In fact, all the Jews had wanted was a little peace to follow their own whims and ways 
of life. The climate might change but they never would. There in their logging camps at 
the foot of the mountains they were now more or less content. At least they were not 
pestered and there was always more than enough left over to make the living good. Hard 
but good. They had all the timber they needed to build with in the summers and burn 
through the winters, meat aplenty, all the vegetables they could grow for themselves, 
even a growing fund of roubles from forbidden trading in furs. There was a little gold in 
the streams, for which they prospected and panned, occasionally with some success; the 
hunting and fishing were good, flexible work rosters ensured a fair distribution of 
labour, and everyone had a share in what was available of "prosperity" and the good 
things of life. Even the cold worked in their favour: it kept busybodies out and 
interference to a minimum.
  Several of the settlers were of Romanian stock with strong family ties in the Old 
Country. Their political views were not in accord with Mother Russia's. Nor would they 
ever be-not until all oppression was removed and people could work and worship in their 
own way, and restrictions lifted so that they might emigrate at will. They were Jews and 
they were Ukrainians who thought of themselves as Romanians, and given freedom of choice 
they might also have been Russians. But mainly they were people of the world and belonged 
to no one but themselves. Their children were brought up with the same beliefs and 
aspirations.
  In short, while many of the resettled families were simple peasants of no distinct 
political persuasion, there were a good many in the new villages and camps who were 
anti-Communist and budding, even active fifth-columnists. They clung to their Romanian 
links and contacts, and similar groups in Romania had well-established links with the 
West.
  Mikhail Simonov-fully documented as a city-bred hothead and troublemaker, who'd been 
given the choice of becoming a pioneering Komsomol, or else-had gone to just such a 
family, the Kirescus of Yelizinka village, for employment as a lumberjack. Only old man 
Kazimir Kirescu himself, and his oldest son, Yuri, knew Jazz's real purpose there at the 
foot of the Urals, and they covered for him to give him as much free time as possible. He 
was "prospecting" or "hunting" or "fishing'-but Kazimir and Yuri had known that in actual 
fact he was spying. And they'd also known what he was after, his mission: to discover the 
secret of the experimental military base down in the heart of the Perchorsk ravine.
  "You're not only risking your neck, you're wasting your time," the old man had told 
Jazz gruffly one night shortly after he took up lodgings with the Kirescus. Jazz 
remembered that night well; Anna Kirescu and her daughter Tassi had gone off to a women's 
meeting in the village, and Yuri's younger brother Kaspar was in bed asleep. It had been 
a good time for their first important talk.
  "You don't have to go there to know what's going on in that place," Kazimir had 
continued. "Yuri and I can tell you that, all right, as could most of the people in these 
parts if they'd a mind to."
  "A weapon!" his great, lumbering, giant-hearted son, Yuri, had put in, winking and 
nodding his massive shaggy head. "A weapon like no one ever saw before, or ever could 
imagine, to make the Soviets strong over all other people. They built it down there in 
the ravine, and they tested it-and it went wrong!"
  Old Kazimir had grunted his agreement, spitting in the fire for good measure and for 
emphasis. "Just a little over two years ago-" he said, gazing into the heart of the 
flames where they roared up the sprawling cabin's stone chimney, "-but we'd known 
something was in the offing for weeks before that. We'd heard the machinery running, do 
you see? The big engines that power the thing."
  "That's right," Yuri had taken up the story again. "The big turbines under the dam. I 
remember them being installed more than four years ago, before they put that lead roof on 
the thing. Even then they'd restricted all hunting and fishing in the area of the old 
pass, but I used to go there anyway. When they built that dam-why, the fish swarmed in 
that artificial lake! It was worth a clout and a telling-off if you got caught there. But 
about the turbines: hah! I was stupid enough then to think maybe they were going to give 
us the electricity. We still don't have it ... but what did they need all that power for, 
eh?" And he'd tapped the side of his nose.
  "Anyway," his father continued, "it's so still on certain nights in these parts that a 
shout or the bark of a dog will carry for miles. So did the sound of those turbines when 
they first started to use them. Despite the fact that they were down in the ravine, you 
could hear their whining and droning right here in the village. As for the power they 
produced, that's easy: they used it for all of their mining and tunnelling, for their 
electric drills and rock-cutting tools, their lights and their blasting devices. Oh, and 
for their heating and their comfort, too, no doubt, while here in Yelizinka we burned 
logs. But they must have taken thousands of tons of rock out of that ravine, so that God 
only knows-you'll forgive me-what sort of warrens they've burrowed under the mountain!"
  Then it had been Yuri's turn again: "And that's where they built the weapon-under the 
mountain! Then came the time when they tested it. My father and me, we'd been setting a 
few traps and were late getting home that night. I remember it clearly: it was a night 
much like tonight, bright and clear. Where it was darkest in the woods, we could look 
through the treetops and see aurora borealis shimmering like a strange pale curtain in 
the northern sky . . .
  The humming of the turbines was the loudest it had ever been, so that the air seemed to 
throb with it. But it was a distant throbbing, you understand, for of course the Projekt 
is about ten kilometres from here. My father and me, we were somewhere in the middle, 
maybe four or five kilometres from the source. Anyway, that should give you some sort of 
idea of the raw power they were drawing from the river."
  "At the top of Grigor's Crest," Kazimir took up the thread, "we stopped and looked 
back. A wash of light, like the aurora, was playing all along the rim of the Perchorsk 
ravine. Now, I was one of the first men to settle this place-one of the first victims of 
Khrushchev's scheme, you might say-and in all those years I'd seen nothing like this. It 
wasn't nature, no, it was the machine, the weapon! Then-" he shook his head, momentarily 
lost for words, "-what happened next was awesome!"
  At this point Yuri had grown excited and once again took over. The turbines had wound 
themselves up to a high pitch of whining," he said. "Suddenly ... it seemed there was a 
great gasp or a sigh! A beam of light-no, a tube of light, like a great brilliant 
cylinder-shot up from the ravine, lit up the peaks bright as day, went bounding into the 
sky. But fast?-lightning is slow by comparison!
  That's how it seemed, anyway. It was a pulse of light; you didn't actually see it, just 
its after-image burning on your eyeballs. And in the next moment it was gone, fired like 
a rocket into space. Lightning in reverse. A laser? A giant searchlight? No, nothing like 
that-it had been more nearly solid."
  At that Jazz had smiled, but not old Kazimir. "Yuri is right!" he'd declared. "It was a 
clear night when this happened, but within the hour clouds boiled up out of nowhere and 
it rained warm rain. Then there blew a hot wind, like the breath of some beast, outwards 
from the mountains. And in the morning birds came down out of the peaks and high passes 
to die. Thousands of them! Animals, too! No beam of simple light, no matter how powerful, 
can do all that. And that's not all, for right after they'd tested it-after the bar of 
light shot up into the sky-then there came that smell of burning. Of electrical burning,