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     Translated from the Russian by John P.Mandeville
     Russian original title: Необычайные приключения Карика и Вали
     Leningrad 1937
     OCR: Tuocs
     ______________________________________________



     Granny is difficult - Mother is  worried - Jack gets on a hot scent - A
strange  discovery  is  made  in  the  Professor's  study  -  The  Professor
disappears


     MOTHER SPREAD A BIG WHITE CLOTH ON THE TABLE. GRANNY  went over towards
the  sideboard. In the dining-room knives and forks  jingled  cheerfully and
plates clattered.
     "Is it egg and onion pie?" asked Granny.
     "Yes.  The children have been begging  and  begging  me  for  it," said
Mother, as she put out the plates.
     "And is the sweet strawberries, and cream? "
     "No.  To-day  we are going to  have ice  cream pudding for a sweet! The
children do love it so."
     "All the  same," mumbled Granny, "in  the summer  it is better  for the
children to have berries and fruit. . . . When I was a little girl. . . ."
     But Mother,  apparently,  was quite  convinced Granny never  had been a
little girl.  Shrugging her  shoulders  she went  over to  the  window  and,
looking out into the courtyard, shouted loudly:
     "Ka-a-ari-ik! Va-alya-ya! Lu-unch!"
     "When I was a  little girl  . . . . "  continued Granny,  offended; but
Mother, not listening  to  her, leaned out on  the  window-sill and  shouted
still louder:
     "Karik! Valya! Where are you?"
     In the courtyard all was silent.
     "There you are," grumbled Granny. "I knew it would happen. . . ."
     "Karik! Valya!" Mother shouted again, and not waiting for an answer sat
down  on the window-sill and asked, "Didn't  they  tell you where they  were
going to go?"
     Granny bit her lip angrily. "When I was a little  girl," she announced,
"I always said where I was going, but nowadays . . . ." She straightened the
cloth on the table, frowning. "Nowadays they  just  do as they like . . . if
they take the fancy  they'll go off to the  North Pole; and  sometimes  even
worse. . . . Why, only yesterday they announced on the radio. . . ."
     "What did they announce?" asked  Mother,  hastily.  "Oh,  nothing! Just
that some boy was drowned - at least that was what they said."
     Mother  shuddered.  "That's all  nonsense," she said,  sliding  off the
window-sill. "Fiddlesticks! Rubbish! Karik and Valya would never go  off and
bathe."
     "I don't know, I  don't know!" Granny shook her head. "Only they should
have been here ages ago and there is no sign of them. They ran off early and
haven't had anything to eat this morning."
     Mother put her hand  up  to her face, and not saying anything more went
out of the dining-room quickly.
     "When I was a little girl . . . ," sighed Granny.
     But what Granny did when she was a little girl Mother just didn't hear,
she was already out in the courtyard and screwing up  her eyes in the bright
sunlight was peering in all directions.
     On a yellow mound of sand lay Valya's green spade with the bent handle,
and beside it was flung Karik's faded beret.
     No sign of the children.
     Under  the rusty gutter pipe,  warming herself in the sun,  was the big
tortoise-shell cat - Anyuta.  She lazily wrinkled her forehead and stretched
out her paws as if she wanted to give them to Mother.


     "Karik! Valya!" shouted Mother, and actually stamped her foot.
     Anyuta, the cat, opened her green  eyes widely,  stared at Mother,  and
then, yawning luxuriously, turned over on the other side.

     "What has become of them?" grumbled Mother.
     She crossed  the  courtyard,  glanced  into  the  laundry room,  peeped
through the dark windows of  the cellar where the firewood was kept. No sign
of the children.
     "Ka-ari-ik!" she shouted once again.
     There was no reply. "Va-a-lya!" Mother cried out.
     "Wough-ough,  woof!"  sounded quite close at  hand. The door at  a side
entrance slammed violently. A big sheep-dog with a sharp pointed nose leaped
out into the yard with his chain dragging behind him. With one  rush  he was
on the mound, rolling in the sand, raising a great cloud of dust; then up he
jumped, shook himself and with loud barking hurled himself at Mother.
     Mother stepped back quickly.
     "Back! No, you don't!  Get away with you!" She shooed him  off with her
hands.
     "Down, Jack! To heel!" a loud voice resounded in the doorway.
     A fat man wearing sandals on his bare feet and with a lighted cigarette
in his hand had come into the yard.
     It was the tenant from the fourth floor, the photographer Schmidt.
     "What are you up to, Jack, eh?" asked the fat man. Jack guiltily wagged
his tail.
     "Such  a fool  you are!" grinned the photographer. Pretending to  yawn,
Jack came  up  to his  master, sat  down and with a jingling chain set about
scratching his neck with his hind leg.
     "Grand weather to-day!" smiled  the fat  man. "Aren't you going to your
country cottage?"
     Mother  stared first at the  fat man,  then  at  the dog  and then said
rather crossly:
     "You have let that dog out again, Comrade Schmidt, without his  muzzle.
He behaves  just  like a  wolf. He  just looks around  to see at whom he can
snap. . . ."
     "What, Jack?"  said  the fat man, apparently most surprised.  "Why,  he
wouldn't harm a child! He is as peaceful as a dove. Would you like to stroke
him?"
     Mother waved him away with her hand.
     "You think I have nothing else to do but to stroke dogs! At home, lunch
is getting cold, none of  the housework is done and here  I am unable to get
hold of the children. Ka-a-ri-ik! Val-a-alya!" she shouted once more.
     "You just stroke Jack and ask him nicely. Say: 'Now then  Jack, go find
Karik and  Valya.' He'll find  them in a wink!" Schmidt bent down to his dog
and rubbed his neck affectionately. "You'll find them, won't you Jack?"
     Jack made a little whimpering noise and, quite  unexpectedly, jumped up
and licked the  full  lips of the photographer. The fat man  staggered back,
fussily spat out and wiped his lips with his sleeve.
     Mother laughed.
     "You  need  not  laugh,"  Schmidt  gravely  assured  her,  "this  is  a
sleuthhound. He follows the scent of a human being just like a train running
on rails. Would you like me to show you?"
     "I believe you!" said Mother.
     "No,  no!" the fat man  was  getting  agitated. "Allow me to assure you
that  if  I  say it is true,  it is  true! Now  then, just give me something
belonging to Karik or Valya - a toy - coat - beret. It does not matter what.
. . ."
     Mother shrugged her shoulders,  but  all  the  same  she  stooped down,
picked up the spade and beret and, smiling, handed them to Schmidt.
     "Splendid! Excellent!" said the fat man, and gave the  beret to the dog
to smell. "Now, Jack," he continued  loudly, "show them how  you do  it!  Go
find them, boy!"
     Jack whimpered,  put his nose to the  ground and, sticking up his tail,
started to run round the courtyard in large circles.
     The photographer cheerfully puffed along behind him.
     Having run up to the cat Anyuta, Jack stopped. The cat  jumped up, bent
herself into a  bow and flashing her green eyes  hissed  like a snake.  Jack
tried to grab her by the tail.
     The cat bristled up, gave Jack a  box on the ear; the poor dog squealed
with pain, but at once recovered himself and with  a loud bark flung himself
at  Anyuta.  The cat  again  hissed and  raised  one  paw as  if to  say:  "
Sh-sh-sh-shove off! I'll s-s-slap you s-s-such a one!"
     "Now, now, Jack," said the photographer, "you mustn't get put off!" and
he tugged so hard at the lead  that the dog sat  back on his hind legs. "Get
on, now! Go find them!" he ordered.
     With a  parting bark  at the  cat, Jack ran on ahead. He ran around the
whole  yard and  once more stopped by the gutter pipe and loudly sniffed the
air, looking at his master.
     "I understand, I understand!" said  the photographer, nodding his head.
"They sat  here,  of  course, playing with the  cat!  But where  did they go
afterwards? Now, go find them, go find them, Jack!"

     Jack  started wagging  his  tail,  twisted himself around  like a  top,
scraped with his paws at the sand under the pipe and then, with a loud bark,
dashed to the main entrance to the flats.
     "Ha-ha! he's  got on the scent!" shouted Schmidt, and with  his sandals
slithering he leaped after the dog.
     "If you do find the children, send them home!" Mother called after him,
and started walking back through the yard. "Of course they are in one of the
neighbouring courtyards," she thought to herself.
     Pulling hard on his lead, Jack hauled his master up a staircase.
     "Not so fast! Not so fast!" puffed the  fat man, barely able to keep up
with the dog.
     On the landing of the fifth floor, Jack  stopped for a second, gazed at
his master and with a  short  bark threw himself at a door which was covered
with oilcloth and felt.
     On the door there hung a white enamelled plate with the inscription:


     IVAN HERMOGENEVITCH ENOTOFF

     Underneath was pinned a notice:

     Bell does not work. Please knock.

     Jack with a squeal jumped up,  scratching at the oilcloth  covering the
door.
     "Down, Jack!" shouted the fat man. "It says knock, and not squeal."
     The photographer Schmidt smoothed his hair with  the palm of his  hand,
carefully  wiped the  perspiration off his face with a handkerchief and then
knocked cautiously at the door with his knuckles.
     Behind the door shuffling steps were heard.
     The lock clicked.
     The door  opened. A  face  with shaggy eyebrows  and  a yellowish white
beard appeared in the widening gap.
     "Do you want me?"
     "Excuse me,  Professor," said  the  photographer in some  confusion, "I
only wanted to ask you - "
     The stout man had  not  succeeded in finishing his sentence before Jack
tore  the lead out of his  hand and, almost knocking  the Professor off  his
feet, dashed into the flat.
     "Come back! Jack! To heel!" shouted Schmidt.
     But Jack  was  already  rattling his chain somewhere  at the end of the
corridor.
     "I am so sorry, Professor, Jack is only young. . . . If you will let me
come in, I'll soon get hold of him."
     "Yes,  yes  . . .  of course,"  replied the Professor, absent-mindedly,
letting Schmidt into  the flat.  "Come in, please. I hope your dog  does not
bite!"
     "Hardly ever," Schmidt assured the Professor.
     The photographer  crossed  the threshold  and  having  closed the  door
behind him, said quietly: "A  thousand apologies! I won't be a minute. . . .
The children  must be with you - Karik and Valya, from the second floor. . .
."
     "Allow me, allow me! Karik and Valya? Yes, of course, I know them well.
Very fine children. Polite and eager to learn.. . "
     "Are they here?"
     "No, they haven't been here to-day; in fact I am waiting for them!"
     "Very odd !" muttered the stout  man.  "Jack has  so certainly followed
their trail. . . . ."
     "But may be it is yesterday's trail?" politely suggested the Professor.
     But Schmidt did not succeed in replying. In the further  room, Jack was
barking resoundingly, then something  rattled,  crashed and jingled as  if a
cupboard or table had fallen with crockery on it.
     The Professor started.
     "He may break up everything!" he shouted as if he was going to cry, and
seizing  Schmidt by the sleeve  pulled him along the  dark corridor.  "Here!
through here!" he barked, pushing open a door.
     No sooner had the Professor and the photographer crossed  the threshold
of the room than Jack threw himself at his master's chest with a whimper and
then at once dashed back with a bark. All around the room he darted with his
lead behind him,  smelling the bookshelves, jumping on the leather armchair,
twisting himself under the table, all the time throwing himself from side to
side.
     On the table, tubes  and retorts jingled  as they bounced up  and down,
tall glass vessels swayed  and  fine glass  tubes shivered. From one violent
jolt the microscope, with its brass sparkling  in the sun,  started to rock.
The  Professor only  just  succeeded  in  catching  it. But  in  saving  the
microscope,  he caught  with his sleeve a gleaming nickel  container full of
some sort of complicated weights.  The container fell and the weights jumped
out and scattered with a jingle over the yellow parquet floor.
     "What are you up  to, Jack?" gruffly  jerked out the photographer. "You
are making an ass of  yourself. You're  barking, but what is  the use? Where
are the children?"
     Jack put his head on  one side. He pricked up his ears  and looked most
attentively at his  master, trying to understand what it was  that they were
scolding him about.
     The photographer shook his head disapprovingly.
     "You  should  be  ashamed of  yourself,  Jack!  They  said  you  were a
sleuthhound! With a diploma! And  all you can do is to chase cats instead of
following a trail. Now, come home! Be generous enough to forgive us. Comrade
Professor, for this disturbance!"
     The photographer bowed awkwardly and made  towards the  door.  But here
Jack  became possessed as  of a devil.  He seized his master by the breeches
with  his teeth, and planting his feet on the slippery parquet floor, tugged
towards the table.
     "What on earth is up with you?" complained the fat man in amazement.
     Squealing, Jack once more darted around the table, but  then leaped  on
the small divan which stood in front of the open window and putting his paws
on the window-sill, barked with short, jerky barks.
     Schmidt got angry.
     "Come to  heel!" he  shouted,  seizing the dog by the collar; but  Jack
stubbornly shook his head and again darted to the divan. "I can't understand
it!" The photographer threw up his hands.
     "Probably there  is a mouse behind the divan!"  the Professor  guessed.
"Or maybe a crust of bread or a bone. I often have my dinner there."
     He went up to the divan  and pulled it towards him. At the back  of the
divan, something rustled and softly padded to the ground.
     "A crust!" said the Professor.
     Jack at that moment tore  himself forward and  squeezed, with his  tail
sticking up,  between  the wall,  and  just managed to  shift the  divan. He
seized something in his teeth.
     "Come on, show us what it is!" shouted the photographer.
     Jack backed out, shook his head, turned abruptly  to  his  master,  and
laid at his feet a child's down-at-heel sandal. The photographer perplexedly
turned the find over in his hand.
     "Apparently some sort of a child's shoe. . . ."
     "H'm . .  . strange!" said  the  Professor, examining the sandal. "Very
strange!"
     Whilst  they were turning the find over in their hands. Jack pulled out
from  behind the divan  a further three sandals,  one  the same size and two
smaller ones.
     Unable to follow what had  happened, the  Professor  and  the stout man
looked first at each other and then at the sandals. Schmidt knocked the hard
sole of one sandal with his knuckle, and for no apparent reason said:
     "Strong enough! They're good sandals!"
     But  Jack meanwhile had  pulled out from under the divan a pair of blue
shorts and, pressing them with his paws to the floor, barked softly.
     "Something more?" said the Professor, quite perplexed.
     He bent over, and would have stretched out his hand for the shorts, but
Jack  bared his teeth and growled so  threateningly that  the Professor very
quickly withdrew his hand.
     "What  a very unfriendly nature he has, to be sure!" said the Professor
in some confusion.
     "Yes, he is not over-polite to me!" agreed the photographer.
     He took  the shorts,  shook them, and, folding  them neatly, laid  them
before the Professor.
     "Please take them."
     The Professor looked sideways at Jack.
     "No, no, it is quite unnecessary," said  he. "I can see everything. . .
. Well, now . .  . well, now . . . there are the markings V and K. Valya and
Karik!" And he touched with his fingers big white  letters sewn in the belts
of the shorts.
     The stout man wiped his face with the palm of his hand.
     "Is there a bathroom in the flat?" he asked in a businesslike way.
     "No," replied the Professor, "there is no bathroom. But if you  want to
wash your hands, there's. . . ."
     "Oh, no," panted the stout man, "I can wash at home. But I thought they
might have undressed and were bathing themselves. Do you see what I mean?"
     "Certainly." The Professor nodded his head.
     "But  where have they hidden themselves?  Naked  . . . without  shorts,
without sandals?  I don't understand  it at  all!" Schmidt made a gesture of
hopelessness.
     Then he put his hands behind his back, spread out his feet, lowered his
head  and  gazed solidly at the yellow rectangles  of the parquet;  then  he
suddenly straightened himself up and said confidently:
     "Don't worry! We'll find them any minute now. They are here, Professor.
They  are simply  hiding! You can  be sure  of that! My Jack has  never been
mistaken yet."
     The Professor  and the  photographer proceeded on a tour round  all the
rooms; they examined the kitchen and even looked into the dark larder.
     Jack listlessly tailed along behind them.
     In the  dining-room,  the stout man opened the doors  of the sideboard,
poked  his head under the  table, and in the bedroom searched with his hands
underneath the bed. But there was no trace of the children in the flat.
     "Wherever can they have hidden themselves?" muttered the photographer.
     "In my opinion," said the Professor, "they have not been here to-day."
     "That's what  you think?"  questioned Schmidt  thoughtfully. "You think
they  have not been  here?  But  what  do  you think, Jack? Are they here or
aren't they?"
     Jack barked.
     "Here?"
     Jack barked again.
     "Well, go find them! Go find them, you dog!"
     Jack at once cheered up. He threw himself  round and  once more led the
Professor  and  Schmidt  into  the  study.  Here he again jumped  on to  the
window-sill and started to bark loudly, and then to whimper as if he  wanted
to assure his master that the children had left the room through the window.
     Schmidt got angry.
     "You're  nothing but a dunce !  Just  a puppy ! You actually think that
the children jumped  out into the yard through a window on the fifth  floor?
Or perhaps you think they flew out of the window like flies or dragonflies?"
     "What !" The Professor started. "They flew? What dragonfly?"
     The photographer smiled.
     "Well, that is what Jack thinks!"
     The Professor seized his head in his hands.
     "What an awful thing!" His voice was hoarse.
     The photographer gazed at him in amazement and asked:
     "What is the matter with you? Here, have a  drink of water! You are not
well."
     He stepped towards the  table on which stood a glass jug full of water;
but here  the Professor positively screamed as if he had  trodden on red-hot
iron with bare feet.
     "Stop! stop! stop!" he yelled.
     The photographer, now frightened, froze in his tracks.
     The Professor  shot out his hand  and grabbed a  glass  containing what
appeared to be water, hastily raised it to the  level of his eyes and looked
through it  towards the light. Then he  hastily produced a  huge  magnifying
glass with a horn handle from his pocket and shouted to Schmidt:
     "Don't move!  For goodness'  sake, don't move! And hold the dog tight !
Better take him in your arms. I beg you!"
     The fat man, thoroughly frightened, was completely  bewildered. Without
further ado, he picked up the dog in his arms and pressed him tightly to his
chest. "The old man has gone off his head!" he thought.
     "Now, stay like that!" shouted the Professor.
     Holding the magnifying glass  in front of his eyes, crouching  down, he
started to  examine  the rectangles of the  floor  carefully one  after  the
other.
     "Shall I  have to  stand long  like this, Professor?" timidly asked the
photographer  as  he  followed  with  alarm  the  strange movements  of  the
Professor.
     "Put  one  foot here!" the  Professor yelled  at him, pointing with his
finger at the nearest rectangles of the parquet.
     Schmidt awkwardly moved his  foot  and pressed Jack  so tightly that he
wriggled in his arms and started to whimper.
     "Shut  up!" whispered  Schmidt,  watching  the Professor  with  growing
fright.
     "Now - the other foot! Put it here!"
     The fat man followed without protest.
     Thus, step by  step, the Professor conducted the photographer,  who was
quite dumb with astonishment, to the doorway.
     "And now," gruff-gruffed1 the Professor, throwing the  door  wide open,
"please go away!"
     Schmidt had hardly got  outside before the door banged in  his face. He
could hear the lock being turned.
     The fat  man dropped  Jack,  spluttered with fright and dashed down the
stairway, losing his sandals, out of breath, looking over his shoulder every
minute.
     Jack, with a great bark, plunged after him.
     And they  did not stop running until they  reached the  nearest militia
post.2

     * * * * *

     A motor-car with blue stripes on its sides drove at high speed into the
courtyard.  Several militiamen sprang  out,  called out  the  caretaker  and
hastened to the fifth floor home of Professor Enotoff.

     1 Russians make use  of words which show what they mean by their sound.
"Gruff-gruff" has been made up  and is  used in various places to illustrate
this. - Translator.
     2 In  the  Soviet Union "policemen" no longer exist; in their place are
"Militiamen" who occupy "Militia posts," not "police stations."

     But the Professor did not appear to be at home. On the door of his flat
there hung a note, pinned up with new drawing pins:

     Don't look for me. It will be quite useless.
     Professor J. H. Enotoff.






     The wonder-working  liquid -  The bewildering  behaviour of shorts  and
sandals - A very ordinary room is  transformed in a very extraordinary way -
Adventures  on  the  window-sill - Karik and Valya  set  off on  an  amazing
journey


     WHAT HAD  HAPPENED WAS JUST THIS. On the evening of the day previous to
that on which the children had vanished, Karik was sitting  in the  study of
Professor Enotoff. The evening was a  good time to have a chat with the  old
man.
     The study was  in semi-darkness  and long  dark  shadows appeared to be
climbing to the ceiling from the  black corners of the room: it seemed as if
someone  was  hiding up there and  was gazing down at the circle of light on
the big  table. Blue flames of a spirit lamp leaped up, flickered and swayed
underneath  the  curved  bottom of a glass retort.  In  the retort something
gurgled and  bubbled. Transparent  drops were falling slowly  and  musically
from a filter into a bottle.
     Karik climbed up on to the biggest leather armchair.
     Pressing his chin on the edge of the table, he gazed attentively at the
skilful hands of the Professor, trying hard not to breathe, and not to move.
     The Professor worked away, whistling, or telling  Karik amusing stories
of his childhood,  but more often talking about what he  had seen in Africa,
America or Australia - it was all very interesting, whatever he said.
     Then, rolling up the white sleeves  of his  overall,  he bent  over the
table and slowly, drop  by  drop, he poured out a  thicky oily  liquid  into
narrow little glasses. From  time to time he  threw into  these glasses some
sparkling  crystals, and  then  little clouds  would appear in  the  liquid,
slowly circle  round and drop to the bottom. After  this, the old man poured
something blue out of a measure and the liquid became, for some reason, rose
coloured.
     All this, naturally, was most interesting, and Karik  was ready to stay
there all night.
     But suddenly, the Professor hastily dried his hands on a towel, grasped
the large retort by the neck and rapidly covered it up with blue paper.
     "Well, that's that!"  he said. "At last I can congratulate myself on  a
success."
     "It's ready?" asked Karik, cheerfully.
     "Yes. All that remains now is to take the colour out of  it, and . . ."
The Professor snapped his fingers, and in a weird voice sang:

     0 beauteous, miraculous fluid!
     They'll all ask: How did you do it?

     Karik  could  not  help frowning: the Professor  sang  so  loudly,  but
unfortunately  he had no ear for music and sang a melody which resembled the
wailing of the wind in a chimney pipe. "Suppose  the rabbit won't drink it?"
questioned  Karik.  "Won't  drink  it!"  The  Professor  just  shrugged  his
shoulders. "We'll make it drink . .  . but that  must wait for to-morrow . .
.but now.  .  . ."  The  old man looked  at the  clock and  started to fuss:
"Oh-oh-oh, Karik! We've  stayed up far  too late. Eleven o'clock.  Yes. It's
two minutes past eleven!"
     Karik  realised that it  was  time to  go home. With a sigh, he climbed
down reluctantly from the armchair and demanded:
     "You won't begin without me to-morrow?"
     "Not under any circumstances," assured the Professor, shaking his head.
"That I promise you."
     "And can Valya come?"
     "Valya?" The Professor thought  over this. "Well, why not  .  . . bring
Valya. . . ."
     "Nothing will happen very suddenly?"
     "Everything  will happen," said the Professor  confidently, as he  blew
out the spirit lamp.
     "And will the rabbit turn into a flea?"
     "Oh, no," laughed the Professor. "The rabbit will remain a rabbit."
     "But tell me, Professor. . . ."
     "No, no, I will not  tell you anything more. Quite enough. We can leave
our conversation  until to-morrow. Go home, my young friend. I am tired, and
it is high time you were in bed."
     All night long, Karik tossed from side to side. He dreamt he saw a pink
elephant, so  tiny that you could put  him in  a  thimble. The  elephant was
eating  jam, then  ran along the table, round  a saucer, playing such pranks
that he upset the salt and  nearly got drowned in the mustard. Karik rescued
him from  the  mustard pot and started to clean him up,  standing  him in  a
little dish, but the elephant wrenched himself away and gave Karik a blow on
the shoulder with  his trunk. Then he suddenly jumped  up on to Karik's head
and said  in a  queer girlish voice,  vaguely familiar: "What is the matter,
Karik? Why are you shouting?"
     Karik opened his eyes. Beside his bed, in a dressing-gown, stood Valya.
     "Aha!  you  -  awake  already?"  said  Karik.  "Grand!  Dress  yourself
quickly."
     "What for?"
     "We  must start. Going  to  the  Professor's.  Oo-oo, what  will happen
to-day . . .? Such wonders! . . . miracles!"
     "But what?"
     "Dress yourself quickly."
     "I'll put on shorts and sandals," said Valya.
     "And I'll do the same."
     Looking under the bed for his sandals, Karik told her in a whisper:
     "Understand: Professor John has invented a pink liquid."
     "Does it taste nice?" asked Valya, buckling the strap of her sandals.
     "I don't know . .  . it's for rabbits . .  . he is going  to give it to
them to-day . . . make them drink it, and then. . . . Oo-oo, my word!"
     Valya's eyes opened widely.
     "And what will happen to them?" she asked in a whisper.
     "He doesn't know yet. This is just an experiment. Come on quickly!"
     The  children  quietly  tiptoed  through  their mother's  room.  Mother
shouted something  after them, but Karik grabbed Valya by the hand and raced
off with her.
     "Keep quiet,"  he whispered, "or she'll make us clean  our teeth, wash,
and wait for breakfast. Then we shall most certainly be late."
     Having dashed across  the courtyard, they darted into the main entrance
of the flats, up on  to the fifth floor,  stopping  at last  in front of the
door, where the bell did not work and callers were instructed to knock.
     Karik knocked - no one answered. He pushed the door - it opened.
     The children went into the semi-darkness of a hall. On the wall a large
mirror glittered. Immediately opposite the children, a bronze idol gazed out
of a glass case. The  Professor had brought it from China, where some of the
Chinamen  actually  pray  to  these  hideous  dummies.  In  the  Professor's
household it served as a doorkeeper. And  a most excellent doorkeeper it was
and never grumbled "shut the door after you."
     In all other respects, it was very like one  of the living doorkeepers,
and like them could watch the door silently all day.
     On the hall-stand there hung the Professor's heavy winter fur coat, his
overcoat and some sort of a raincoat with big checks like a chess board.
     All  was  silent in the flat;  except that  the  tick-tock  of  a clock
sounded a measured  beat in the dining room, and in  the kitchen, water  was
dripping musically from the tap.
     "We'll  go  in,"  said  Karik. "The Professor is  certain to  be in his
study."
     But in the study there was no Professor. The children decided to wait.
     The  windows of the study  were  wide  open. The sun  lit up  the white
table,  covered  with curving jars, vessels and retorts.  Fine  glass tubing
stood up like flowers in the glass vessels. Nickel-plated cups gave blinding
reflections of the sun. The brass of the microscope sparkled cheerfully, and
on the ceiling the sunbeams frolicked.
     Along  the wall, there was  fixed a  glass case full of  books -  thick
books and thin books. The titles were hard to understand:
     The  Ecology of  Animals,  Hydrobiology,  Chironomidae, Ascaridae. They
were the sort of books children do not touch.
     The  children wandered  round the  study, twisted  the  screws  of  the
microscope, sat  in the leather  armchair, on which, with its empty  sleeves
flung  apart, lay the white overall of the Professor;  and then they started
to look at the jars.
     Between two retorts, Valya noticed a tall, narrow glass. It was full to
the  brim with a silvery clear liquid. Little bubbles, which glittered, rose
from the bottom and burst on the surface. It was very like soda water.
     Valya carefully took the tall glass in her hand. It was as cold as ice.
She raised it to her face and smelt it. The  liquid had a scent like peaches
and something else she could not recognise. It was very appetising.
     "Oh, how good it smells!" cried out Valya.
     "Put  it  back  in its place," said Karik, crossly. "You  mustn't touch
anything. That may be a poison. Come away from the table. Do you hear?"
     Valya put the glass back in its place, but she did not leave the table;
the liquid smelt so delicious that she wanted to sniff it again.
     "Valya,  come  away!"  said  Karik. "Or else I'll  tell Mother.  Honour
bright, I will!"
     Valya went round  the table, sat in  the armchair, but quickly returned
and found herself once more opposite the delicious liquid.
     "Do you  know,  Karik, it  is soda  water!" she  said, and she suddenly
wanted desperately to  drink it, just  as if  she  had  been  eating  salted
herrings all day long.
     "Don't touch it!" shouted Karik.
     "But if I want a drink?" asked Valya.
     "Go home and drink tea."
     Valya didn't answer a word. She went over to the window, looked out  of
it, down at the courtyard; but when Karik  turned away, she quickly  skipped
over to the table, seized the tumbler and took a sip.
     "I say, it's delicious!" she half-whispered.
     "Valya, you are mad!" snapped Karik.
     "Oh, Karik, it's so nice! Try it!" And she held  out the tumbler to her
brother.
     "Cold and so nice . . . never tasted anything like it."
     "And suppose it suddenly  poisons  you!" said Karik, looking doubtfully
at the silvery fluid.
     "Poison would be bitter," smiled Valya, "but this is so delicious."
     Karik shifted from foot to foot.
     "It is sure  to be some  sort  of rubbish!" he said, stretching out his
hand for the glass in an undecided way.
     "It  is certainly not rubbish. You try  it. It  smells like peaches but
the taste is like lemonade. Only much nicer."
     Karik looked round. If  the Professor were to come in at this minute, a
rather unpleasant conversation  would ensue. But as there  was nobody in the
study except Valya, Karik hastily took a few gulps and put the glass back in
its former place.
     "But it  certainly tastes  nice!" said he. "Only  we  mustn't drink any
more  or  the  Professor  will  notice it. Let's sit  in the window. He will
surely be back soon and we shall begin the experiments.
     "All right," sighed Valya, and looked sadly at the glass  and its tasty
contents.
     The  children  climbed  on to  the  divan  and  from  thence on to  the
window-sill. With  their heads  hanging out  they  lay, 'their feet dangling
behind them, and gazed down on the courtyard below.
     "Oo, what a height!"  said  Valya,  and actually spat so  as  to  watch
something fall. "Would you jump down?"
     "Jump?" answered Karik. "I would with a parachute."
     "But without a parachute?"
     "Without a parachute? No, without a parachute you cannot jump from such
heights."
     Suddenly, against the window pane there banged a blue  dragonfly  which
fell on to the window-sill.
     "A dragonfly!" shouted Valya. "Look, look!"
     "Mine!" shouted Karik.
     "No, mine!" screamed Valya. "I saw it first."
     The  dragonfly  lay  on  the   window-sill  between  Karik  and  Valya,
helplessly moving its tiny feet.
     Karik  stretched out  his hand towards  the dragonfly, and suddenly  he
felt  that his shorts were dropping off. He  stooped  quickly but  could not
catch them: the shorts slid off and after them fell his sandals.
     Karik then wanted to jump off the window-sill on to the  divan standing
by the window, but the divan suddenly started to drop away down, just like a
lift leaving the top floor. Unable to grasp what was happening, Karik looked
around in confusion, and then saw that the whole room was suddenly expanding
both upwards and downwards.
     "What's happened?" he screamed.
     Walls,  floor and ceiling  were  moving away from each  other like  the
bellows of a huge  concertina. The electric light was  hurrying away up with
the ceiling. The floor was falling precipitately down.
     Hardly  a  minute  had  passed,   but   the  room  was  already  almost
unrecognisable.
     High  above overhead, there swung a gigantic glass  balloon hung around
with huge transparent icicles which gleamed in the sunlight.
     This was the chandelier.
     Far  below,  there  stretched  a  boundless  yellow field  divided into
regular rectangles. On the  rectangles were piled  square wooden blocks with
burnt ends. By them lay a long white tube on which there was printed in huge
letters "Navy cut." One end  of this was burnt and covered by a great cap of
grey ash. Nearby, like immense leather mountains, stood the dark  armchairs,
on one of which lay the Professor's white overall looking like snow covering
the mountain.
     Where  lately had been  the  bookcase there now  stood a  skyscraper of
glass and  brown  beams.  Through the  glass  could be seen books as  big as
five-storied houses.
     "Karik,  what  is all this?"  Valya  asked  quite calmly,  looking with
curiosity at the amazing transformation of the room.
     It was only then that Karik noticed Valya. She  was standing beside him
without sandals and without shorts.
     "Look, Karik,  isn't it funny!" she giggled. "It must be the experiment
beginning. Ooh!"
     Before  Karik succeeded in  answering, something beside them started to
make a  noise and to thump. Thick  clouds of dust rose from the window-sill.
Valya clung on to Karik's shoulder. At that moment there was a puff of wind.
Dust flew up and slowly started to settle.
     "Ooh!" shouted Valya.
     In the spot  where just  a  moment  or two  ago  there  had lain a tiny
dragonfly, there now moved a thick, long, log-like, jointed body with a huge
hook at the end of it.
     The brown body,  covered with turquoise  blue splashes, was contracting
in  spasms. The  joints  moved, sometimes sliding over each other, sometimes
turning sideways. Four  huge transparent wings, covered with a dense  web of
glittering threads, trembled in the air. A monstrous head hammered  upon the
window-sill.
     "Kari-ik!" whispered Valya. "What is this?"
     "Sh-sh-sh!"
     Treading  carefully, Karik started to cross the window-sill  which  now
was  like a wooden motor road,  but,  having  taken  a few steps, he stopped
aghast.
     He  was standing  on the edge of a precipice. It seemed to him that  he
was looking down from the height of the St.  Isaac's Cathedral.  It was then
that Karik realised what had happened. He returned to Valya, took her by the
hand and, hiccupping with fright, said:
     "It... it must have been the water for the rabbits... do you understand
. . . the Professor's experiment has succeeded . . . only you and I have got
small and not the rabbits."
     Valya didn't understand anything.
     "But what is this?" she asked, pointing  at the monster  which was  now
lying motionless on the window-sill.
     "That? The dragonfly!
     "So enormous?"
     "Not  at all enormous," gloomily replied  Karik, "it  is the same as it
was. On the contrary it is we who have become tiny . . . like fleas. . . ."
     "Isn't that interesting?" said Valya cheerfully.
     "You  fool!"  Karik  was  really  angry.  "There  is  nothing   at  all
interesting about it. They'll put us in ajar and start looking at us under a
microscope."
     "In my opinion," said Valya confidently, "they will not  have a  chance
to look at us. The Professor will come and make us big again."
     "Oh, yes, big again! He won't even notice us!"
     "But we'll shout!"
     "He won't hear us!"
     "Won't hear us? Why? He is not deaf, is he?"
     "No,  he is not deaf, but  our  voices  are  just about as strong as  a
midge's voice."
     "Is that so?"  Valya  smiled unconvinced, and then shouted  at  the top
other voice: "Oho!  Here we are!" She looked at Karik and asked: "What about
it? Difficult to hear?"
     "All right for us, but no good for the Professor."
     "But what will happen to us?"
     "Nothing particular. They'll whisk us off the window-sill with a duster
and trample us underfoot, that's all. . . ."
     "Who will whisk us off?"
     "The Professor himself."
     "Whisk us off with a duster?"
     "Yes, certainly! He'll start to clear up  the dust  with his whisk! And
off we'll go with the dust!"
     "But we  . . . but . . . we - Listen, Karik,  I have already thought of
something .  . . . Do  you know  what  -  we can sit  on  the dragonfly. The
Professor  will notice  the dead dragonfly and most  certainly  will take it
over  to  his  table, and then we can get on to his microscope  and  he will
catch  sight of us - of course he will catch sight of us! And then  he  will
make us big again. Let's climb on to the dragonfly quickly."
     Valya clutched Kari& by the hand and they ran to the dragonfly.
     "Get up on to it!"
     Helping  one another,  the  children  nimbly clambered  up  on  to  the
dragonfly,  but they  had  only just sat down  when the dragonfly started to
quiver, to beat its lumbering wings, to turn heavily and pant and  puff like
some machine. The children could feel a strong muscular body bending beneath
them.
     "Oy, it's still alive. Jump down quickly!" screamed Valya.
     "Don't worry, don't worry. Hold on tighter."
     The children clung with hands and  legs to  the body of  the dragonfly,
but  it  wriggled  its  whole  body, endeavouring  to  free  itself from the
unpleasant burden. Karik and Valya rocked and  bounced  as if  they were  on
springs.
     "It will throw us off! Oh, it will throw us  off any minute!" whimpered
Valya.
     "Just wait!" shouted Karik. "I'll throw it off. . . . There, stop it!"
     He slid up to the head of the  dragonfly, bent over and hit it with all
his strength several times in its eye with his fist.
     The dragonfly shuddered, twisted itself and sank down.
     "It appears to be dead again," said Valya.
     "We shall see."
     Karik slid off the dragonfly, went  all around it and then  seized with
both  hands one of  the clear,  mice-like wings and tried  to raise  it. The
dragonfly didn't stir.
     "It's dead," said Karik, confidently clambering up on to the dragonfly.
     For some time  the children sat silently, looking every now and then at
the  door,  but they soon  became  bored and began to examine the dragonfly.
Karik perched himself on the wing and tried  to tear it  away from the body.
But the wing was too strong. Then he jumped on the head of the dragonfly and
knocked its eyes with his heels.
     "0-ooch, what huge eyes! Look, Val! Aha!"
     Valya  timidly stretched out her hand and touched an eye  which  was as
cold as if it had been moulded out of crystal glass.
     "Dreadful things!"
     The dragonfly certainly  had wonderful eyes - huge and  protruding like
glass lanterns. Covered with thousands of even facets, they seemed to be lit
with bluey-green light from within.
     These strange eyes looked at both Karik and Valya at  one and the  same
time, and  indeed  were looking also at the courtyard, at  the  sky,  at the
ceiling of the room and at the floor. It seemed that in each eye there shone
a thousand separate greenish  eyes,  all of  which were watching attentively
like a hawk. In front of those enormous  eyes, on the very edge of the head,
were  three more small brown eyes,  and these also attentively followed  the
children.
     "Do you know," said  Valya,  "it is alive in spite of everything.  It's
watching, Karik, don't you see?"
     "Well, what about it?"
     "You must  kill it  again. It  will suddenly come to life. Do  you know
what dragonflies feed on?"
     "On grass  or the sap  of flowers, I should think," said Karik,  rather
uncertainly. "I don't really remember. Why?"
     "I was afraid  that if it came to life it might eat us.  Who knows what
it really does eat. It would be better for us to kill it once again."
     Valya was getting down  in  order  to get away from the  dragonfly when
there appeared  to be the  noise of some explosion in the  room.  Then there
sounded regular heavy thuds.
     "What is that?" Valya stood stock-still.
     "That . . . hurrah! It's - the Professor. He is  coming!" shouted Karik
at the top of his voice.
     Valya hastened to occupy her former  place. The door banged. A wave  of
air from the window struck them. A man-mountain with a beard like a stack of
white flax came into the study.
     Then Karik and Valya screamed with all their strength.
     "Professor!"
     "Professor!"
     The man-mountain stopped. The palm of a hand the size  of a dining-room
table  shot upwards and stopped  at a twisted, shell-like ear  out  of which
there protruded tufts of grey hair  as big as drawing pencils. He looked all
around, listened carefully and shrugged his shoulders perplexedly.
     "Professor! Pro-fess-ess-or!" Karik and Valya shouted together.
     The man-mountain sighed noisily.  In the rooms  everything buzzed.  The
children  were  both very nearly thrown  off  the  dragonfly  into the stone
courtyard below.
     "He-ere we are! Over here!"
     The man-mountain stepped towards the window.
     "Hurrah!" shouted Karik. "He has heard us!"
     The man-mountain stopped.
     "Come here! Here we are! Here! We are here!" screamed the children.
     The man-mountain came over to the window.
     But suddenly  the  dragonfly started to move. It  started  beating  its
mica-like  wings, raised a cloud of dust on the window-sill  and then - with
Karik and Valya on its back - it swooped away down into the blue airy ocean.
     "Hold tight!" screamed Karik, clutching Valya by the neck.




     Adventures in the airy ocean - The gluttonous aeroplane - The unwilling
parachutists - After the big splash - The submarine prison - In the clutches
of an eight-eyed monster

     THE DRAGONFLY FLEW ON,  ITS TRANSPARENT RIGID  WINGS BEATING as noisily
as if they had been made of sheet iron.
     The wind they met seemed like  elastic, it plucked  at  their hair  and
whistled  shrilly in their  ears. It  beat  in their faces and blinded their
eyes.
     It became difficult to breathe.
     Clinging desperately to the dragonfly, gripping it with their arms  and
legs, the children rode on in mortal fright.
     "Karik!"  shouted Valya amid the howling  of the wind. "How  can I hold
on, it's pulling me off - pulling me down - the wind!"
     "Shut  up!  We'll fall off!" screamed  Karik, and nearly choked in  the
wind.
     The  wind  was blowing so hard that it seemed that it would either tear
the  heads off the children or sweep them away. They bent down to  the  very
back of the dragonfly but that did not help.
     "Lie flat, Vally!" shouted Karik, stretching himself out full length.
     Valya followed his example.
     "How's that?" shouted Karik, "better now?"
     "A little!"
     And  certainly  the blast of the wind  seemed  to have lessened at that
moment. It was even possible to open their eyes and look around.
     Not raising her head, Valya shouted, "This if too awful'"
     Amid the noise of the wind, Karik could only hear one word, "awful." He
turned slightly  back and said  as loud  and calmly  as he  could:  "Its all
right, hold on tighter!"
     The dragonfly hurried  on,  smoothly  swooping  up the  sides of aerial
mountains and then rapidly plunging down again.
     "Oy, Karik," screamed Valya, "it's like an American switchback."
     But Karik didn't hear.
     He was watching attentively the way in which  the dragonfly's mica-like
wings worked.
     The two front wings stood out in  the air practically motionless. Their
movement could barely be seen. From time to time they curved, now up and now
down,  and  then the insect either flew  lower or  higher. By these wings it
directed its flight. At the same time they supported it in the air.
     The rear wings  on the other hand flashed like propellers.  They droned
and roared as they quickly cut through the air and, flinging it behind them,
drove the dragonfly ahead.
     Then the rear wings started to lift upwards until they stood vertically
on edge like a sail.
     The wind now blew evenly along its back. The dragonfly was  noiselessly
floating in the air like an aerial yacht.
     "Oh, how interesting!" whispered Valya, "they should build an aeroplane
like this."
     Karik looked sideways at his sister  and  sniffed with displeasure. Her
lightheartedness was making him angry.
     "Sit  tighter  and shut  up!" he commanded.  But  Valya could  not  sit
silently. How indeed could  she be silent. Past them  like  trains coming to
meet them huge winged  beasts  bore on their way  swirling the children with
gusts of air. They flew past so quickly that it was impossible to grasp what
they were. Birds? Bees? Dragonflies?
     Valya every now and then shouted.
     "What's that one? What is it? You saw it, Karik?"
     They  as  near  as  anything  collided with  something  as  big  as  an
aerial-tank -  a beetle. It was all adorned with  gold and purple  colouring
and shone so blindingly in the sun that it was impossible to look at it.
     The  beetle  flew  straight  at  the  dragonfly.  A  collision   seemed
inevitable. But suddenly the beetle without  even  turning around started to
whirl backwards at the same speed.
     "It  is  going  backwards!"  screamed   Valya.  "It  can  actually  fly
backwards. Do you see?"
     Suddenly  underneath  the  wings  something buzzed  and  sang.  I  From
somewhere below there came plunging a round striped animal.  Wit