Krivoshein rolled a cart with a fish tank over to the reactor; the tank contained a half — dead eel, with fins and sharp teeth.
“This is a freshwater eel, Anguilliformes,” Valerno announced, without even looking, “the most hardy of river fish. When Valentin Vasilyevich dumps it into the pool, the eel, heeding its instincts, will immediately go to the bottom… hmm… something that I wouldn't do in its place, since even the luckiest ones come floating belly up from there in two minutes. Well, see for yourselves. Mark the time, please. Valentin Vasilyevich, you're on.”
Krivoshein tipped the fish tank over the pool and started the stopwatch. The students leaned over the edge. A streak of black lightning sped to the gray — tiled bottom of the pool, made a circle, another, crossed the green light over the cylinder. Apparently blinded by that, the eel bumped into the opposite wall and reeled back.
Suddenly the light in the pool got brighter — and in the green light Krivoshein saw something that made his skin crawl: the eel got trapped in the wires that held the graphite rods, the regulators of the reactor, and was struggling among them! One rod fell out of its case and flew off like a green stick into the water. The light got even brighter.
“Everyone back!” Quickly appraising the situation, the pale Valerno barked a command. His baritone was flat. “Please leave at once!” He pulled the emergency alarm. The contacts of the automatic blocking device clicked. The light in the water blinked, as though they were doing arc welding in the pool, and got even brighter. The students, covering their faces, raced from the exits. There was a crush at the door.
“Please stay calm, comrades!” Valerno shouted in a real falsetto. “The concentration of uranium — 235 in the heat — generating elements is not enough for an atomic explosion! There will only be a heat explosion, like in a steam engine!” “Oh, God!” some exclaimed.
The doors cracked. A girl screamed. Someone cursed. The freckled four — eyes, not losing his head, grabbed a very heavy Sl — 8 synchronoscope from the table, and threw it through the window, following it rapidly…. The room was empty in a few seconds.
In the first moment of panic Krivoshein followed the rest, but stopped himself and went over to the reactor. Rapid, large bubbles rose from the cylinder and the water churned. Instead of the quiet glow there was a green bonfire in the water. The eel was quiet, but the graphite rods that it had knocked out were crisscrossed and wedged against one another.
“When the water splashes up, there'll be a cloud of radioactive steam all over,” Krivoshein thought feverishly. “That's as bad as an atomic blast. Can I do it? I'm scared. Well! What good are all my experiments, if I'm scared? And what if I end up like the eel? The hell with it!”
(Even now Krivoshein couldn't believe it. How could he have done it? Had he decided that he was invincible? Or was it the thinking of a motorcyclist who has to pass between two oncoming trucks — the important thing is don't think, just go forward! The intoxicating instant of danger, the roar of the trucks, and with a beating heart you tear out into the asphalt expanse! But this wasn't an instant — and it was quite possible he could end up along with the dead eel on the pool bottom.)
The motorcyclist's daring hit him. Tearing off his buttons, he undressed, put his leg over the edge, and — “Stop, Val! Think!” — went to the counter, and put on rubber gloves and goggles (“Wish I had an Aqua — lung!”). He filled his lungs with air and plunged into the pool.
Even at a distance from the reactor the water was warm. “A thousand one, a thousand two….” Krivoshein, instinctively turning his face away, walked across the slippery tiles to the middle of the pool. His rubber gloves were in contact with something, and he had to look: the eel, hanging in a loop between the wires, was there. “A thousand ten, a thousand eleven,” and carefully, so as not to disturb the rods, he pulled at the dead fish. “Thousand sixteen….” His hands got hot, and he instinctively wanted to pull away, but he controlled the impulse and slowly extracted the eel from the jumble. The goggles weren't so hermetic, and streams of radioactive water seeped into his eyes. He squinted. “Thousand twenty, a thousand twenty — one” — he got it out! The green glow flickered, and the rods silently slipped back into the cylinder. It got dark in the pool.
“A thousand twenty — five!” With a sharp push Krivoshein came up to the wall, jumped out of the water, grabbed the edge, and climbed over. “A thousand thirty….”
He had the presence of mind to hop around to get the excess water off his body; he even rolled around on the floor. He wiped his face and eyes dry with his pants. “Just don't let me get blind before I get there.” He dressed haphazardly and ran out of the room.
The radiation counter howled harshly as he went by. An automatic barrier blocked his path. He jumped over it and ran across the freshly dug lawn to his dorm.
“A thousand seventy; a thousand seventy — one,” his brain continued to count. It was twilight and he avoided meeting acquaintances; but someone called after him near zone B: “Hey, Val, where's the fire? He thought it was Nechinorov, a graduate student. “A thousand eighty, a thousand eighty — one….” His skin ached and itched and then it was pierced by a million needles. That was his nervous system, honed in previous experiments, telling him that the protons and gamma — quanta from the decayed nuclei were shooting the molecules of protein in the cells of the epithelium, in the nerve endings of the skin, breaking through the walls of the blood vessels, and wounding the red and white corpuscles. “A thousand hundred. thousand hundred five….” Now the prickling had moved to his muscles, stomach, and under his skull. His lungs were congested as though he had taken a deep draw on the crudest homegrown tobacco in the world. That was the blood carrying the exploded atoms and fractured proteins all over his body.
“A thousand two hundred five… two hundred eight… idiot, what have you done? Two hundred twelve….” He no longer had the idea, the impetus. There was only fear. He wanted to live. He was getting nauseating cramps in his stomach, and his mouth was filled with copper — tasting saliva. Bumping into the massive front door as he ran in, Krivoshein realized that he was dizzy. He was seeing black. “Two hundred forty — one… will I make it?” He had to get up to the fourth floor. He slapped himself as he ran, and his head got clearer.
Twilight rushed into the dark room with him. For the first few seconds Krivoshein circled the room aimlessly and weakly. The fear, that biological fear that cannot be controlled, that makes a wounded animal head for his lair, had almost killed him: he had forgotten what to do. He felt terribly sorry for himself. His body was filled with a ringing weakness and his consciousness was slipping away. “Well, so go ahead and perish, you fool,” he thought listlessly and felt a wave of extreme anger. And that's what saved him.
His clothes, spotted with green like lichen on trees, fell on the floor. The room got even lighter; his feet glowed, and his hair and vein pattern were visible on his hands. Krivoshein ran into the shower and turned it on. The cold water poured over him, sobering him up, over his head and body, forming an irridescent pool of emerald green on the floor, and refreshed him long enough to gather his thoughts and will power.
Now, like a strategist, he commanded the battle for survival that was raging in his body. Blood, blood, blood, was rushing through his entire body! The feverish pounding of his heart resounded in his temples. Myriad capillaries washed damaged molecules and particles from every cell in his muscles and glands and sucked them out from the lymph nodes. The white corpuscles surrounded them, breaking them down to elemental particles, and carried them off into the spleen, the lungs, the liver, kidneys, intestines, tossed them into the sweat glands. “Cover the bone vessels!” he instructed the nerves, remembering in time that radioactivity could settle in bone marrow, which produced blood cells.
Several minutes passed. Now he was exhaling radioactive air with faintly glowing vapors, spitting out glowing saliva that had collected the decayed radioactive cells of the brain and muscles, washing off greenish drops of sweat from his body, and urinating a beautiful emerald green stream. After an hour his excretions no longer glowed, but his body still ached.
And so he spent three hours in the shower. He swallowed water washed himself off, and threw out all the harmful radiation from his body. He came back to his room after midnight, unsteady on his feet from weakness and physical emaciation. He pushed his glowing clothes into a corner and fell onto his bed. Sleep!
The next day he was very thirsty. He dropped by the radiometrics lab, used the Geiger counter all over his body. The apparatus crackled as usual, noting random cosmic particles.
“My God, when did you lose all that weight?” Nechinorov asked as he ran into him at a lecture….
“Yes, in terms of results, that was a major experiment,” chuckled the graduate student. “I conquered a fatal dose of radiation! But in terms of performance… no, those experiments are no joke. It's better to do it his way.”
July 27. I have a great quantity of doubles and monsters. I set the normal rabbits free on the grounds, and the monsters I take out one at a time in a satchel and take them to the other side of the Dnieper.
