street with 30 houses where Sergey lived most often, changing the houses of his grandmothers by turns, at least ten summer residents appeared – several girls from Moscow and boys from Leningrad, Siberia and the Far East…
You had to get acquainted and make friends with everybody. But it only happened for the first time, and then they just grew up together, meeting almost every year in the same village.
His grandmother’s house was situated right at the foot of a small mountain located near the street; Sergey liked to climb it and look at the spaces of this part of Central Russian Upland from above. Just below he saw his street, then fields and vegetable gardens going down from it, and orchards near the stream.
When he looked at all that, he sometimes had the desire to stretch out his arms and fly, but he surely couldn’t. He just could run very quickly down the mountain with his arms stretched to the sides, trying to jump as high as possible while running. The slope was not very steep, and sometimes he could fly for just a few meters…
Now they flew millions of kilometers together. But he did not feel that childish feeling of joy or happiness from a second-long several-meter flight.
It was left there, very far on the spaces of Central Russian Upland.
Chalk mountains, steppes and forests, valleys and small plateaus, ravines and streams: 3 months of summer holidays passed almost imperceptibly to explore all these.
The village he usually went to was situated in Bobrovsky district of Voronezh Region. Nearby there was a river Bityug – a tributary of the Don. The village comprised several dozen streets, and some were located several kilometers from the central part.
The river flowed in a huge valley bordered from two sides by huge plateaus covered with forest. Most often he visited one of the grandmothers whose house stood practically at the foot of a small 50-60-meter mountain, with several higher mountains near it, and all that merged into a vast plateau of about 200–300 meters high, with a wheat field on it stretching to the horizon.
There were not many houses – about thirty, and they lined an ordinary country road. There were a lot of corn and potato fields around going down to a big stream. Closer to the stream, the fields turned into orchards with apple trees, pear trees and plum trees – it’s difficult to remember everything that grew there…
On the other side of the street, which was the farthest from the village, along the second half of houses, closer to the beginning of mountains, there were cherry gardens. Each one of ten houses had its own Cherry Garden, and unlike the one described by Chekhov, nothing threatened them.
The cherry trees were small – it was easy to brace them with the fingers of two palms. The trunks were dark grey, almost black, with shining yellow delicious gum, more like amber, flowing down. Sergey and his friends liked to eat this gum from the tree, but sometimes they also bit some bark and then had to spit it out.
The ripening cherries were dark red, and then became almost black unless picked on time. In twenty minutes one could easily pick a full three-liter can. By this time the grandmothers rolled the dough with rolling pins and cut it into circles for the future vareniki…
Usually about one hundred vareniki were made – not the small ones like they do in town, but sized like a small cake. 6–8 cherries were put into the circle of dough, it was poured with granulated sugar, and the edges were rolled in a beautiful winding seam. The dough was thin, and the round-sided cherries bulged from the varenik, making it almost triangular.
That’s it – put them in boiling water and they are cooked after they flow up. Vareniki increased by three to four times in size, the swollen and boiled cherries looked like blue grapes bulging from the semi-transparent dough… The mixed sugar and cherry juice yielded very delicious hot sweet-and-sour syrup, and you felt like swallowing the cherries themselves with stones in them, which often happened.
Vareniki with cherries are very tasty…
Yes, they really are…
What is it? – Sergey thought. – There is an echo in my head, or I’m going mad?
There is no threat of that, said the strange voice again.
Who is talking to me, then, is there a space bogie on the rocket?
The voice grew silent and then answered a bit sadly: I am the one who has been here all the time…
Dear me! – thought Sergey. – Are you God?
The silence answered: I am something closer to Peter…
This is the one who has the keys to paradise? – asked Sergey.
There are no keys… and even no paradise. More exactly, it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, – he heard an answer in his head.
Can you be more specific? For instance, we are flying to Mars – will we find life there or at least did it exist there? – Sergey continued the telepathy session.
Actually, you are not flying just to Mars… And there surely was life there, even similar to yours in some respect, but there is nothing left of it, sounded in Sergey’s head.
But what happened to it?
Almost the same that happened to almost all others, including your form, though not completely, but it looks like they degraded.
I see… the prospect is not very bright, thought Sergey.
But nobody promised that everything would be so wonderful and carefree, said the sad voice again. – All right, I have to go. We’ll talk later.
So long, said Sergey aloud… But there was only silence around.
-8-
Sveta flew into the service compartment in enticing and suspiciously small shorts. Her T-shirt reminded of cyclists’ uniform, though a little less tight, but anyway – it emphasized very well her tempting slender waist, high breast and beautiful sportive shoulders.
Andrey was sitting in the working zone of the service compartment and admired the beauty called Sveta which appeared suddenly or not very suddenly, with the corner of his eye.
The working zone of the service compartment included a small and comfortable hollow in the form of a table with the prototype of present-day computers and two armchairs almost like in a plane, and could be separated almost completely from the rest of the compartment with a light semi-transparent and shielded partition.
The shield was necessary to create the gravity like on Earth in the compartment, with a practical difference of about 25 percent. To create more similar and customary conditions, the installation greatly increased in size, and it was a luxury that could not be afforded there.
But it was quite enough to work quietly at the computer for an hour or two and give your body a rest from the zero-gravity it was fed up with.
A larger and more powerful installation that created artificial gravity worked for the living module – the bedroom. There it created the gravity which was practically the same as on Earth for the resting part of the crew to sleep. The crew not only slept but also restored the body from the consequences of a long exposure to zero- gravity.
The beauty flew quite near, almost a meter from Andrey, and he first admired the long and slender legs that went down to the armchair, thinking that there are wonderful aspects of zero-gravity, and here there are two of them nearby!
The legs smoothly turned into shorts – the shorts into a waist outlined by a tight T-shirt – the gaze stopped on the breast… the beauty almost sank into the armchair and tried to settle comfortably in it. The process was not quick and Sveta started to get bored with it.
She asked jokingly: Is the seat free? May I joint you?
You are always welcome! – replied Andrey and switched on a part of earthly gravity.
At last, said Sveta, settling in the armchair almost like on Earth. For complete similarity she crossed her legs and, looking into Andrey’s eyes, slowly put her hands behind her head and leaned on the back of the armchair. Andrey inadvertently stared at her breast again.
Andrey tried to look somewhere else and saw the shorts. If he looked up, it would be like rolling his eyes… so he looked at the shorts involuntarily. They suited Sveta best of all, emphasizing her slim waist turning into hips, then something these shorts were put on, and this magnificence finished with almost ideally slender and strikingly beautiful legs…
Sveta was looking at Andrey smiling, still with her hands behind her head.
