia, less sentimental in hue...346Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeePg6H0i9A
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"Good Jesus, if a jaunt of 300 versts to Kansk and back knocks a man up this line---that's on a road, mind you! Heaven help us if we're off the beaten path!"
"Don't worry, Eric Saveli." Yanovich had come alive again. "Wherever Man lives, he leaves behind footprints. The Tungusi know where the paths are. One day, I swear to you, this forest will be driven back, oh, maybe as far as Kansk itself! You'll see fields of cabbages and potatoes. And the one thing which bring that day closer to call attention to is Siberia!"
"You know, back in Moscow I used to think the crash of an axe was such a cruel sound."
"We're all of us lost in a dark wood, blundering around. We need to let in a little bit of light, yes?"
"We do, we do."
"In reality our problem comes down to one small thing: timing. Our surveyor friend has said as much. We could hop in a boat right away. The Yenisei would carry us off to the North without us lifting a finger. But as soon as we left the river..."
" 'Da! There is the rub,' as Vasily Fedotik would say."
"The taiga is an evil place, Eric Saveli. The mosquitoes can eat you alive. Horses can drown in the hellish bogs, and often do."
"So, we will simply have to wait until it freezes"
"But then the winter swallows us. It's madness. Besides, I'm sure you haven't even begun to consider the cost."
How slowly yet valiantly the ferry moved---A group of peasants shared the jetty with them, perching on baskets of springtime onions. A circuit judge sat pompously upon his carriage. Eric's thoughts drifted back over to the strange chain of events of the past few weeks....
Commencing with his visit to the offices of the Krasnoyarets newspaper on the morning after he had first heard Yanovich tell his wild tale... The editor insisted upon holding a reception in Eric's honor at his own home that very evening. Present at that soiree had been a fairly famous company of ladies, drummed up in haste, who oo-ed and ahh-ed over him and tinkled pianos and recited Pushkin--- to say nothing of the not-quite-famous Countess Lydia Zelenina who was playing it up as a 'romantic exile'....
It was there that Eric had also met a Czech surveyor, Richard Matousek by name, who had something to do with a railway construction scheme, but who was cooling his heels in Krasnoyarsk.
One thing had led to another, which had led in turn to a third, till a fortnight later Eric was still becalmed in Krasnoyarsk----just like Mishin, Abramovich, and Aho. It now transpired that the three musketeers were in reality strapped for cash, having extravagantly run through their stipends of two thousand rubles apiece. But by then Mishin was talking brashly of persuading the Governor to second him from his assignment on the Amur, "for a real adventure," while Milorad Yanovich who had stopped behaving quite so superfluously, was all for having Eric off to Kansk on a fact-finding mission---a trip from which they were just now returning.
Fate, it seemed, had conspired. Yet what of the convicts and their women and children still languishing all this while in Sakhalin? Could it be that there was more than one way to pay one's debts to science?
Presently the ferry grounded against the jetty. Ropes were tossed ashore, and the judge's driver flicked his whip, catching an attractive peasant girl across the ass.
Dismounting, Eric and Yanovich hauled their own team and carriage out upon this mighty warrior of rivers.
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Upon returning to the hotel in Rybichkala, Eric promptly downed five glasses of tea in a row till his face glowed as red as a beetroot---and sorted through his accumulated correspondence. Those troikas of the Imperial Postal Service might run you down without thinking twice, but they did deliver the goods at a wonderful speed.
His article about the "Tunguska Mystery" was already in print in New Times; already it had caused a bit of a sensation in the newspapers, so Yanovich reported----there was even talk of raising a fund.
Apart from Yanovich's epistle there were letters from his sister Sveta---blessedly accompanying a pouch of tasty Ukranian tobacco, to spare him from the Siberian variety which resembled pounded hay---and from his mother, Gavriela, also from Novoarino. Then there was a long reply to his own appeal for scientific advice, from Ludmilla Degtyarova; and finally, there was a bulky letter from some total stranger who lived in Borovsk, fourscore versts to the south of Moscow.
He read the family news first while guzzling the fourth and fifth cups of tea and enjoying a real Ukranian smoke; then opened the lady astronomer's letter.
This was full of astronomical speculation about comets and meteors and meteorites and boilides and the craters of the Moon. From it he gathered that there ought to be a huge crater hidden somewhere out on the taiga, with a fortune in iron and nickel and platinum buried beneath. A fortune, that is, for any passing reindeer or Tungusi tribesman enterprising enough to build a mine and smelting works and a railroad line.
Eric was starting to itch all over as the heat from the tea tried to sweat its way out through his blocked pores. Putting down the letter from Borovsk till later, he hurried to pay a call on the public bath house. On the way he fell in with Richard Matousek, heading for the same destination, though the Czech was hardly one tenth as dirty as Eric.346Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR3C1J3W9hD
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To Eric's embarrassment the water turned first to brown then to inky black, as the two men soaped and scrubbed and ducked. To get their minds off the dirt, Eric went into Yanovich's notions of meteoric wealth in lavish detail.
"Hmmm," said Richard. He was a short, hairy, muscular man with keen blue eyes. "If that's so, it's just what this part of the world needs. Yet what incredible difficulties---it might be 50 years before we could even complete utilization."
"Utilization" was one of Matousek's favorite words. He habitually saw the trees of the taiga as nothing else than so many railway ties planted upright in the ground, waiting to be pushed over and trimmed.
"Maybe it needs a change in the system of government, too," he added quietly. "But that's no business of mine."
They repaired to the steam room together, where they thrashed one another with birch bosoms, after which Eric felt ravenous.
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He dined alone back at the hotel, in the restaurant, on boiled eggs with cream followed by flabby boiled chicken and cabbage. Afterwards he went up to his room and poured himself a generous glass of spirits; then he opened the letter from Bovorsk....346Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGRAAVEWtZw
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Most Truly Honored Sir..346Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaKdP9TFzku
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Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, and currently I am employed as a teacher of arithmetic and geometry at the chemistry school here in Borovsk....346Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1siEGEnxut
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"What can this be, then? Is this man offering me a job?" Quickly Eric skimmed through the long letter, various passages catching his eye.346Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgZcf5pVLc7
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....my sincere hope is that next year you may see the publication of my paper on How to Protect Fragile and Delicate Objects from Jolts & Shocks---with a special reference to gravitational acceleration due to interplanetary travel. My own humble, and as yet unpublished essay in the art of fiction---of a species which might maybe be described as "Science Fantasy"---entitled On the Moon....346Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9PiT57NDQD
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"Science Fantasy, eh? What's that?" wondered Eric. "A new school of literature? A kind of Odoyevsky and Jules Verne thing? Aha! Now I understand; this chap wants me to recommend him to a publisher!"
But surely no one in their right mind would dispatch a letter thousands of versts for that reason alone? Not unless they were bonkers....
....ballistic tremor....
Eric skipped to the end.
.....for that reason my conclusion, most respected Eric Savali, based upon the newspaper reports from Siberia which you quote in your article, together with the other hearsay evidence you cite, is that an interplanetary space vehicle----perhaps from the planet Mars---exploded high above the forests of the Taiga whilst attempting to enter the Earth's atmosphere subsequent to its journey through the heavens. This disaster would have been caused by overheating, due to the resistance and friction of gas molecules encountered at high speed.
I have carried out some experiments, employing matchsticks for trees, and I feel confident in predicting that the trees directly beneath the center of the explosion will be found to remain erect, although stripped of their foliage and branches.
I have carried out some calculations, a copy of which I append to this letter. I have always felt sure, hitherto, that a "ship of space" such as I envisage ought to be powered by a principle of "jet propulsion" employing liquid fueled as the propellant. But I have estimated the probable size of this "ship," basing my estimate on the appearance of the shockwave in the upper atmosphere, as described by your good self. And I have carefully calculated the explosive force of appropriate masses of various propellants---including naptha, liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen et cetera (taking into account the certainty that this ship would already have consumed a proportion of its fuel during initial accelerating0---and in a way can I account for the force of the blast described unless some entirely new principle of Science were employed. Unless---may I hazard?---Mass be regarded as a "bound state" of Energy only a tiny fraction of which Energy is released during the normal process of combustion. Were Mass to be totally convertible into Energy (by some method by which I cannot yet envisage), then sufficient force might well be available to cause the destruction described.
This supposition set me to wondering about the sum total of heat which our planet receives from the Sun---in view of the distance, size and likely age of that heavenly body. Were the Sun an ordinary 'bonfire' of gas, Sir, it would have consumed its whole substance long ago!
This was followed by an appendix of mathematical calculations of which Eric could make neither heads nor tails. He read the whole letter through again slowly from the start. He read the whole letter through again slowly from the beginning.
Maybe he was in a state of mental confusion due to the return trip from Kansk, and hence open to suggestion. Or maybe this letter from out of nowhere did indeed address the question of how one could pay his debts to Science in a manner more worthwhile than just prospecting for meteoric ore. Whatever the reason, the letter had an effect on him equivalent to only one other piece of correspondence he'd never gotten in his life: four years before M.R. Lagunov hailing Eric as a new star in the literary firmament and exhorting him not to squander his talents as a back.
But this letter he now held in his hands wasn't from a Grand Old Man of the past addressing a young and careless tyro who might yet make good. It was from a man of the future, who had not yet had a chance to prove himself.
Pouring in the second installment of his nightcap, Eric re-read the letter. Then he began jotting down calculations of his own, though these had nothing at all to do with ballistics or the energy value of naptha.
He had already paid off a good half of his absence from Prokhor Izmailova; and his books were still steadily netting cash for the New Times bookshop. Come springtime, he'd been planning to ask Fima Mihaylov for another two or three thousand rubles advance, repayable over the next five years.
Why not right now?
Then there was this proposed fund which Izmailova mentioned. Subscribers could well be lured by the prospect of meteoric wealth.
He might write post-haste, tomorrow, to Izmailova---and then to this Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, too.
Eventually Eric crawled into his bed, his head spinning. Instantly he fell asleep, exhausted.
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