Vadim turned around. Bashkalo was standing, his gun lowered, staring at the smoke arch in space, his jaw hanging as far as the chin strap allowed. However, he recovered faster than Vadim.
– Stop, sto-op! – he said, taking Vadim on sight again. – Calm down, son. Ye-e-es… Fucking gitik! – he exclaimed softly and cheerfully. – The time hole. Well… Fine. Are you ready for work and defense, comrade traveler to the past?
Vadim imagined how Bashkalo saw him, Vadim, in general, so to speak. Against the background of the smoke patterns, in the center of the main arch of the system of gitiks “The Time Hole -1”. A beautiful target. (Mumbler laughed.)
– As for me – I'm ready, – said Vadim loudly, cutting off this laugh, which nobody except him could hear. – And what about you, a chunk, are you ready?
– So you're not a pussy, right? A brave one, right? – said Bashkalo grinning, with pleasure. – Well, say it, say it, bumper. Last speeches. The Senior Ensign Petrovich was kind, but Ensign Bashkalo is evil. No damn way, puppy, you will not understand me. And you did not understand the meaning of the situation. For you it won't make a difference if I was lying as a corpse now and Petrovich was drinking vodka. Do you think he's better than me? He has done in more of ours here than guerillas in his Afghanistan! He was a beast, his soul was dead!
Vadim stopped listening to him. Bashkalo noticed this immediately.
– So you're a brave one, right? – he said over the gunsight. – Well, come on, come on, come on, go ahead… you sensitive leather stocking. Bring me some prehistorical loots, my two-legged cat. Some flowers. Dinosaurs. And will see, what we shall do with you later. But if you don't get out, then you don't. A grenade after you. You don't know, right? Exactly “procrustes” explode very well. How do you think we made it almost halfway to the airfield? So many of these tough places were there… Stand down, – he said to himself. – Come on, Sverzhin. Farewell.
Vadim turned away, looking at the hole, that means looking at the steppe, framed with a smoke frame. “Slowly, try it with your hand first”, timidly suggested Mumbler, who became serious. Vadim shook his head. No. He rummaged around the belt, pulled out another strip of gauze from the clamp.
– Hey, hey, warrior, no jokes!.. – proclaimed Bashkalo expressively.
Vadim showed him the gauze over the shoulder. Bashkalo went silent. Vadim tied several knots at one of the ends, one above the other, put the formed ball in his mouth and began drooling on it. The wet ball weighted the strip rather well for something homemade, making the “risk” manageable, but without a sinker, without a nut. For some reason here and now it seemed important to be iron-free. (The thought about the first one who ran through the second railcar flashed again.) Keeping the “risk” in his outstretched hand, Vadim began to swing it forward and backward. Here the ball touched the hole, like the surface of a vertical puddle, no waves ran, but the gauze immediately stretched out. Vadim unclasped his fingers and the hole sucked it in. And Vadim, without a farewell sigh, bent and stepped after it. And disappeared.
Having waited a moment, ensign Bashkalo licked the mustache, sticky with blood, lowered the barrel of the machine gun and said into space:
– And what now, bitch? Is that all, bitch?
