Self-discovery

Investigator Onisimov reached the New Systems Laboratory at 8:30 in the morning. The guard on duty, Golovorezov, was sitting in the sun on the porch, leaning against the door with his cap over his eyes. Flies were crawling around his open mouth and on his cheeks. The guard moved his facial muscles, but didn't wake up.

“You'll get a bad burn on duty, comrade guard,” Onisimov said sternly.

The guard woke immediately, fixed his cap, and stood up.

“Everything quiet here, comrade captain. There were no incidents in the night.”

'I see. So you have the keys?”

“Yes sir.” He pulled the keys from his pocket. “You gave them to me, and I have them.”

“Don't let anyone in.”

Onisimov unlocked the door and shut it behind him. He found his bearings in the dark hallway easily, maneuvering among the boxes and crates, and reached the door to the lab.

He looked around carefully in the laboratory. There were gelatinous puddles on the floor, their dried edges curling up. The hoses of the computer — womb hung limply from the bottles and flasks. The lights were out on the control panel. The switches on the electric panel were sticking out sideways. Onisimov inhaled the stale air carefully and turned his head: “Aha!” Then he took off his blue jacket, hung it neatly on a chair back, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work.

First of all he rinsed the teflon tank with water, stood it back up on the floor, and removed all the hoses and conductors from it. Then he followed the power cable and found the burnt — out part that had shorted, eaten away by acids, near the wall board. He took rubber gloves from the drawer, got the right tools from the cabinet, went back to the cable and cleaned and patched it up with insulated tape.

A few minutes later it was all done. Onisimov, taking a breather, stretched and turned on the electricity. The transformers in the TsVM — 12 began humming. The air vents rustled, and the exhaust fan whined, picking up speed. The green, red, blue, and yellow lights on the control panel blinked aimlessly.

Onisimov, biting his lower lip in anxiety, got a full flask of distilled water and added it to all the flasks; he got Krivoshein's lab journal from the desk, and deciphering the notations, started adding reagents to the bottles and flasks. When he finished all this, he stood in the middle of the room expectantly.

The trembling light flitted from one end of the control panel to the other, and up and down and down and up — tearing around like a maddened bulb on an electronic billboard. But gradually the random movement began forming a pattern of broken lines. The green vertical lines were shaded with blue and yellow lights. The red lights blinked more slowly: soon they went out completely. Onisimov kept waiting for the “Stop!” signal to go on at the top of the panel. Five minutes, ten, fifteen… the signal didn't come on.

“I think it's working.” Onisimov rubbed his face with his hand.

Now he had to wait. So as not to sit by idly, he filled a pail with water and washed the floor. Then he taped up the torn wires of Monomakh's Crown, read the notes in the journal, got together some more reagents and poured them in. There was nothing else to do.

He heard footsteps in the hall. Onisimov turned toward the door sharply. Golovorezov came in.

“Comrade captain, scientific secretary Hilobok is out there. He wants to come in. He says he has something to tell you. Should I let him in?”

“No. Let him wait. I have to talk to him, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I guess I'll have to talk to Harry,” Onisimov chuckled. “The perfect time to remind him of recent events.”

May 17. But Harry Haritonovich bent the truth when he said he didn't have time to write his dissertation! He lied. Yesterday, it turns out, he had his preliminary defense of his doctoral at a closed session of our scientific council. We do what so many organizations do: before letting one of our people out into the world, we listen to him in our private circle. His official defense will take place in a few days at Lena's construction project bureau.

Oh, Harry isn't lying for nothing! There's something going on.

May 18. Today I knocked at the window next to which a local institute poet, who wished to remain anonymous, had written in pencil:

Be worthy of the first form.

The enemy does not sleep!

Major Pronin.

I was worthy. That's why Joahann Johannovich let me into the closed reading room and gave me a copy of the dissertation of technical sciences candidate H. H. Hilobok to attain the degree of doctor of technical sciences on the top of… well, I can't write about that.