– Rather, rather!
We ran out for a door.
There was a light moonlight night. From the house the road went down, to the small lake from which we took ourselves water. On this road we saw an extraordinary phenomenon.
On the road the huge sphere from puffs of vapor slowly slid. On a frost of couples turned into hoarfrost which made as if an external mobile cover of a sphere. Moonlight was reflected in the sparkling crystals of hoarfrost and gave iridescent auras. Behind a sphere the tail from snow flakes lasted. It was possible to think that on the road the small planetka who came on a silver platter together with the atmospheric attire slides. But we understood at once what the planetka is: the strange phenomenon left clear and quite deep prints of bare human feet on snow. It was our Kazya shrouded in a cloud of steam who brought down from his body excited with fever.
«Perhaps, this steam – I thought – protects Dashkevich’s body from burning action of cold a little, is perfect the same as the atmosphere protects Earth from action of absolute cold of interstellar depths. But whether for a long time his internal heat can be enough for Kaza? It will disappear from his body before Kazya reaches the lake».
– Казя! Казя! Stop! – we shouted, pursuing the cloud sliding on the road.
We could not consider Kazyu in this cloud of steam.
Dashkevich answered nothing to us, but quickened the pace. Small blizzards began to spin behind it. He already ran up to the coast of the lake, stepped into ice, stopped and suddenly desperately cried. Over the place where it stood, the whole column of steam rose. We ran on shout, entered dairy steam and is careful, blundered about to that place from where Dashkevich’s voice was heard. This voice reached from below.
– Devil take it, ice thawed under legs! – Kazn shouted. – I failed and now I cannot get out. When I grab the edge of ice, ice thaws and turns into water…
I made out a vague spot of the Kaziny head and grabbed at random a hand. Yes, it was the hand if only I did not grab for burning головню: heat of this hand was felt even through my fur mitten. «However what temperature of his body has to be?» – with surprise I thought.
We pulled out our friend on the coast. From an ice bathtub on a forty-degree frost! But unfortunate Kazya delirious and fire of fever did not feel cold and danger. It was stirred up as the bear who got out of water and ran from us along the lake. It was easy for it to run. He ran on the trampled-down road with a speed of a dog, we in our fur suits could not catch up with him. The shining sphere of our «steam» friend sparkled on a hillock soon and disappeared.
What to do? To run after Dashkevich? But we could not leave radio station for a long time. In our work and so there was a break. We decided that one of us has to go to work, and another will be engaged in searches of the run-away patient. But as Dashkevich was stronger than each of us separately, we decided to invite to the help of professor Wagner. Pronin hurried on radio station, and I rushed off to Wagner.
– What did you make with our friend? – I asked Wagner.
Professor looked at me with one eye and answered, without coming off the lamp transmitter:
– I nothing to it made bad. And what our patient? How he feels?
– Ran away! – hasty I answered. – Ran away when it has probably not less than forty degrees temperature. Naked ran away!
