Vadim picked up the stick, handed it over. Ensign Bashkalo also approached, hanging the rifle on his shoulder, tense, attentive, very concentrated. Vadim sneezed as his approached.
The Senior Ensign was drawing on the ground with the end of a brush.
– Here's how that is. This “zero” is – the closest one. Has been founded by Alex. And here's how the second one is located by the first. I'd found it during the first mission when I walked around the heavy one. Like an “eight” on its side. They are only ten meters in diameter each and both are the same. You can bypass it on the left using the “risks”. It is safe. I did it before. Have I already said that? And here, between them, I've noticed the traction, like in a good furnace. It starts at throwing the “risk”. Pulling smoke somewhere. How much we had burned there…
He slipped the stick to Vadim, took out his wallet from one of his pockets, and from the wallet – a piece of a comb, a piece of paper and, continuing to talk, he quickly made a smoke pot.
– And Alex ascertained that where the joint and traction are between these “procrustes”, something strange is present. By appearance – it is the effect of “invisibility”, with air-to-air special effects, with oxygen, with gas. A step forward – there is something, a step back – you don't see anything. Hocus-pocus, as I showed you, Sverzhin, with the “risks” and the fog. “Risks” just disappear in the hole, but nothing thumps as it would if they fell in the heavy stuff, nothing like this. And then Alex thought of throwing “a cat” in there and pulling it back out.
Vadim (“Fenimore, or already Fenimore with a capital F? Huh?”, leaned out Mumbler) was listening to Petrovich as he used to listen to cosmonaut Makarov. Madness is infectious and contagious, and Senior Ensign Petrovich, Nikolai Nikolaevich, judging by his tone and appearance, was now completely out of his mind, like everyone who creates (or imagines he does) a story or a feat.
This time, the wrapper of a cigarette pack, glued on the sides with a blue electrical tape, appeared from Petrovich's wallet. Petrovich first showed it to Vadim, then handed it to him. In the wrapper Vadim saw a dry, bluish flower and the curved stalk of some plant with sharp leaves on it. He stared at Petrovich. Petrovich grinned.
– Bennettit! Did you understand, my Fenimore? An ancient flower, shortly. And even more precisely – a protoflower. That's what we took out with that “cat”. Live protoflower. I personally saw Alex drank two bottles161 like water. Two hundred million years ago… or whenever it was. The Cretaceous of the Jurassic, did you understand, son?.. In this hole is the Cretaceous! Understand?
He suddenly cut himself off, stopped smiling and lifted a finger, and said anxiously.
– Oh! Do you hear? There is a shooting somewhere.
“Somewhere” nearby the fuse had flipped.
Vadim would remember forever that after the first hit, the smile returned to the face of the Senior Ensign, and each of the next four bullets that pierced Petrovich from the back made this smile wider, more cheerful, more sincere.
– There is a time hole, did you understand, son? – said Petrovich, gurgling and dying. – I myself… oh… uh… like water…
And he died and fell on his side, as if at attention.
Bashkalo transferred the smoking pupil of the machine gun to Vadim. Vadim stepped from foot to foot. Bashkalo barked quietly:
