– And who will be the leader?
– Vasiliev.
Today I am surprised how they chose these people for the expedition.
– Vasiliev should not have agreed! – I said.
– Why? – Sergeyev was surprised. – He is a specialist.
– But you! – I insisted. Now I shared Salnikov's indignation. – How could you agree?
– Or maybe Titov should have been the leader? – Sergeyev looked at me coldly. – This is the first time I would send an expedition whose leader does not believe in its goals and does not know what to study. That would be wrong!
I remained silent.
Titov is a good specialist, but he deals with hydroacoustics, and not with what is needed for the expedition. There is some sense in Sergeyev's words.
– The famous deep-sea biologists were busy, – Sergeyev said, as if he had read my thoughts. – Of the free ones, none were suitable in character or qualifications.
Yes, Titov is an excellent deep-sea swimmer. But if we started with Vasilyev, then everything else fell into place by itself.
– After all, the trip was not considered dangerous, – Sergeyev noted. – No one ordered them to explore this area. They were simply cruising along the canyon – and that's it. What happened, no one knows.
– Tell me, – I asked directly, – do you yourself believe in this?
Sergeyev smiled.
– I understand your bewilderment. In the twenty-first century – and suddenly old sailor's tales. But, you see, whether these are tales or not, may finally become clear in our century. A paradox? There is no paradox. Zoologists are still arguing about some representatives of even land fauna, whether they existed or not. And when scientists discovered a lobe-finned fish last century, they didn't want to believe their eyes. It was believed that the last coelacanths had died out several tens of millions of years ago. And then they caught a few more coelacanths. So, do you think that fossil fish have started to come back? Nothing of the sort. Science expanded its search, and scientists began to come across more coelacanths.
– But somehow no sea snakes have ever been found, – I noted.
– There may be only one or two of these snakes, – Sergeyev said seriously. – And then they were found somewhere in their last refuge.
– For some reason, they used to catch my eye more often, – I said. – And they weren't embarrassed by people. If you believe the books that Vasiliev has.