Alice: The Girl From Earth
Kir Bulychev








Another well known series of Bulychev's stories are young adult stories about Alisa Seleznyova, a young girl from the future. A number of them were made into films, with Guest from the Future ("Гостья из будущего"), based on Bulychev's novel One Hundred Years Ahead ("Сто лет тому вперед"), the most widely known about a girl Alice living in the future. Another famous film was the animated feature The Mystery of the Third Planet (1981), for which Bulychev penned the screenplay. Alice's Birthday is a 2009 animated film based on one of his tales.







Kir Bulychev

Alice: The Girl From Earth


Translated by John H. Costello

Copyright 2002 by Kir Bulychev




The Little Girl Nothing Ever Happens To


Stories about the life of a little girl of the 22nd Century, as recounted by her father





In Place of a Foreword


Tomorrow Alice starts school. It will be a very interesting day. Her friends and acquaintances have been on the videophone to her all day and everyone is congratulating her. In fact Alice hasn’t let anyone have any peace for the last three months just talking about her new school.

The Martian Boose sent her some sort of remarkable pencil case which no one ha s been able to open not me, not my co-workers, who include two Doctors of Science, and the Moscow Space Zoo’s chief mechanic.

Shusher said he would accompany Alice to school to make certain she got a sufficiently experienced teacher.

There has been an astonishing amount of fuss. From my recollection, when I went to school for the first time, no one bothered to raise such a bother.

Now the commotion has died down somewhat; Alice has gone off to the Zoo to say good- bye to Bronty.

And finally, it’s quiet in the house, and I can sit down and dictate a number of events from the lives of Alice and her friends. I’ll send these notes to Alice’s teacher. It will let her know what sort of dilettante she has to deal with in me, and it will let her know what she’s getting into with my daughter.

From the very first, Alice was a child like any other. Until about three. The proof of my statement will be the events I relate first of all. But about a year ago, from when she first met Bronty, I have observed in her character the wisdom to do things not quite as everyone expects them to be done, to vanish at the most inconvenient times and even to by accident! make discoveries beyond the powers of even the greatest of modern scientists. Alice has the ability to get everyone to do what she wants, despite which she has a mass of good and true friends. For us, her parents, this has been very difficult. We are simply not able to just sit around at home all the time. I work in the zoo, and my wife is an architect constructing buildings, most of the time on other planets.

I want to warn Alice’s teacher before she meets my daughter herself. Quite simply, things are not going to be easy. So let her pay attention to a number of completely truthful accounts of my daughter’s experiences and adventures in various places of the Earth and space over the last three years.




On the Dialing of Random Numbers


Alice would not go to sleep. It was ten O’clock already and she would not go to sleep. I said:

“Alice, you must go to sleep now, or else I….”

“Or else what, papa?”

“Or else I shall call Baba Yaga.”

“And who is Baba Yaga?”

“Hmm… That is something all children have to learn. Baba Yaga is the Wicked Witch of the North! She lives in a giant castle on stilts made out of chicken leg bones. She’s an evil old woman who eats small children… Disobedient small children…”

“Why?”

“Well, because she’s evil and hungry!”

“But why is she hungry?”

“Because there are no stores nearby, and no food service to her castle.”

“Why not?”

“Because the castle is too old and it’s too far away in the forest.”

Alice had become so interested she even sat up in bed.

“Does she work in the nature preserve?”

“Alice, go to sleep immediately!”

“But you promised to call Baba Yaga! Please, papa, please call Baba Yaga!”

“I will call her. But you will be very sorry that I did!”

I walked over to the videophone unit and punched out a few numbers at random. I was certain there would be no connection and that Baba Yaga would not be home.

But I was mistaken. The videophone screen lit up, there was a buzzing someone had pressed the ACCEPT button at the other end of the line, and hadn’t even appeared in person on the screen when a deep voice said:

“Martian Embassy. May we be of service?”

“Is it her, papa? Is it her?” Alice cried from her bed.

“She’s already gone to bed.” I said sternly.

“Martian Embassy here. May we be of service?” The voice repeated.

I turned to face the videophone. A young Martian was looking out at me. He had green eyes, and no eyelashes.

“I’m sorry.” I said. “Rather clearly I have the wrong number.”

The Martian laughed. He was looking not at me, but at something behind my back. Alice, naturally, had jumped out of her bed and was standing barefoot on the floor.

“Good evening.” She said to the Martian.

“Good evening, little girl.”

“Does Baba Yaga live with you?”

The Martian cast a questioning look in my direction.

“You see,” I said, “Alice won’t go to sleep, and I was hoping to get through to Baba Yaga and have her punish her. But I got a wrong number.”

The Martian laughed again.

“Good night, Alice.” He said. “You have to go to sleep now, or your papa will call Baba Yaga.”

The Martian said good bye to me and hung up.

“Well, now are you going to go to sleep?” I asked. “You heard what your uncle from Mars said…”

“I’ll go sleep, papa. Are you going to take me to Mars?”

“If you are a good little girl and behave yourself we’ll go to Mars in the summer.”

At long last Alice tell asleep, and I went back to my work. I was at my desk until one o’clock in the morning. And suddenly there was a deafening ringing from the videophone. I pressed the ACCEPT button. The Martian from the Embassy looked out at me.

“I’m sorry to trouble you at such a late hour.” He said. “But your videophone was not turned off for the night, and I concluded you had yet to go to bed.”

“No bother.”

“Then is sit possible you can help us?” The Martian said. “The whole Embassy can’t get to sleep. We’ve poured over the encyclopedias, gone through all the phone books, but we still can’t find out who Baba Yaga is and where she lives…”




Bronty


They brought a Brontosaurus egg to us at the Moscow Space Zoo. Some Chilean tourists found the egg after a landslide on the shores of the Yenisei River. The egg was nearly round and miraculously preserved by the eternal cold. When the specialists started to study it they noticed it appeared to be quite fresh, and so we decided to place it in the Zoo’s egg incubator.

Certainly no one expected success, but after no more than a week the X-Rays and ultrasound equipment showed us a developing, growing Brontosaurus embryo. No sooner had the news hit the info services and the Net scientists and correspondents began to pour into Moscow from all over. We had to reserve the whole eighty story Venusian Arms Hotel on Tver Street, and that wasn’t enough to house them all. I had eight Turkish paleontologists sleeping like sardines in my dining room not to mention the journalist from Equador in the kitchen and the two women correspondents from “Antarctic Woman” who set up housekeeping in Alice’s bed room.

When my wife phoned in the evening from Nikos, where she was overseeing the construction of a stadium, she had decided not to come home for a while.

All the world’s newsfeeds were showing The Egg. The Egg from the side. The Egg from the front. A skeleton of a brontosaurus superimposed on the Egg…

A whole visiting Congress of Cosmolinguists came for a mass visit to the Zoo. But by that time we had cut off access to the incubator and the philologists had to content themselves with the polar bears and the Martian Mantises.

On the forty-sixth day of this madness the egg began to suddenly shake and shudder. My friend Professor Yakata and I were at that moment beside the hood which sheltered the egg with tea cups in our hands. We had already given up hope that anything would ever come out of the egg alive. We had been forced to halt the x-rays and other scanners because of the likelihood of damaging our ‘baby,’ And we hadn’t been able to predict the date and time of the delivery in as much as no one in the world prior to this had so far managed to deliver brontosaurs into the world..

And now, suddenly, the egg shook and shook, then it broke with a crack and through the thick leathery shell of the Egg a black, snake-like head began to emerge. The automatic cameras and data recorders began to click like mad. I knew that a red light had gone on over the door to the incubator room outside. Throughout the area of the Zoo something approaching panic took hold.

Five minutes later we were surrounded by everyone who had a right to be here and anyone who was able to find a spot and wanted in. It became very warm and very stuffy.

At last the small brontosaur forced its way completely out of the egg.

“Papa, what’s he called?” I suddenly heard a familiar voice.

“Alice!” I was shocked. “How did you get in here?”

“I came with the correspondents.”

“Children cannot come in here.”

“I can. I told everyone I was your daughter. They let me through.”

“Don’t you know it isn’t very nice to use the people you know for private ends?”

“But papa! Bronty’s so small; he’ll be bored without other children. So I came too.”

I could only throw up my hands. I didn’t have a minute free or I would have escorted Alice from the incubator myself, and there was no one around who would have agreed to do it for me either.

“Just stay right here and don’t go anywhere.” I told her, and I headed for the hood covering the newborn brontosaur.

All that evening Alice an Is aid absolutely nothing to each other. I utterly forbade her to go anywhere near the incubator, but she just said to me, as though she had not heard a word that I said, “I feel so sorry for Bronty,” and the very next day she was right beside the incubator again. Some of the space men from the Jupiter-8 mission brought her. The space men were heros, and no one was going to refuse them anything.

“Good morning, Bronty.” She said, standing right next to the hood.

The baby brontosaur looked at her with a squint.

“Whose is that child?” Professor Yakata asked me. I tried to make myself invisible and failed..

But Alice was not one to slink away at mere words.

“Don’t you like me?” She parried.

“Oh no, it’s not that. Quite the contrary. I just was thinking, er, that maybe, hm, you had gotten lost….” The professor was quite unable to carry on a conversation with a little girl.

“Too bad.” Alice said. “But I’ll be back tomorrow to see you, Bronty. Don’t be bored.”

And Alice did in fact come back the next day, and she came nearly every day. Everyone liked her and let her through without a word. I quite washed my hands of the matter. After all, our house sits right next to the Zoo and, we could hardly bar the road or build a wall.

Brontosaurs grow very quickly. After only a month his was two and a half meters long, and we moved him to a specially constructed pavilion. The young brontosaur roamed throughout the fenced enclosure and munched on young bamboo shoots and bananas. The bamboo was brought in on the freight rocket from India but the bananas came from local hothouses. We put a cement wading pool in the middle of the enclosure and filled it with hot, salty water. The baby dinosaur loved it.

Then suddenly he lost his appetite. For three days he left the bananas and bamboo untouched. By the fourth day the brontosaur lay on the bottom of the pool and rested his small black head on the plastic rim. Everyone could see he was getting ready to die. This was something we could not permit to happen. There was only one brontosaur in all the world, and we had him. The best doctors in the world helped us. But all in vain. Bronty refused grass, vitamins, oranges, milk… Everything!

Alice knew nothing of this tragedy. I had sent her off to her grandmother’s at Vnukovo. But on the fourth day she happened to turn on the television just at the moment when the news about the brontosaur’s worsening health was read. I still don’t know how she convinced her grandmother, but non the same morning Alice ran into the pavilion.

“Papa!” She shouted. “How could you not tell me? How could you?”

“Later, Alice, later.” I answered. “We’re having a meeting.”

We were in fact having a meeting at the time. It had been going on for the last three days.

Alice said nothing more and ran out. And a few minutes later I heard a great deal of gasping, ooh-ing, and ah-ing from close by. I turned and saw that Alice had already crossed through the barrier, wormed her way into the enclosure and had run up to the brontosaur’s head. She had a bulky roll from lunch counter in one hand.

“Eat, Bronty.” She said. “Or you’ll starve yourself to death here. If I were living here, I’d get sick of bananas too.”

I hadn’t even made it to the barrier when something unbelievable happened. Something which was greatly to Alice’s credit and which strongly soiled our, the biologists, reputations.

The brontosaur lifted his head, looked at Alice, and carefully took the dinner roll in her hands.

“Don’t make so much noise, Papa.” Alice waved her finger at me. She had seen me frozen, half way across the barrier. “Bronty’s afraid of you.”

“He won’t do anything to her.” Professor Yakata said.

I could see for myself that the dinosaur wasn’t doing anything. But what would happen if her grandmother came on this scene?

Afterwards the scientists argued the point endlessly. Some said Bronty just needed a change of diet, while others that he just trusted Alice more than he trusted us. Whatever the reason, the crisis ended.

Now Bronty has become entirely domesticated. Although he is now more than thirty meters long he likes nothing better than to take Alice for a ride. One of my assistants has constructed a special saddle and when Alice comes to the pavilion Bronty inserts his enormous neck into the corner and takes in his triangular teeth the saddle standing there and carefully lifts it to his shiny black back. Then he and Alice go for a ride around the pavilion or go swimming in the pool.




The Tewteqs


As I had promised Alice I took her along when I went to Mars for a conference.

The flight was uneventful. True, I do not take weightlessness well and therefore preferred to keep to the acceleration couch, but my daughter spent all her time flitting around the ship and once I was called to remove her from ceiling of the control room because she had wanted to press the red button the one for emergency deceleration. But the pilots were not really very angry with her.

On Mars we looked around the city, went with a tour group into the desert and even visited the Grand Cavern. But after this I had no more time to be with my daughter and I took her to the local boarding school for the week. A great many specialists from Earth work on Mars, and the Martians have helped us construct an enormous dome for a children’s camp. The camp is a fine place there are real Earth trees growing there. Sometimes the kids go on excursions.

When they do, they wear their own space suits and walk in a file down the street.

Tatiana Petrovna that was the name of the headmistress said that I could leave her there without a worry. Alice also told me not to worry. And I said good-bye to her for the week.

On the third day Alice disappeared.

It was a totally extraordinary event. To begin with, in all the years the boarding school had been in operation it had never lost, or even mislaid, a single child for more than ten minutes. It was totally impossible to get lost in the city on Mars. Let alone an Earth child, in a space helmet. The first Martian who saw him would bring him back to the school. Not to mention the robots. And the police. No, getting lost on Mars is completely impossible. But Alice had done it.

She had been nowhere to be seen for about two hours when I was summoned from the conference and brought to the boarding school in a martian walker. I must have looked utterly distraught when I cycled through the airlock into the dome everyone gathered there froze and were absolutely silent. And just who wasn’t there! All the teachers and the schools robots, the ten Martians in space helmets (they had to wear helmets when they went into the dome where there was an Earth atmosphere) space men, the emergency search team chief Nazaryan, archeologists…

It turned out the city-net and entertainment channels had for the last three hours been broadcasting news that an Earth child had vanished. The whole videophone system was being used to broadcast the emergency. The Martian schools had closed and the school children had gone out in groups combing the city and surroundings…

Alice’s disappearance was noticed as soon as her group returned from its walk. Since then two hours had passed. The oxygen in her helmet was sufficient for three hours.

I, knowing my daughter, asked if they had looked in the secluded spots in the school itself, or right next to the building. Quite possibly she

They answered that the city had no cellars, all the potentially secluded spots had been searched by the school children and the students at the Martian University who knew them all by heart.

I was very angry with Alice. Just about now I expected her to emerge from some corner or hole with the most innocent look on her face. But her behavior had inflicted enormous bother and cost, worse than a bad sand storm. All the Martians, and all the Earthmen living in the city had been torn from their own affairs and business, and set out on foot to join the rescue service. At the same time I was terribly worried. This little adventure of hers could end terribly badly.

News from the search parties was flowing in constantly.

“Third Martian Technical School students report they have search the stadium. No Alice.” “MarsSweets candy factory reports no child found on our property.”

“Is it possible that she managed to get out into the desert?” I mused. In the city, they would have certainly found her by now. The Martian deserts are still not well explored, and one could get lost there so throughly they would not find you in ten years’ searching. But the closest regions of the desert had already been searched by people in walkers.

“They found her!” A Martian in a blue tunic shouted; he was looking at his pocket-com.

“Where? How? Where?” Everyone under the dome shouted in excitement.

“In the desert. Some two hundred kilometers from here.”

“Two hundred?!”

Of course. I thought. They don’t know Alice. Something entirely expected…

“The child is all right and will be here soon.”

“And just how did she get out there?”

“In a postal rocket.”

“Of course!” Tatiana Petronva said and started to cry uncontrollably. She had endured far more than anyone else. Everyone ran to console her.

“We went on a walk that took us past the post office. They were loading the automated postal rockets. But I didn’t pay it any attention. You see them more than a hundred times a day!”

But ten minutes later, when a Martian flyer brought Alice in, everything became clear.

“I went inside to get your letter, Papa.” Alice said.

“What letter?”

“Papa, you said that mama was going to write us a letter. So I went inside the rocket to see if it was there.”

“You just got inside?”

“Of course. The door was open, and there were a lot of letters there…”

“And then…”

“As soon as I got inside the door closed, and the rocket took off. I started to press buttons to stop it. There were a lot of buttons. When I pressed the last one the rocket went down and then the door opened. I went out, but it was all sand around everywhere, and Auntie Tanya wasn’t there, and the other kids weren’t there…”

“She hit the emergency landing button.” The Martian in the blue tunic said with admiration in his voice.

“I cried a lot, then I decided to walk home.”

“But how did you decide which way to go?

“I went up on a small hill to look around. And there was a door in the hill. I couldn’t see anything at all from the hill. So I went inside the room and sat down there.”

“What door?” The Martian was amazed. “That region is completely empty.”

“No, there was a door, and room. And in the room there’s a big stone. Like an Egyptian pyramid. Only small. Remember, Papa, you read me that book on Egyptian pyramids.”

Alice’s unexpected revelation produced consternation among the Martians and Nazaryan, the Rescue Chief.

“The Tewteqs!” They shouted.

“Where did you find the girl? The map coordinates!”

And half those present vanished in a puff of smoke.

But Tatiana Petrovna, who had started to feed Alice, told me that many thousands of years ago there had existed on Mars a mysterious civil ization called the Tewteqs. All that remained of them were stone pyramids. Up to now, neither the Martians nor the archaeologists from Earth had been able to find a single example of Tewteq construction. Just pyramids, scattered around the desert and drowned in sand. And here Alice had come across a Tewteq ruin by accident.

“So here we are, and nothing bad happened, again.” I said. “But I am going to take you back home right away, anyway. On Earth you can get lost as much as you want. Without a helmet.

“I like getting lost at home more too.” Alice said.

Two months later I was reading an article entitled “What were the Tewteqs?” in the magazine Around The World. In the article the writers described how they were at last able to examine an intact Tewteq archeological site. The scientists were now occupied with the deciphering of the inscriptions found in the site. But what was most interesting, on the pyramid itself they observed the drawing of a Tewteq, preserved as though it had been carved yesterday. And there was the photograph of the pyramid with the Tewteq portrait….

The portrait was somewhat familiar. I was suddenly overcome with a horrible suspicion.

“Alice.” I said in my strictest of Strict Father voices. “Answer me honestly: did you draw anything at all on the pyramid when you were lost in the desert?”

Before she answered, Alice walked over and looked at the picture in the magazine very carefully.

“You’re right, Papa. I did draw it. Only it wasn’t really drawing. I had to scrape it with a small stone. I was so bored there….”




Shusher the Timid


Alice has many pets: two kittens, a Martian Mantis which lives beneath her bed, and which spends its nights imitating the balalaika, a hedgehog which lived with us for a while and then ran back to the forest, the brontosaur Bronty, who lets Alice ride his back in the Zoo, and finally the neighbor’s dog, Rex, a lap dog I suspect is really a mongrel.

Alice acquired one other pet when the first expedition to Sirius returned.

Alice had met Poloskov. I do not know quite how she arranged it; Alice seems to know everyone. Somehow or other she was with the group of children that brought the returning space men flowers. Imagine my surprise when I saw Alice running along the red carpet with a bouquet of blue roses bigger than she was and handing them to Poloskov himself.

Poloskov took the bouquet, took my daughter’s hand in his, and together they listened to the welcoming speeches, and they left together.

Alice only returned home in the evening, carrying a large red basket in her hands.

“And where were you?”

“The kindergarten, mostly.” She answered.

“And where were you leastly?”

“Well, they took us to the space port?”

“And afterwards?”

Alice understood that I was just as capable of watching the television as she. She said:

“And then they asked me to greet the space men.”

“And who was it who asked you?”

“Someone. You don’t know him.”

“Alice, have you ever made the acquaintances of the term ‘corporal punishment?’“

“It’s when they spank you. But I thought that was just in fairy tales.”

“I fear we shall have to turn fairy tales into reality. Why do you always get into places you shouldn’t go?”

Alice pouted, but suddenly the red basket in her hands began to shake.

“And just what is that?”

“A gift. From Poloskov.”

“You inveigled you begged a gift from him. Now, that simply isn’t….”

“I didn’t ask him for anything. It’s a shusher. Poloskov brought them back from Sirius. It’s a baby shusher. A shusher-cub. A shushin. Shushy?”

And Alice carefully reached into the basket and lifted out a small, six pawed little animal similar to a kangaroo. The baby shusher had large, compound eyes. He was turning them every which way, clutching tightly at Alice’s dress with the upper pair of paws.

“See, he loves me already.” Alice said. “I’m going to make him a bed.”

I already knew the story about the shushers. Everyone knew the story about the shushers, my fellow biologists especially. I had five shushers in the zoo already, and in a day or so we were expecting additions to their family.

Poloskov and Zeleny had discovered the Shusers on one of the planets of the Sirius system. They were tame, harmless little animals who wouldn’t go a step from the spacemen once they found the Earthmen’s camp. They turned out to be mammals, although in behavior they more resembled terrestrial penguins. They exhibited quiet curiosity and were constantly attempting to crawl into the most unlikely and unhealthy places. Zeleny even had to save a shusher once before it could drown in a large can of condensed milk. The expedition made an entire film about the shushers which had been enormously successful on the entertainment channels and the web.

Unfortunately the expedition simply did not have enough time to study the shushers as they should have; they knew the shushers came into the expedition’s camp at sunrise and vanished with the sun, hiding in among the rocks.

However they managed it, when the expedition had already taken off for home, Poloskov discovered three shushers who had evidently gotten aboard the ship. Naturally Poloskov’s first thought was that the shushers had been brought on board as contraband by one of the expedition’s members, but the distress of his comrades was so sincere that Poloskov soon abandoned his suspicions.

The appearance of the shushers produced a whole mass of consequent problems. First of all they might very well be a source of some unknown infection. Secondly, they might very well die en route back to Earth when the ship made its jump. Thirdly, no one knew what they ate. And so on.

But all of the dangers proved, in the end, to be chimeras. The shushers went through disinfection without the slightest problem at all, they dutifully subsisted on bouillon and dried fruits. This made them a lifelong enemy in Zeleny, who had a taste for fruit himself and had to spend the last months of the expedition getting his vitamins from pills in order to ‘feed the mice.’

Over the course of the long flight back to Earth the Shushes gave birth to six kits. As a result the ship reached Earth orbit filled to the gills with shushers and shusher kits. They turned out to be quick witted little animals and, other than Zeleny, none of the crew suffered the slightest unpleasantness or inconvenience.

I remember the historic moment when the expedition landed back on Earth, when, under the glare of the television and film cameras the airlock opened, and, instead of the spacemen, first through the orifice was an astonishing, furry animal. And after that came several more, just smaller. You could hear the gasp of astonishment around the world, but it cut off a moment later when a laughing Poloskov followed the shushers from out of the ship. In his hands he had one of the kits, condensed milk still smeared on its fur.

One part of the contingent of animals ended up in the zoo, others remained with spacemen who refused to give them up. Poloskov’s shusher kit finally reached Alice. The Lord alone knows how my daughter charmed the spaceman out of the shusher.

Shusher lived in a large basket right beside Alice’s bed; he got along fine without meat, slept nights, made friends with the cats and the large Martian Mantis, and he purred in a low, quiet voice when Alice petted him or told him how good he was or what he had done wrong.

Shusher grew very quickly and two months later he stood as tall as my daughter. They went for walks in the small garden across the street and Alice never put a collar and leash on to him.

“But what if something frightens him?” I asked. “He might get run over.”

“No, nothing frightens him. And anyway, he’d really be embarrassed if I put him on a leash. He’s really very sensitive.”

One time Alice could not get to sleep. She was very cranky and after I put her to bed she called me on the house com and insisted that I read to her about Doctor Doolittle.

“Not now, kid.” I said. “I have work to do right now. Besides, it’s time you started reading your own books.”

“But it’s not in the book, Papa. It’s still on the old microfilm and the letters are too small.”

“So that’s why we have the book reader. If you don’t want to read yourself, turn on the sound.”

“But I’d have to get up, and it’s cold.”

“Then you have to wait a while. When I finish writing I’ll turn it on for you.”

“If you won’t do it, I’ll ask Shusher.”

“Ask him all you want.” I laughed.

And a few minutes later I suddenly heard from the room next door the microfilm reader voice say: “…lived in a little town called Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. All the folks….”.

And that meant Alice had gotten out of bed anyway and turned on the reader.

“Back to bed right now!” I shouted. “Go to sleep!”

“But I am in the bed.”

“You mustn’t lie to me. Just who turned on the reader?”

“Shusher.”

One thing I will not permit is for my daughter to grow up a liar. I put aside my work, went into her room, planning to have a very serious conversation.

The book reader screen on the wall had been turned on. Shusher was at the control panel. On the screen Doctor Doolittle was surrounded by unfortunate animals.

“And how did you manage to teach him to do that trick?” I was truly astonished.

“I didn’t teach him to do anything. He knows how to do it all on his own.”

Shusher crossed his upper pair of paws on his chest in embarrassment.

There was a strained moment of silence.

“Oh well…” I finally started to say.

“Pardon me.” A high pitched, husky voice broke the silence. It was Shusher speaking. “But I really did teach myself. It wasn’t very difficult.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“It wasn’t at all difficult.” Shusher repeated. “You showed me how to work it yourself when you showed Alice the tale of the Mantis king the day before yesterday.”

“No, that doesn’t matter. How did you learn to speak?”

“I showed him how.” Alice said.

“But I don’t understand it at all! Dozens of biologists are working with the shushers and not once has a single shusher said a word to any of us!”

“But our shusher can read too, can’t you?”

“Somewhat.”

“He’s told me a lot of interesting things…”

“I’ve become great friends with your daughter.”

“But why were you silent for so long?”

“He’s timid.” Alice answered for him.

Shusher blinked his eyes.




A Parition of the Night


We spend our summers in Vnukovo. It’s very convenient; the monorail station is five minutes walk from the old country house. In the forest on the other side of the road grow different kinds of edible mushrooms, the brown caps that grow beneath the birches and the orange caps that grow near the pines, but they are far outnumbered by the mushroom hunters.

I arrived at the country house straight from the Zoo and instead of settling in to a rest found myself up to my ears in the local goings on. It centered around a local boy, Colin, who had become notorious in the Vnukovo area for seizing other children’s toys. His parents had gone so far as to summon a psychologist from Vladivostok, who had in turn written his dissertation on the lad. The psychologist studied Colin, and Colin ate pot stickers and whimpered all day long. I had brought the kid a model photon rocket just to shut him up.

Aside from Colin there was his grandmother, who loved to talk about genetics and had written a novel about Mendel, Alice’s grandmother, a kid named Yura and his mother, Karma, a set of triplets on a neighboring street who sang in a chorus underneath my window whether I wanted it or not, and, of course, the apparition.

The apparition lived somewhere near the apple tree and was a quite recent arrival.

I was sitting with Alice on the terrace and waiting for the new house robot to finish my super. So far the robot had tried its hands at cooking twice, and failed, leaving two saucepans sitting on the kitchen counter with overdone maccaroni and burned rice, and Alice and I were cussing out the factory, but neither of us wanted to bother with the chore, and Alice’s grandmother had already set off for the theater, nor could we have called for instructions. Our house-com was broken and she had taken the pocket-com with her.

Alice said:

“He’ll come today.”

“Who — he?”

“My parition.”

“Ap-parition. One word.” I corrected her automatically, not taking my eyes from the robot.

“Okay.” Alice wasn’t going to argue. “So he’ll be my AP-parition. And Colin stole some nuts from the twins. Isn’t that remarkable?”

“Remarkable. What’s your apparition like?”

“He’s nice.”

“Everyone you know is nice.”

“Other than Colin.”

“All right, other than Colin…. I was thinking; if I brought you home a fire breathing dragon lizard would you be able to make friends with it too?”

“Sure. Is it nice?”

“No one’s been able to talk with it yet to find out. It comes from Mars and spits fiery venom.”

“Sure. They got it angry. Why did they take it from Mars?”

There was no possible answer that I could give. It as the simple truth. No one had certainly ever asked the lizard when they removed it from Mars. And on the way back to Earth the lizard had eaten the ship’s pet dog, making all of the space men very angry.

“Well, what can you tell me about the apparition?” I asked to change the subject. “What’s it like.”

“He only walks when it becomes real dark.”

“Well, that’s to be expected. From time immemorial. It’s recounted in all of the fairy tales. Colin’s grandmother….”

“Colin’s grandmother just wants to tell me the history of genetics. How they persecuted Mendel…”

“Yes, and by the way, does your apparition react to the cry of a cock?”

“He doesn’t. Why do you ask?”

“You see, a real apparition finds it useful to vanish from sight with terrible curses when a cock crows at dawn.”

“I’ll ask him tonight about the cock.”

“Fine.”

“And I have to go to bed later tonight. I have to speak to the apparition.”

“As you will.” Alas, our joking had come to an end. At long last the robot removed the frozen suppers from the microwave, beaming with pride in accomplishment.

Alice started to eat and I went back to my notes on the National Parks of Guinea. There was a very interesting article on Sirian Wickers. A revolution in zoology. They had been able to breed Wickers in captivity. The offspring were born dark green, despite the shells of both parents having been blue.

It grew dark outside the windows. Alice said,

“Well, I’ll be off?”

“And where are you going?”

“To the apparition. I promised.”

“And here I was thinking that you were joking. Well, if you really have to go out into the garden, then go, only put on a jacket because it’s become cold. And don’t go any further than the apple tree.”

“But why should I go further? He’s waiting for me there.”

Alice ran out into the garden. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. I did not want to enter into her fantasy world. If she wanted, let her surround herself with apparitions and wizards and enchanted nights, good giants from the magic blue planet… Just so long as she would go to bed on time and eat normally.

I lowered the lights on the veranda so I could keep an eye on Alice better in the darkness. So I watched as she ran up to the apple tree, an old tree with mighty branches, and she stood beneath it.

And then… A blue shadow separated itself from the apple tree’s trunk and moved to meet my daughter. The shadow swam through the air, not touching the ground. The next moment, grabbing something heavy for a club I had already jumped down the three steps to the lawn. I didn’t like it at all. Either it was some sort of really dumb joke, or… It was the ‘or’ that I didn’t want to even think about…

“Be careful, papa!” Alice said in a loud whisper. She had heard my heavy steps. “You’ll frighten him!”

I grabbed Alice by the hand. In front of me a blue silhouette came apart like mist.

“Papa, what you’ve done! And I almost saved him!”

Alice howled shamefully while I carried her back to the terrace.

What was that thing beneath the apple tree? A hallucination?

“Why did you do it, Papa?” Alice howled. “You promised…”

“I didn’t do anything.” I answered. “Apparitions do not exist.”

“You saw him yourself. Why won’t you speak the truth? He can’t stand it when the air moves. Don’t you understand you have to come up to him slow so not to make a wind?”

I really did not know how to answer her. Of one thing I was certain, as soon as Alice fell asleep I was going out into the garden with a flash light to take a look.

“And he gave me a letter for you. Only now I won’t give it to you.”

“What sort of letter.”

“Can’t have it.”

I finally noticed the piece of paper she had clutched in her fist. Alice looked at me, I looked at her, and she handed over the piece of paper anyway.

On the paper were notes for the feeding of red Crooms. I had been missing the note for the last three days.

“Alice, where did you find my notes?”

“Turn it over. The apparition didn’t have any paper so I gave him some of yours.”

On the reverse side of the paper, written in English in an unknown hand, was:






“Honorable Professor!

“I have summoned my courage to appeal to you, for I have fallen into a most unpleasant situation from which I may not emerge without outside intervention. Alas, neither can I go further than one meter from the center of this apple tree. You may look upon me in my woeful condition only during darkness.

“Thanks to your daughter, so thoughtful and sympathetic a being, I am finally able to resetablish communication with the outside world. “I, the woeful Professor Kuraki, am the victim of an unsuccessful experiment. I have been conducting experiments in matter transmission. I was able to transmit two turkey hens from Tokyo to Paris. They were received without problems by my colleagues. However, on the day I decided to test the equipment myself, the fuses in my laboratory overheated precisely at the moment of transmission. And the energy for molecular re-integration was insufficient. I was dispersed in space, however, my most concentrated locus is located in the region of your honorable garden. In this vexatious condition I have found myself for two weeks, and no doubt I have been given up for dead. “I beg of you, immediately upon receipt of this letter communicate with my colleagues in Tokyo. Someone must fix the fuses in my laboratory. Only then will rematerialization be able to occur. “Thanks a million, Kuraki”





I spent forever looking around in the darkness beneath the apple tree. Then I went down from the terrace and went closer. It was whitish blue, scarcely discernable as a shine in the air around the tree’s trunk. Looking closer, I could make out the details of someone’s face. The ‘apparition’ appeared to be praying, his hands raised toward the sky.

There was no time to waste. I ran all the way to the monorail station and found a com to call Tokyo.

The entire operation took no more than five minutes.

It was only on the way back home that I remembered I had forgotten to put Alice to bed. I hurried.

The light on the terrace hadn’t been turned off.

Alice was there, showing her herbarium and collection of butterflies to a shortish, emaciated Japanese. The Japanese held a sauce pan in his hand and, not taking his eyes from Alice’s treasures, was delicately eating overdone maccaroni.

Seeing me, our ghost bowed quite low, and said.

“Professor Kuraki, your humble servant. You and your daughter have saved my life…”

“See, Papa. This is my parition.” Alice said. “Now do you believe me?”

“I certainly do.” I answered. “Delighted to make your acquaintance.”




The Missing Guests


The preparations for the meeting with the Labucillians were an enormous public spectacle. Never before had the Solar System hosted guests from so far away in space.

The Labucillians’ first signals were received by the station on Pluto, and three days later the Londel Radio Observatory established contact with them.

The Labucillians were still far out but the Sheremetevo Spaceport was ready to greet them. Girls from the “Red Rose” Nursery had decorated it with garlands of flowers, and students from an arts college were practicing a show for their arrival. All the embassies had reserved seats on the reviewing stands and the reporters were spending their nights in the space ports restaurants.

Alice was living not far from there, in our country house in Vnukovo, and was gathering flowers and plants for her herbarium. She wanted to have a collection far better than the one Vanya Spitz in the senior group had made. Therefore, Alice took no part in the preparations for the big meeting. She did not even know about it. Nor did I have any direct connection to the First Contact. My work would only begin when the Labucillians landed.

But in the mean time events developed in the following manner.

On March 8 the Labucillians advised us that they had made Earth orbit. At exactly that moment a tragic accident occurred. Instead of the Labucillian ship the station had locked onto a lost Swedish satellite, the “Nobel-29. When the error was finally noticed it turned out the Labucillian ship had vanished. It had gone on to its landing, and contact with it was temporarily lost.

On March 9 at 6:33 the Labucillians advised us they had landed in the area of 55 minutes 20 seconds north latitude and 37 minutes forty seconds east longitude in the terrestrial system of coordinates, with a possible error of 15 seconds. That is, not far from Moscow.

Further communication was cut off and with one exception about which I will say later, could not be re-established. It turned out that terrestrial radiation had seriously damaged the Labucillian’s communications equipment.

Immediately hundreds of machines and thousands of people rushed to our guests’ presumed landing area. The roads were clogged with those desiring to find the Labucillians. The spaceport at Sheremetevo emptied; not a single correspondent remained in the restaurants. The sky over Moscow was cluttered with helicopters and other rotary wing aircraft, ornithopers, whirlagons and anything else that could be up into the sky. It looked like thousands of enormous bugs were hovering over the city.

Had the Labucillians’ ship crashed and embedded itself in the ground the people in the air would have observed the crater.

No one found it.

Not a single local inhabitant saw the ship come down. And this was passing strange; at that moment a nearly all the inhabitants of Moscow and the surrounding countryside were looking up at the sky.

This indicated there had been an error. Somewhere.

Toward evening when I returned from my work to the country house the entire work-a-day life of the planet had been altered. People were afraid that something untoward had happened to our guests.

“Maybe they were antimatter?” Someone argued on the monorail. “When they entered Earth’s atmosphere they would have gone poof!”

“Without a visible explosion, or any trace at all? Idiot!”

“And just how much do we know about the nature of antimatter?”

“Then who radioed their landing coordinates?”

“Maybe a practical joker?”

“Not a chance! How did they fake the communications with Pluto station?”

“Well, they could have….”

But it was the version about the invisibility of our guests that won the most adherents.

I was sitting on the veranda, looking over my overgrown lawn, and thinking as well; what if they had landed close by, in the next field? Could the poor aliens be standing around now outside their ship, wondering why people were paying them no attention. Might they get angry and depart? I was wanting already to go down and set out for the that very field when I saw a file of people exiting the forest. It was my neighbors from the next house over. They were holding hands like children playing a game. I realized they had reached the same conclusion I had, but earlier, and were trying to locate our presumably invisible visitors by touch.

At that moment there was more, unexpected, information came over NewsNet; they rebroadcast a transmission received by old style radio hams in Northern Australia. The transmission repeated the coordinates and then added the following words: “We are located in a forest. The first group has gone out in search of people. We continue to receive your broadcasts. We are astonished by the lack of contact….” At that moment contact was broken off entirely.

The idea that the visitors were invisible was immediately accepted by several score million more people.

I could see from my perch on the terrace the chain of people stop, turn, and head back again toward the forest. And at that moment Alice came up the steps with a small basket of strawberries in her hands.

“Why are they all running around?” She said before even saying hello.

“Who are ‘they?’ And one says ‘Hello’ if you haven’t yet seen your only paterfamilias since this morning.”

“Since last night. I was still sleeping when you left for work. Hello, papa. What’s going on?”

“The Labucillians have vanished.” I answered.

“I don’t know them.”

“No one knows them, yet.”

“Then how did they get lost?”

“They were flying to Earth. They flew here and got lost.”

I felt like I was talking nonsense. Alas, it was the simple truth.

Alice looked at me with suspicion.

“Does that happen all the time?”

“No, it doesn’t. Not usually.”

“And they couldn’t find the space port?”

“Evidently.”

“And where were they lost?”

“Somewhere in the area of Moscow. Maybe not very far from here.”

“And everyone’s looking for them on foot and from the air?”

“Yes.”

“And why don’t they just come themselves?”

“Then they must be waiting until people find them. It’s their first time on Earth. So they wouldn’t go very far from their ship.”

Alice was silent for a moment, as though she were content with my answer. She walked around the porch about two times, not letting the basket with strawberries out of her hands. Then she asked:

“Are they in the field or in the forest?”

“In the forest.”

“How do you know that?”

“They told us themselves. By radio.”

“That’s good.”

“What’s good?”

“That they’re not in the field.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid that I saw them.”

“How so?”

“It’s nothing, I was just joking…”

I got up from my chair. In general, Alice can be a great fabulator…

“I didn’t go walking in the forest, Papa. Word of honor, I didn’t. I was in the meadow. That means I didn’t see them.”

“Alice, I want you to tell me everything, in detail, all that you know. I’m not going to add anything myself. You saw strange…people, in the fore st?”

“Word of honor, cross my heart, I wasn’t in the forest.”

“All right, all right. In the meadow.”

“I didn’t do anything bad. And really, they’re not all that strange.”

“I want a decent answer from you, an adult answer: who did you see and where were they? Don’t torment me and the rest of the human race….”

“Is the rest of the human race here, Papa?”

“Listen to me, Alice…”

“Oh, all right. They’re here. They came with me.”

I looked around involuntarily. The terrace was empty. If you didn’t count the buzzing bee, there was no one here but Alice and myself.

“No, not there. You’re not looking in the right place.” Alice sighed, walked up closer to me, and said. “I wanted to keep them. I really didn’t know the human race was looking for them.”

She stretched out the basket with the strawberries. She raised the basket right in front of my eyes, and I made out, not really believing what I saw myself, two figures in space suits. They were covered with strawberry juice and sitting together on a single berry.

“I didn’t do them any harm.” Alice said guiltily. “I thought they might be gnomes, from the fairy tales.”

But I wasn’t listening to anything else she said. Carefully clutching the little basket to my heart I was running for the videophone. All I could think was, for our visitors, our uncut lawn must have seemed like an immense forest.

And that how we made our First Contact with the Labucillians.




Our Man In The Past


The ordeal with the time machine took place in the Little Hall of Science House. I had picked Alice up from the kindergarten and realized that if I took her home I would miss the demonstration. So I made Alice swear that she would behave herself and we went to Science House together.

The Head of the Temporal Institute, a very large and very bald person, stood in front of the time machine and explained the scientific principles of its construction and operation. The scientific community listened eagerly.

“Our first experiment, as you all know, was rather unsuccessful.” He said. “The cat we sent back to the beginning of the twentieth century exploded in the region of the Tungus river, giving rise to the legend of the Tungus meteorite. Since then we have not experienced serious failure. True, in accordance with certain natural laws with which anyone may become acquainted by perusing our Institute’s brochures, for the moment we can send people and objects back only to the seventh decade of the twentieth century. One has to say that some of our co-workers have spent time there, obviously in the utmost secrecy, and returned home successfully. The temporal transmission procedure is comparatively uncomplicated, in as much as it is the results of the labors of some hundreds of our people over many years. One need only put on the Time Belt… If I could be so fortunate as to have a volunteer from the hall, and I will demonstrate the procedure for preparing to move through time on him…”

There was an awkward silence. No one wanted to be the first to go onto the stage. So obviously, who else should be the first to step forward but Alice, who only five minutes before had sworn up and down that she would behave herself.

“Alice!” I shouted. “Get back down here!”

“Oh don’t be alarmed.” The Institute Head said. “Nothing at all will happen to the child.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Papa!” Alice said happily.

The people in the hall began to laugh, heads turned in my direction, in search of the strict father.

I tried to appear nothing of the sort.

The Institute’s Head put a belt around Alice’s waist and attached something like earmuffs to her head.

“And this is all there is.” He said. “Now the person is ready to travel through time. All he has to do is enter the time cabinet here and he will appear in the year One Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventy-Five…”

What has he said!? The panicky thought exploded through my head. If Alice was listening….

But it was too late. Of course she was going to take advantage of the opportunity.

“Little girl, what are you doing? Stop!” The Institute’s director shouted.

But Alice had already climbed into the Time Cabinet and, in the eyes of everyone, vanished. The hall gasped in chorus.

The Temporal Institute’s director, white as a sheet, waved his arms back and forth, trying to lower the din. And, seeing that I had started to run toward him down the aisle, started to speak, bent over the microphone so he could be heard over the other noise:

“Nothing at all will happen to the child. After three minutes she will re-appear in this very hall. I give you my word that the apparatus is completely reliable and tested! Don’t worry a bit!

His arguments were excellent, but all I could think of as I stood there was the fate of the cat who had been transformed into the Tungus meteorite. I both believed and disbelieved the speaker. Think of it a minute; what would you do if your child found herself a century in the past. And what if she should run away from the machine there, and get lost?

“Isn’t there any way you can send me after her?” I asked.

“No. In three minutes…. Don’t be alarmed; our man in the past will meet here.”

“You have one of your researchers there?”

“Yes and no. He’s not a researcher. We just found someone who understood all our problems perfectly and the second time cabinet is in his apartment. He lives there, in the twentieth century, but because of his specialty is sometimes comes into his future, our present…”

At that moment Alice appeared in the cabinet. She stepped onto the scene with the look of someone who had completed a mission successfully. Under one arm she held a large, antique book.

“So you see….” The Institute’s Director said.

The hall burst into friendly applause.

“Little girl, tell me, what did you see?” The speaker said, not even giving me the chance to approach Alice.

“It was very interesting there.” She said. “Pop! And I was in another room. There was a man sitting at a desk. He was writing something. He asked me: ‘Little girl, are you from the twenty-first century?’ I said of course I was, only I didn’t know the number of the century because I can’t count too well, I go to kindergarten in the middle group. The man said he was very pleased to meet me and that I had to go right back.

“‘Do you want to look at Moscow the way it was before your grandfather was born?’ I said I wanted to, and he showed it to me. It was very strange. All the buildings were small. Then I asked what he was called, and he said he was Arkady. He was a writer and wrote science fiction books about the future. Only it turns out that he doesn’t think everything up by himself because sometimes people from our time come to him and they tell him everything. Only he can’t tell anyone of this because it’s a strict secret. He gave me his new book… And then I came back.”

The hall greeted Alice’s story with wild applause.

Then a venerable scholar rose from his seat and said:

“Young lady, in you’re hand you are holding a unique book a first edition of the SF novel “The Holes On Mars.” Would you give this book to me? There’s no way you’ll be able to read it.”

“No,” Alice said. “I’m going to learn how to read myself real soon.”




End




Chapter One

Alice The Criminal!


I had promised Alice: “When you get a pass out of second grade I’ll take you along on the Summer expedition. We’ll be flying on the Pegasus to collect exotic and rare animals for the Zoo.”

I had said that back in winter, right after New Year, but right at the same time I posted certain conditions: she had to study hard, do not do anything really stupid, and under no circumstances was she to have any ‘adventures.’

Alice worked hard at carrying out her terms of the bargain, and it looked like there would ne nothing to threaten our plans. But in May, just about a month before our departure date, certain events transpired which almost wrecked everything.

On that day I was working at home, writing an article for Cosmozoology Courier. Through my study’s open door I saw my daughter enter the house on her return from school, downcast and gloomy, throw the bag with her bookreader down with a crash on the table, refuse her dinner and pick up not the book that had been her constant companion for the last three months Animals of Distant Planets but instead grab for The Three Musketeers.

“Are you having difficulties?” I asked.

“Nothing in particular.” Alice answered. “How’d you guess?”

“It showed.”

Alice thought a while, put the book back down and asked:

“Dad, do you have any gold nuggets hanging around?”

“Just how much gold do you need?”

“About a kilogram and a half.”

“Nope.”

“Do you have less than that?”

“Do be honest, I don’t have any less than that at all. None whatsoever. What’s it good for?”

“I don’t know.” Alice said. “I just need it.”

I came out of my study, sat down on the divan beside Alice, and said:

“I think you’d better tell me just what it is you’ve gotten into.”

“Nothing special. I just need the gold.”

“And if you were to be totally honest with me….”

Alice took a long and painful sigh, looked out the window, and finally came clean:

“Dad, I’m a criminal.”

“A criminal?”

“I committed a robbery, and now they are going to kick me out of school for sure.”

“Too bad.” I said. “But continue. It might be that everything isn’t quite so terrible as it was when you looked at the problem first glance.”

“Okay. Well, in general, Alesha Naumov and I decided to catch the giant pike. It lives in the Ikshinsky reservoir and devours the fry. One of the fishermen there told us about it. You don’t know him.”

“And for this you need gold ore?”

“For a fish lure.

“My whole class talked it all over and decided we would need a lure to catch the pike. Ordinary pike you catch with simple lure, but a giant pike would need as really special lure to catch it. And we have a big piece of gold in the school museum. Or we had. It weighed a kilogram and a half. One of our graduates gave it to the school; he found it in the asteroid belt.”

“And you stole gold ore weighing a kilogram and a half?”

“It really wasn’t like that, Dad. We were just taking in on loan. Leva Zvansky said that his father was a geologist and could get us a new one. And so we decided to make lures out of gold. The giant pike wold be sure to fall for a lure like that.”

“Is that all?”

“Nothing much else happened, Dad. The other kids were afraid to open the display case so we drew straws and I wouldn’t have ever taken it if I hadn’t drawed the shortest straw.”

“Drawn.”

“What?”

“To draw straws. Past participle ‘drawn.’ I draw, I drew, I have drawn, I had drawn.”

“Oh, yeah. So I drew the shortest straw and there was now way I could go back on my word to the other kids. All the more so since no one was going to miss that piece it just sat and sat in the museum…”

“And then?”

“And then we took it to Alesha Naumov, who got a laser and cut the darned gold nugget into lots of small pieces. And then we went to the Ikshinsky reservoir and the pike took our bait.”

Alice thought it over a moment, and she added:

“Or maybe it wasn’t the giant pike. Maybe it was a snag on a dead tree. The lure we made was very heavy. We searched for it and we never found it. We all took turns diving for it.”

“And your crime was discovered?

“Yes, because Zvansky was a liar. He brought a handful of diamonds from home and said there wasn’t a bit of gold to be had. We sent him back home with his diamonds. As if we needed diamonds! And when Elena Alexandrovna came by and said: ‘Kids, open up the museum; I’ll be taking the first graders on their tour. Talk about bad timing! So everything was discovered. And she went running to the headmistress: “Danger,” she says (we were listening under the door) “The past has come alive in someone’s blood!” Alesha Naumov did promise to take all the blame on himself, but I didn’t let him. I drew the straw, so they hang me. And that’s everything.”

“And that’s all?” I was amazed. “And you’ve `fessed up to it?”

“I haven’t had a chance yet.” Alice said. “They gave us all until tomorrow. Elena said that either the gold nugget is in place or we will be having a ‘serious conversation.’ That means that tomorrow they’re going to take us out of the races and maybe even expel me from school when I do ‘fess up.”

“What races?”

“Tomorrow is the big air bladder races. For the school championships. My class’s team is Alesha, me, and Egorov. And there’s no way they’ll let Egorov fly alone.”

“And haven’t you forgotten one further complication?” I said.

“What complication.” Alice asked with a tone in her voice that told me she knew perfectly well which one.

“You have failed to live up to our agreement.”

“Yes I did.” Alice agreed. “But it was done in a good cause.”

“It was? You stole a gold nugget in the weight of a kilogram and a half, cut it into fish lures, lost it in the Ikshinsky Water Reservoir and you don’t even recognize what you did! A good cause indeed! I fear the Pegasus will have to leave you behind.”

“Oh, Daddy! Alice whispered. “What do I do now?”

“Think.” I said, and went back into my office to finish the paper. But writing proved difficult. Such a silly misadventure! How like small children to cut a museum exhibit to pieces with a laser!

After about an hour I looked outside my office. Alice was nowhere to be seen. She had run off some where. I went back inside and punched out the number of Friedman at the Mineralogical Museum; we’d met long before when our expeditions had crossed in the Pamir Mountains.

His round face and black moustache filled the videophone screen.

“Lenny,” I said, “Do you by any chance have any gold nuggets weighing about a kilogram and half in stock?”

“I’d say I have at least five kilos. What do you need it for? For work?”

“No. It’s needed at home.”

“I don’t know what to say.” Lenny answered, curling one long moustache end around a finger. “They’re all on the account books.”

“And I need the most worthless.” I said. “Or rather, my daughter needs it for school.”

“Alice?”

“Alice.”

“Then you know what,” Friedman said, “I’ll give you the gold. Or rather, not to you, but to Alice. And you can pay me back with a favor in return.”

“With pleasure.”

“Loan me one of your Centaurian Blue Leopards for one day.”

“What?”

“Your Blue Leopard. We are infested with mice.”

“They go after the stones?”

“I don’t know what it is they are eating, but the Pied Piper would be hard pressed to keep up with them. And they do not fear the cat. And they get away from the robot mousecatchers and ignore the old style mousetraps. But the smell and sight of a Blue Leopard sends mice running until they can’t go any further. Now, what am I to do? A Blue Leopard is a rare and exotic animal, and I need someone who can bring it to the Museum and make certain it doesn’t eat anyone. Other than mice, of course.”

“Okay.” I said. “Just send the gold nugget by the morning, by pneumopost.”

I hung up the videophone and immediately heard a knock on the door. I opened it. Before our door stood a fair haired little boy in the orange costume of a Venusian terraformer, with the emblem of first Expedition to the Sirius system on his sleeve.

“Pardon me.” He said. “Are you Alice’s dad?”

“I am.”

“Hello. My name is Egorov. Is Alice at home.”

“No. She went off somewhere.”

“Too bad. Can you be trusted?”

“Me? Oh, of course!”

“Then I have to have a man to man conversation with you.”

“Not Astronaut to Astronaut?”

“Don’t laugh.” Egorov flushed red. “I plan to earn my wings some day.”

“I don’t doubt you will.” I said. “So how about the man to man conversation?”

“Alice and I are in the airbladder race tomorrow, only something has happened that might cause them to pull her off the team. To put it generally, she has to return something that was lost to the school. I’m giving this to you., but I don’t want you to say who it from. Is that clear?”

“Very clear, o mysterious and unknown stranger.” I said.

“Take it.”

He held out a small bag to me. The bag was very heavy.

“Gold, by any chance?” I asked.

“So you know?”

“I know.”

“It is.”

“I trust it was come by legitimately.”

“Of course it was! What do you think I am? I got it while camping in the mountains. Well, good bye.”

I hadn’t yet managed to reach my seat when the door bell rang again. I found two small girls on our doorstep.

“Hello.” They said in chorus. “We’re from the first grade. Take this for Alice.”

They handed me two individual purses and ran off. In one purse lay four gold coins, very old coins from someone’s collection. In another, three tea spoons. The tea spoons it turned out were not, in fact, gold; they were platinum. Yet another piece of gold arrived in a box in the evening mail from another unknown wellwisher. Then Leva Zvansky dropped by and tried to foist on me a small casket with diamonds. After he left an member of the 8th Grade class came by; he brought along three tiny gold nuggets.

“I collected them back when I was a kid.” He said.

Alice returned toward evening. She shouted happily from the door:

“Papa! There’s nothing to worry about. Everything worked out. I can go with you on the expedition.”

“Why such a change.” I asked.

“Because I found a replacement.” Alice was scarcely able to drag the Mother Load of gold ore out of her bag. It appeared to be about six or seven kilograms.

“I went to see Captain Poloskov. I told him the problem and he called around to everyone he knew. He also fed me supper, so I’m not hungry.”

Then Alice caught sight of the gold nuggets and other gold and platinum objects that had accumulated in our house over the course of the day, which I had spread out on the dinner table.

“Oh my!” She said. “The museum is making out like space pirates.”

“Listen to me, my fine young criminal.” I said to her. “I would, under no circumstances, be taking you along on this expedition were it not for your friends.”

“And why, because of my friends?”

“Because they would hardly have run all over Moscow searching for gold objects for a really bad person.”

“But I’m not such a bad person.” Alice said without the slightest hint of modesty.

I frowned, but at that moment there was a ka-chunk in the wall slot indicating the arrival of a package via the pneumatic tube postal system. I opened the wall slot and pulled out the package with gold in it from the Mineralogical Museum. Friedman had completed his part of the bargain.

“And this is from me.” I added it to the pile.

“So you see,” Alice said, “you’re my friend too.”

“It would appear so.” I answered. “But I suggest you not be presumptuous.”

The next morning I had to accompany Alice to school, as the weight of the gold objects that had accumulated in our apartment had reached seventeen kilograms.

Handing her the bag at the entrance to the school I said,

“I quite forgot about your punishment.”

“About what?”

“On Sunday you will be taking the Zoo’s Centaurian Blue Leopard on a trip to the Mineralogical Museum.”

“Take the Blue Leopard to the Museum? But he’s too… too stupid!”

“Yes. He’ll be there to scare the mice. And you’ll be there to see he doesn’t frighten anyone else.”

“Agreed.” Alice said. “And we are going on the expedition.”




Chapter Two

Forty-Three Stowaways


The last two weeks before our departure passed in a flash of excitement and often unnecessary commotion. I hardly saw Alice at all during that time.

Firstly, I was in charge of preparing, checking, and loading and finding places aboard the Pegasus for all the cages, snares, ultrasound lures, traps, nets, forcefield generators, and the thousand other things which were needed to catch animals.

Secondly, the medicines, stored foods, films, recording tapes, cameras, dictaphones, microscopes, herbarium papers, note books, rubber boots, calculators and computers, umbrellas for the varius suns, and from the rain, lemonade, rain coats, panama hats, dried ice cream concentrate, jetpacks, and the still million more other things that might prove necessary on the expedition.

Thirdly, in as much as we would, on our outbound run, be stopping in at many isolated scientific bases, stations, and diverse worlds we found ourselves carrying freight and gifts: oranges for some astronomers on Mars, canned herring for some explorers on Arcturus Minor, cherry juice, India ink, and modeling clay for the archaeologists in the 2-BTS system, brocade dressing gowns and electrocardiographs for the inhabitants of the planet Fyxx, a set of walnut trees won by an inhabitant of the planet Samora in the “Do You Know The Sol System” contest, fried quince (fortified with vitamins) for the Labucillians and still many more gifts and packages which were foisted on us in the last moments by the grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children and grand children of those people and extraterrestrials we would be seeing. Toward the last moment our Pegasus began to take on the appearance of Noah’s Ark, a flying flea market, a Harrod’s and Macy’s all rolled into one. Over the last two weeks I must have lost twelve pounds, and the Pegasus’s captain, the famous astronaut Poloskov, must have aged six years. Add to that the Pegasus was not really a large ship, and its crew was really very small.

On Earth and other planets command of the expedition would devolve to me, Professor Seleznev of the Moscow Zoo. That I am a professor hardly means that I am already old, grey haired, and important; it just happened that I had always been fascinated by animals and had not changed my childhood preference for rocks, stamps, radio astronomy, or other such interesting things. When I was ten I joined the Young Naturalists Club at the local zoo, and after high school went to University to major in biology, but even while I was in college I continued to spend my free time in the zoo and biological laboratories. When I graduated from the university I knew enough about animals to write my first book. That was back before we had faster than light ships that could carry us to the ends of the Galaxy, and there were very few astrozbiologists. That was twenty years ago, and astrozbiologists have become fairly common. But I happened to be one of the first. I made the rounds on many different planets in other star systems and quite without knowing what I was doing I found I had become a full Professor.

When the Pegasus leaves Terra firma the ship’s master and commander over us all will be Gennady Poloskov, the famous astronaut and ship’s captain. The two of us had encountered each other earlier on distant planets and scientific bases. He had been a guest in my house many times and was especially fond of Alice. Poloskov is not at all like the Movie Star Starship Captain; when he takes off his uniform he looks more like a kindergarten teacher or librarian. Poloskov is of medium height, with ash blond hair, taciturn, and very precise in all his movements. But when he takes his place in the command chair on the bridge, he changes: his voice deepens, his face radiates firmness and decisiveness. Poloskov has never lost his composure and he is very well respected in Star Fleet.

We had difficulty in getting him to captain the Pegasus; Jack O’Connell had been after him to captain his new passenger liner on the Earth-Fyxx run. If it had not been for Alice I’d never have talked him into it.

The third member of the Pegasus’s crew is Zeleny, the engineer. He is a tall man with a bushy red beard. He’s a fine engineer and has flown with Poloskov on previous expeditions; his chief joy in life is to immerse himself in the engines or fix something else in the engineering section. In general Zeleny is first rate, but sometimes he becomes distracted and then some or other very important machine or instrument would be disassembled precisely at that moment when we needed it most And Zeleny was a confirmed pessimist, always certain that whatever we were doing would not end well. Whatever it was. For example, he had read in some old book how someone had cut himself while shaving with a razor and died of blood poisoning. Now, although you will not find such a razor anywhere on the planet Earth, although all men now smear their faces with a depilatory paste rather than shave, he had decided to let his beard grow out. Whenever we land on an unknown planet he immediately advises us to leave, because the animals here are few, or something not needed by the Zoo at all, and if they are needed there’s no way we could get them back to Earth, and so forth. But we’re all used to Zeleny and we pay no attention to his grumbling, nor does he become angry with us. The fourth member of our crew, if you do not count the cook robot which was always broken anyway and the automated land rover, was Alice. She is,as you know, my daughter; she had just finished the second grade and something or other was always happening to her, but so far all her various adventures had ended successfully. Alice was a useful member of the expedition she was able to look after the animals and was almost never afraid of them.

The night before we took off I had trouble getting to sleep; it seemed like I kept hearing the doors to the house opening and slamming shut. When I got up Alice was already dressed, as though she had never even been to bed. We both hurried to the flyer. We were carrying almost nothing with us, if ignore my black leather briefcase, and Alice’s shoulder bag, where the swim fins and harpoon for underwater hunting had been tied. The morning was cold, chilly, and bright. The meteorologists had promised to give us rain after supper, but, as always, they had been off in their timing and the rain had come just before dawn. The streets were empty; we had already said good-byes to our relatives and friends and had promised to write from every planet.

The flyer cruised slowly over the streets and drifted west to the space port; I gave piloting over to Alice and pulled out my reader, scrolling down the enormous list, re-examining and cross- checking for the thousandth time because Captain Poloskov had sworn to me that if we could not kick of three tons of payload, at the very least, we would never make it off the planet.

I was paying no attention to our approach to the space port; Alice was clearly concentrating on something, but what it was not was flying, which she had completely forgotten about. She was so distracted she landed the flyer at the base of another ship, a freighter loading piglets for Venus.

At the sight of a car dropping out of the sky the piglets scattered in every direction, the robots herding them rushed to catch the fugitives, and the human in charge of the loading cursed me out for trusting a landing to a small child.

“She’s not so small.” I answered the freight handler. “She just finished second grade.”

“Even worse.” The freight handler said, clutching a just caught squealing piglet to his chest. “There’s no way we’ll catch them all before sundown!”

I glared at Alice, took the control rod from her, and moved the car to the white disk of the Pegasus. The Pegasus, back in the days when it was fresh from the shipyards, had been a high speed mail carrier. Then, when ships that were faster and more capacious appeared, the Pegasus was relegated to expeditions. It had enormous holds and had already served both geologists and archaeologists, and now the Zoo had acquired its services. Poloskov was waiting for us; we had barely managed to say our hellos when he asked:

“Have you thought about which three tons we clear out?”

“I’ve don some thinking, yes.” I said.

“Tell me about it.”

At that moment a little old lady in a blue shawl came up to us and asked:

“Would it be possible for you to take a small package for my son in the Aldebaran system?”

“Why not?” Poloskov threw up his hands. “We can’t take any more of this!”

“It’s really a very small package.” The old woman said. “Two hundred grams, no more. “You can just imagine what it will be like if he can’t get his birthday present…”

We couldn’t imagine.

“And what is in the package?” Poloskov asked politely, surrendering to the mass of grey hairs.

“Nothing unusual. Cookies. Kolya so loves cookies! And a stereotape showing his son, my grandson, learning to walk.”

“Bring it on.” Poloskov said gloomily.

I looked around for Alice. She had gotten off somewheres. The sun was already high over the space port and the Pegasus’s long shadows reached the space port buildings.

“We’ll re-load part of the cargo for the moon to the regular freight ship.” I told Poloskov. “And take off will be easier from the moon.”

“I was thinking that too.” Poloskov said. “But in any case we have to unload four tons to have a reserve.”

“And where can I put this wee package?” The old woman asked.

“Then robot at the lock can take it.” Poloskov said, and the two of us started to go over what we would have to unload.

Out of the corner of one eye I got a glimpse of Alice moving about and that carried my eye toward the old woman and her wee package. The old woman was standing in the shadow of the ship, and quietly arguing with the robot loader. Behind the old woman floated a seriously overloaded baggage handler.

“Poloskov,” I said, and nodded in the old woman’s direction.

“Oh lord!” came from our famous captain’s lips. “There’s no way I’m going to live through this.”

He made a tiger’s leap for the old woman.

“What’s this?” He thundered.

“The package.” The old woman said timidly.

“Cookies?”

“Cookies.” The old woman was already recovering from fright.

“And why, pray tell, so large.”

“Please, Captain.” The old woman said boldly. “Would you expect my son to get cookies from me and go off and eat them all in hiding, alone, not even bothering to share with his one hundred and thirty fellow researchers. Would you want that?”

“I I want nothing else.” The exhausted Poloskov said. “I am staying home and flying nowhere! Is that clear? I’m not going anywhere!”

The battle with the old woman lasted half an hour and ended in Poloskov’s victory. During that time I remained aboard and oversaw the robots in removing the oranges and the walnut tree prize.

I encountered Alice in a far passage of the cargo hold and was very surprised at our meeting.

“And what are you doing here?” I asked.

Alice hid a half eaten bagel behind her back and answered:

“Just familiarizing myself with the ship.”

“Go to the control room.” I said. “Scat!”

Finally, toward twelve, we had finished the re-loading. Everything was ready. Poloskov and I went over the figures again; when the anti-gravs kicked in, there would be a reserve of two hundred kilograms, our weight would be more than completely neutralized and we would fall toward space. Poloskov used the loud speaker system to get in touch with Zeleny. The engineer was sitting in the control seat, running his hands through his rusty beard.

Poloskov bent over the screen and asked:

“Can we take off?”

“Any time.” Zeleny said. “But I really don’t like the weather.”

“Traffic control.” Poloskov said into the microphone. “Pegasus requests permission for lift off.”

“A moment please.” The dispatcher answered. “Do you have any places for passengers?”

“Not a single one.” Poloskov answered firmly. “We are not taking any passengers.”

“That’s not what I meant. Do you have room aboard to carry five people to the Moon?”

“Why? What about the regular flights?”

“All over booked.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know? Today’s the Galactic Sector soccer championships; Earth versus Fyxx in Luna City.”

“Whatever reason would they put it on the moon?” Poloskov had absolutely no interest in soccer and in general had spent the last there days prior to our departure quite divorced from such mundane realities.

“Where have you been?” The dispatcher said. “How are Fyxxians supposed to play under terrestrial gravity? The moon’s gravity is uncomfortable enough!”

“In other words, Earth emerges victorious?” Poloskov asked.

“I doubt it.” The dispatcher answered. “They switched three defensive ends with Mars, including Simon Braun.”

“I should have your cares and travails.” Poloskov said. “When can we leave?”

“We’re going to win anyway.” Alice entered the conversation. She had come onto the bridge without my noticing.

“Right, kid!” The dispatcher beamed. “Now, can you take any of the fans? For me to send them all I’d need seven ships. I can’t imagine how the applications are already piling up….”

“No.” Poloskov cut him off.

“Well, that’s up to you. Ready your engines.”

Poloskov turned to the engine controls.

“Zeleny,” he said, “turn on the in-system drives, but just enough to make certain we’re not overloaded.

“How could we be overloaded.” I felt shocked. “We’ve just recalculated everything.”

The ship almost began to shiver with the expectation of coming speed.

“Five Four Three Two One Liftoff!” The captain said.

The starship groaned and remained on the ground.

“What happened?” Poloskov said.

“Pegasus, what’s going on?” The dispatcher, who had been overseeing our liftoff, asked.

“Nothing happened, that’s what.” Zeleny said. “I keep telling you that nothing good is going to come of this.”

Alice was sitting like she was fastened to her seat, not looking in my direction.

“We’ll try it again.” Poloskov said.

“You don’t have to prove anything.” Zeleny answered. “There is a considerable overload, far too much mass for our engines to shift. I have the readings here…”

Poloskov attempted to lift the Pegasus a second time, but the ship remained on the ground as though nailed in place. Then Poloskov said:

“We must have some sort of major error in our calculations.”

“No. The computer checked them, and I added them up on the side.” I answered. “We have a reserve of two hundred kilograms.”

“But then what’s the cause?

“We’ll have to throw a lot of the freight overboard. We can’t loose any more time. Which cargo hold do we begin with?”

“With the first.” I said. “It’s filled with packages bound for the moon.”

“Not the first, please!” Alice suddenly said.

“All right.” I answered her automatically. “Then we start with three and get rid of the cages and trapping equipment.”

“But the third…” Alice started to say.

“Now what’s going on?” Poloskov asked angrily.

The traffic control dispatcher’s face was on our screen again.

“Pegasus,” he said. “We have a request for you?”

“What sort of request?”

“You’d better speak to the Information Desk.”

The screen changed to show the starport waiting room. A crowd had gathered around the Information Desk; among them I recognized a number of familiar faces. Where had I seen them before?

The woman standing closest to the Information Desk pick up looked at me.

“Now this is absolutely shameful! This is a horrible prank to play!”

“What prank?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“I told Alyosha: ‘You can’t go to the moon; you have five Cs in your final quarter.”

“And I told Leva he couldn’t go to this game.” Another woman pushed her way into the pick up. “He could see it perfectly well on television!”

“A-ha.” I said to myself slowly. I did know these people who were about to stage a riot in the starport’s waiting room. They were the parents of the other children in Alice’s class.

“So it’s all clear.” Poloskov said. “Just how many stowaways do we have on board?”

“I didn’t think we’d be overloaded.” Alice said. “There was no way the kids could miss the match of the century! What’s the point of me going to the match if they’re not there?”

“And how many stowaways do we have?” Poloskov repeated in a voice of steel.

“Our class and the two parallel ones.” Alice whispered. “While dad was sleeping I flew them to the spaceport and hid them aboard.”

“You are not flying anywhere!” I said. “There is no way we can take irresponsible people on this expedition.”

“Papa, I won’t do it again.” Alice begged. “Please, understand! I have a strongly developed sense of responsibility!”

“We could have crashed because of your sense of responsibility.” Poloskov said.

Usually he was the one who would pardon any of Alice’s transgressions, but now he was very angry.

“Get those stowaways off the ship.” He added. “If we can do it in half an hour, you will remain aboard. If not, we take off without you.”

The last stowaway was hunted down and expelled from the cargo holds in twenty-three minutes. Six minutes later they were all standing outside the ship, terribly proud and terribly sad, with a crowd of mothers, fathers, and grandparents rushing toward them from the space port’s buildings.

In sum there had been forty-three stowaways aboard the Pegasus; to this day I do not understand how Alice was able to find places for them all aboard so well hidden that we had noticed not a one of them.

“Bye, Alice! Have fun!” Alesha Naumov shouted from below when we were at last closing the locks. “Root for Earth for us! And come back soon!”

“Earth will win!” Alice shouted back.

When the Earth was already dropping away from us and we had set course for the Moon, Alice said:

“It didn’t turn out all that well, papa.”

“Not all that well at all,” I agreed. “I am quite ashamed of you.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.” Alice said. “The whole Third B class took off on a freight barge for the moon in potato sacks. They’ll be at the stadium, but our Second grade class won’t. I have not lived up to the trust of my fellow students.”

“And what did they do with the potatoes they displaced?” Poloskov asked, surprised.

“I don’t know.” Alice said. She thought and added: “It will just be me and the Third B class at the game. Yuck!”




Chapter Three

“Have You Heard About The Three Captains?”


When the Pegasus set down at the Luna City Space Port I asked my fellow travelers:

“What plans do you have? We’re taking off tomorrow at six AM on the button.”

Captain Poloskov said he was planning on remaining aboard ato ready the ship for its flight.

Engineer Zeleny asked permission to go to the soccer match.

Alice also said she was going to the soccer game, but without all that much pleasure in her voice.

“Why so glum?”

“You mean you’ve forgotten? The whole Third B class will be at the stadium, and I’’ll be the only one from the Second. It’s all your fault.”

“Mine?”

“You were the one who kicked my kids off the ship?”.

“We couldn’t have gotten off the ground with them aboard! Not to mention what their parents would have said to me. What if something had happened?”

“Where.” Alice was angry. “In the Sol system? At the end of the twenty-first century?”

When Alice and Zeleny left I decided to go for one last cup of real coffee from a real restaurant for the last time until we returned to Earth, and I headed for the Selene.

The enormous domed hall of the restaurant was nearly full; I stopped not far from the entrance and began searching for a free place, when a familiar voice thundered at me:

“Who is it that I see before me!”

It was one of my oldest friends, Gromozeka; he had occupied a distant table. I hadn’t seen him for almost five years, but I had certainly never forgotten about him. Once we had been very close, in as much as our acquaintance began when I managed to save him in the jungles of Eurydice. Gromozeka had managed to get separated from an archaeological survey crew, was unable to find his way in the forest and nearly ended up in the jaws of a Minor Dragonette, a fairly nasty critter all of sixteen meters long.

On seeing me Gromozeka unfurled the mass of the tentacles he had curled up for convenience sake, his charming green smile split his half meter wide maw in two, he reached out his razor sharp claws for me, and, at full throttle, he rushed to my side.

Some tourist who had never before in his life seen an inhabitant of the planet Chumaroz, screamed and fell down in a faint. But Gromozeka paid him no heed; he strongly enfolded me in his tentacles and clutched me to the hard boney plate on his breast.

“Sweetheart!” He roared like a lion. “How many years have separated us, now many winters have we been forced to endure each other’s absence! I was about to get a ticket for a flight to Moscow to see you, and now, here, before my eyes I can hardly believe it! How have the Fates been so kind!”

“I’m going off on an expedition.” I said. “Hunting animals around the Galaxy.”

“That is stupendous!” Gromozeka was delighted. “I cannot tell you how overjoyed I am that you have finally been able to overcome the plots and intrigues of your enemies and go off into the field.”

“But I don’t have any enemies.”

“You cannot deceive me.” Gromozeka said, shaking sharp, clicking claws in front of my nose reproachfully.

I did not bother to speak back because I knew how suspicious my friend was.

“Sit, sit.” Gromozeka ordered. “Robot, a bottle of your best Georgian wine for my dearest friend and three liters of Ex-Lax for me.”

“Order taken.” The robot waiter answered and trundled off to the kitchen for our order.

“And how has life been?” Gromozeka continued his interrogation. “How is your wife? And your daughter: has she already started to walk?”

“All the way to school.” I said. “She just finished second grade.”

“Wondrous.” Gromozeka roared. “How quickly time runs with us in its grasp…”

With this some sad thought overcame my friend, and, being a very impressionable being, Gromozeka sighed, and caustic smoking tears flowed from each of his seven eyes.

“And how are things with you?” I grew alarmed.

“You can’’t imagine how quickly time flies,” Gromozeka said between the tears. “The children grow, and the two of us grow old.”

Gromozeka, overcome with aa feeling of tenderness, expelled streams of caustic yellow smoke from each of his four nostrils; the cloud of noxious gas began to fill the restaurant, but he got himself in hand and spoke up:

“Pardon me, most noble restaurant patrons; I shall try to avoid causing you any further discomfort.”

The mist spread between the tables; people coughed and a few even had to leave the hall.

“Let’s go.” I said, wheezing, “or you might do something else.”

“You’re right.” Gromozeka agreed resignedly.

We exited the restaurant and went into the hall, where Gromozeka occupied an entire divan, and I found room for myself beside him in a chair. The robot brought us the wine and Ex- Lax, a wine glass for me and a liter bottle for my friend.

“Where are you working now?” I asked Gromozeka.

“We’ll be digging a dead city on Coleida.” He answered. “I stopped by here to pick up an infrared detector.”

“An interesting city on Coleida?” I asked.

“Perhaps, interesting, or not.” Gromozeka answered carefully. He was horribly superstitious. To avoid the Evil Eye he circled his rightmost eye with his tail four times and said in a whisper: “Baskuri-bariparata.”

“When do you begin?” I asked.

“Our team departs from Mercury in two weeks time. That’s where our temporary base is.”

“A strange, inhospitable place.” I said. “Half the planet is a scorching airless desert while the other half is a frozen airless desert.”

“Nothing extraordinary.” Gromozeka said, and reached again for the Ex-Lax. “We were there last year hunting the remains of the ship of the Midnight Wraiths. That’s work. But I’ve told you all about myself! I want to hear your plans.”

“I only know them approximately.” I answered. “For starters we’ll be making a circuit of research bases in the neighborhood of the Sol system, then we’re off. We’ve a lot of time three months, and the ship is pretty big.”

“Not headed for Eurydice?” Gromozeka asked.

“No. There is a Dragonette Minor in the Moscow Zoo already, and the Dragonette Major, unfortunately, can’t be caught.”

“And even if you could catch it,” Gromozeka said, “Your ship would never be able to carry it.”

I agreed the Pegasus could never carry a Dragonette Major, but that was because it had to eat four tons of meat and bananas a day.

The two of us were silent for a while. It can be very pleasant to sit with an old friend with no need to hurry anywhere. An elderly woman tourist in a purple wig, decorated with holographic flowers, came up to us and timidly extended a notebook.

“Would it be possible,” she asked, “if I could obtain your autograph as a memento of our chance encounter.”

“And why not?” Gromozeka said, reaching for the notebook with a clawed tentacle.

The old woman drew back in fear; her small hand trembled.

Gromozeka turned the notebook to a blank bage and wrote in a florid script:

“To the fair young damsel hominoid of Earth from her admirer from the misty planet Chumaroz. Selene Restaurant, 3 March.”

“Thank you.” The old woman whispered and departed in tiny steps.

“And did I write it well? Gromozeka asked me. “It was touching?

“It was touching.” I agreed. “But not entirely correct.”

“How so?”

“That was not a very young human girl, but a woman of late middle age. And, in general, we use hominoid to include most of the apes and our pre-sapient ancestors that we dig up from paleontological sites.”

“Oh, what shame!” Gromozeka was distraught. “But she had flowers in her hat. If I run after her now I might be able to re-write the autograph.”

“It’s not worth it.” I stopped him. “You’d just frighted her out of her wits.”

“Yes, heavy is the burden of glory.” Gromozeka said. “But it is pleasant to discover that the most important archaeologist on Chumaroz is known even on the distant Earth’s Moon.”

I did not bother to disabuse my friend; I suspected the old woman had not once in her life imagined, yet alone encountered, an astroarchaeologist. She had simply never seen anyone like Gromozeka before.

“Listen,” Gromozeka said, “I have an idea. I can help you.”

“How?”

“Have you heard about a planet named The Three Captain’s World?”

“I read about it somewhere, but I don’t remember where or when.”

“That is superb.”

Gromozeka leaned closer, placing one of his heavy, rather warm tentacles on my shoulder, straightened the shining plates that formed the globular, almost balloon-like belly, and began:

“In Sector 19-4 there is a smallish, uninhabited planet. It used to be it did not even have a name, just a numerical code. Now space men call it the Three Captain’s World. And do you know why? There, on a flat, stony plateau they have erected three statues, placed there to honor three space captains. These were great explorers and noble people. One of them was born on Earth, the second on Mars, and the third Captain was born on Fyxx. Hand in hand these Captains strode the constellations, landing on planets everyone else thought were impossible to land on; they saved entire worlds threatened by danger. They were the first to defeat the jungles of Eurydice, and one of them wounded a Dragonette Major. They sought out and destroyed a nest of space pirates, although the space pirates outnumbered them by twenty to one. The descended into the methane atmosphere of Golgotha and recovered the Philosopher’s Stone lost there by Kursak’s convoy. With it they destroyed a poisonous volcano that threatened to exterminate the population of an entire planet. You could spend weeks recounting their achievements…

“Now I remember.” I interrupted Gromozeka. “Of course I’ve heard of the Three Captains.”

“To-to,” Gromozeka grumbled and drank from his can of Ex-Lax. “How quickly we forget our heros. Shameful.” Gromozeka reproachfully nodded his soft head and continued. “Some years ago the paths of the Captain’s diverged. The First Captain was lured onto the Venus Project.”

“That I know about.” I said. “That means he’s one of those who are changing the planet’s orbit.”

“Yes. The first captain always loved grandiose projects. And when he learned that the decision had been taken to shift Venus’s orbit further from your sun and change the period of its rotation so that people can settle there, he immediately offered his services to the project. And this is glorious, in as much as the scientists had decided to turn Venus into a very large space ship and there is no one else in the Galaxy better suited than the First Captain in dealing with the celestial mechanics of a world-ship.”

“And the remaining Captains.”

“The second, it is said, died somewhere, whereabouts unknown and when unknown too.

“The Third captain set off for the Andromeda Galaxy and will not return for many, many years.

“What I wanted to say to you, is that the Captains encountered many strange, rare, even miraculous beasts and birds. Their notebooks and diaries would surely provide invaluable information.”

“And where are they?”

“Their notebooks and records are maintained on the Three Captains’ World. Right beside the monument which was erected by subscriptions from the grateful inhabitants of some seven hundred planets there is a laboratory and memorial center. The full time resident archivist is a doctor Verkhovtseff. He knows more about the Three Captains than anyone in the Galaxy. If you drop in there, you will not regret it.”

“Thank’s Gromozeka.” I said. “Perhaps you’ve had enough Ex-Lax? Didn’t you once complain to me that it had a bad effect on your heart?”

“What can I do?” My friend threw up his tentacles in horror. “I have three hearts, anyway. Ex-Lax has a precarious affect on one of them, but there is no way I can remember which one.”

We spent another hour remembering old friends and adventures the two of us had both, however precariously, survived. Suddenly the door to the corridor opened and a crowd of humans and off-worlders appeared. They were carrying the members of the Earth soccer squad on their hands and other appendages. A band was playing; there were shouts of triumph.

Alice jumped out of the crowd. “Know what?” She shouted when she saw me. “Those mercenaries from Mars didn’t help the Fyxxians one bit. It was three to one! Now there will be a match on a neutral field!”

“And what about the Third B.” I asked maliciously.

“They never made it.” Alice said. “I’d have seen them for sure. I guess the Third B was caught and sent back. In potato sacks! Serves them right!”

“You’re a dangerous person, Alice.” I said.

“She is not!” The outraged Gromozeka cut in. “You have no right to insult a helpless child so! I will not give her to you to be insulted again!”

Gromozeka embraced Alice with his tentacles and lifted her to the ceiling.

“No,” he repeated again agitatedly. “Your daughter is my daughter, ad I will not allow it.”

“But I am not your daughter.” Alice said from above. Fortunately, she was not the least bit frightened.

But the same could not be said for the engineer Zeleny. At that very moment he came into the corridor and what did he see but Alice beating at the tentacles of an enormous monster. Zeleny did not even notice me. He threw himself at Gromozeka, his rusty beard like the banner on a charging Medieval knight’s lance, and tore into my friend’s round belly like a madman.

Gromozeka snatched up Zeleny with his free tentacles and draped him over one of the ceiling lights. Then he carefully lowered Alice and asked me:

“Did I become too demonstrative?”

“A little.” Alice answered for me. “Put Zeleny down on the floor.”

“He shall not throw himself on archaeologists.” Gromozeka said. “I do not want to take him down. Ave, we shall see each other in the evening. I have remembered that I must spend the rest of the working day in the base warehouse.”

And, craftily winking at Alice, Gromozeka pushed off on all his tentacles in the direction of the airlocks, leaving behind him a more than faint whiff of Ex-Lax in the corridor.

We got Zeleny down from the chandeliers with the help of the soccer team, and I was somewhat angry at my friend; as talented a scientist and true a friend as Gromozeka may be, he was raised very badly and his sense of humor sometimes takes strange forms.

“Where are we headed for?” Alice asked when we were walking toward the ship.

“Our first task,” I said, “Is to get our cargo to Mars and the researchers at Arcturus Minor. And from there we’ll go directly to sector 19-4, to Three Captains Base.”

“All hail the Three Captains!” Alice said, although she had never heard about them before in her life.




Chapter Four

The Vanishing Tadprowlers


The investigators on Arcturus Minor met the Pegasus with a brass band, figuratively if not literally. As soon as we had eased our way down onto the metal plates of the landing field they smartly marched out into the constant rain to greet us, followed by the all-terrain vehicle. The pre-fab landing field was still staggering under our ship’s weight; rusty water bubbling with the products of plant decomposition still splashed in the cracks between the plating. They were all in space suits with top hats on top of the closed helmets, the trumpets and bassoons were flat plastic cut-outs, and two of the researchers carried a large plate with the Key to the Planet.

And when we came down to the wet metal strips of the space port they decorated our helmets of our space suits with leis and awarded Alice with the keys to the research station.

Our arrival was an excuse to have a feast in the close confines of the base dining hall. We were treated to fruit salad concentrate, dehydrated duck and artificial ham sandwiches. The engineer Zeleny, who also worked as the Pegasus’s chef, responded in kind and managed to place on the table real apples, real sliced pears with real currants and, best of all, real rye bread.

Alice was the principal guest. All the researches were adults; they had been forced to leave their children at home on Mars, the Earth, and Ganymede, and they depressed without real children. Alice answered all their questions, honestly trying to be far more stupid than she was in reality, and when she returned to the ship she confided in me:

“They were hoping I’d be a pretty little doll; the kind who wouldn’t cause them any trouble.”

The next day we transferred all the cargo and packages we had brought to the research base, but, unfortunately, it turned out that the research team couldn’t invite us to go hunting local animals: the season of storms had begun, all rivers were overflowing their banks and travel around the planet was nearly impossible.

“Would you like us to get you a tadprowler?”

“Why not?” I agreed.

I had occasion to hear about various of the local reptiles, but so far I had not encountered a tadprowlers.

About two hours later the researchers brought us a large aquarium, on the bottom of which dozed meter long tadprowlers, who resembled giant salamanders. Then the researches dragged a large container of water plants up the gangway.

“This feed will just get them going.” They said. “Look, the tadprowlers are very voracious and will grow quickly.”

“Shouldn’t we make the aquarium a bit larger?” I asked.

“An Olympic sized pool might even be better.” The base chief answered.

His people even now were dragging yet another container of food for the tadprowlers up the gangway.

“Just how quickly do they grow?” I asked.

“Pretty quickly. I can’t really put it more precisely.” The base chief answered. “We don’t hold any of them in captivity.”

He smiled mysteriously and started to speak with someone else.

I asked the head of the research team:

“And you’ve never had a chance to spend any time on the Three Captains’ World?”

“No.” He answered. “But once Doctor Verkhovtseff came to visit us; that was about a month or so ago. I really have to say that he struck me as being an enormous crank.”

“How so?”

“Why would he need the design schematics of the starship “Blue Gull?”

“I am sorry, but why is that strange?”

“It’s the Second Captain’s ship, the one that vanished without a trace four years ago.”

“But why would Verkhovtseff need information on that ship?”

“Why indeed? I asked him about it. It turns out he is up to his ears in writing a book about the exploits of the Three Captains, a documentary novel, and he can’t continue his work without knowing how that ship was constructed.”

“Are you saying the ship’s special?”

The base commander almost laughed condescendingly.

“I see you haven’t a clue…” He said. “The ships of the Three Captains were all made specially to order, and then each of them was more or less re-built by the captains themselves by their own hands. And these were astonishing ships! Equipped for all conceivable circumstances. One of them, the Everest, the First Captain’s ship, stands today in the Paris Astronautics Museum.”

“Then why doesn’t Verkhovtseff just call the Paris Astronautics Museum?” I was retorted.

“Because each of the three ships was different!” The research chief answered. “Each of the Captains was unique, and so was each of their ships.”

“So I guess we’re off to Verkhovtseff.” I said. “I gather you can give us the coordinates of his base?”

“With pleasure.” The Chief answered. “And give him our greetings while you’re at it. And don’t forget to transfer the tadprowlers to your pool.”

We said our farewells to the hospitable researchers and departed.

Before I dropped off to sleep I decided to examine the tadprowlers.

It turned out their similarity to salamanders was only superficial. They were covered with a tough, shining mass of scales, and they had enormous sad eyes with long lashes, short tails split in two and ended with thick, coarse brushes.

I decided would move the tadprowlers to the pool in the morning there was nothing that could happen to them overnight in the aquarium. I threw the tadprowlers two pieces of water plants and turned off the light in the hold. A beginning had been made the first animals for the Zoo were aboard the Pegasus.

In the morning Alice awakened me.

“Papa,” she said. “Wake up.”

“Anything happen…”

I glanced at my watch. It was still only seven O’clock in the morning ship’s time.

“Why have you gotten up so early?”

“I wanted to take a look at the tadprowlers. I’ve never seen anything like them on Earth before.”

“What of it? For that you have to awaken your elderly father? You should have turned on the robot. Let him get breakfast ready; we have to reason to hurry to get up.”

“Your breakfast can wait, Daddy!” Alice shot back very impolitely. “I’m telling you, get up and come look at the tadprowlers!”

There was something in her voice that made me very apprehensive.

I got out of my bunk and, without bothering to get dressed, ran to the hold where the aquarium had been placed. The sight which awaited me was tremendous. The tadprowlers, as unbelievable as this may sound, had more than doubled their size over-night and now no longer fit into the little aquarium. Their tails stuck over the sides of the glass and now hung down almost to the deck.

“That can’t be!” I said. “We’ll have to ready the pool immediately.

I ran to awaken the engineer Zeleny.

“Come quick; the tadprowlers have grown so much I can’t even lift one up.”

“I did warn you.” Zeleny said “It’s all going to be like this. Why in heaven’s name did I ever agree to work on a wandering Zoo? Why?”

“I don’t know.” I said. “Come on.”

Zeleny put on a coverall and let himself be dragged, grumbling, to the hold. When he saw the tadprowlers he gasped, scratched his beard, and groaned:

“Tomorrow they’ll occupy the entire ship!”

Fortunately for us the pool had already been filled with water. With Zeleny’s aid I transferred the tadprowlers. They turned out to be not quite as heavy as they looked, but they twisted and squirmed from our hands so much that when we had dropped the third and last of them into the pool we were bruised and covered with sweat.

The Pegasus’s pool wasn’t very large four by three meters and only two meters deep but the tadprowlers found it comfortable. They began to circle around inside, hunting for fish. It took little intelligence to realize they were famished certainly these creatures, evidently, were intent on setting the Galactic record for speed of growth.

While I fed the tadprowlers half the contents of one of the crates of water plants were consumed at once Poloskov appeared in the hold. He had already showered, shaved, and was dressed in uniform.

“Alice tells me your tadprowlers have grown a bit.” He said, laughing.

“Not enough to be worth mentioning.” I answered, pretending that such wonders were anything but unusual to me.

Then Poloskov looked into the pool and gasped.

“Crocodiles!” He said. “Real crocodiles! They could eat a man in one gulp”

“There’s nothing to fear.” I said. “They’re vegetarians. The researchers should have warned us, though.”

The tadprowlers swam on the surface of the water and opened thier enormous, hungry maws.

“They want to eat again.” Zeleny said. “Pretty soon they’ll come hunting us.”

Toward supper the tadprowlers had reached a length of two and a half meters and had entirely consumed the first crate of water plants.

“They could very well have warned us.” Zeleny groused, referring to the researchers. “They knew what was going to happen and were thinking: let the specialists sweat some.”

“Naw, that wasn’t it.” Alice spoke up; the researchers on Arcturus Minor had given her as going away presents: a model of an ATV carved from wood, a chess set made from the bones of an excavated parallelepiped, a small paper knife carved from the core of a petrified tree, and a number of other interesting items which they had made themselves over the long evenings to maintain their sanity.

“Oh well, we’ll see.” Zeleny said philosophically and went off to check the engines.

Toward evening the length of the tadprowlers reached three and a half meters. They were already finding it difficult to swim about the pool and they kept close to the bottom, swimming to the top only to munch on bunches of waterplants.

I found myself going to sleep that night with the heavy forboding that I would not be able to get the tadprowlers to the Zoo. The first of the animals had turned into a snow ball rolling down hill. Space was still filled with mysteries which a smiple terrestrial biologist just can’t sink his teeth into.

I made certain I got up before anyone else. I tiptoed down the corridors, remembering the nightmares that had run through my mind during the night. I had dreamed the tadprowlers had become longer than the Pegasus itself, crawled outside, and were now flying beside us in empty space and still trying to eat our ship.

I opened the door to the hold and stood for a moment on the threshold, looking around to make certain that a tadprowlers didn’t crawl out from around some corner.

But the hold remained silent. The water in the pool was unmoving. I walked closer. The shadows of the tadprowlers, now about four meters long, were black pools on the bottom.

My heart almost burst from my chest. I grabbed a mop and stuck one end into the water. Why weren’t the tadprowlers moving

The mop knocked against one of the tadprowlers and shoved it easily to one side, pushing one of its companions to the far side of the pool. That one did not move either.

“Expired.” I realized. “From hunger.”

“What’s up, papa?” Alice asked.

I turned. Alice was standing barefoot on the cold plastic surface of the hold, and instead of answering her I said:

“Go right back to our cabin and put something on your feet. You’ll catch a cold.”

Then the door opened and Poloskov came into the hold. Over his shoulder I could see Zeleny’s red beard.

“Well, what’s up?” The two spoke in chorus.

Alice ran off to put on her slippers, and I, not bothering to answer, tried to push one of the motionless tadprowlers to the side of the pool. His body felt like it was empty and drifted lightly around the pool. The eyes were closed.

“They kicked off.” Zeleny said sadly. “And after all our work transferring them to the pool yesterday. Well, I did warn you!”

I turned the tadprowlers over with the mop. That proved not at all difficult. The tadprowlers spotted belly was split open down the middle. All that remained in the pool were the creatures’ outer skins, which retained the form of their bodies because hard and thick scales covered them, not permitting the hides to collapse.

“O-ho!” Zeleny said, looking around the hold. “They’ve shed their skins!”

“Who?” Poloskov asked.

“If we’d only known!”

“Listen, Professor Seleznev.” Captain Poloskov turned to me in his official capacity, “judging from everything I suspect that unknown creatures are now aboard my ship, creatures which were hidden in the so called tadprowlers. Where are they?”

I turned the last of the tadprowlers over with the mop. It was empty as well.

“I don’t know.” I admitted honestly.

“And when you entered the hold, was the door shut or open?”

My mind was simply not working to well, and I answered:

“I don’t remember, Poloskov. Most likely it was closed.”

“Tarnation!” Poloskov said, and hurried toward the exit.

“Where are you going?” Zeleny asked.

“To search the ship!” Poloskov said. “And I advise you to search the engineering compartment. Just make certain you’re armed. We don’t know what’s come out of the tadprowlers. It could be dragons.”

They hurried out, but a few minutes later Poloskov returned running and handed me a blaster.

“This isn’t something to laugh at.” He said. “And I’d advise you to lock Alice in your cabin.”

“There’s really no need for any of this.” Alice said. “I have a theory…”

“I don’t want to hear your theory.” I said. “Off to the cabin.”

Alice fought back like a wildcat, but we finally succeeded in locking her into our cabin and began a search of the entire ship.

It is remarkable how many holds, bulkheads, corridors, accessways and simple spaces are hidden in a comparatively small research vessel. The three of us, covering each other, wasted three hours while we examined every cubic centimeter of the Pegasus.

Nowhere did we find monsters.

“That’s it.” I finally said. “Let’s have breakfast; then we can search the ship all over again. They had to have gotten somewhere?”

“I want to eat too.” Alice, who had been listening to our conversations over the internal com system, said. “Just get me out of this prison.”

We released Alice and proceeded to the crew’s lounge like soldiers on patrol.

Before we even sat down for breakfast we locked the door and placed the blasters beside us on the table.

“It’s a mystery!” Poloskov said, hunched over Soya-Bix. “Where could they be hiding. In the reactor? Could they have gotten outside.?

“Infernal monsters.” Zeleny said. “I just don’t like monsters. I didn’t like the tadprowlers right from the very start. Hand me the instacaf.”

“I fear we may never resolve this mystery.” Poloskov said.

I nodded, agreeing with him.

“No, it’s simple.” Alice interjected.

“Now you be quiet and drink your tea.”

“I can’t be quiet. If you want, I can find them for you.”

Poloskov started to laugh. Then he laughed a long time, and sincerely.

“Three grown men searched the ship for three hours, and you want to find them on your own.”

“All the easier.” Alice answered. “Bet I can’t?”

“Of course I do.” Poloskov laughed again. “What do you want to bet?”

“A wish.” Alice said.

“Agreed.”

“Only I have to search for them alone.”

“Not on your life!” I said. “You are not going out there alone. Have you forgotten that there may be creatures of unknown capabilities and intentions roaming about the ship?”

I was furious at the Arcturus Minor researchers for their dangerous practical jokes. I was angry with myself as well for being asleep in bed and missing the moment when the tadprowlers’ outer coverings were discarded. And, I was angry with Alice and Poloskov who had taken such a serious moment to make a childish bet.

“Then we’re off.” Alice said, getting up from the table.

“First finish your tea.” I said severely.

Alice finished her tea and confidently headed for the hold where the aquarium stood. We followed after her, feeling ourselves to be fools. What reason, after all, did we have for listening to her?

Alice quickly looked over the section. She asked Poloskov to pull the cases off the wall. He complied with a smile. Then Alice returned to the pool and walked about it. The tadprowlers’ empty skins of the lay black on the bottom. On the surface of the water drifted uneaten waterplants.

“Here.” Alice said. “Pick them up. But be careful they can jump.”

And then we saw what was sitting on the green water plants in a row, three frogs. More precisely, not quite frogs, but three creatures very similar to frogs. Each about the size of a thimble.

We snatched at them and placed them in a can and then I, regretting my earlier obstinacy, asked Alice:

“Listen, kid, how did you guess?”

“That’s not the first time you’ve asked, papa,” She answered, covered with pride. “It’s all because you’re all grown up, all very wise and educated, and you think, as they say, logically. I’m not very wise and educated and I think about whatever pops into my head. I was thinking, that if the name of these tadprowlers comes from tadpoles then what they turn into is frogs. And young frogs are always smaller than tadpoles or prowlers. You went about the ship with pistols and hunted for giant monsters. Even I was afraid at the time. But I was sitting locked in the cabin and thinking that, you don’t always look up and search for something enormous. Maybe you should look in the corner and hunt for a really small frog. And I found them.”

“But why did frogs so small need such big skins?” Poloskov was curious.

“I wasn’t thinking about that.” Alice admitted. “I didn’t think about that at all. And if I had, then I would never have found the frogs.”

“And what do you say, Professor?” Poloskov asked me.

“What’s there to say? We have to study the tadprowlers outer covering. Evidently it’s some kind of fabric from feed and a complicated concentrate for the frogs. Or maybe the enormous size of the tadprowlers makes it easier for them to defend themselves from predators.”

“And don’t forget about my wish, Poloskov.” Alice said severely.

“I won’t forget about anything.” Our captain answered.




Chapter Five

The Advice of Doctor Verkhovtseff


While en route we sent a subspace message to Doctor Verkhovtseff: “Arriving on Saturday. Can you meet us?” Verkhovtseff answered immediately. That he would be delighted to meet with us and would lead us through the dangerous belt of asteroids that surrounded the Three Captains’ World in his own speedster.

At the appointed hour we slowed to a halt outside the asteroid belt. The thick roi of sone debris was like a cloud hiding the planet’s surface from us. For some reason we were all excited; it seemed likely the encounter with Doctor Verkhovtseff would lead to important and interesting events. Perhaps, Even to adventures.

The doctor’s space cruiser flashed like a silver arrowhead among the asteroids and then he was beside us.

“Pegasus, are you receiving me?” A muffled voice came from the speaker. “Follow my lead..”

“What does he find so interesting here? It must be boring to be on just one planet.” Alice said; she had taken her place on the bridge in the little acceleration chair that had been made specially for her.

No one answered her. Poloskov piloted the ship while I took the navigator’s position. Zeleny was not on the bridge; he remained in the engine room.

The Pegasus changed course, avoiding a jagged asteroid, and immediately obeyed Poloskov’s command to drop toward the surface.

Beneath us passed a desert at various points cut with gorges and dotted with the pockmarks of craters. The space yacht’s silver arrow flew in front of us, guiding us in.

We slowed noticeably. You could already make out cliffs and dried rivers. Then in front of us was the dark green circle of an oasis; arched over it was the dome of the base. The doctor’s yacht went into a curve and landed on flat ground. We followed his example.

The Pegasus had hardly stopped rocking when Poloskov stood up from his acceleration couch and said, “That’s it.” Out the port, between the green oasis and our ship, I could see three stone statues.

It was the Three Captains. Their monument had been erected on a very tall base; even from far away you could make out that two of them were human beings. The third was a spindly, three legged Fyxxian.

“We’ve landed.” Alice said. “Can we go out.”

“Wait a moment.” I answered. “We don’t know the composition of the atmosphere or the temperature. Which space suit are you planning to wear?”

“None of them.” Alice answered. She pointed out the port. A man had exited the silver space yacht; he wore an ordinary, if very old fashioned grey business suit and had a floppy grey hat on his head. He raised his hand and waved to us.

Poloskov turned on the outside speakers and asked:

“I take it the atmosphere is suitable for breathing?”

The man in the hat quickly started to nod: Come on out, there’s nothing to fear!

We let down our gangplank; he met us at the bottom.

“Welcome to the base!” He said and bowed. “We so rarely see guests here!”

His manner of speech was very old fashioned; it went with his clothing.

Doctor Verkhovtseff appeared to be about sixty. He was short and skinny, but in general looked like a pleasant late middle aged mam with a face covered with tiny wrinkles who spent most of his time squinting or laughing, and when from time to time the skin of his face was stretched the wrinkles became white and very broad. Doctor Verkhovtseff had long, thin fingers. He shook our hands and invited us to visit the base.

We followed the doctor the green trees of the oasis.

“Why is there an oxygen atmosphere here?” I asked. “The rest of the planet appears to be sheer desert.”

“The atmosphere is artificial.” The Doctor said. “It was made when they erected the monuments. Several years from now they will be erecting a large museum dedicated to the heroes of space. They will be bringing in ships that have outlived their usefulness and all sorts of trees and wildlife from distant planets, a whole ecosystem.”

The doctor stopped in front of a stone block. Carved into it were these words in InterGal:

SPACE MUSEUM TO BE ERECTED HERE SOON

“As you can see,” Verkhovtseff said, “The museum will be the joint venture of some seventy different planets. In the mean time, as a beginning, an enormous atmosphere reactor was built in the center of the planet to separate out oxygen from ores. At the moment the atmosphere here isn’t the best, but by the time the museum opens it will be the best in the Galaxy.”

As we spoke we approached the base of the monument.

The monument was enormous, at least as high as a twenty story building. We stopped, bent our heads back as far as they could go, and looked over the Three Captains.

The first captain appeared to be young, broad shouldered and muscular. He had an almost up-turned nose and a broad face. The captain was laughing. On his shoulder sat a strange bird with two claws and a beautiful crown of stone feathers.

The second captain was taller than the first. He had the very wide chest and thin legs of those people who had been adapted to live on Mars. The Second Captain’s face was sharp and lean.

The Third Captain was a Fyxxian in a stiff space suit with helmet open and thrown over his back, leaning with one hand on the branch of a stone bush.

“They’re not at all old.” Alice said.

“You are correct, little girl.” Doctor Verkhovtseff answered. “They had already won fame and glory when they were quite young.”

We entered the shadows of the trees and walked down the broad path that led to the base. The base turned out to be an enormous establishment but mostly fille with cases, containers, and instruments.

“They’ve started to send the in the museum exhibits already.” The doctor said, as though apologizing for the clutter. “Come with me to my den.”

“It looks just like the Pegasus at the start of our voyage!” Alice exclaimed.

And in fact the passage through the base to Doctor Verkhovtseff’s living quarters was in some ways like walking though our ship when it had been filled with packages, cargo, and all sorts of equipment.

Doctor Verkhovtseff’s sleeping and working quarters turned out to be in a small store room between containers, filled with books and microfilms; there was scarcely room to place a folding cot which was covered with papers and films.

“Sit down, why don’t you; make yourselves at home.” The doctor said.

Other than to the occupant it was completely clear that there was nowhere here to find a place to sit. Verkhovtseff brushed a pile of papers onto the floor. The pages flew end over end, and Alice bent down to gather them up.

“You’re writing a novel?” Poloskov asked.

“Why would I write a novel? Oh, yes, of course, the lives of the Three Captains are far more interesting than any novel. It would be worth while in order to describe them as examples for future generations. But I have absolutely no literary gifts whatsoever.”

I thought that Doctor Verkhovtseff was just being modest. After all, it had been he who flew to the researchers on Arcturus Minor in order to find the plans of one of the Captains’ ships.

“And so,” the Doctor said, “how might I prove useful to my honored guests?”

“We were told that you knew everything there was to know about the Three Captains.” I began.

“We-el,” Verkhovtseff even turned red from embarassment, “that is a clear exaggeration.”

He placed his hat down on a pile of books; the hat tried to slide off, but the doctor caught it and placed it again in its former spot.

“The Captains explored a great many otherwise unknown planets.” I said. “They encountered remarkable animals and birds. We were told they left notes and observations in their diaries and logs. Our expedition is searching for unknown animals from other planets. Would you be able to help us?”

“Ah, that’s why…” Verkhovtseff grew pensive. His hat took this opportunity to slide off the pile of books and vanished beneath the cot. “Hmn,” he said, “if I had known earlier…”

“Papa, may I ask…” Alice asked.

“Of course, little girl.” The Doctor turned toward her.

“One of the stone Captains has a bird with two claws and a crown of feathers on its head perched on his shoulder. There’s no bird like that in the Zoo. Do you know anything about it?

“No.” Verkhovtseff said. “Almost nothing at all. And where is my hat?”

“Beneath your bed.” Alice said. “I can get it for you.”

“Don’t be troubled.” Verkhovtseff said, and crawled beneath his bed until only his legs stuck out from beneath it. It was searching for his hat in the darkness, shuffling papers, and continuing to talk: “They gave the sculptors the last photographs of the Captains. They chose the photos they liked the best.”

“You mean they just came up with the bird. The sculptors, I mean?” I asked, bending low over the bed.

“No, no!” Verkhovtseff’s shoes twitched. “I saw the photos myself.”

“And would you know where they were taken?”

“The First Captain was never separated from the bird,” Verkhovtseff answered, “but when he joined the Venus project he gave the bird to the Second Captain. And the Second Captain, as you know, vanished without a trace. The bird vanished too.”

“So it’s not even known where it came from?”

Verkhovtseff finally crawled out from under is bed. He had the hat rolled up on one fist, and in general he looked very embarrassed.

“Pardon me,” He said, “but I’ve lost the train of thought.”

“I mean, does anyone know where this type of bird originates?”

“No. Oh no.” Verkhovtseff answered quickly.

“Too bad.” I sighed. “It means failure. There seems to be no way you might be able to help us. And we were so hoping…”

“And why do you think that?!” Doctor Verkhovtseff grew indignant. “I’ve done a lot of traveling all on my own. Just let me think a moment.”

The doctor thought for about three minutes, then he said:

“Now I remember! On the planet Eurydice you can find the Dragonette minor. Also, they say, the Dragonette major.”

“I know.” I said. “One of the Captains shot a Dragonette major.”

“Do you know that for a fact?” Verkhovtseff asked.

“I know it. My friend, the archaeologist Gromozeka, told me about it.”

“Odd.” Verkhovtseff muttered and tilted his head to one side, looking me over as if he had seen me for the first time. “Well then just let me think some more.”

He thought for a few more minutes and then when on to describe the Martian Mantis. That was actually funny. Martian mantises may be found not only in all Zoos, but in many homes as well as pets. Alice, for example, has one.

Then Verkhovtseff went on to tell us about the tadprowlers, about the Fyxxian mudfly, about the Demon Birds of the planet Trool, and about other animals all well known from the pages of Guide to the Animals of our Galaxy.

“No, none of these animals are at all worth capturing.”

“My regrets,” Verkhovtseff said politely, “but I’ve spent my entire life interested in intelligent beings, and haven’t encountered all that many animals. May I give it one more go?”

Verkhovtseff began to ponder anew.

“Just where was I?” He asked himself. “A-ha,” He answered his own question. “I was on the Empty Planet.”

“Where?”

“On the Empty Planet. It’s not far from here, in a neighboring star system.”

“But if it’s an ‘Empty Planet,’ then how does it have animals.” Alice asked surprised.

“That’s something no one knows. You must understand, we were there on a Monday, and the whole sky was alive with birds. But on Tuesday there wasn’t a bird to be found, just wolves howling after herds. And the deer. But on Wednesday you couldn’t find either. The planet was empty.”

“But couldn’t the animals simply been hiding in dens or…”

“No, not at all.” Verkhovtseff said. “We were in a fast scout ship and out of curiosity we flew over most of the planet. There were no animals, and no birds. Just lakes. And I wasn’t the only one who was amazed by it. I’ll give you the coordinates.”

“Thank you.” I said. “But if you can’t remember anything else we’d like a chance to look at the Captains’ notebooks. In their travels and explorations they must have had a chance to observe many different kinds of animals.

“And who told you about the notebooks?” The Doctor asked, and frowned.

“Our friend the archaeologist Gromozeka.” I answered.

“I’ve never heard of him. Just why do you want the notebooks? I’ve just remembered the skliss from the planet Sheshineru. There are countless numbers of them there. They told me about it.”

“Thank you very much for the information.” I said. But what I really wanted was a chance to look through the Captain’s notebooks, but for some reason Doctor Verkhovtseff did not want me anywhere near them. For some reason he did not trust us.

“You’re welcome.”

“And the notebooks?” Alice asked.

“Oh, child, what in the universe would you want the notebooks for? And anyway, they’re not here. They’re on Fyxx; they hold them in the Archive. Yes, yes, in the Archive.” Doctor Verkhovtseff suddenly came alive, as though he had thought up a successful lie.

“Oh well.” Alice said.

The doctor was embarrassed, he wiped his eyes with the rumpled hat, and said:

“And you must certainly visit the market in Palaputra.”

“That’s one place we will be certain to stop.” I said. “We know all about it.”

“Then I shall see you off.” said the Doctor.

He stood up and led us back between the crates and containers toward the exit from the base. He walked very quickly, as though he feared we might change our minds and not leave.

We found ourselves back at the monument. We stopped beside it.

“And what happened to the Second Captain?” I asked.

“He died. Everyone knows that.” Verkhovtseff answered.

“We were told he vanished without a trace.”

Doctor Verkhovtseff shrugged his narrow shoulders.

“But you could find the First Captain?” I refused to give up. “He’s still alive?”

“Yes, he’s working somewhere off in space.”

“On the Venus Project? But there must be thousands of people working on it.”

“It would appear you yourself know how to contact him. There is really nothing else I can help you with.”

“Then I can only thank you for your hospitality. Although, in fact, we thought our encounter would go differently.”

“I also thought the same.” Verkhovtseff said.

“Perhaps, when you’ve finished writing the novel, you can send me a copy?”

“I am not writing any novels! I don’t know how! Whoever told you such a thing?”

“I’m talking about the novel you told the researchers on Arcturus Minor was you reason for visiting them a month ago when you asked about the construction of the Blue Gull.”

“What do you mean?” Doctor Verkhovtseff waved his arms furiously. “What about the Blue Gull? What researchers? I haven’t been there for at least six months!”

“Fine, fine…” I said, seeing how disturbed the Doctor became. “We didn’t want to embarrass you.”

“Think nothing of it.” Verkhovtseff said. “If you come this way again, drop in; I’m always glad to see visitors. Especially your enchanting daughter.”

He reached out a hand to stroke Alice on the head, but Alice stepped to one side and the Doctor’s hand hung in the air.

“Well, don’t forget.” He said, stopping beside the monument to the Three Captains. The Sklisses on Sheshineru and the mystery of the Empty Planet.”.

“Thank you doctor.” I answered. “We won’t forget.”




Chapter Six

The Wander Bushes


The Doctor stood for what seemed to be forever at the feet on the enormous stone Captains and twisted and turned his hat in his hands. The golden rays of the setting sun illuminated him, and it seemed he was also a statue, merely much smaller than the rest.

“Waaait!” The long cry suddenly reached us.

We turned

The Doctor was running in our direction, his feet sinking into the sand.

The Doctor reached us, and spent the next two minutes trying to get his breath back, continuingly starting with one or another sentence, but the air in his lungs was insufficient to allow him to finish.

“Boo…” He said. “Bu..”

“Butterflies?” She asked.

“Nah… No. Bushes. I…for-got to tell you about the bushes.”

“What bushes?”

“I was standing right by the bushes and forgot to even mention them.”

The Doctor pointed at the monument. Even from where we stood some distance away it was clear the sculptor had illustrated an enormous, splendid bush at the feet of the Third Captain, carefully carving its leaves and branches out of the stone.

“I thought that was just to make it pretty.” Alice said.

“No, its one of the wander bushes! You mean to tell you’ve never even heard of the wander bushes?”

“No, never.”

“Then listen, please. It will only take two minutes. When the Third Captain was on Aldebaran’s seventh planet he got lost in a desert. There was no water, no food, no nothing. But the Captain knew that if he did not make it to the base his whole ship’s crew would die, because they were all sick with a fever contracted in space and the vaccine was only at this one abandoned, empty base in the foothills of the Sierra Barracuda mountains.

“And then, when the Captain’s strength was exhausted and he had lost his way in the sand, he heard a distant singing. At first the Captain was certain it was a hallucination, but despite that he gathered the last of his strength and headed in the direction of the sounds.

“After three minutes he had crawled in among the bushes. The bushes in those places grow around small springs, and before sand storms their leaves stricking against each other producing melodic sounds. It appears the bushes are singing. So, in this way, the bushes in the Sierra Barracuda mountains lead the Captain to the water by their singing, gave him the chance to survive a terrible sand storm, and save the lives of eight other astronauts who were dying from a cosmic disease. To commemorate this event the sculptor chose to add a bush to the statue of the Third Captain.

“Therefore, I think it may be worth your while to look in on Aldebaran Seven in the area of the Sierra Barracuda, to find the bushes. Also, the Third Captain said that the bushes are covered with enormous, softly iridescent flowers in the evenings.”

“Thank you, Doctor?” I said. “We will certainly try to find these bushes and bring them to Earth.”

“Do you think they can grow in pots?” Alice asked.

“Certainly.” The doctor answered. “But in truth I have never seen the bushes myself and they are very rare. They’re only found at springs in the very center of the desert that surrounds the Sierra Barracuda mountains…”

…The Aldebaran system lay not far off, and we decided to search out the bushes, if possible, to find out what their singing sounded like.

For eighteen times our landing boat cris-crossed the entire desert, and only on the nineteenth pass did we see a flash of green in a deep hollow. The boat spiraled down over the sandy valleys, and we made out bushes surrounding a spring.

The bushes were low, just up to my belt, and possessed long, leaves that were silver on the inside and thick roots which came out of the sand easily. We carefully dug out five of the bushes, choosing those which already had buds, transferred them to a large box filled with sand, and brought our trophy back to the Pegasus.

That very same day the Pegasus took off from the desert satellite and headed on its way.

As soon as acceleration had ended I began to ready for the survey camera, because I hoped that glowing flowers would soon blossom on the bushes, and Alice went and got paper and crayons in order to draw them.

It was then that we heard the low, harmonious singing.

“What’s that?” The engineer Zeleny was surprised. “I didn’t turn on music. Who turned it on? Why won’t they let me get any sleep?”

“That’s our bushes singing!” Alice shouted. “Does that mean we have a sand storm heading our way?”

“What?” Zeleny dismissed the idea. “Where would we get a sand storm in space?”

“Let’s go take a look at the bushes, Papa.” Alice insisted. “We’d see what’s up.”

Alice ran off toward the hold, but I held back a few seconds to grab and load the camera.

“I’ll take a look too.” Zeleny said. “I’ve never seen singing bushes before.”

I suspected that in fact he wanted to take a look out the nearest window because he was afraid we were in fact due for a sand storm.

I had just finished loading the camera when I heard a shout. I recognized Alice’s voice.

I threw down the camera in the crew’s lounge and hurried down the ladder way toward the holds.

“Papa!” Alice shouted. “Just take a look at that!”

“Save yourselves!” Zeleny roared. “They’re walking!”

A few more steps and I had run up to the double lock doors to the cargo hold. In the open doors I collided with Alice and Zeleny. More precisely, I collided with Zeleny who was holding Alice. Zeleny looked frightened and his beard blew wild, like from a wind.

On the other side of the airlock door leading to the hold stood the bushes. The sight was utterly terrifying. The bushes had extracted themselves from the sand and were moving heavily and slowly on their short, deformed roots, advancing on us. They were walking in a half circle, shaking their branches, the buds had opened and reddish flowers now glared at us like hostile eyes from amid their leaves.

“To Arms!” Zeleny shouted at the top of his lungs and handed Alice to me.

“Close the door!” I said.

But it was too late. While we had been talking, trying to get past each other, the first of the bushes had passed through the hold lock and we were forced to step back into the corridor.

One after another the bushes followed after their leader.

Zeleny, pressing all the emergency buttons on the nearest com panel, ran off to the bridge for weapons, and I grabbed a mop that was standing against he wall and tried to protect Alice. She was looking at the advance of the bushes enchanted, like a rabbit at a boa constrictor.

“Get out of here! Run!” I shouted at Alice. “I won’t be able to hold them off for long!”

The bushes were resolute, with strong branches they clutched at the mop and tried to tear it out of my hands. I backed off.

“Hold on, pop!” Alice said, and ran off.

At least Alice is safe, I thought. My own situation continued to remain perilous. The bushes were trying to force me into a corner, and I couldn’t even move the mop.

“Why does Zeleny want the flamethrower?” I heard Captain Poloskov’s voice over the loudspeaker. “What’s going on.”

“The bushes are attacking.” I answered. “But don’t give Zeleny the flamethrower. I’m trying to contain them in their section. As soon as I can get them back through the lock I’ll let you know and we can seal the cargo section.”

“You’re not in any danger, are you?” Poloskov asked.

“Not at the moment.” I answered.

And at that very moment the nearest bush had yanked on the mop and pulled it out of my hands. The mop flew to the furthest end of the corridor, and the bushes, as though buoyed by my now by my now unarmed state, moved toward me in close order.

At that moment I heard rapid steps approaching from behind.

“Get away, Alice!” I shouted. “Get back this instant! They’re as strong as lions!”

But Alice crawled beneath my legs and threw herself at the bushes.

She had something large and shining in her hands. I tried to grab her as she passed but lost my balance and fell. The last thing I saw was Alice surrounded by the threatening branches of the moving bushes.

“Poloskov!” I shouted. “I need help now!’

And at that very instant the bushes singing stopped! It turned into low humming and a sigh.

I got to my feet and surveyed a picture of absolute tranquility.

Alice was standing in a thicket of bushes and was watering them from a garden can.

The bushes had their leaves turned into little cups, trying not to loose a single drop of moisture, and sighed blissfully.

When we moved the bushes back into the hold we found the broken mop and wiped the floor, and I asked Alice:

“But how did you guess it?”

“It wasn’t all that special, Pop. The bushes are plants, aren’t they? That means they have to be watered. Like carrots. And we did dig them out of the ground, we moved them into plastic pots filled with sand, and we forgot to water them. When Zeleny grabbed me to try and save me, it gave me a chance to think: at home they live right at the edge of a spring. The Third Captain only found them and the water because of their singing, and they only sing when there’s a sand storm coming, that is when the wind is moving and drying out the air and pulls water from the sand. That’s when they’re agitated because they don’t have enough water. “

“Why didn’t you say so immediately?”

“Would you have believed me. You were fighting them like they were tigers. You completely forgot they were just ordinary bushes who have to be watered.”

“Not at all ordinary!” The Engineer Zeleny cut in. “Ordinary bushes do not go hunting for water down the corridors of a space ship!”

Then it was my turn, as the biologist, to have the last word.

“That’s just how these bushes engage in the struggle for existence.” I said. “There’s little water in the desert, the springs dry up periodically, and to stay alive the bushes are forced to move to where the water is.”

Since then the bushes have lived peacefully in their pots of sand. Only one of them, the smallest and least settled in, often pulls its roots out of the pot and lies in wait for us in the corridors of the ship, rustling its branches, singing and asking for water. I asked Alice not to reward the young scamp the roots drip onto the floor but Alice took pity on him and kept bringing him glasses of water. That was really nothing we couldn’t live with, but once she watered him with fruit juice instead of water and now the little bush has become such a pest you can’t walk down the ship without him getting in your way; he traipses around the ship leaving wet root marks behind, stupidly jabbing at people’s legs with his leaves.

There wasn’t a penny’s worth of intelligence in him, but he loves fruit juice more than a million dollars.




Chapter Seven

The Mystery of the Empty Planet


“Where to first?” Poloskov asked.

He was examining the space map. The course to Palaputra, where we would find the market in animals, was laid out on it. At the same time a dotted line noted our course toward the Empty Planet described to us by Doctor Verkhovtseff.

“We can always go to Palaputra.” I answered, “But the Empty Planet isn’t noted in a single guide to space. Why not take the risk?”

“But even doctor Verkhovtseff himself said all the animals had vanished. Maybe they all died and we’ll just be wasting our time.”

“And our fuel is getting tight.” Zeleny interjected himself into the conversation. “Whatever else Palaputra has, we can replenish our fuel supplies there. Can we do that on the Empty Planet? We could find ourselves there, out of fuel, and waiting until someone else passes by.”

But we ignored Zeleny. He is simply a pessimist. We were both certain that we had more than enough fuel to last us. He just wanted to be doubly careful.

“So I say,” I said, “Let’s look in on the Empty planet. It’s a mystery, and there’s nothing more interesting on any world than figuring out a mystery.”

So we set course for the Empty Planet.

Unfortunately, after two days’ flight it appeared that Doctor Verkhovtseff’s coordinates had been less than precise. We should have been able to see the star around which this planet orbited after our last jump, but before us was emptiness.

What could we do? We decided to continue on course for yet one more day, and if nothing had changed then, to abandon the search for the planet.

We reached that decision toward evening, before supper, and after supper Zeleny headed for the com center to inform Earth that our flight was proceeding normally and that everything was in order. I followed after Zeleny.

When Zeleny turned on the receiver and listened to Space I liked being there, listening when uninhabited emptiness came alive. We could hear distant ships and bases communicating, ships acknowledging each other and automatic buoys transmitting information from uninhabited planets and asteroids about local conditions, space ‘weather’ reports about meteorite swarms and pulsar stars.

While Zeleny prepared the transmission I flipped the receiver switch.

Suddenly I heard a female voice come in weakly.

“Located in sector 16-2, have noted previously unknown meteorite stream in the Blooke system. In three days time the stream will intersect the Blooke to Fyxx passenger lane. Please advise all ships.”

“We’re right in that sector.” I told Zeleny.

“I heard.” Zeleny answered; he had already jotted the transmission down and begun to enter the information from the unknown ship into the log.

“And since that ship is in our sector, let’s ask it about the Empty Planet.” I said to Zeleny. “It could be we’ve gone off course.”

Zeleny said the ship had to be too far from us to pick us up, that our transmitter would undoubtedly fail, that the woman who was warning of meteors would know less than nothing about the planet, because the planet did not exist, as he grumbled and at the same time twisted the control knobs of the transmitter and, when the unknown ship took our call, he said:

“Starship Pegasus speaking. We are currently in your sector and are headed for the Empty Planet but we can’t even spot the star.”

“Give me your co-ordinates.” The woman’s voice answered. “I’ll recheck it for you.”

We called the bridge and Poloskov gave us the coordinates. We passed them along per instructions.

“It’s all clear.” The woman’s voice answered. “There is a cloud of cosmic dust between you and the star, so of course you can’t see it. Your next jump should take you through the cloud.”

“Enormous thanks.” I said to the unknown ship. “We were given the coordinates of the planet on the Three Captains’ World, but our source was not an astronaut but a museum administrator, and we were afraid he erred.”

“Doctor Verkhovtseff?” Then woman’s voice asked.

“Yes. You know him then?”

“I know him very well.” The woman answered. “He’s a marvelous old man. Simply wonderful. If only we had met earlier; I have a letter to pass on to him but there’s no way I can stop in there. Not for a while. Any chance you will be heading back that way?”

“None.” I answered. “From here we go on to Blooke, to Palaputra. We’re biologists looking for rare animals.”

“So am I.” The woman answered. “We may very well have met, but there’s no time for that now. I have to be off in a hurry. I’m hunting a living cloud.”

“One last question.” I said. “Have you ever been on the Empty Planet yourself?”

“I certainly have.” The woman answered. “The seas were overflowing with fish, but there wasn’t a single animal on dry land. Good luck.”

Then all that came out of the speakers was the meaningless hum of static.

“She’s accelerating at full speed.” Zeleny said. “She’s heading off somewhere. What’s this about a living cloud?”

“There are no such things as living clouds.” I said. “I met this woman at some conference or other and told her that she was utterly mistaken. You heard her opinion of Doctor Verkhovtseff? A ‘marvelous old man.’“

“Well, I still don’t trust him.” Zeleny grumbled. “If he was so marvelous and wonderful why did he lie to us? Why is he writing a novel and then not writing it? Why does he swear that he hasn’t been to Arcturus Minor for six months? And why didn’t he want to show us the Three Captains’ notebooks?”

Zeleny went back to the receiver.

The woman was right. The next day after the jump we spotted a small star on our sensors around which orbited but a single planet. Judging from everything we had been told, that had to be the Empty Planet.

We set down toward sunset on the shores of a large lake, at the edge of an endless plain overgrown to fearturelessness by a yellowing grass. A light rain, long and boring, kept us on the ship in front of the ports through which we saw neither beasts nor birds. What if this place was in fact devoid of animal forms?

Alice and Zeleny headed to the lake for water. They were a while in returning, but I did not become alarmed as I could clearly see them occupied with something along the shore through the ship’s ports.

Then Zeleny returned’ he headed not for the bridge, but for his own cabin.

“What have you looking for?” I asked him through his com unit.

“Fishing tackle.” Zeleny answered. “There’s so many fish in that lake they turn the water black! We started to scoop water into the bucket and it was full of fish. Don’t you want fresh fish soup, Professor?”

“No.” I answered. “And I must advise you against eating what you find here too. There are poisonous fish even on earth, and adding anything found on another planet to your diet without a lot of tests is just plain thoughtless.”

“Ah weel….” Zeleny said. “Then I’ll just have to add to your collection the hard way.”

Zeleny ran back to the shore, and I grabbed Alice’s rain coat to keep her from catching acold, grabbed a net, and headed for the lake.

Zeleny disdained the net for catching fish, declaring that it was not sporting, and he was a sportsman. But Alice and I filled the whole bucket. We carried our fish back to the ship. A sodden Zeleny followed after us, his catch in a fish tank.

“Don’t forget to close the ship for the night.” I said; we left the containers with our hauls in the main airlock.

“Of course I won’t!” Zeleny’s excited voice came back; he was so entranced with the local fishing he would have stayed at the lake all night, except it had become dark.

In the morning the first thing I did was look out the ports. The sun was shining brightly and multitudes of birds circled overhead

“That’s the ‘Empty Planet.’“ I said aloud and went to awaken my friends. “Come look at the Empty Planet.” I repeated. “Yesterday we caught fish, today the birds are circling overhead in monstrous flocks.”

I awakened Alice and Poloskov, but Zeleny had already gotten up ahead of me. He had lain out his assorted lures and other types of fishing tackle.

“I have to get ready for the big one.” He told me. “I can feel in my bones there are pikes as long as I am tall.”

“Just be careful.” I answered. “Watch out that no pike catches you.”

Then I went down to the airlock to take a closer look at the birds. I noticed one distressing detail; it turns out that, intoxicated with the joy of reel and tackle, our Engineer forgot to close the Pegasus’s outer airlock door for the night. No animals had managed to get inside, but we had lost every last one of our fish. Evidently the birds had noticed the open airlock and had dropped by for and early morning snack, claiming all our catch from the night before.

“This is a very serious violation of space discipline.” Poloskov said over breakfast when he heard of Zeleny’s blunder. “But I am guilty of it to

o, as is the Professor. We both were required to check the airlocks for the night.”

“But nothing really happened.” Alice said. “ Zeleny and I can fill a dozen buckets with fish. You can’t imagine how many fish there are in that lake!”

“That is not the point.” Poloskov sighed. “If such an incident happens again we might as well turn around and go back home, because it means we are all far too thoughtless to be running around in space.”

“I’m sorry, Captain.” Zeleny said. He understood, of course, that he had made a mess of things, but thoughts of fishing had so overcome him that a moment later he was off for the lake.

I prepared the nets for catching birds and pulled out the air powered rifles with the anaesthetic darts. Then I steeled myself for hunting birds. Zeleny sat on the shore of the lake, and I watched him out of the corners of my eyes. I was surprised that he appeared so downcast. “Now why would he be upset?” I wondered.

Then the weather unexpectedly grew worse. A strong wind came up; it drove the birds from the sky and raised whitecaps on the lake. In a few minutes there wasn’t a single bird left in the sky. They had gone and taken refuge elsewhere.

Zeleny got to his feet and headed back to the ship.

I decided to return the nets to the ship out the bad weather and the return of the birds.

“How did it go?” I asked Zeleny. “Care to show me your catch?”

“There is no catch.” Zeleny answered. “Not a bite.”

“How come? Didn’t you yourself say the lake was literally overflowing with fish?”

“Yesterday it was. But now, evidently, all the fish have gone to the bottom.”

“And my birds have dispersed.” I said. “So it looks like both of us are out of luck. We can wait a while until the weather clears. Care to drop by the lake in the evening? Maybe that’s the only time they bite.”

“I don’t know. I don’t believe in this planet.” Zeleny said mournfully. “They certainly didn’t call it the Empty Planet without reason. There were fish, but they’re not here now. There were birds, but the birds have flown.”

“Look!” Alice called; she had been standing close by and listening to our conversation. “It’s a rabbit. See!”

Some sort of small animal was jumping through the grass. Another animal, a little larger, was chasing the first. We weren’t able to get a very good look at them, and then both vanished; only the grass rustled in the wind.

“There you are!” I said. “This is not an ‘empty planet.’ There are animals here.”

“And the animals will vanish too in their turn.” Zeleny said. “Remember what Verkhovtseff said? Of course I don’t believe anything Verkhovtseff says but…”

“Zeleny,” I said, “Let’s a check to see where your fish have gone. I’ll send a bioscout into the lake. I’ll program it to search for fish; as soon as it catches sight of one it will signal us.”

“Whatever you want.” Zeleny said. “Only there are no fish in that lake now. I’m a fisherman from way back; I know when a lake is empty.”

I carted a bioscout from the Pegasus and released it into the lake. The bioscout had a waterproof casing and its own engine and power supplies. I put on the earphones and waited for a signal. The instruments showed that the bioscout had reached the very bottom of then lake, then went further from shore toward the middle. But no signal came. After half an hour I was forced to end the search. The bioscout would not err, and there was not a single fish in the lake.

If I had not dragged fish from the water yesterday with my own hands I would never have believed that such a thing could happen, I had to admit. Verkhovtseff was right; this planet was strange.

“I’d say the same.” Zeleny added, folded up his fishing rod, and went into the ship.

“There’s an enormous herd of antelope like critters on the horizon.” The loudspeaker said.

That was Poloskov from up top in the command section

But even without him scouting I already knew that the plains were flooded with animals. Things like field mice ran through the grass, a suslik was crawling all over a bush not far from where I stood, and some sort of creature very similar to a little bear was walking along the shore of the lake.

“Nothing all that terrible.” I said. “Let’s ready the ATV and catch some critters.”

But as soon as we had gotten the All Terrain Vehicle from the Pegasus it began to pour. The rain pounded down from the heavens far fiercer than it had the day before; it struck without warning and pounded the ATV’s roof like a mad drummer. Alice and I crawled inside and, ignoring the drumbeat of the rain, headed off for the plains where Poloskov had spotted the herd of antelope.

There were no antelope to be seen. Nor did we find any other animals. And when I exited the ATV and went down on my hands and knees to find the mice that had been running in the grass not all that long before, it turned out that there were no mice either. This time I released a bioscout over the plain. The bioscout came back after flying to the horizon; there was no doubt here was not a single animal on this planet.

“What are we going to do now? I asked Poloskov in desperation when we had loaded the ATV back onto the Pegasus and were seated in the crew’s lounge. “This really is an empty planet, and I really don’t want to leave here until we discover its secret.”

“There is no way we can remain here forever.” Poloskov said. “And we’re not the first who’ve come face to face with this mystery. Perhaps the secret of the empty planet is going to remain unresolved for a while longer.

“It’s too bad Zeleny forgot to close the lock.” Alice said suddenly “If we just had one of those fish left.”

“It’s too bad he was so excited.” I cut off Alice. “Something really is surprising here; we landed yesterday, it was raining and the lake was full of fish. In the morning the sky was filled with birds, but as soon as the wind picked up the birds vanished and the animals came out…” “Papa,” Alice said suddenly. “But I just guessed the secret to this planet.”

“O course!” The gloomy Zeleny said. “No one has determined it, but a Sherlock Holmes named Alice has!”

“Be a little bit more careful, there.” Poloskov said. “I’ve already lost one wish to Alice when we were searching for the tadprowlers.”

“Correct!” Alice agreed. “My way of thinking is not entirely scientific.”

“Well daughter, tell us then.” I said.

“With your permission I’d rather demonstrate than tell.”

“Whatever you prefer.”

“Then I’d like you to sit here for a few minutes; I’ll be right back.”

“You’re going outside? But it’s raining.”

“There is nothing to fear. I won’t even get wet. If you are afraid that something might happen to me look out the ports.. I’ll just be to the lake and back.”

I went over to the port and watched Alice, her head covered with her plash, run toward the lake and dip a bucket into the water. Once. Twice. A third time. Then she ran back to the ship.

Alice came into the crew lounge running and placed the bucket on the table.

“Take a look.” She said.

A small fish was slowly swimming around in the bucket.

“Oh-ho!” Zeleny said. “I completely forgot that here samyj klev in the evening. Where is the fishing rod?”

“Wait a moment.” Alice plunged her hand into the bucket, pulled out the fish, and threw it onto the table.

“What are you doing?”

“If I’m right….” Alice began, and immediately our eyes beheld a remarkable transfiguration. The fish turned itself over once or twice with powerful smacks from its tail, then the fins began to turn into wings, the scales into feathers, and a minute later a small bird sat preening and smoothing his feathers on the table.

As our mouths dropped from astonishment at having witnessed a fish become a bird, the bird shook its wings and flew up. It struck the ceiling of the crew’s lounge.

“Catch it!” I shouted. “It will break its wings!”

“Stop, papa! That’s not everything yet.” Alice said.

The bird struck the ceiling a few times and fell back onto the table. And, coming erect, began to change once more. But this time the feathers vanished, wings grew into the body, and in front of us sat something like a rodent. The rodent-oid darted past the tea cups and hid in the corner where the table came out of the wall.

“Is everything clear now?” Alice asked.

My daughter was preening. It is not every day that one is able to solve a mystery that had eluded so many other biologists.

“But how did you guess it?” I asked.

“You suggested the idea to me. You mentioned how when it was raining there were only fish, when the sun was out there were birds, and when the winds blew there were animals everywhere.”

“You’re right.” I said. “It is a remarkable adaptation, but perfectly suited to this planet. The living creatures take on the forms most suitable to the circumstances. They need fear neither wind, nor rain, nor sun. When, when winter comes, they must think of something…”

“That can be checked.” Alice said. “Just put the fish in the freezer.”

We did not put the fish in the freezer, but we did construct a cage containing an aquarium where the animal could spend the hours when it wanted to be a fish, yet tall enough that it could fly out of the water into the air and broad enough that it could run from corner to corner for feeding.




Chapter Eight

What the Audities said


All collectors and fanciers of anything wild in Galactic Sector Seven eventually find their way to the planet Blooke. There, once a week, in the city of Palaputra, a bazar is held.

In our Galaxy there are some billions of collectors. For example, the collectors of Sol System gather on the first Sunday of every month on Mars, on the tablelands beside the Grand Canal. They tell me that even in the Andromeda Galaxy there is an enormous community of collectors, and on one of its planets they are so numerous they have taken control of all industry and that world produces only stamp albums, tweezers, and aquariums.

I’’ve spent time with Martian collectors; I found rare flying fish for the Zoo through them. But I had not yet had a chance to spend any time at all on Blooke.

Palaputra turned out to be a medium sized city, but filled to overflowing with hotels and warehouses. And the Palaputra space port was the envy of most major planetary capitols.

As soon as the Pegasus settled to the vast concrete expanse a ground vehicle filled with guards approached.

“And where have you flown in from?” They asked Poloskov, who had stopped at the top of our extendable stairs.

“From Earth.” Poloskov answered.

“And where is that?”

“In Sector Three. Sol System.”

“A-ha. I thought as much.” The Chief border guard said.

He was very similar to a fan. He had three enormous round ears, and when he spoke his head bobbed up and down so much it produced a wind. That’s why, out in the Galaxy, they called the inhabitants of Blooke Audites.

The guards climbed on board the ship and came into the crew’s lounge.

“And what is it you will be selling?” A guard asked.

“We’d rather be looking.” I answered. “We’re here in search of interesting animals for the Moscow Zoo.”

“Does that mean that you have nothing you will be selling?” The guard asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you have aboard here no sorts of animals?”

“We do have animals.” I said. “But they’re not for sale.”

“Show them to me.” The guard said.

“Why?” Poloskov was surprised. “We’re here as your guests. Isn’t our word good enough for you?”

“We would rather believe you,” the Audity said, “but you know little of the collectors. They drag various critters all about the Galaxy and we then must deal with the resulting infelicities. Once upon a time we were polite and never bothered to check starships, but now we do. We have learned through bitter experience.

And the security guard, raising a constant wind with his ears, told us the sad story:

Not that long ago a trader had been observed in the market. He had come to the bar with a small carpet bag and a can. In the can were white grubs. Collectors with birds to feed quickly came to value these grubs. The grubs were high in calories and the animals loved them. One of the collectors purchased the can of grubs. A second followed, then a third. So the merchant undid his bag and drew out a new batch. The collectors stood in line for the grubs. The two hundredth and twenty third in line was the famous collector of exotic fish Krabakas of Barakasa; he stood in line and watched the merchant pull cans out of his bag, and he calculated that there could be at most space for three and a half such cans of grubs in the bag. Then Krabakas of Barakasa reached the conclusion that something untoward was going on. He went up to the merchant and asked: “Could it be that you have a bottomless bag?”

“No, your excellency,” one of the chief security guard’s assistants interrupted him at this point of the story, “He asked: ‘Where do all the grubs come from?’“

“Quiet.” A third guard said. “Nothing at all like that. What Krabakas of Barakasa said to him was: ‘Give me your bag so I can look inside.’“

“Silence!’ The Chief Guard shouted at his aids. “I will bite your ears off if you interrupt me again! The merchant did not pay any attention to Krabakas’s words, possibly because Krabakas’s diameter is just about a half a millimeter and even if he is seven meters long he real does resemble a very thin blue worm himself. Then Krabakas turned to the collectors who stood in line and shouted: ‘I don’t like this suspicious merchant!’“

“I beg your forgiveness most humbly our excellency,” One of the aids could not stand it and had to speak, “but if I may be so bold as to say that Krabakas of Barakasa then said to the other collectors: ‘Grab that thief!’“

“You’ve gone mad!” The third guard whispered. “Krabakas said: ‘I am no less a rational being than you are, merchant, and I ask you to pay attention to me. And give me your bag, by the way.’“

“That’s all!” The Chief of Customs Inspection started to flap his ears in frustration. “I’m going to retire!”

The Customs Officers began to argue among themselves, switching over to their own, utterly incomprehensible language, which quite cunningly involved the flapping of their ears. A storm was rising in the crew’s lounge, and how it would have ended no one can tell, but a gust of wind blew the coffee maker from the table. The coffee machine shattered, and the Customs agents became very embarrassed for their behavior.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon.” The chief Audity said. “I fear we’ve gotten rather heated.”

“It’s nothing, nothing.” I said, trying not to break out in laughter gathering the remains of the coffee machine from the floor while Alice ran for a rag to wipe up the brown puddle.

“Krabakas of Barakasa,” the Chief Audity continued, “explained his suspicions to the collectors, and they took the small bag from the merchant. In the small bag they found two hands full of grubs. But when they extracted a part of the grubs, they immediately, with their own eyes, saw the remaining grubs divide in half and grow. Suddenly, from the far end of the bazar, they could hear a frightened cry. One of the song bird collectors had sprinkled some of the grubs in a cage and seen them reproduce in front of his eyes.”

“No.” The second Customs Agent said as he flapped his ears. “Let me be so bold as to express, your nobility….”

But the chief Customs Agent had no time to listen to expressions. He grabbed his aids by their ears and dragged them out of the crew’s lounge, slammed the door shut, and said with some satisfaction:

“Now I can tell you in peace.”

But the door suddenly slide slightly aside and the ear of a recalcitrant Customs Agent edged inside:

“May I be so bold as to…”

“No, this is impossible!” The Chief Customs Agent pressed his thick back to the door and started to finish the story:

“It turns out that these grubs reproduced with unbelievable rapidity. So quickly in fact, that in ten minutes they had doubled in mass, and in an hour were six hundred times as many as when they began.”

“But what did they eat?” Alice couldn’t understand it.

“Air.” The Custom’s Agent answered. “As unbelievable as it sounds, they consumed air.”

“Oxygen!” The second Custom’s Agent shouted from behind his back.

“Nitrogen!” The third responded.

The Chief Custom’s Agent covered his face with his ears from shame at the behavior of his own subordinates. It was another five minutes before he had calmed himself down enough that he could finish the story.

“In general, I would say, but three hours after it began the entire market in Palaputra was filled with grubs to the depth of one meter; the collectors and hawkers had fled to wherever.”

“And what happened to the trader?” Alice asked.

“In the commotion the trader vanished.”

“He ran away.” came from the other side of the door.

“The mountains of grubs were spread out everywhere. Toward evening they reached the center of the city. All the Fire Engines, which poured water and foam, and fire from flame throwers, onto the grubs, could do nothing to contain their advance. We tried to burn the grubs, we tried to poison them, we used DDT and other insecticides, we trampled them under foot, but all was in vain. The air on the planet began to get thinner and thinner. They had to pass out oxygen masks. The planet Blooke sent out emergency signals to all the ends of the Galaxy. However, it was the bird fancier Krabakas of Barakasa who saved the planet. He set gluttonwings on the worms, little birds but so voracious is their appetite that not a single self-respecting collector would keep one. They destroy everything! In the final analysis we were rescued from the grubs, but the gluttonwings on their own also consumed all ants, beetles, bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, spiders, bumble bees and dung beetles. Now we have to rebuild the whole ecology!”

“But why did that merchant sell such dangerous bugs?” Alice asked.

“And why not? He wanted to make money. After all, his supply was endless.”

“No.” Alice said. “It can’t be that. He couldn’t be such a fool. All the collectors would soon guess what was going on.”

“Of course he wasn’t a fool!” Another Custom’s Agent shouted from the other side oft he door. “He wanted to destroy our planet.”

“But why?”

“We don’t know ourselves,” The Chief Custom’s Agent admitted. He left the door and admitted his assistants. “We don’t know why, but since that time we have examined all in-coming ships, especially those from the Sol System.”

“But why especially from the Sol System?”

“That’s a secret.” Said the first Custom’s Agent.

“It’s no secret at all.” The Second Custom’s Agent interjected. “It’s just because the trader was from the Sol System. He was a human being.”

“That’s very odd.” I said. “Do you have a description of him? What did he look like.”

“No. All your people look alike to us anyway.”

“Despite that, shouldn’t he have any distinguishing characteristics.”

“Yes, he did.” One of the junior Custom’s Agents said.

“Silence.” His chief ordered.

“I won’t.” The aid said. “The creature walked around in head attire with a horizontal field and a transverse trench in the peak.”

“I don’t understand.” I said. “What do you mean by a transverse trench.”

“Oh divinely earspired, show him the photo. Perhaps they can help us.” The aid said.

“No. The photo is too secret”

“And you don’t want it said of you that you gave away state secrets”

“Definitely.”

Then his most Earnestness pulled a photograph from his pocket. The photo was creased, it was amateurish, stained, but without a doubt anyone could tell it depicted Doctor Verkhovtseff with a can in one had and a medium sized carpetbag in the other.

“That can’t be!” I was so surprised I spoke aloud.

“What do you mean Do you know this human?”

“Yes. He lives on the Three Captain’s World.”

“Alas, for such a lovely planet to have such a nefarious inhabitant. When did you see him?”

“Three days go.”

“Our encounter with him took place last month. Now we shall have to subject your ship to a thorough investigation. Do you have any bugs aboard”

“No, we don’t have any bugs aboard,”

“They’re holding out.” The second Custom’s Agent whispered to is chief. “They don’t want to talk.”

“Then we cannot permit them to go out into the city.” The Chief Custom’s Agent said. “Where is your telephone. I shall have to assume that all of you are sick with a galactic plague. Then you can leave voluntarily. Otherwise, we must begin the disinfection, which is certainly far less comfortable than just leaving.”

“Let me assure you we are not contemplating anything criminal.” I tried to calm the Custom’s Agent down. “We’ve only seen that individual one time. And perhaps that was not even him. There are certainly a lot of people who look like him. And what reason would a scholar, the director of a museum, have for trading in grubs.”

“I don’t know.” The chief Audity said sadly. “We’ve had so many woes! We’ve already started to distrust our guests.”

“And what else happened?”

“You shouldn’t ask. Someone exterminated nearly all the Blabberyaps.”

“Blabberyaps?”

“Yes, Blabberyaps. They’re our favorite birds.” /P>




Chapter Nine

We Need A Blabberyap


Alice and I set off for the bazar on foot, but told the ATV to stop by there in two hours.

The morning was fine, the sky was bright and clear and orange tinted, the clouds were few and green, the sand beneath our feet was soft and blue.

We strode down the city’s main street. On both sides of the avenue rose hotels. No two hotels were at all alike in terms of architectural details or materials; each had been constructed specially for the inhabitants of this or that stellar system.

The hotel Krak, which resembled a children’s balloon although it was more than a hundred meters in diameter, floated in the air above an antigrav field. The hotel catered to stellar wanderers used to zero gravity or who lived in space permanently and had no planet of their own, the comet dwellers and the meteorite miners.

Then we passed the Heaven Point Hotel; it also resembled a sphere, but heavy, massive, inserted halfway into the planet. The sign read ‘Methane Breathers Only.’ From an improperly secured door came the hiss of gas.

The next hotel in line was the ‘Skillet,’ its walls showed signs of burning and were untouchable, despite the nearly hundred layers of insolation. The Skillet’s customers were the inhabitants of stars, for whom bathing in molten lava was comparable to us swimming in a lake on a summer’s day.

All the hotels, those hanging in the air and those plunged into the ground, had their entrances on the roofs and, generally, were without windows or doors to the surface. And then we saw a smaller building fronted by columns, with utterly ordinary windows, and a throughly typical door. The sign over it read “Mother Volga Inn.’

“Look da, that has to be for Earth people!” Alice said.

We stopped in front of the hotel to get a good look at it, and because of the chance we might meet people we already knew.

A tall man in the uniform of the merchant space fleet came out of the building. He nodded in our direction, and I said:

“Hello. What brings you to Blooke?”

“We carted a load of atmospheric regenerators out from Earth.” He said. “You might have heard about the late unpleasantness here? They very nearly lost their atmosphere.”

While I was talking with the space man Alice was standing beside us and looking the hotel over. Suddenly she grabbed me by the hand.

“Papa! Look at who’s there!”

I looked, and saw Doctor Verkhovtseff looking down at us from a window on the third floor. Our eyes met, and he vanished from the window.

“That can’t be!” I shouted. “There’s no way he could expect to come here!”

“Let’s go and ask him how he got here.” Alice said.

The door to the hotel was carved, heavy, with a curved, gilded latch. The reception area inside was lined with mirrors and gilt filigree, with enormous hanging chandeliers made of cut crystal. The surfaces of wall not covered with reflecting glass were decorated with pictures of unicorns and beautiful maidens or knights in armor. Wide benches ran the length and breadth of the room along the walls. It was rather obvious that the Audity architects had seen the famous twenty episode TV miniseries ‘The Sun King.’ In the middle of the nobleman’s chamber I stopped.

“Wait here, Alice.” I said. “I don’t like this at all.”

“Why?”

“Judge for yourself: we just said our good-byes to Doctor Verkhovtseff, we flew here, and the Customs people tell us that he nearly killed this planet with the white grubs he was selling, and right away the first person we see through the hotel window is the Doctor.”

“Then it’s even more important we go and ask him what’s going on.” Alice said.

“Maybe.” I agreed and walked up to a long counter where a Audity porter in a white kaftan stood between a stuffed silk swan and a plastic bucket.

“Tell me,” I asked him, “in which room would Doctor Verkhovtseff be staying?”

“One moment, young man.” The porter answered, brushed his enormous ears to his back, and opened an enormous book with a leather cover with enormous hasps. “Verkhovtseff…” he mumbled. “Ve-ri-ho-vi-tseff… Ah yes, Verkhovtseff!”

“And where would he be staying.”

“In the eighth chamber would he be staying. On the third floor.” The porter said. “And you would be his friends?”

“His acquaintances.” I answered carefully.

“It is deplorable,” the porter said, “that such a foul and coarse guest should have such fine looking acquaintances.”

“Are you saying that he has done something…”

“Go.” The porter answered. “Suite number Eight. And tell him, that infidel that, henceforth, if he insists on cooking sausages on his bed and breaking the attendant robots when they try to stop him then we shall have to ask him to quit our establishment.”

“I got the impression that Verkhovtseff was a rather quiet individual.” I said to Alice once we were walking up the stairway.

The people who came downwards to met us were humans, Lineans, Fyxxians, and other beings who live on planets where the conditions resemble those of Earth. Some of them carried cages in their hands, others small aquariums, stamp albums, or just bags. They were hurrying to the bazar.

Room Number Eight was located at the end of a long corridor covered by vast numbers of Persian carpets. We stopped in front of a painted plastic door set in a sold oak wall and I pressed the call button.

There was no answer.

Then I knocked on the door. From a light impact of my knuckles the door opened wide. The small room beyond had been furnished and decorated according to the illustrations of historical romances from many parts of the Earth. Overhead hung a crystal chandelier, on the table a kerosine lamp without a wick, a tungsten samovar and a decorated Japanese silk screen. Of Verkhovtseff there was no sign.

“Doctor!” I called. “Are you here?”

There was no answer.

Alice entered the room and looked the silk screen over. I told her from the entry way:

“Come back out here. It’s impolite to enter someone else’s room…”

“In a moment, Pa…” Alice answered.

I heard rapid breathing behind my back. I looked around. A very fat man in a black business suit was standing in the doorway. He had blubbery lips and several chins which lay on his collar.

“And who are you seeking?” He asked in a very high, soft, almost childish voice.

“We’re looking for an acquaintance.” I answered.

“I beg your pardon, but I’m staying in the next room.” The fat man answered. “And I believe I heard the fellow staying here leave about five minutes ago, and I thought I should inform you.”

“And where is he off to, would you know?”

The fat man rubbed his chins, thought a moment, and said:

“To the bazar, I would say. Where else would anyone ever go?”

We left the Mother Volga and headed for the bazar. “A strange fellow indeed, this Doctor Verkhovtseff.” I thought.

We passed a hotel constructed in the form of an aquarium that provided hospitality to the inhabits of planets covered entirely with water, and a hotel similar to a tea kettle. Steam rose from the tea kettle’s spout; it was inhabited by Infernoids from Paracelsius. The planet was so hot that water boiled and it was covered with superheated steam.

A stream of customers flowed from the hotels; many were in environmental suites, many different kinds of environmental suits. Some crawled on the ground, some flew over our heads. We had to be careful where we walked because of the collectors about the size of ants who got under foot, and hoped those the size of elephants would be equally considerate of us.

The closer we approached the bazar, the thicker became the crowds, and I grasped Alice by the hand to keep her from unwittingly trampling anyone underfoot or unexpectedly being trampled by someone else.

The bazar was spread out over a vast plain for many kilometers. It was divided into a number of sections. At first we passed through the shell collectors department, then we cut right through the book collectors, struggled through an area filled with mineral and gem collectors, but after that it was more or less clear sailing through lines of flowers, except where I had to grab Alice by the hand and keep her from getting the vile smell of a Fyxxian rose on her.

But when we found ourselves in the philatelists’ section Alice asked me, “Wait a moment.”

A square a kilometer on a side had been filled with folding tables. There were more cases than, as the old saying went, you could shake a stick at. The philatelists sat mostly in pairs, but in some places four to a table as well. They were trading postage stamps. Those who had no tables traded them on the run or were just walking around. Alice bought a packet of stamps in bulk, one with the illustration of a Sirian bird, a Montenegran stamp from 1896, an album for Fyxxian stamps which arraigned the stamps in the right spot themselves, and two stamps from the planet Sheshineru.

“I got these for you special, Pa.” She told me.

One stamp was entirely white, on the second all that could be seen was a notation in tiny letters “A Young Skliss in Pasture.”

“You wanted to know what a Skliss was, Dad.”

“But where is the Skliss?”

“You get the Skliss tomorrow.” The fat man from the Mother Volga Inn said. He had overtaken us.

“What do you mean ‘tomorrow.’“

“The illustration does not appear every day on these stamps, only one even numbered days.” The fat man said.

“And what about the second stamp.”

“On the second? There won’t be anything on the second. It’s been cancelled.”

“Then what’s the use of collecting it?” I was astonished.

“That is a very rare stamp. The inhabitants of Sheshineru don’t like writing letters, so very nearly all the stamps from their planet turn out to be unused. But empty stamps are very rare. Your daughter did very well in getting such a rarity.”

Having said that the fat man waved his hand and hurried off into the maze of collectors.

We were almost lost in the maze of subdivisions and separate markets into which the Bazar had been divided. But then, ahead of us, we heard the cries of birds, the growling of animals and the chittering of insects. We came out into a square covered with cages, aquaria, fish ponds, and other enclosures. We had finally found our way to the section of the bazar which dealt with live animals from all over the Galaxy.

Even I, an experienced cosmobiologist, had extreme difficulty figuring out what, exactly, we were looking at. The animals and birds were so diverse, and their keepers, handlers, buyers and sellers were just as diverse, that I began our journey with a gross error. I walked up to a dark blue avianoid who stood on three, two meter long legs. A chain stretched from his master an alien completely unknown to me who resembled a multicolored sphere. I asked the sphere how much his beautiful bird cost, and it was the bird who answered me in superb InterGal:

“I am not for sale. But if you desire I can sell you the multihued little sphereoid. And I trust you will not insult me again.”

It turned out I had erred as to who was holding whom on a chain. Around us the traders and collectors burst into laughter, which made the avianoid even more annoyed and he pecked me on the head with his long beak

I backed away quickly; the avianoid appeared to be gathering his anger and getting ready for a second blow.

“Papa.” Alice said. “Come here. Look, how interesting.”

I tore myself away from a display of crystal bugs which we had long wanted to get for the Zoo and turned to her.

Alice had stopped in front of a large, empty aquarium. A little stool stood beside it. On the stool sat a dwarf.

“Look, papa, this man is selling such interesting creatures.”

“I don’t see anything at all.” I admitted. “The aquarium is empty.

The little fellow sighed sadly and wiped away a tear.

“You’re not the first.” He said. “You’re not the first.”

“What is it you have in there?” I asked politely. “Microorganisms.”

“No, that’s a horrible idea!” The dwarf said. “I’m going. I can’t stand it any more.”

“Papa,” Alice whispered so loudly that she could be heard ten meters off, “he has invisible flying fish. He told me so himself.”

“Invisible.”

“The little lady is right.” The dwarf said. “All I have are rather ordinary, invisible fish.”

“That is very interesting.” I said. “And just how do you go about catching them?”

“With nets.” The dwarf said. “Invisible nets. The fish fly around all over and they crash into the invisible nets, and I take them home.”

“And could I hold one?” I asked.

“Hold?” The dwarf was totally amazed. “And just how would you hold one?”

“With my hands.”

“But you won’t be able to hold it?”

“Why?”

“Because these flying fish are very slippery. They slip away the moment you touch them. Don’t you believe me?”

I did not answer. Then the dwarf threw up his hands and exclaimed,

“Oh, all right. Take a look, as much as you want, let it be on your head! Do whatever you want. Diminish me, insult me!”

The dwarf raised the edge of a large net from off the aquarium, grabbed me tightly by the hand and put my hand into the aquarium.

“Well? He shouted. “Is that proof enough? Don’t you understand you’re not going to catch anything!”

My hands felt only the empty water. There were no fish in the aquarium at all.

“There is nothing here.” I said.

“Well, there, you see it?” The dwarf turned to the crowd of curious onlookers who had gathered, tears pouring forth. “He is convinced that the fish are so slippery they can never be caught, yet he does not want to admit it.”

I pulled the netting back and ran my hands through the water of the empty aquarium when the dwarf started to shout anew:

“He has released all of my fish! He has let them all escape! How could I have suspected he would remove the net from my aquarium? I am pennyless! Now I am ruined!”

The surrounding crowd murmured and grumbled and growled in twenty languages and looked at me with severe condemnation.

Even Alice said,

“How could you, papa?”

“Don’t you people understand?” I addressed the crowd that had surrounded us, “There never was anything inside the aquarium, ever!”

“And how would you know that?” A tiger striped, white moustached inhabitant of the planet Ikes asked me. “What if he’s right? What if there are invisible fish that cannot be caught? How can we prove that he is not telling the truth?”

“That’s right.” An Audity supported him. “Why would someone fly here from another planet with an empty aquarium?”

“So he can sell its non-existent contents every day.” I said.

No one at all was listening to me.

And so I was forced to pay the sad dwarf for ten rare fish. The dwarf hadn’t even waited for my rapid surrender and was deeply moved, overcome with gratitude, and promised me that were he ever to catch another invisible fish he would certainly bring it to me. And when we were getting ready to leave, he said:

“Little girl, permit me, I have a small gift for you.”

“Of course.” Alice said. “I would be delighted.

“Take this.”

The dwarf reached inside his pocket and withdrew his empty hand, his palm cupped as though it contained something, and showed it to Alice:

“This,” He said, “is an invisible hat. Take it, but don’t be afraid. I love giving good people priceless gifts. But you must be careful. The hat is woven of such a fine thread that it weighs nothing and cannot even be felt.”

Alice thanked the scoundrel and pretended to place the gift in her bag, and we went on.

Suddenly I found that an incomprehensible creature had gotten itself underfoot. It looked like a furry ball on sticks and was about knee high. The being’s remarkable coloring ranged from bright red to whitish speckles, like a toadstool.

“Hold him, Dad!” Alice shouted. “He’s running away.”

“I’m not so sure.” I said, finally putting my wallet into my pocket. “Maybe that’s not one of the animals but the collector chasing after an animal that’s got away. If I grab hold of him he’ll call the police complaining that I insulted him because I didn’t guess he was sapient.”

But at the same time I caught sight of a fat, two headed snake in a shining, flowing space suit who was chasing after the red sphereoid in pursuit.

“Help me!” He shouted. “The Empathicator’s fled!”

The red ball tried to hide itself behind my legs, but the snake extended one of a hundred thin extensors attached to its side and grabbed the fugitive. The later immediately changed color from red to yellow and braced itself on its straight little legs.

“Pardon me,” I said to the fat snake. “Just what is this animal.”

“Nothing interesting.” The snake said. “We have lots of them on my planet. We call them empathciators. They can’t talk, so instead tey change their color in accordance with their moods. They have a lot of very interesting shades. Do you have any sugar cubes with you?”

“No.” I said.

“Too bad.” The snake answered, but found a cube of sugar somewhere else.

On seeing the sugar the sphere showed purple highlights.

“He’s happy.” The snake said. “He is a pretty boy, isn’t he?”

“Very pretty.” I agreed.

“We constantly expose them to new sensations on purpose, in order to get unusual colors. If you’d like I can hit him? He’ll become a superb shade of black.

“No, don’t.” I said. “Would you be able to sell him to us for the Moscow Zoo?”

“No.” One of the snake’s heads answered, at the time the other was silently hanging down. “Perhaps we can do an exchange?”

“But I don’t have anything to trade?”

“We’ll take one of these, this little creature here.” The snake said and pointed a dozen or so extensors at Alice.

“Can’t be done.” I said, trying not to get angry, in as much as I had myself only recently taken a sapient being for a non-sapient bird. “This is my daughter.”

“Foo! What a horror!” The snake shouted angrily. “I shall call a Trade Supervisor immediately. This is absolutely forbidden!”

“What is forbidden?” I asked.

“It is forbidden to deal in one’s own progeny. Giving them in exchange for animals is also forbidden. Didn’t you bother to read the Rules posted at the entrance to the Bazar. You are a monster and a barbarian!”

“Nothing of the sort.” I broke out laughing. “I would have as much success selling Alice as she would me.”

“That would be worse.” The snake shouted, clutching the colorful ball of the Empathicator to its side; the Empathicator, evidently, had become terrified and turned white with red chevrons along its back. “A daughter selling her own father? What is the universe coming to?”

“Honestly,” I implored, “we are not selling each other. On Earth, in general, it is not accepted for parents to sell their own children, or for children to sell their parents. We just came here together to buy some rare animals for our Zoo.”

The snake thought about it a while and said:

“I really don’t know enough about your species to know if I should believe you or not. It’s better to ask the empathicator. He is that sensitive.” He bent both heads to the Indicator and asked him:

“Can this strange being be believed?”

The empathicator turned emerald green.

“As strange as it may sound, he affirms that you can be believed.”

Then the snake grew quiet and said in quite a different tone:

“But you do want me to give you to them?”

The empathicator turned gold like the rays of the sun.

“He wants it very much.” The snake said, his voice drenched with emotion. “Take him before I change my mind. And yes, this booklet “Feeding your Empathicator, and keeping him in the best color.”

“But I don’t know what I can give you in return.”

“Nothing.” The snake said. “I did, after all, insult you with my suspicions. If, in return for the Empathicator, you will agree to forgive me, I will be delighted, at least until evening.”

“Not really,” I said. “I wasn’t at all insulted.”

“Not in the least.” Alice said.

Then the snake rippled the mass of its extensors and the Empathicator’s globular body flew into the air and landed in Alice’s hands. The Indicator remained gold, except along the spine where blue ripples ran up and down as though they were alive.

“He is satisfied.” The snake said and quickly crawled away, not listening to our protestations.

The Empathicator jumped down from Alice’s hands and walked beside us, rocking back and forth on thin straight legs.

Coming toward us was an entire family of Audities. A large male with ears larger than an elephants, his wife, and six small children. They carried a canary in a cage.

“Look.” Exclaimed Alice. “Isn’t that a canary from Earth?”

“Yes.”

“This is not a canary.” The father Audity said severely. “It is a bird of paradise. But it is not at all what we had really wanted to buy. We were searching for a real Blabberyap.”

“And not found one.” The little Audites said in chorus, raising a storm with their ears.

“There isn’t a single Blabberyap.”

“That is astonishing!” The Audity woman said. “Why in the past year the Bazar was half filled with Blabberyap birds, and now they have quite vanished. Do you know why?”

“No.” I said.

“We don’t know why either.” The Audity said. “So we had to settle for a Bird of Paradise.”

“Papa,” Alice said when they had gone, “We need a Blabberyap bird.”

“Why? I was amazed.

“Because everyone needs a Blabberyap.”

“All right, let’s go in search of a Blabberyap.” I agreed. “Only first I want you to look at the Sewing Spider. And if they’ll part with him, we are definitely going to buy. Our Zoo has dreamed of having one of those for a long, long time.”




Chapter Ten

We Buy A Blabberyap


Alice and I traipsed our way around the whole bazar, buying at least seventeen different animals and birds for the Zoo, the vast majority of them totally unknown on Earth and never before seen by human beings. Alice asked each and every trader or collector:

“But where can we get a Blabberyap bird?”

Their answers were all the same:

“The Blabberyaps stopped laying eggs.” One said.

“The Blabberyaps have all died out from some mysterious illness.”

“It’s impossible to capture a Blabberyap bird.”

“Someone bought up all the Blabberyap birds on the planet.”

“There never were any such birds as the Blabberyap anyway.”

And many, many other answers. Nor, for that matter, did we understand how the disappearance had taken place. Everyone recognized this as fact: earlier, the Blabberyap had been one of the most common of birds and everyone loved to keep them at home and in zoos. But over the last year nearly all the Blabberyaps had simply vanished. Gone. Dissapeared.

It was said that people went from house to house and bought Blabberyaps. It was said that someone stole the Blabberyaps from the zoos. It was said that all the Blabberyaps in the Blabberyaperies had contracted some sickness or other and died.

The more hopeless finding a Blabberyap became, the more Alice wanted to get a look at the bird.

“But just what is a Blabberyap, I mean?” I asked Krabakas of Barakas, whose acquaintance I had just made.

“Nothing really special.” Krabakas answered politely, swaying at the end of his blue tail. “They talk.”

“Parrots talk too.” I said.

“I don’t know anything about parrots. Perhaps parrots are what you call our Blabberyaps.”

“Maybe.” I agreed, although parrots could hardly have evolved on this planet. “Where would they have come from?”

“What I don’t know, I don’t know.” Krabakas of Barakasa said. “Maybe they originated on this very planet. I have heard that Blabberyaps are capable of traveling between the stars and always return to their home nest.”

“If you can’t find us a Blabberyap, we’d better return to the ship.” I told Alice. “All the more because your Empathicator is starving.”

The Empathicator heard my words and as a sign of agreement became a bright green.

We turned toward the entranceway and immediately Krabakas’s cry from behind stopped me. He hung over the cages like a blue whirlwind.

“Hey!” He shouted. “Earth humans! Come back here right away!”

We returned. Krabakas had wound himself into a little ball from excitement and said:

“You want to see a Blabberyap? Well, consider yourselves fabulously lucky. I have a fellow here hiding behind these cages who brought a real, fully grown Blabberyap bird to the Bazar.”

Alice, not waiting for him to finish, rushed back to where we had been, the Empathicator crawling after her, the colors of impatience being replaced by all the colors of joy

On the other side of the wall of bird cages we found a short Audity with his ears pressed tightly to his head, hiding. He was holding a large white bird by its tail. The bird had two beaks and a golden crown.

“Oh!” Alice said. “You recognize it, don’t you, dad?”

“Looks familiar some how.” I said.

“Familiar!” Alice burst out. “That’s the bird sitting on the shoulder of the statue of the First Captain!”

Alice was right. I remembered. Naturally, exactly as the sculptor had cut the stone.

“You’re selling your bird?” I asked the Audity.

“Quiet!” The Audity whispered. “If you don’t want to get me killed, don’t make any noise.”

“You can buy it without a long conversation.” Krabakas of Barakasa spoke into my year. “I would have bought it myself, but I think you need it more. Perhaps, this is the last Blabberyap on the planet.”

“But why such secrecy?”

“I don’t really know myself.” The Blabberyap’s owner answered. “I live well away from town and only get in here very, very rarely. Some time ago, several years ago in fact, this Blabberyap landed in my yard. He was exhausted and injured. I looked after him, and since then he’s lived in my house, although I must say that this Blabberyap has evidently spent its whole life on other worlds. He speaks many different languages. Some days ago I was forced to come into the city on business and met an old friend in a caf‚. We were talking, and my friend mentioned there wasn’t a single Blabberyap bird left in the city. Someone had been buying them up or killing them. But then I told my friend that I had a Blabberyap. ‘Watch him.’ My friend told me. Right away some Earth human came up to me told me he wanted to buy the Blabberyap bird.”

“Did he wear a hat.” Alice asked suddenly.

“Yes, he did.” The Audity answered. “How did you know?”

“And he was middle aged and skinny?”

“Yes.”

“It has to be him.” Alice said.

“Who is it?” Krabakas of Barakasa asked.

“The same fellow who was trading in grubs.”

“Of course it would be him the miscreant!” Krabakas muttered angrily.

“Wait, don’t interrupt.” The Audity stopped us. “I then refused to sell him my beloved bird and went back home. And, imagine, on that very same night someone tried to break into my house. And on the next night someone tried to burn me down, but the Blabberyap was not sleeping and awakened me. And yesterday I found a still unfinished tunnel beneath my house. And last night someone threw an enormous stone into my bed room. Even I can understand: if the bird remains in my house I will not remain alive. If you do not fear death, take the bird, but I cannot answer for the consequences.”

“Take it.” Krabakas said, “The bird is rare, in excellent condition, and you are leaving here anyway. You have nothing to fear.”

“Shall we take him, Papa?” Alice asked and reached out her hand to the Blabberyap bird.

Before I had a chance to answer the Blabberyap fluttered its wings and landed on Alice’s shoulder.

“Fare thee well, my friend.” The Audity sighed.

I settled accounts with the Audity, who almost immediately departed quickly, not even bothering to count the money.

“You can feed the Blabberyap white bread.” The good Krabakas said in parting, “as well as milk. Extract of dogrose would also be useful.”

Having said that compacted himself into a blue cube and lay down in the cage with the canaries.

Alice and I headed toward the Bazar entrance. Alice walked in front, the Blabberyap bird sitting on her shoulder. In truth, he had yet to say a single word, but that did not disturb me. After Alice came the Empathicator, pensively changing its color. I followed, holding a bridle attached to an extremely rare, working, almost sentient Sewing Spider, that I had bought for pocket change. The Sewing Spider was spinning a silk scarf in its cage, its long end trailing along the ground. Behind me came the robot trundler filled with cages and aquariums; it was packed as so high there was no place for anything else. As our little procession passed the Bazar’s collectors turned to us from all sides and repeated again and again in dozens of voices and languages:

“Look! They’ve got a Blabberyap!”

“A Blabberyap!”

“A live Blabberyap!”

Suddenly the Blabberyap inclined its head to the side and started to speak.

“Attention!” It said in Russian. “A landing on this planet is impossible. I am returning to synchronous orbit, and you, my friend, don’t forget to turn on the inertial dampers.”

Having said that, the Blabberyap began to chatter in a totally unknown language without a pause and kept it up for at least two minutes.

“Now that is a parrot.” Alice said.

The Blabberyap grew silent, listened to her words and repeated:

“Now that is a parrot.”

Then it seemed to think a little and said in my voice:

“But why such secrecy?”

Then the Blabberyap spoke in its former master’s voice:

“…on that very same night someone tried to break into my house. And on the next night someone tried to burn me down…”

“It’s all very clear now.” I said. “We’ve been very lucky, Alice; this is a super-parrot, the parrot to end all parrots. It remembers whatever it hears, immediately and once and for all.”

At the same time the Blabberyap began to speak Russian again:

“Listen, Two, I have nothing to give you, so I want you to take my Blabberyap bird. It will remind you about our wanderings it keeps in its head everything that it hears, to the last word. And you know how to get it to repeat anything you may wish.”

The Blabberyap answered in another voice:

“Thanks, First. We’ll see…”

Then the Blabberyap’s throat gave forth a rumbling and a roaring as though off in the distance a space ship was rising toward the stars.

“Papa, you understand what it just said?” Alice asked.

“Yes. It would seem, those are the voices of the famous Captains.” I said.

We had exited one square and were trying to avoid the crowds in the section devoted to the stamp collectors with our unusual cargo. From out of the crowd ahead the familiar fat man in the black leather business suit came toward us.

“I say,” He asked. “I take it you found what you wanted?”

“Oh, yes.” I answered. “Everything went beautifully.”

“We bought a Blabberyap.” Alice spoke with pride. “And you can’t imagine all the interesting things he’s been saying.

At the same moment the Blabberyap opened his beak, straightened the crown on his head and spoke in the First Captain’s voice:

“You of all people know how much I want to get back into space again, Second. But there are barriers everywhere…”

The fat man turned toward Alice, saw the Blabberyap, and his face turned as white as a sheet, and his eyes bulged out in alarm.

“Give that to me.” The fat man said.

“Why?” I was rather surprised.

“Because you must.” The fat man reached out for the Blabberyap.

The Blabberyap managed to peck him painfully on the finger.

“Ouch!” The fat man shouted. “Damned vermin! I’ve hunted you for too long now!”

“Remove your hand.” I said.

The fat man came to his senses and obeyed.

“Sorry.” He said. “I’ve been searching for a Blabberyap bird for a long time. I came more than seventy light years to find one. You can’t refuse me! I’ll pay whatever you want.”

“But we don’t need your money.” I said. “On Earth we don’t really use it any more. We carry it along when we go into space to places where they still use it, of course….”

“But I can give you whatever you want for the bird! I can get you a whole zoo!”

“No.” I answered firmly. “As far as I understand it, Blabberyaps are almost extinct. This Blabberyap will be safe in the zoo.”

“Give me the bird, or I’ll take it.” The fat man threatened.

“Just try it.”

A pair of two Audity policemen were walking past. I turned toward then to ask for help but the fat man had vanished as though the ground had swallowed him up.

We continued our journey.

“See, Papa. There’s some sort of secret connected with the Blabberyaps.” Alice said. “Just don’t give him up to anyone.

“Don’t worry.” I calmed her down.

We were walking along an empty road. The Bazar was noise and activity on the other side of a low wall. Ahead of us we could see the city of Palaputra and its hotels. Suddenly we heard light footsteps. I turned quickly and froze from surprise.

Running up the road toward us was Doctor Verkhovtseff. His hat was pushed to one side, his suit was rumbled and he looked far thinner than when we had seen him last. He reached us.

“Professor.” He said to me, panting for breath. “You’re in great danger. You’re lucky I managed to reach you in time. What good fortune!”

“What sort of danger?” I asked.

“The danger is the Blabberyap itself. If you don’t part with it immediately, your ship is doomed. I know exactly what I am speaking…”

“Listen, Doctor Verkhovtseff.” I said angrily. “Your behavior goes well beyond strange. You behaved like some thriller novel conspirator back on the Three Captain’s World when you told us you did not know what kind of bird was carved on the monument. Then you came here and tried to destroy all the oxygen in the atmosphere, so they say, by selling white grubs. You behaved like a pig at the hotel, cooking sausages on your bed and breaking the robot attendants. And now you demand that we give you the Blabberyap bird. No, don’t interrupt me. When you’ve thought things over, come visit us in the ship and we can talk about this under calm circumstances.”

“You will come to regret it.” Verkhovtseff said, and reached into his jacket pocket.

The Empathicator turned red from terror. The Sewing Spider started to wave the unfinished scarf in Verkhovtseff’s direction.

“Be careful, papa! He has a gun!” Alice shouted.

“Poloskov.” I spoke into the transmitter that was placed on my chest. “Take down our coordinates. We’re in danger. Emergency!”

On hearing my words Verkhovtseff froze, thinking what to do next. To our good fortune a large crowd of collectors leading an enormous green elephant came onto the road; Verkhovtseff jumped over a fence and vanished.

“Oh, I really like all this!” Alice said. “We’re having a real adventure.”

“Frankly, I don’t like adventures like this at all. We’re here to collect animals for the Zoo, not fight battles with Doctor Verkhovtseff.”

Three minutes later the Pegasus’s landing boat hung over our heads; it was Poloskov on a rescue mission. The boat slowly flew over us all the way back to the ship, which we arrived at without further incident.




Chapter Eleven

On Course For the Medusa System


As soon as we had settled the animals in their cages and fed them I went up to the bridge and sent a message to the research base on Arcturus Minor. It read:

“Please determine location of Doctor Verkhovtseff. Have reason to believe he is not what he appears to be.”

That evening the answer arrived from Arcturus Minor:

“Doctor Verkhovtseff not on Three Captains’ World. No other information currently available.”

“We’d already found out by ourselves he wasn’t on the Three Captains’ World on our own,” Poloskov said when he read the message. “He’s here.”

We had constructed a large cage for the Blabberyap bird and hung it in the crew’s lounge. The Blabberyap spent the whole day muttering in unknown languages and never came close to uttering anything by one of the Captains, but Poloskov believed Alice and me anyway and said:

“I think this is the very same Blabberyap which belonged to the First Captain and which he gave to the Second when they split up.”

“Could it be that Verkhovtseff was chasing after all the Blabberyaps because he wanted to get his hands specially on this one?” Alice asked.

“But what did he want this Blabberyap bird for?” I asked.

“What else! We know the Second Captain vanished without a trace; no one knows where he is. We know that he had the Blabberyap bird…”

“Of course!” The engineer Zeleny cut in. “That’s it. Our kid’s right on target. There’s no Captain, but the Blabberyap bird is here, and that means the Blabberyap knows where the Captain is. And Verkhovtseff wants to find that out himself.”

“But why make such a mystery of it?” I asked him. “We’d be willing to help him, with pleasure.”

The sound of knocking interrupted us. Someone had come a-visiting.

I went down to the airlock and opened it. The fat man in the black leather suit was standing on the gangway.

“I beg your pardon for this intrusion,” he oozed. “I would like to make amends for my behavior in the market place. I was so desperate to obtain a living Blabberyap bird that I fear I could not contain myself.”

“Quite all right,” I answered. “We weren’t offended. But there is no way we could possibly part with the Blabberyap bird.”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t want you to part with it,” the fat man said cheerfully. “But I simply must do something to better the terrible impression I must have made. Please, you cannot refuse to do me the honor of accepting this as a parting gift.”

He held out a very rare animal indeed, a diamond backed turtle from Menata. The turtle’s shell was composed of real diamonds and flashed so brightly it hurt your eyes to look at it.

“Please, accept it,” the Fat Man said. “I still do have three.”

Naturally I was less than eager to take a gift from such a strange individual one really has to show some caution but there wasn’t a single diamond-backed turtle in any of Earth’s zoos! We had been searching for one for five years, and now we had found someone who just gave us one!

“Please do not refuse,” the Fat Man said. “Fare thee well. Perhaps we will meet again. Bear in mind, I am known on a hundred planets. My name is Veselchak U.”

And he stamped his feet on the steps, went down the gangway and jumped up on the moving walkway that led in the direction of Palaputra.

It had already grown dark; both suns had set almost simultaneously, although from different spots on the horizon, and two sunsets fell over the space port, one prettier than the other, and I found myself thinking how pointless it was to think the worst of people. That fat man, for example, was a true amateur biologist, yet he had not hesitated to give us this rare animal as a gift.

So I returned to the crew’s lounge in a very fine mood and showed my friends the gift. The turtle moved from one of my hands to the other, and everyone admired the superb play of light on the diamonds that composed the shell.

“So where do we go from here?” Poloskov asked after dinner.

“For the Sklisses.” Alice said. “On the planet Sheshineru.”

“Why not?” I agreed. “We were planning to go there anyway.”

It was at that moment that the Blabberyap bird, which hitherto had been sitting peacefully in its cage and looking down on us drinking tea, began to speak again.

“You’re planning to leave,” he asked in the First Captain’s voice.

“Yes, I’m flying to meet him,” the Blabberyap bird answered himself in the Second Captain’s voice.

“All right then. Second, if there’s trouble, don’t hesitate to call on me.’

“If I can.”

“Take the Blabberyap bird. You can tell him everything. I know how to get him to repeat it. Give the bird all the details.”

“Until we meet again, then.”

“Until we meet again.”

The Blabberyap bird grew silent.

“Well, you heard it, Poloskov?” Alice asked.

“Of course I heard it; don’t shout,” Poloskov answered and started to think.

The Blabberyap bird nodded its golden crown, as though considering whether it should continue or not. Abruptly it spoke very slowly in the Second Captain’s voice:

“Set course for the Medusa system.”

We waited in the expectation that the bird might speak again, but the Blabberyap bird closed its eyes and tucked its head beneath its wing.

“So, the Second Captain got into trouble and sent the Blabberyap bird for help,” Alice said. “Now how can we get it to tell us more?”

“Hold on,” I spoke up. “Just what is it you’ve decided? Remember, the Blabberyap bird did not fly to Venus where the First Captain is working, but returned to its home planet. That means that no one sent it anywhere. The Second Captain might have just died, and the bird went home.”

“It really could have been anything,” Poloskov said, and got up from behind the table.

He left the crew’s lounge and returned in five minutes, carrying with him the Galactic Map. He placed it on the table, pushing aside some tea cups, and pressed the control. The holographic image sprang into existence above the table. He pointed to the edge of the map.

“Here.” he said, “this is the Medusa system. Completely unexplored. The star has planets. I propose we fly there. If the Captain is alive, we may be able to help him. If he has died, at the very least we will find out what happened! And where.”

“But he could very well have perished in space.” I objected.

“And just what could have happened to the great Captain in space?”

“His ship could have exploded, for example.”

“And would not the Blabberyap bird have exploded with it?”

“Well, anything at all could have happened!”

I fell silent. In the final analysis, the expedition had its own questions, and it was totally unknown if the planets of the Medusa system had any sort of life forms at all. The flight to the star and our return would take up most of the time allotted to the expedition. And we really did not know anything other than what we had heard the bird say. What if the Captain had spent some time there, and then gone off to another part of the Galaxy and perished there? I mentioned this to my colleagues, but the longer I spoke the less convinced I was of the rightness of my arguments, and the more I knew that I had failed to convince either Poloskov or Alice. “Fine,” I said finally. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Just let’s make a stop at Sheshineru first. We really have to find out what a Skliss is.”

“Agreed.” Poloskov moved his finger through the map. “This is our route, then; along the way we should be able to stop on various planets and search for rare animals for the Zoo.”

“And now it’s time to sleep.” I said. “We’ll depart tomorrow morning. Are all the animals fed and watered?”

“A-Okay Boss Expedition Leader Sir,” Alice, who was responsible for the feeding of the animals, answered.

“And where is the diamond-backed turtle?” I asked.”

“It was here just a moment ago.” Poloskov said. “Where is it now?”

We wasted an entire hour crawling all over the ship and only found the diamond-backed turtle with the aid of the Empathicator, who had hunted it down right in the air lock.

“It’s obvious it wants to run away.” Zeleny said. “Just like I warned. We’ll have to keep a constant eye on this turtle.”

The Empathicator became a bright yellow.

I dug out the table listing the Empathicator’s colors and feelings they indicated which the two-headed snake gave me, and said:

“A yellow color indicates distrust.”

“Don’t believe the turtle?” Zeleny asked the Empathicator. “Neither do I.”

The Empathicator became so yellow it outshone even the light of the lamp.

“Oh well,” I said then. “I’ll confine him in his cage.”

The Empathicator remained just as yellow, but black bands ran up and down its spine. The table advised us that black bands on a yellow background indicated disagreement.

“Oh, all right.” I said. “If you distrust it that much we’ll lock it in the safe for the night.”

When I spoke the Empathicator turned a delighted dark green.




Chapter Twelve

An unfortunate Discovery


By the time the Pegasus arrived at the planet Sheshineru the gifts and cargo that had filled its holds had for the most part found their way to their diverse destinations. You could finally walk down the corridors and not bump into packages, bags and containers.

We had crossed about a third of the Galaxy already and found ourselves in regions where scheduled freighters and liners from Earth never ventured.

The planet Sheshineru lays far from any of the great commerce routes. It’s natural world is notably poor; it’s only been three hundred years now since it was empty and uninhabited, but then colonists came from Rozodor, established oceans and an atmosphere, planted forests and lawns.

We would not even have bothered wasting time with a landing but Doctor Verkhovtseff had told us, back on the Three Captains World, that he had heard about an animal on the planet called a Skliss.

The Pegasus landed on the planet in the dead of night, in a field not far from the flickering lights of a medium sized city. We landed silently so as not to awaken the citizens and not to frighten them; very few ships ever reach Sheshineru and only a few of its citizens have ever seen aliens.

The engines were turned off, the engineer Zeleny stroked his beard and lay down to get some sleep; Captain Poloskov remained on the bridge to make some corrections in navigation charts that were long out of date. Alice began to write a letter to her grandmother, planning to transmit it from Sheshineru, and I went down to the first hold to choose an empty cage for the Skliss and feed the animals we already had aboard.

The ship was quiet and dark; I hardly made a sound as I walked on the soft carpet and thought about how we had to restock our water supplies on Sheshineru and obtain silk for the Sewing Spider. One of the wander bushes approached me from behind one corner and I told it:

“Go to sleep right away! Or I will not water you tomorrow.”

The wander bush waved and rustled its leaves in horror and drew back into its own section.

Suddenly I heard the sound of someone chewing food. Someone something had crept into the store room where we were keeping the remaining gifts. I stopped and listened carefully. I couldn’t tell which of the animals had gotten out of its cage, and not all of them were the sort I would want to approach with empty hands.

I very carefully looked into the store room’s open door. The room was empty. But the chewing became all the louder. I went inside. The chewing came from the closed door of the refrigerator where we were keeping the pineapples.

My eyes widened when I saw that the key to the refrigerator was hanging in its spot on the outside and no one could have gotten into the refrigerator and then closed it behind them without the key.

Slowly I extended my hand to the latch, turned it and pulled the door open.

On one of the shelves, shivering from the cold, sat a little green man, his long thin teeth gnawing one of the pineapples.

In terror the little person raised his eyes and clutched the pineapple to his chest.

“You will not be able to.” He said.

“Go on, finish the pineapple.” I answered. “But how in blazes did you ever get in here?”

“They won’t even let you eat in peace.” The little man said and vanished together with the pineapple.

I rubbed my eyes. The refrigerator was empty. Three pineapples were gone from the shelves. Something then touched my feet and I jumped back in shock.

It turned out that it was just one of the wander bushes wandering about the hold.

“Go to bed!” I shouted at it, although I usually never shout at animals or moving plants.

The bush picked up its branches and turned on its heels.

I looked inside the refrigerator again. A little green man stood inside with his back to me, raising on his tiptoes, trying to drag a large pineapple from the shelf.

“Stop that!” I shouted.

The little man turned to look at me and I realized that this wasn’t at all the same little thief who had been eating the pineapple three seconds ago.

“Oh, don’t get in a bother.” The little man said. “I do have permission.”

And he immediately vanished, carrying away the pineapple.

Previously in my life I had been spared from such wonders. My head even started to whirl. I looked into the refrigerator with what must have been the stupidest of all look’s on my face; as though someone could hide himself in its depths!

At the very same moment something touched me; a third green person was standing on the shelf.

“Don’t get upset.” He said. “My error.” Immediately he reached for a pineapple.

“Hey, what the Devil’s going on here?” I growled. “Where are you from?

“I live here.” The little person said, took the pineapple, and vanished into thin air.

That was more than I could stand. I pressed the button on my com and called Poloskov.

“Gennady,” I asked, “are you sleeping?”

“No.” Our Captain answered. “Working. And what’s happened to your voice?”

“My voice? Nothing.”

“It’s four octaves higher than it normally is. Has anything happened?”

“Tell me, Gennady, is the ship’s airlock sealed?”

“Of course it is. No one can get in.”

“And Zeleny is sleeping?”

“He is. So is Alice. I just checked them. Alice was writing a letter and fell asleep halfway done. What’s going on?”

“Do you know of any cases.. instances… occurrences…of little green men appearing to people?”

“Little?” Poloskov asked industriously. “The type that sit on your shoulder? With tails perhaps? I do seem to recall reading about that somewhere, in a very old book.”

“No” I answered, “somewhat larger, without tails, and with a taste for pineapple. And one’s right here now! Here! The fourth!”

And in fact yet another little robber had appeared in the refrigerator, winked at me, and vanished.

“ I’m coming.” Poloskov said to assure me. “Don’t do anything precipitate. Get a hand on yourself…”

By the time Poloskov began is run from the bridge to the hold less than half of our stock of pineapples remained on the shelves, and right away two green, little persons appeared and were giving each other a hand up to get to the refrigerator’s top shelf.

“Don’t let it frighten you.” Poloskov said. “That has to be a hallucination.”

“What do you mean calling me a hallucination!” One little green man was outraged. “You can touch me.”

“Sometimes.” The second interrupted him.

“Give our regards to Alice.” The first said.

And the pair of them vanished, just in time to make room for another.

“Alice is really sleeping?” I asked Poloskov.

“Definitely.”

“Then however did they learn of her?”

“I can’t begin to guess. This must be some sort of madhouse.

The refrigerator was finally empty. No one else had appeared fora while.

“Then let’s close the door.” Poloskov said. “It will be quieter.

I slammed the door of the refrigerator shut.

“Where could they have learned about Alice?” I repeated. “We only landed here an hour ago and no one has been outside.

Poloskov and I remained awake, trying to think of an explanation for the strange phenomena, but we thought of nothing. Several times we checked the bolts on the airlock doors and walked around the ship. It remained empty, quiet, and peaceful.

In any event I spent the night in Alice’s cabin, an uncomfortable situation because the deck cover was hard and I had to share the space with Alice’s plastic swim fins.

Fortunately, I got up before Alice and when my daughter opened her eyes I was already sitting in the side chair and thumbing through “Guidebook To The Inhabited Planets” as though nothing had happened.

“What are you doing in here?” Alice asked.

“I wanted to check on something in your library what do the locals look like?”

“Then why do you look like you spent the night on the floor?”

I flipped the book shut, took a look at myself in her mirror, and hurried off to my own cabin to fix myself up, where, in the process of washing my face, I almost convinced myself that there were no little green men, that it was all a mirage, a dream, a delusion.

With those thoughts in my mind I went down to the hold to take a look in the refrigerator.

The refrigerator was open, absolutely empty not a trace of a pineapple remained with a pensive Poloskov standing in front of it.

“In general, I suppose the locals have learned how to walk through walls.” He said. “Although it goes against all the laws of nature as I understand them.”

“No, those certainly can’t be the local inhabitants.” I said. “Most likely we managed to pick up members of some sort of parasitic civilization while in space.”

Right then Alice came into the hold.

“Good morning, Captain Poloskov.” She said. “Where did you put the pineapples?”

“They stole them.” Poloskov said. “And we’re considering how to punish the thief.”

“Who?” Alice was surprised.

“Little green devils.” Poloskov answered. “Just let me get my hands on them! You can only imagine what they’ll think of me on Rotweiss! They were expecting those pineapples… There’s one, grab him!”

As he spoke a little green man appeared suddenly in the refrigerator; he took one look at the empty shelves sand said, not even looking at us: “Darn it! Too late!” and promptly vanished.

“That’s him.” Poloskov repeated. “And you can’t even catch him.”

“That’s one of the locals.” Alice said. “I looked in the book which Papa left on his chair”.

“You’re certain?”

“Completely certain.”

“Then all the worse for them. I am sending an immediate protest to their government. Is this any way they treat their guests?” Poloskov’s face had turned red.

“Forgive them, Captain.”

“No, that would be unthinkable. Where is the telephone.”

“Captain Poloskov, just think about it.” Alice pleaded. “These are gentle and fine people. They don’t want to steal the pineapples. It just happened. Accidentally.”

“You’re too good hearted Alice.” Poloskov replied. “Over night, just as soon as we landed, they managed to break into our supplies and steal the pineapples. Who knows what they’ll be after half an hour from now?

“Captain,” Alice said firmly, “have you forgotten what I won from our bet? A wish?”

“I remember.” Poloskov said.

“So, my wish is..that you forgive them their pineapples.”

And at that very moment the walls of our ship reverberated with a terrible noise. So powerful it was that it broke through the baffling. We forgot all about the little green men and rushed en mass to the airlocks. Along the way Poloskov managed to hit one of the EMERGENCY buttons and little red lights began to blink in the corridors.

Poloskov opened the upper airlock and we looked outside from the height of three storeys.

The enormous, wan red star had risen. Long grey clouds raced across the sky. The whole field in front of the Pegasus was filled with little green people. They were waving flags, placards, and banners with the words “Hi There! Fine to Meet You!”

“Wel-come A-lis! Wel-come Alice! Hurray! Hurray! Hip Hip Hurray!” as well as other greetings in thier own language which we did not understand.

On seeing Alice their joy knew no bounds. It was as though the sky had come down to earth.

In the blink of an eye several little green men appeared in the airlock, picked Alice up, and before I could even gasp they had vanished with her, appearing at the same moment in the very crush of the crowd. The crowd carried Alice off toward the city whose white towers we could see on the horizon on their upraised hands.

All that remained behind was a little old green man who waited while we hurried down the gangplank to greet us and say:

“Evidently, dear guests, you don’t understand anything at all of what is going on.”

“Nothing whatsoever.” Poloskov said.

“Nothing is going to happen to Alice?” I asked.

“Nothing at all. Permit me to explain?”

“Certainly.”

“Let’s sit down on the grass. The ground is warm and we won’t catch cold.”

We obeyed the little old green man and he told us the following:

Not all that long ago nothing distinguished the planet Sheshineru at all from numerous down-and-out provincial worlds of the Galaxy. But about ten years back a locaal scientist had invented a tablet which permitted travel through time for about one or two years in either direction. At first the whole planet was overcome with joy, everyone began swallowing tablets and traveling where and whenever, but after several weeks the bitter hangover set in.

Someone could set of for the future and learn there that his wife had left him, or that his house had been robbed. Someone else could go into the past in order to set right some utterly bitter error or werong, but discover that he could not set it right, he could only repeat it. If you suspected someone of deception it took little effort to return to a certain day and follow after your enemy; if you suspect that you were going to die from some disease or other, it was equally easy to go into the future and discover if the doctors who said you were healthy were deceiving you. Gradually, people began to fear the future and now no one ever went there. Instead, everyone spent their time in the past. Everyone has some fine memories, and now you could depart into the past in order to live those pleasant moments over again. And you cold go back again, and again and again, endlessly.

“Let’s go into the city.” The little old green man said. “So you can see waht this had led us to.”

We followed him into the city. The city was half empty, trash lay everywhere. The big parade with Alice had already gone on ahead and all we met were a few random passers by on the streets. They didn’t pay any attention to us, but from time to time one of the pedestrians just vanished. Someone else might appear in the middle of the street, think about something for a moment, and then vanish again.

“These people are traveling in time.” Our companion said. The present holds no interest for them The future they fear. No one is working. The government tried to ban the tablets but they are so easy to prepare anyone can make them at home in their own kitchens.”

“No I understand why your people knew about Alice yesterday.” I said. “And about our ship’s landing.”

“Of course, they all came into your refrigerator from the future.”

“And why all the joy on seeing Alice?” Poloskov asked. “Why not for me, for example?”

“It’s all very simple.” The elderly Sheshinerian said. “We are really very inoffensive, peaceful people, and we greatly appreciate kindnesses shown to us.”

“What does that have to do with it? Alice certainly didn’t know that you were going to crawl into our refrigerator.”

“Ah, such naivete.” The little green man said reproachfully.

He vanished into thin air and after three seconds reappeared with a large pineapple in his hands.

“I just spent a few seconds in your refrigerator.” He said.

“But there are no more pineapples there.”

“But I was just here yesterday night. Isn’t it clear enough? The simplest of things. I now flew into the past and yesterday at night took this pineapple from the refrigerator. But I did not steal it. I took it because Alice today, this morning, reminded Poloskov that she still had one wish that she had earned, and that her wish was that he give us the pineapples. So, today this morning we welcomed Alice with gratitude because she had decided to let us take the pineapples yesterday night….”

“I’ll go crazy here!” Poloskov said. “First it was today in the morning, the it was yesterday at night, and you took the pineapples which still shouldn’t have been taken because it later became possible to take them….”

“But we have so few joys left in life, so few pleasures.” The little green man said, not listening to Poloskov. “And we have never tasted pineapples before. I, for example, will now, every day, go back to yesterday so I can finish eating the pineapple which I ate yesterday…”

For a while the two of us were silent, mulling the information over in our heads. Then the Sheshinerian sighed and said:

“I can’t stand it any more. I am going into the past to finish eating your marvelous pineapple.”

“Wait up.” I stopped him. “I have a question, a business question.”

“Better you don’t ask it at all.” The little green man said. “I already know what you will ask.”

“Oh, yes…” I said.

“You will ask about an animal called the Skliss, which was the reason you came here?”

“Naturally.”

“We can get you a hundred Sklisses, but you wouldn’t want them. You will take a look at one that’s just around the corner. You will then wave your hands in frustration and you will say: ‘But that’s just an ordinary cow!’

We looked around the corner. There was a cow there.

I waved my hands in frustration and said: “But that’s just an ordinary cow!”

“Told you so.”

Then the little green man said his good byes and left more precisely, he vanished into thin air because that was what all the inhabitants of this planet did, so he did not see what happened next, and all his ability to look into the future and into the past helped him not at all, for we took that cow with us and brought it back to the Moscow Zoo, and even today it is one of our most popular exhibits.

As soon as our little green guide vanished, the cow stretched and slowly got to its feet, and unfurled long, membranous wings which until then it had wrapped around its belly. The cow sighed and looked at us with large, sad eyes, stretched out its wings and raised a cloud of dust, jumped up with clattering hooves and flew to the other side of the street.

The Skliss flew like a cow, badly and clumsily, but the Skliss really did fly!

I asked a green skinned little boy who had unexpectedly appeared right next to us.

“Whose cow is that?”

“You mean the Skliss?” The kid asked.

“Well of course, yes, whose Skliss is that?”

“It’s no ones’.” The kid said. “Who needs a Skliss? It’s totally impossible to herd them and they just fly about. Take one, no one cares.”

So we set off for the Pegasus, chasing the Skliss ahead of us with a long stick of wood. From time to time the Skliss would fly up into the air but it very quckly grew tired and returned to the ground and a lazy trot.

Along the way we picked up another Skliss who wanted to come along, but we couldn’t take it with us; feeding even one such animal would be rather difficult. The Skliss mooed for a long time in disappointment and waved its tail back and forth.

Alice returned shortly after we did. She had become bored with the Sheshinerians. They, in turn, quickly forgot all about her and vanished, some into the past, and some into the near future.




Chapter Thirteen

The Paralyzed Robots


“Well now,” Poloskov said when he had lifted from the planet where we had lost of entire stock of pineapples. “I’m for setting a direct course for the Medusa System. Any objections?”

No one objected. I would have liked to have objected, but Alice gave me such a look that I said:

“When we’re in flight the Captain is in charge. Whatever Poloskov says, that’s what will be done.”

“Then there is nothing further to delay us.” Poloskov said.

But two days later we found ourselves delayed again when we were forced to change course. The Pegasus’s on-board subspace radio had picked up an SOS.

“Where’s it from?” I asked Poloskov.

“I’ll let you know in a moment.” Our captain said. He was hunched over the receiver.

I sat down on an empty chair on the bridge, deciding to use the time to get some rest. I had been tired since morning. The Empathicator had an upset stomach, and he kept changing colors, like a traffic signal on a busy intersection.

I sat down on am empty seat on the bridge, deciding to take a minute to get some rest. I had been working since morning and I was exhausted. The Empathicator had an upset stomach, and it was changing colors like a traffic sign on a busy intersection..

The Sewing Spider had completely run out of raw materials for his work and had reached into the next cage where the Snook lay sleeping and saved off all his long fur so that I no longer recognized the Snook. As a result of his nakedness the Snook had caught a cold and was coughing up and down the hold. I had to place him in isolation.. The Blabberyap bird had spent thee night muttering in some incomprehensible language, scratching and screeching like an ungreased cart. He got the hot milk and soda treatment. The wander bushes had spent the night arguing over creamed stones and the littlest had suffered numerous broken branches. The diamond backed turtle had used the sharp facets on his shell to cut a hold in the door leading to the engine room, and I had been again forced to clamp him in the safe.

I was tired, but I knew that you always had such problems when transport a collection of rare animals. All these sicknesses, unpleasantries, fights and conflicts were nothing at all compared to the problem of feeding them.

In truth Alice had been helping me, but she had overslept and I had been forced to do the morning feed myself.

It was all very well that the animals were not too many and the majority of them could breathe terrestrial atmosphere. I had been forced to place a heater only under the enclosure with the Beelzabeetles, which was normal since they lived in volcanoes…

“It’s all clear.” I heard Poloskov’s voice.

What was he talking about. Ah, yes, I had been lost in thought and had completely forgotten we had received a disaster signal.

“The signal comes from the planet Eyeron. What could possibly have happened there?”

Poloskov opened the last volume of our copy of The Guide to the Planets and read aloud:

“Planet Eyeron. Discovered by a Fyxxian expedition. Occupied by a metallic culture of comparatively low level. It is hypothesized that the inhabitants of the planet are the decedents of robots left behind by some unknown space ship. They are straight forward and hospitable. However, very capricious and touchy. The planet is lacking in useful fossil fuels. There is no uncontaminated water. There is no breathable atmosphere. There is nothing at all on the planet. If there had been the robots would have wasted it all and now live in poverty.’

“SOS,” the subspace radio receiver blared. “We have an epidemic. Request aid.”

“We’ll have to divert.” Poloskov sighed. “We can’t ignore sapient beings in distress.”

So we changed course for the planet Eyeron.

Only when we could already see the grey, airless mountains and sea-bottoms of the planetary sphere from space was Poloskov finally able to make contact with the local dispatcher.

“What exactly is going on here?” He asked. “What sort of aid can we offer you?”

“We have an epidemic….” The voice hissed from the speaker. “We are all sick. We need a doctor.”

“A doctor?” Poloskov was surprised. “But certainly you are a metallic species. Wouldn’t it rather be a mechanic that you want?”

“Perhaps a mechanic as well.” The voice agreed from Eyeron. “But definitely a doctor.”

We set down on a flat, dusty, empty field that served as the space port. It had been a long time since a ship had set down here.

When the dust settled we lowered the gangway and rolled out the ATV. Poloskov remained on the ship, while Zeleny, Alice and I headed toward the long, low, boring building of the space port terminal. Neither spirits nor shadows surrounded us. If he had not just been talking with someone, no one would have guessed this planet held any living beings. On the road lay the discarded rusty leg of a robot. Then a wheel with torn out spokes.

Making out way through such a wasteland was somehow sad. We all wanted to shout out loud: “Is anybody here?”

The doors to the space port terminal building were wide open. Inside it was as empty and quiet as without. We left the All Terrain Vehicle and stopped at the doors, not knowing where to head for now.

There was a hissing from the enormous, grey loudspeaker that hung from the ceiling and an already familiar scratchy voice said:

“Go up the stairway to the small black door. Push on it and it will open.”

We obeyed and found a narrow stairway. The stairway was narrow and just as dusty as everything else. It ended in a small black door. I pushed on the door and it did not move. Perhaps it had been locked?

“Hit it harder!” The voice came from behind the door.

“Let me do it.” The engineer Zeleny said.

He put his shoulder to the door, pushed hard enough for him to groan, and the door burst open. Zeleny vanished into the room.

“Just as I thought.” He said gloomily after he had flown into the room and collided with one of the planet’s metallic inhabitants who was sitting at a desk.

The robot was covered with dust like everything else.

“Thank you for coming.” The robot said, raising his hand to help Zeleny get to his feet. I didn’t think anyone would ever come. I’d given up hope. And we don’t have any ships of our own out…”

“It’s your transmitting station.” I said. “It’s too weak. We picked up our message only because we were flying right by. It was pure random chance.”

“Once our station was the most powerful in the sector.” The robot said.

Then something grinding sounded from his iron jaw and he froze with his mouth open. The robot waved his hands back and forth and silently called for help. I looked at Zeleny in confusion, and he said:

“It’s not doctor that’s needed here.”

He went over to the robot and struck him below the chin with his fist. The mouth opened with a clang and the robot said:

“Than….”

Zeleny had to deal with the robot with his fist again. He shook his bruised hand and said,

“Please don’t open your mouth so wide. I’d rather not have to stand with my fist over you all the time.”

The robot nodded and continued to talk, with its mouth only slightly open.

“I sent the SOS signal.” He said. “Because for the past two weeks no one has come to relieve me. I suspect the entire population of the planet is afflicted with paralysis.”

“But why do you think that?”

“Because my own legs refuse to work.”

“Has this sickness afflicted you long?” I asked.

“No, not very.” The robot said. “In general, over the last few years, we’ve had jams even with lubricant, but in general we’ve managed to avoid them. But not long after one human had become angry with us and swore a terrible curse against us, a terrifying, mysterious paralysis began to ruin us, both the weak and the great. And I fear that I am the last more or less healthy robot on the entire planet. But the paralysis is already approaching my heart. And, as you see, even the jaw is affected.”

“All right, let me take a look. Maybe despite all your precautions you’ve forgotten to replace your oil properly.” Zeleny said with suspicion.

He went over to the robot and opened the round plate on the robot’s chest, put his hand inside, and the robot started to giggle.

“Ticklish!”

“Wait a moment.” The engineer insisted. He checked the joints in the robot’s legs and arms, straightened him out and said as he wiped his hands on a handkerchief:

“He’s been lubricated all right. I don’t understand it at all.”

“Nor do we.” The robot agreed.

We went on into the city. We stopped at one of the apartment buildings enormously long structures with long rows of single plank beds. The individual robots lay on their plants, covered with dust. Indicator lights burned on their foreheads; this meant the robots were alive. The robots could move their eyes, but nothing else. Finally, understanding nothing at all of what was going on, we returned to the space port terminal and put the robot dispatcher into the ATV. He was still at least able to talk. So we brought him to the Pegasus to analyze him there and try to determine the cause of the strange epidemic that had overwhelmed the planet.

The robot himself was able to help us with his own disassembly; he gave advice, which screw to turn, which button to press. The robot was neglected and dirty, but we were unable to find any particular damage to him. Although, in general, the service robots of this type had long ago been taken out of production in the Galaxy, they were designed to work for centuries and were capable of working in deep space, in volcanoes, underwater, or underground. They just had to be oiled from time to time, but they were perfectly capable of doing that themselves.

Finally, we laid out the parts of the robot on a large work table in the laboratory; we set his head up in one corner and tied it to the ship’s power net.

“Anything at all?” The head of the robot asked when Zeleny finished the mechanical dissection of his body.

Zeleny could only shrug his shoulders.

“Is there nothing that can be done?” The head asked quietly. “Our entire civilization will die.”

“We’ll have to send a message to Earth or to some other major planet.” I said. “They can send an expedition with specialists on robot sicknesses.”

“But how can we be sick?” The robot asked so firmly its jaw remained open. I had to go over and hit it under the chin.

“Thank you.” The robot said. “But should we remain like this our condition will be perilous. Think of yourself in our position. Not a single moving being on the entire planet. The very first rainstorm of flood will damage us irretrievably; we wouldn’t even be able to dry ourselves off.

“But listen,” I said, “There is no way we could stay with out until other help arrives!”

“Then your work must be extremely important, I take it?” The robot head asked.

Before I had a chance to answer Zeleny said:

“One last possibility. The first one. I’m going to try to change the oil. May I?”

“If it’s good quality oil, of course.” The robot head answered.

Zeleny began to clean all the moving parts of the robot and replace its lubricant with our own.

At the same time the robot asked again:

“And just what is it that you are doing?”

“We’re gathering animals for the Moscow Zoo.” I said. “Rare animals. We should even now be finishing the expedition and returning home. It is extremely difficult to carry a whole zoo with you.”

“If you can help us,” The robot said, “We would be delighted to give you our animals. There are none like them anywhere else in the universe.”

“What sort of animals?”

And then the robot told us:

Once, many years ago, an automated space ship crashed onto this planet; on board were a number of universal robots. They survived and built themselves huts from pieces of the ship. Then they found deposits of iron and other metals, they found uranium and many other useful resources, And then the robots began to build themselves children, and gradually, over the years, the robots, became very numerous.

But as intelligent as the robots were they were unable to look into the future. At that time there was water and air on the planet, grass and trees. The robots, however, had no interest whatsoever in the planet’s environment and ecosystems. They made use of their complete freedom and soon built many factories, and all the factories constructed robots, and the new robots built new factories and the new factories prepared new robots. And this continued until the day came when all the oxygen on the planet was consumed in the furnaces, all the trees were turned into warehouses for spare parts, all the native animals had died out, all the mountains were leveled to their foundations and all the seas were expended in coolant for engines. Finally the useful fossil fuels were used up. All that remained on the planet were robots, many billions of ordinary robots who suddenly had nothing at all to do.

The robots were the forced into a lottery; those who lost were taken apart for spare parts or sold to passing space ships or stellar wanderers for machine oil. That was how the robots lived. Gradually, they became all the fewer, but all the same there remained many millions of robots unemployed. The robots decided to build a space ship and fly it to some as yet unsettled planet in order to start all over again, but they were unable to build a ship because they had no plans, and they were unable to design one themselves. And so it continued, right up to the present time. And then this strange epidemic struck the robots and all of them were paralyzed.

“But about what animals are you talking?” I asked the robot’s head.

“About robot animals. We wanted to have everything that people have. And when we realized that the local animals had all died out because they could not live on a dead planet, we made artificial animals But then the shortages became to great and we decided to turn the animals into spare parts of ourselves. We don’t do it any longer, but the animals could feel the danger and they fled over the planet Eyeron’s flat valleys. If you can help us we can catch some totally unusual metal animals for you.

“Thank you,” I told the robot head, but at the same time thinking that such animals would hardly fit into our Zoo when every school child on Earth can now build a mechanical turtle or electric hedgehog from a kit bought from a store.

While we spoke with the robot’s head Zeleny cleaned all the parts of the robot’s body throughly and applied new lubricating oil. Then he tightened the robots screws from top to bottom and pressed his thumb down on a red button. All of us waited with concern for what might happen next. The robot uncertainly raised an arm and then made a step forward. The leg obeyed him He made another step, raised both arms above his head, bent forward, then back, and began to dance. I had never before in my life seen a dancing robot. He almost knocked over the table and nearly kicked me; the robot seemed to be laughing from joy.

Having danced himself to contentment the robot shouted:

“Tha…ag!” And froze.

We hadn’t changed the lubricating oil on his head.

This time engineer Zeleny didn’t hit the robot with his fist on his chin’ he just dipped the head into an open oil can.

The robot started to gurgle, something clicked inside him, the mouth started to open and closed again, and the robot sang in a fine, resonant voice:

“Too, too, the lilly-white boys, clothe them all in green, Ho! Ho! one for one and all for all and ever more shall be, so!” which had evidently been programmed into his ancestor long, long ago.

“So then, the problem is located in the lubricating oil.” The robot said more than a little disturbed. “But it was almost fresh. We had just changed it.”

Zeleny, without saying a word, placed some of the old machine oil taken from the robot onto a glass slide and went over to the microscope.

“It’s all clear now.” Zeleny said after a minute. “I should have guessed it right from the beginning. There’s bacteria in the oil which turns it into useless gunk. Interesting any idea how this bacteria could have gotten into your oil supply?”

The robot started to think. We all went into the Crew’s Lounge to continue the conversation.. The robot continued to think. We poured ourselves tea, and poured our robot guest a tube of sunflower oil, an enormous delicacy for robots. The robot automatically drank down the tube’s contents and continued to think.

Suddenly over our heads the Blabberyap bird awoke. It caught one sight of our guest and, spreading its beak wide, began to sing:

“‘Who’s afraid of the big, bad, wolf..’.”

The bird was singing in the robot’s voice.

We were very surprised. Only the robot was not surprised; he raised his head and said to the Blabberyap bird:

“Hello, bird. How are you?”

But the Blabberyap bird continued to sing; it fluttered its wings. No one had expected an answer; a Blabberyap is not a very wise bird.

“You know the Blabberyap bird?” Alice asked.

“Yes, of course.” The robot answered absently. “I was the one who repaired him.”

“And how could you repair a living bird?” Alice was curious.

“A few years ago,” the robot answered, “this bird came to our planet out of space. At the time we didn’t have any air worth breathing and there were no local animals left, but Blabberyaps, as you must know, do not need air. They are able to fly between planets and not breath for several weeks and even for months. But this bird hardly made it to our planet. Someone had attacked it en route and severely wounded the bird.

“We rescued the bird, fattened him up again on lubricating oil, but one wing had to be cut off and replaced with a prosthetic.”

“That’s not possible.” I exclaimed. “We would have noticed it already.”

“Take a look.” The robot answered with pride. “We do superb repair work.”

I got to my feet and walked over to the Blabberyap bird. The bird, as though guessing what was needed, spread its right wing. I felt it. Beneath the feathers was metal. The robot had told the truth.

“As you see, not even you noticed it.” The robot said triumphantly.

“But what happened to the bird then?” Alice asked.

“It had flown here from the Medusa system.” The robot said. “Someone was chasing after it and wanted to kill it. While we were fixing the bird it told us a great deal, and we leaned that someone had suffered some sort of accident and fallen into danger on one of the Medusa system’s planets and the bird was hurrying to inform someone else, a friend. We would have gone to his aid ourselves, but we don’t have any space ships.”

“And you let the bird go?”

“We let it go.” The robot said. “But we tried to explain to it that it would never be able to reach the sector of the Galaxy where it was headed. Although the artificial wing looks just like the real one, it’s not possible to fly very far on it. Alas, the bird did not understand us. It is not a very wise bird. But we also knew that the planet Blooke isn’t very far from us; it’s the Blabberyap bird’s home planet, and we concluded the blabberyap bird would be able to make it home. We haven’t seen it since then.”

“There, see!” Alice said. “How can you doubt that the Second Captain survived and sent the bird for help now?”

“But four years have passed since then.” I answered. “Most likely, he’s dead.”

“But I should relate to you one very strange event.” The robot said. “It took place not all that long ago. About a month or so. Just three days before the epidemic began. I would not have even remembered about it had I not seen the Blabberyap bird. A small black ship landed here on our world. One individual emerged. He wore a hat. We thought at first that he wanted to deal in our spare robots, but it turned out his ship was damaged and he needed our aid… We were delighted to have a chance to render assistance to this person…”

“That was Doctor Verkhovtseff.” Alice whispered.

“But when his ship was ready for flight we asked him if he might give us some machine oil or recent newspapers in exchange for the labor. However, the person in the hat cursed us and said that we would get nothing. And that we should be thankful to him for even leaving us alive. I then said to him: ‘Alien, you should be ashamed of yourself. I remember when we aided a non sapient bird, a Blabberyap, and repaired her wing, although she had nothing to give us in return, and we thought nothing about it. But you are a sapient being, an Earthman by your exterior appearance. You should be ashamed of yourself!’ At that he asked: ‘What Blabberyap’s wing did you fix?’ I said that had happened all of four years before and was irrelevant to the present matter. But he insisted that I tell him all about the injured bird. You should have seen how angry he became. He cursed us for helping the bird, and when he learned she had flown on to the planet Blooke, he set off for there. ‘I have wasted far too much time on that darned bird!” And he muttered a few more things. And later that night he was seen near the main cistern…”

“What cistern?”

“Now all is clear!” The robot said. “He went to the main cistern that contained the machine oil! He is an evil individual, and he may very well have contaminated it with harmful bacteria…”

We told the robot the bacteria may very well have gotten to the planet by some other means, but the robot just shook its head and would not listen to a word I said.

As a parting gift we gave the robot a can with machine oil, enough so he could fix several dozen robots, and promised to immediately send hyperspatial telegrams to the nearest planet as soon as we were in space again so they could send a ship with machine oil.

When the robot departed my friends grew furious.

“The faster we go the better.” They rushed to me. “We may still be able to save the Captain! Now there isn’t the slightest doubt that he’s fallen into some misfortune and that Doctor Verkhovtseff fears that someone will learn the truth.”

“I feel ashamed of being an Earthman.” Zeleny said gloomily. “And until we solve this mystery I won’t be able to look any aliens in the eyes. If Earth has produced such a despicable monster it is our duty to find him and pull his fangs. Maybe the Second Captain will be able to help us in this, once we find him. The animals can wait.”

I sighed and agreed, and anyway Alice and Poloskov were in complete agreement with Zeleny.

“All right.” I said, joining the majority. “Although I suspect that your hopes are founded only on rumors and we won’t find the Second Captain in the Medusa system. As soon as we’re convinced that it is all an error we can head back to the center of the Galaxy do some quick animal collecting.”

“Prepare the ship for departure!” Poloskov gave the order. “Zeleny, to the engine room. Get ready with the antigravs.”

I sent over to the port to take a last look at a planet rendered lifeless and empty by a race of industrious robots who never thought about what they were doing; then I noticed the robot dispatcher was running toward the Pegasus across the dusty field. He was carrying something in his hands.

I went down the gang plank to meet him.

“Take these animals.” He said. “All you need do is change their machine oil; at the moment they’re all paralyzed.”

He pushed a pile of metallic objects into my arms.

“Farewell.” He said as I pulled up the gangplank. “If you should ever find that fiend in a hat and not know what to do with him, bring him to us. We have tons of ruined lubricants to smear him with!” The robot started to laugh and headed off into the dust.

While the ship accelerated for our hyperspace jump I changed the lubricating oil on the metallic animals. I really did want to get a look at the type of animals robots might come up with for their world. And when Zeleny looked into the lab two hours later he almost collapsed from shock. On the floor of the lab he saw little robot animals on wheels chasing after each other. As animals they were terrible, but they more or less resembled mice and cats. Evidently, when the robots built them, they still had memories of real cats and mice.

I placed the robot animals in a steel cage, but sometimes they slip out and go chasing after the diamond backed turtle.




Chapter Fourteen

The Chase for Milady deWinter


The Medusa system is located at the very furthest reaches of our Galaxy. It consists of three planets orbiting a large sun from which protuberances like long hairs flow out into the darkness of space. The first world, the world closest in to the star, is so baked by the heat that it was instantly clear that we would find nothing there.

We flew on to the second world.

The planet was empty, a gloomy desert. The rays of the sun beat back from shining grey rocks, from a lake of asphalt, from a few naked trees. An eternal wind howled over this world.

“Well, is it?” I asked the Blabberyap bird. “Is this the planet or not?”

The Blabberyap leaned its head to one side and gave me no answer.

“Pa,” Alice said, walking to the port hole in the crew’s lounge, “that’s no way to talk to him. He’s afraid of you?”

“But he’s not afraid of you?”

“None of the animals are afraid of me.” Alice said. She was holding one of the robot cats in her arms; it kept licking Alice on the nose with its cold, rubbery tongue. “Blabberyap dear, tell us, did you have to leave your master on this planet?”

The Blabberyap listened to Alice’s words and answered in the voice of the Second Captain:

“‘Beware of the mirages. Do not trust them. Do not get lost in them.’“

“Alas, I think the bird is rather stupid.” I said sincerely. “Is she talking about the planet or about mirages?”

“We’ll see.” Alice answered.

Rain was trickling down the ports; the rain itself was light but the wind blew it in streams that ran over and flowed down the Pegasus’ hull. Even looking out onto this planet was uncomfortable. A long, very boring, night had fallen.

“Oh well,” Poloskov said, “It’s too late to do anything outside today. I suggest we have supper and get some sleep.”

After supper Alice locked the metal cat in its cage, picked up a book and sat down on the small couch in the Crew’s Lounge. I set about searching for the runaway Diamond Backed Turtle, to make certain it did not get into trouble. Poloskov and Zeleny also had things of their own to do.

Two or three hours passed. I returned to the Crew’s Lounge. Alice was still reading. The lounge was comfortable and warm and especially pleasant now that, although the wind still howled beyond the port, the rain at least had stopped.

I walked over to the port and looked out into the half darkness. The plain was a barren waste people were slowly walking toward our ship across down the valley. They were Earth humans or very close, without space suits and helmets, in very strange clothing. They were carrying on a conversation among themselves and, it seems, had not at all noticed the ship. I whispered:

“Alice, take a look.”

Alice threw her book down on the couch and ran to my side.

The people came closer and closer and we could make out that they were dressed in camisoles, with enormously broad brimmed hats on their heads, and on top of the camisoles they had short capes. Four of them were men. Behind the men came a woman, slowly as if she were unwilling, with her hair done in an elaborate style on the top of her head and wearing a wide dress that went down to the ground. The men were arguing heatedly, the woman was silent.

“Alice, could this be a hallucination?” I asked, not believing my own eyes.

“No.” Alice answered. “Don’t frighten them off. I know them.”

“Seleznev!” The loudspeaker barked. “Seleznev, are you sleeping?”

I recognized Poloskov’s voice.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“On the bridge. Take a look out the port. Do you understand what’s going on.”

“I’m looking now.” I answered. “And I don’t understand anything at all. Where could people have come from out here?”

“But I understand it.” Alice said. “I know who these people are.”

I turned toward Alice.

“How come you don’t know them, Papa?” Alice sounded astonished. “Okay, maybe you’d forget the woman, but the second man from the right you have to know!”

“No I do not!” I answered. “Stop fooling around and tell me!”

“The second from the right, that’s Porthos.” Alice said. “Look, see how he’s bending down to d’Artangnan, listening to him. They must have decided to execute Milady de Winter after all.”

“What are you talking about, Milady de Winter?” I started to shout. “I must have gone mad. Where would Porthos have come from out here?”

“I don’t know.” Alice said. “But that’s them. The Musketeers of the King. If they had been the Cardinal’s guards we’d have known right away.”

“Poloskov, are you listening to this?”

“Of course I am.” Poloskov said calmly. “I’d say that Alice is completely correct. You could tell the Cardinal’s guards apart from the Musketeers right away.”

While we were speaking the four Musketeers had walked right up to our ship. I pressed my nose to the port to see what they would do next. The Musketeers stopped, and one of them I would guess it was Aramis, the handsome man with the thin moustache, waved his hand in an elegant bow to ask Milady to go forward.

“All very interesting.” Alice said, standing on tiptoe to get a better look down. “Are they going to execute her or not? What do you think, Papa.”

“I’m not yet thinking anything at all.” I answered. “Poloskov, can the steps be lowered?”

And suddenly the Musketeers walked further, right into the wall of the ship and vanished.

“They’re walking right through the wall.” I heard Poloskov’s excited voice.

Astonishing Captain Poloskov is difficult. He’s seen things ten times larger, ten times more amazing, ten times more mysterious than the ordinary man. Neither the Dragonelle Minor, Iely Jellybladders from Iely, nor space pirates frighten him. But Musketeers of the King, taking a stroll through the very walls of the Pegasus, are something he’s never seen before.

“Maybe they’re time travelers too, like the Sheshinerians?” I asked.

Alice ran over to the other side of the Crew’s Lounge and looked out the portal opposite.

“There they are.” Alice said. “Just like I thought. They walked right through the ship and didn’t even notice it.”

I ran to the other side of the Crew’s Lounge myself. And in fact the Musketeers had alked right through the ship as through it were not there, their swords glistening under the light of the two moons. They passed some rocks and vanished down a gorge.

“Let’s go up to the bridge.” I said to Alice. “We can get a better look from there.”

“All right.” Alice said and picked up the book she had been reading all night from the divan. The book’s title read The Three Musketeers.

That started me thinking.

“Hand me that book.” I told Alice.

On our way up to the bride I flipped through the copy. I flipped it open immediately to a picture which illustrated one of the King’s Musketeers D’Artagnan in a cape with his sword.

When we ran up to the bridge Poloskov, who had been standing beside the main port, raised his hand and called us forward.

Beyond the port, in the middle of the plain, stood a thin birch tree, its leaves rustling in the wind as if alive. Around the birch tree the ground was covered with grass, and you could see the hood of a large mushroom growing in the tree’s roots.

“This is somehow familiar.” Poloskov said thoughtfully. “I’ve seen it somewhere.”

“I know where.” Alice said. “It’s Zeleny’s favorite post card. It’s hanging over his bed in his cabin. He always looks at it when he reads poetry aloud. ‘….one last landing, on the globe that gave us birth….’“

“Mirages.” Poloskov said.

“Yes.” I agreed. “Of course they’re mirages, illusions, and the Blabberyap bird did not err when it warned us in the Second Captain’s voice about them. But who’s making them and why. To whom do we owe this rare amusement?”

The birch tree vanished in the darkness and we saw a strange procession moving in the direction of the Pegasus from the far side of the hill. It contained human beings, Fyxxians, beings from worlds and stars unknown to us, animals and robots. A crowd of mirages surrounded the ship as if they did not notice us. They walked straight through us, vanished into mist, split in two, and walked straight through each other.

“Pop,” Alice said, “Let’s go get a close up look at them.”

“I can see it all from here.” I objected. “We don’t know their capabilities. What if they’re not as harmless and insubstantial as they appear.”

We watched the wraith parade for a long time, and when the plain had finally emptied again, Alice began to plead again.

“Look Daddy, let’s go down before it’s too late. Hey, take a look at that. There’s just one mirage left, D’Artagnan.”

And in fact only a single Musketeer was left on the emptied plain; he began to walk back and forth not far from the ship.

“Go on.” Poloskov said. “Just don’t get too far from the ship. I’ll be watching to make certain nothing happens.”

As always, Poloskov guessed my desire. Of course I wanted to get a close look at our phantoms desperately. I was just worried that something might happen to Alice, but leaving the ship without her would have required a long and finally fruitless argument. She thought of the mirages as her own after all, she was the first to think of the Three Musketeers.

We went down the steps onto the plain. The land as completely empty. Even d’Artagnan had vanished.

“Let’s wait.” Alice said. “They’re bound to come again.”

I walked over to the spot where, not so long ago, there had been a birch tree. The only ground cover was small round stones, neither grass nor trace of leaf.

“Look at who’s coming, Pop.” Alice said. “Wouldn’t you know it!”

I raised my head and shuddered. Coming toward us I saw myself, holding Alice by the hand. For some reason we both were without space suits and helmets, wearing running shoes and, it seems, completely lacking any need to breath.

Alice ran forward to meet herself.

“Stop!” I shouted at her. “Where are you going?”

But Alice had already reached her double and run right through her, tripped on a stone and fell onto her knees. The mirage immediately vanished. While I hurried to Alice’s aid a new mirage appeared. He moved very quickly toward Alice, as though he wanted to grab her. But this mirage depicted Doctor Verkhovtseff. His hat was pulled down to his eyes and his sharp, narrow shoulders raised almost as high as his ears.

I stood between the mirage and Alice, shielding her, because I was not entirely certain that Verkhovtseff was just an illusion.

But the doctor did not notice Alice. He was walking in a straight line, laughing, as though he had seen someone. I looked ahead of him. Coming to meet Verkhovtseff was the fat man in the black leather suit. They shook hands and, their heads close together for conspiracy, began to argue about something.

Alice got to her feet and took my hand.

“There’s no way you can keep secrets on this planet.” She said. “So now we know that the fat man and Verkhovtseff are friends and they had some reason to try and get the Blabberyap bird from us.”

The mirages conversed soundlessly, and from the other side approached yet one more mirage. It depicted the Three Captains. But not made out of stone, like we had seen on the Three Captain’s Planet, but the real Captains in the blue uniforms of the Space Fleet. The Captain’s stopped, clasped each other’s hands as if saying good-bye. And immediately they wavered and vanished. In their place stood just one of the Captains, the Second. Tall, thin, with a curved nose. The Captain stood pensively, as though thinking of something. On his shoulder sat the Blabberyap bird. The Captain took a very long look around the valley and quickly headed for yet another mirage which had grown on the horizon. The mirage was a starship, blue, except where its hull had been inlaid with precious stones in the form of an enormous, dark blue gull.

And then the mirages dissipated. Verkhovtseff and the fat man vanished as well.

“I’ve never seen such a beautiful ship before.”

Poloskov’s voice came through my ear phones:

“Listen, Professor; you say you’ve never seen such a beautiful ship before? That must have been the Second Captain’s Blue Gull.”

“Of course.” Alice said. “Could it have been hidden somewhere around here? We have to find it!”

From the horizon where the Blue Gull had stood came a flash of light; we watched the ship rise from the ground and leave the planet.

“So your mirage flew away.” Zeleny said. “I would have thought so.”

“Yes, right after that the Blue Gull departed.” Poloskov agreed with him.

I bent down over the spot where Alice had fallen while running toward our doubles. I bent down because I had seen something very curious: two roundish stones were slowly rocking, as though someone had touched them. But no one had. Even the wind had died away. I reached out to touch one of the stones but it moved away from my hand, and suddenly a mirage began to grow from the stone. At first it was misty, almost transparent, but then it became Milady de Winter. Milady de Winter ran for the hills holding her skirts in her hands.

“Don’t go!” I said aloud. “Just like I thought. There are no miracles here!”

I jumped forward as thought I wanted to grab Milady de Winter; at the moment when I reached the spot where she stood, the mirage vanished. Under my hands lay a round stone.

“What have you got?” Alice asked. “Why did you chase after Milady?”

“I caught her.” I said.

Zeleny snorted a laugh.

“Nothing at all like that happened. Your Milady de Winter just up and vanished without a trace.”

“Actually, she’s in my hand.” I said. “So let’s return to the ship and I’ll explain it all.”

Back in the Crew’s Lounge I placed a roundish stone on the table, as well as another five like it that I had picked up on the way back to the ship. The little stones lay peacefully in a row. Quite ordinary stones, each about the size of a small potato, looking in fact like small, hard potatoes.

“Let me present this planet’s inhabitants.” I said.

“They’re living beings?” Zeleny was astonished. “I would never have guessed that.”

“With a very interesting ability. They can generate optical illusions copies of people, objects, not only what they have themselves seen for example the Three Captains or Doctor Verkhovtseff, but what they pick up from the minds and imaginations of visitors. Thus, for example, Alice was reading The Three Musketeers, she saw the book’s illustration and imagined how the Musketeers must have looked, and we in turn saw them. They were, Alice, exactly as you imagined them?”

“Exactly.” Alice said.

“As to whatever these stones might need mirages for, why they evolved the ability, I haven’t a clue.”

“Maybe they are just bored?” Alice asked. “All they do is lay around on the empty ground and get bored. So any visitor, any guest for them is just a marvelous diversion.”

“Anything else might be.” I agreed. “So, do we search here or fly to the third planet?”

“I suspect the third planet will be more interesting.” Poloskov said. “I looked at the long range photos and there was air, water, and vegetation.”

Then one of the stones turned itself into the Second Captain. The Captain looked at us with vast sadness in his eyes, but the Blabberyap bird said in his voice:

“‘Search for me on the third planet. Search on the third planet.’“

“There, you see!” Alice said.

We immediately took off for the third planet in the Medusa system.




Chapter Fifteen

The Crockadee’s Nest


Four suns rose and set quickly in the fast spinning planet’s sky, and nights were scarce and short; without some complicated calculations no one could determine at which moment it might suddenly become dark, the short twilight flash past and a short night settle over that part of the planet. Half an hour would pass, sometimes less, and another close star rose above the thorny bushes and temporarily rose into the sky.

The planet was overgrown with forests and underbrush. At the poles the forests were low and huddled close to the ground; in the tropics they rose to unbelievable heights.

The world turned out to be heaven for a biologist. What didn’t this planet have! The oceans overflowed with fish, jelly fish, crustaceans, sea snakes, the forests were filled with every imaginable kind of animal and butterflies with wings a meter long; different kinds of birds flew over our heads, to the jagged crags of the mountains and the endless hills.

“We can stay here a while.” I said when we climbed to the top of a hill overgrown with bushes. “One planet like this could fill fifty zoos.”

“Great.” Poloskov said. “First thing we can do is carry out some repairs to the ship.”

“That’s fine.” Alice said. “But for starters we have to find the Second Captain. I’m certain he’s around here somewhere.”

“Just don’t go off in search of him on your own.” I warned Alice. “There are some very dangerous animals around here.”

“But I’m the Queen of the Natural World.” Alice said.

“The animals here might not know about that.” I said. “It might not be something covered in their educational system.”

“Then how are we going to find the Second Captain?” Alice asked.

“First thing we’ll do is orbit a scanning satellite over the planet.” Poloskov said. “And have it hunt for metal concentrations.”

“Why?”

“As soon as it locates the traces of metals used in space ships it will let us know.”

“How long will that take?”

“To do a thorough job, about two weeks.”

“That long!”

“And in the mean time you can help me.” I said. “I dub thee Feeder of Animals.”

“And Waterer of Bushes.” Alice added. “Except they’ve run all over the place and I can’t find them.”

At that moment the youngest of the wanderbushes pushed his way into the crew’s lounge and timidly stopped in the doorway. He shook his branches and began to sing, trying to make us understand that he wanted fruit juice.

“Here he is now.” Zeleny the engineer aid. “It’s all your fault for spoiling him. Soon he’ll be old enough to bite. Give him his fruit juice, God love ‘im.”

The next day we rose early, at the break of dawn. Poloskov unpacked and programmed the metal detector while I loaded nets and the survey camera into the all terrain vehicle.

We were so occupied with our own work that we missed the moment the Crockadee bird put in its appearance. All I saw was that some sort of shadow had fallen on me and I heard the beating of wings that sounded more like beaten sails.

“Down!” Poloskov shouted.

I fell onto the grass.

The claws snapped shut right over my head and the Crockadee, having missed me, beat its wings to gain altitude in order to make another run.

It was only then that I managed to get a look at it.

It was an enormous monster about the same size as a small passenger flyer. It had very narrow, long wings, a short tail and powerful, clenched claws, like the claw of a steam shovel. The bird made a narrow circle, and, like a dive bomber, headed back down out of the sky towards me.

I tried to crawl away but realized I would never make it.

I closed my eyes shut and clung tightly to the ATV’s wheel. At that moment a shot rang out.

As it happened the engineer Zeleny was able to run to the airlock, grab a pistol and shoot at the bird when it was all of three meters from me.

The bird beat its wings and rose higher and higher into the air. One of its feathers fell and landed beside me. The feather was about a meter long and so hard that its end was driven into the dry ground to stand upright like a knight’s sword.

I pulled the feather out of the ground and showed it to Alice.

“Listen,” I told her, “the owner of this feather is extremely angry and would really like to have one of us over for dinner. You know what I mean?”

“I understand. But it can’t carry away the ATV, can it?”

“No, it can’t/”

So I’ll go with you in the ATV.”

“No, Alice.” I told her. “I’m going out on a reconnaissance now and I’ll be back around supper time. All of us, other than you, are very busy. No one else even to prepare supper and feed the animals. And don’t forget that the Sewing Spider is going to run out of silk.”

“Oh, all right.” Alice agreed.

“How’s it coming with the metal detector?” I asked Poloskov, who was sitting in the ATV.

“I don’t understand it..” He answered. “For some reason its not working. It’s never misbehaved before, now it’s not working.”

The All Terrain Vehicle drove slowly through the mass of bushes, bouncing through the rough spots and easily rolling down the hills. The bushes vanished in front of the ATV and popped up again behind us after we had passed. I was thinking how fine it would be to catch one of those birds. I had learned they were called Crockadees back in Palaputra. I really wanted to get one of those monsters for the Zoo, but I understood we would hardly be able to transport it back to Earth on the Pegasus. On the other hand, if we could find one of their nests, I could obtain a fledgling. The nests must be somewhere off in the high mountains none of the trees could withstand the weight of that bird!.

I turned toward the distant mountains. My road was crossed by procession of long-legged, yellow reptiles. In front, picking his way slowly, came the tallest; each succeeding reptile was shorter and shorter…. I counted all of twenty three. The last of the reptiles was very tiny. I could have caught him, but did not bother. First we would have to determine just what, exactly, they, and see if it was possible to transport them back to

A crockadee bird fly overhead, far high above us. It had set course for the mountains. Most likely the birds nested there.

I launched an automatic net and caught a blue butterfly with meter long wings with it. While I was using the robot arms to free the butterfly and place it in the ATV’s lockers without damaging its wings the videophone’s screen lit up showing Poloskov, a look of concern on his face.

“Listen,” he said. I just launched the metal detector satellite.”

“Great.” I said. “Give me a moment. I’m trying to disentangle this butterfly..”

“But the link with it has been cut off.”

“With the metal detector?”

“Yes. This has never happened before. I checked everything out myself. There minutes after launch, the metal detector went dead.”

“Which means you’ll have to go up in the cutter, catch the darned thing, and fix it.” I said, carefully placing the butterfly into a container.

“That was what I wanted to tell you. I’m setting off now; you should return to the ship. I really don’t like this planet.”

“You’re wrong, Gena.” I said. “The planet is tremendous. I’m glad we came here.”

“And what if the Second Captain really died here?”

“You believe that?”

“I don’t know. But if such an experienced explorer could be killed here, that means this planet is hiding some truly horrendous danger about which we do not even suspect.”

“And what if his engines just failed. That happens with even the best of ships. Or what if he was killed by one of the local animals. For example, the Crockadee. Did you get a look at the claws on that thing?”

“I most certainly have.”.

Poloskov turned off the screen.

Still another bird flew past overhead, headed for the mountains, and I committed its line of flight to my memory. Most certainly that was where they nested. We would most definitely have to visit there. Sunset came quickly. I headed back to the ship.

I parked the ATV right at the base of the steps and, in darkness and went up the steps to the bridge. The first thing I did was determine where my companions were. Zeleny was in the machine ship performing miracles with his tools. Alice called out from her cabin. She said she was reading. Then I contacted Poloskov.

“How’s it going.” I asked.

“I’’ve finally located where the recognizance satellite is.” Poloskov said. “I’ll catch up with it momentarily. Don’t go off-line.”

I sat down by the port and listened while Poloskov kept muttering things to himself while trying to corner the errant machine. The short night came to an end. I looked outside at the forest, the mountains, and considered what route I would take tomorrow. Along the river for a while, then up into the hills… I would hae to take Alice. Nothing could threaten her in the ATV…

“Caught it!” Poloskov declared victory. “Putting it into the hold and coming back now.”

At that moment I saw Alice and go out onto the field in front of the Pegasus. She was walking carefully, on tiptoe, looking up at the ports, but she did not notice me.

It was cool and humid and Alice had put on her fluffy yellow jumper. It was evident she was planning to go somewhere far off. But more remarkable was the Blabberyap bird pacing back and forth in front of her on the grass. He was tied to a long chain; Alice kept the other end of the chain in her hands. She said something to the Blabberyap bird and the bird bounded into the air. Alice let the chain out as far as she could so as not to interfere with the bird’s flight. He beat his wings slowly, as though he understood that Alice could not fly, and headed toward the forest.

At that point I came to my senses.

I turned on the loud-speaker and shouted to the entire forest:

“Alice, have you gone out of your mind? Come back at once!”

But then I was afraid she could not hear me and I ran down the landing steps to grab her and return her to the ship.

When I made it to the airlocks Alice was already at the edge of the forest.

And cruising overhead was an enormous Crockadee.

“Alice!” I shouted.

But she was too far off and did not hear my cries.

I was unarmed; I didn’t have anything at all in my hands.

What can I do?

Without any real thoughts or plans in my head I ran down the steps.

Alice had caught sight of the descending bird and, from terror, let go of the chain. The frightened Blabberyap bird darted for the trees.

I ran toward Alice and saw the Crockadee reach out with its white claws, catch hold of the fluffy yellow figure, and, gaining speed, beat its wings back into the sky.

I kept running, watching them grow smaller and smaller, the ascending bird beat its wings in giant sail sweeps…

Ten minutes later Poloskov landed beside the Pegasus. By then Zeleny ad I were ready to go on the chase. We were unloading the smaller landing boat.

“Where are you off to?”

“A Crockadee took Alice!” Zeleny shouted. I said nothing. The fear and pain had taken away my gift of speech.

“Jump up here!” Poloskov ordered. He brought his cutter down low enough for me.

I jumped up, caught the lower edge of the opened lock, and climbed aboard.

Poloskov immediately shot the boat into the sky.

“Which way did it go?” He shouted over the hum of the motors.

“That way, toward the mountains.” I answered. “That’s where the nest will be.”

It only took a few minutes for us to reach the mountains, but finding the right nest wold not be so easy. Thousands of single, sharply pointed peaks rose over the plateau, and we spent more than an hour cruising overhead, finding nothing. And with every minute that passed there were fewer and fewer chances we would find Alice alive

It was the Crockadee bird itself that helped us. We caught sight of it cruising over the mountains.

“After her.” I said.

“Hold on.” Poloskov answered. “We’ll frighten her and she’ll never show us where her nest is.”

Poloskov cut back on the cutters speed and we hung over the mountains. The bird was flying toward the highest peaks, where he had yet to check. Once there the bird descended in circles and landed. Poloskov immediately headed for that mountain, gaining height as we went.

Once we had reached the mountains five or six birds rose into the sky. They viewed our cutter as an unknown flying enemy. The birds threw themselves at us heroically, and Poloskov was forced to remember his best fighter pilot skills in order to avoid colliding with the enraged birds.

“There’s the nest, look!” Poloskov said.

I pressed my face to the port.

I could make out the dark circle of the nest on the steep slope of the mountain. The nest was comprised of stones and trees and stuck to a flat niche in the mountainside above an enormous chasm.

As soon as we got lower we could make out any number of nests with birds sitting in them, birds with wings spread wide as if covering the fledglings or eggs from potential predators.

“Look.” I said.

There was something bright yellow in one of the nests. The cutter, as if it were alive, darted for the nest, so fast it left the bird we were following behind.

“No, that’s not Alice.” Poloskov said. “That’s a chick.”

Three fledglings covered in bright yellow down sat in the nest. Having caught sight of us, they waved their hooked beaks back and forth. Then an adult bird darted past us, landed on the nest, and spread its wings.

“Take us higher.” I said to Poloskov.

Then we saw yet another bird. It was heading toward one of the mountains, carrying a large fish in its talons.

“After her!” I said.

The bird did not notice us. She was headed toward the most distant nest.

And in that nest, between to enormous chicks, sat Alice. From afar she looked like a chick herself, the fault of her fluffy yellow overalls.

On seeing their mother the nestlings opened their maws, but the big bird had lifted the fish to Alice and was attempting to insert its catch into Alice’s mouth. Alice pushed it away, but the mother bird was insistent.

Poloskov broke out in laughter.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the strange sight for a second.

“Alice was in no danger.” Poloskov smiled. “She was mistaken for a chick that fell from then nest and was due for a course of forced feeding.

Poloskov was right. What had saved Alice was her fluffy overalls.

We hung over the nest. Poloskov let down the steps and Alice climbed up into the cutter, while I frightened off the bird with sonic grenades and blaster bolts.

“Do you want to collect the nestlings?” Poloskov asked, still laughing.

“The next time, perhaps.” I answered. “How do you feel, Alice?”

“Not bad.” She answered.

She was covered in fish scales, but otherwise completely hale and hearty.

“I was just starting to get frightened.” She said. “And then, when she brought me to the nest, it was even comfortable. The chicks and I got along, but then the big bird naturally tried to get me to eat. You know, like your grandmother when she tries to put another spoonful of porrige down your throat.”

Poloskov was positively cheerful, asking Alice if she had managed to learn to fly, or if she didn’t want to return to her new family.

“But why did you leave the ship?” I asked sternly, after their levity had died away.

“I went in search of the Second Captain.”

“Why?”

“I overheard Poloskov say the surveyor satellite was working badly, and two weeks is really far too long to wait. And then I thought the Blabberyap might very well remember how to get to where he’d last heard the Second Captain’s voice. I asked him to show me the way, and he flew off.”

“And why didn’t you ask permission?”

“Would you have given it to me?”

“No, of course not. And there’s no Second Captain here. Forget about him.”

“No?” Alice asked. “He is here. It’s just too bad that the Blabberyap bird got away. We could have found him in two minutes with the bird.

“And what makes you think that?”

“What I found in the nest, of course.” Alice answered, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a piece of a porcelain saucer with “ue Gull” stamped in gold. “Blue Gull, right?” She asked me. “Or don’t you believe me?”

“Show it here.” Poloskov asked. — Nu i vezet zhe tebe.

“You don’t say.” Alice shot back. “To get this piece I had to take a flight in the Crockadee’s claws. Have you ever done that?”

“No.” Poloskov laughed.

“But the bird gave me the fragment itself. Evidently it keeps it in its nest as a toy for the chicks. So it gave it to me to play with.”

I began to think Alice might indeed be right. It did appear that the Blue Gull had, in fact, been on this planet. But how could we find it?

“Whatever happened to the probe?” I asked Poloskov. “I thought you had tested it earlier.”

“It’s very odd, but someone broke one of the connections to the metal detector.”

“Broke?”

“It was snapped. And it did not snap itself. The connection is located right in the center of the probe unit.”

“What are we going to do?” I wondered aloud.

We landed in front of the Pegasus and got out onto the grass and under the trees, looking up in the sky warily for any sign of the Crockadee.

“We’ll use the Blabberyap bird.” Alice said.

Then I noticed, hanging right in front of my nose, a thin chain that reached almost to the ground.

The blabberyap bird flew down from the trees and circled over our heads, as though inviting us to follow it in search of the Captain.




Chapter Siixteen

The Mirror Flowers


Alice held tightly onto the chain that held the Blabberyap bird. The bird did not resist or cry out; it was as if the animal understood what was wanted of it. It flew slowly over the bushes, and if we held behind it rose a little on the wind and tread the air, waiting for us to catch up. Our going on the ground was difficult; we were the first to tread the grasses and weeds of this world. We had to crawl across fallen trees, work our ways thorough long curtains of lianas and thorn, and cross swift flowing steams.

Yellow lizards on tall, long legs jumped out from beneath the roots and exploded running to warn the forest’s inhabitants of our approach.

When we came out onto a field overgrown with enormous numbers of predatory white flowers. The flowers chittered loudly, snacking on the butterflies and bees, and turned toward us, plucking at our feet with their leaves, but they were unable to bite their way through our boots and because of that they just grew vexed and wailed in protest. On the other side of the copse of trees still another meadow opened amid the trees. The flowers here were reddish in color. They papered to be very curious; as soon as we came through the trees all flowers turned in our direction was though they were looking at us and catching our scent. A vaguish whispering filled the field.

“It’s like they’re all gossiping with each other at once.” Alice said. “And they’ll be talking about how we were dressed and how we went through here until night fall.”

The whispering and muttering of the curious flowers seemed to go on forever.

It was a planet of flowers. On that day we encountered even more flowers that argued violently among themselves, flowers that huddled underground to hide themselves from us as soon as we appeared, that jumpped from plce to place, bolting into the air on long roots, and enormous numbers of perfectly ordinary flowers: blue, red, green, white, yellow, some of them on trees or bushes, others on the cliffs, in the water or slowly flowing through the air.

For about two hours we chased after the Blabberyap bird. In the end we were exhausted.

“Wait!” I shouted to the Blabberyap. “We have to rest.”

We hid beneath an enormous tree to avoid being seen from above by a circling Crockadee and found places to rest in the shade. The Blabberyap bird perched on a branch overhead and, as always, drifted off to sleep. It was a lazy bird and, when it was not speaking or not working, was not long for the waking world.

Poloskov sat down, leaned back against the trunk of the tree, and asked doubtfully:

“And what if the Blabberyap bird just decided tog go for a stroll?”

“Don’t say such a thing!” Alice said angrily. “If you think that way it will just be easier to go back.”

Unexpectedly the star slid behind the horizon and a short night commenced. Immediately the stars came out.

“Look,” Alice said, “one of the stars is moving.”

“More likely it’s an asteroid.” I said.

“Or it could be a ship.” Alice said.

“Now why would a ship end up coming here at all?”

The star vanished behind the trees. Five minutes or so later another dawn began, but this time three stars at once rose above the horizon and very quickly it became both very bright and very hot. All around bees were buzzing and grasshoppers made clicking sounds.

“It’s time to get up.” Poloskov said, rising to his feet. “The Blabberyap Bird is calling us on, ever on!”

“‘Forward!’“ The blabberyap bird shouted in the First Captain’s voice. “‘Onward, a tam razberemmsya.’“ Then it added in quite another voice: “‘To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield,’ as the famous Captain Scott said.’“

“See, papa.” Alice said. “He’s encouraging us. We’ll be there soon.”

I did not share Alice’s joy. I know what we would see if the Blabberyap bird did indeed lead us to the place where the Second Captain came down. We would see the shattered pieces of the Blue Gull entangled in vines and weeks, overgrown with flowers, and of the Captain himself we would be lucky to even find bones. But I followed after Poloskov.

We struggled through the dense underbrush for another half hour, and suddenly the Blabberyap bird darted for the sky, as though he wanted to test the strength of his leash.

“‘Remember this spot!’“ He shouted from on high. “‘Remember this spot, Captain.’“

Then the voice changed, and new words were shouted down:

“‘Grab that bird. Hold on to it! Don’t let it get out alive!’“

“Who is he imitating?” Alice asked.

“I don’t know.” Poloskov answered. “Verkhovtseff, perhaps?”

The Blabberyap was searching for something.

“Let go of the leash.” I told Alice.

She obeyed me. The Blabberyap bird flew higher and higher, turning into a dot among the clouds, and just as quickly dropped faster than a stone heading for the ground.

“He’s found it.” Poloskov said.

But then we saw that a Crockadee was chasing afer our bird. The huge predator was gaining.

“Shoot!” I shouted to Poloskov.

Our Captain clutched his pistol and fired without aiming. The Crockadee, which had nearly caught up with the Blabberyap, gave a loud squawk, it seemed to loose its trim for a moment, but the bird caught itself and continued its flight over the forest as though nothing had happened.

We rushed to where we had seen the Blabberyap come down. A large green meadow opened up beyond the tangle of bushes. It was surrounded by rounded hills overgrown with trees that could almost be described as paunchy. The Blabberyap bird was no where to be seen.

We stopped at the edge of the field. It was covered with ankle high, silky grass, and along its edges, as though they had been specially planted there, grew some very unusual flowers. Low and very wide, Petals of a metallic color surrounded a center the size of a large plate. The center was mirror bright, an almost convex lens that reflected the whole meadow. The flowers sat on short, fat stems without any leaves.

“Don’t get close to them.” I told Alice. “What if they’re poisonous?”

“No,” Alice said. “I don’t think they are. Look.”

We watched as a small animal similar to a rabbit jumped out of the bushes. The animal hopped up to the flower and looked up into the mirror. Then, just as quietly, as though we had not been there, it hopped back into the bushes.

“Some sort of error.” Poloskov said. “Not a trace of the ship anywhere. The blabberyap was just wrong.”

“Or we were wrong to go running after him as though we were small children.” I said.

“I am thinking just how far it is back to the ship. Maybe we should get Zeleny to come pick us up in the cutter or ATV, but I really don’t want to leave the ship unguarded.”

Alice had gone on to the middle of the field, looking around. She approached one of the flowers. The flower moved to follow her, as though it wanted Alice to look at it.

“Let’s take them back.” Alice said.

“All right.” I answered.

Poloskov pulled the portable metal detector from his pocket and made a circle of the meadow. The metal detector found absolutely nothing.

“There’s no ship here and there probably never was.” Poloskov said finally. “Let’s go back.”

We cut off a bouquet of the mirror flowers. The bouquet was heavy, as though the flowers had been cut from stone. We took turns carrying them, and I more than once wanted to throw away part of them, but Alice would have none of it.

We hardly made it to the ship alive. Fortunately, while we had been away, nothing had happened there.

“Well, how’d it go?” Zeleny asked. “A failure, I take it?”

“A complete and utter failure.” Poloskov answered, taking off his boots and stretching out on the divan in the Crew’s Lounge.

While we spoke Alice dragged in two large pans and filled them with water to keep the Mirror Flowers from drying out.

“Yes.” I said. “The ship was not there. Aside from that we lost the Blabberyap bird. Most likely he’ll end up as hors d’oeves in the diet of the Crockadee.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Poloskov said, laying on the divan. “Tomorrow morning I’ll start in on the metal detector, fix it, and we won’t leave this planet until we’ve found the Captain.”

Something hit me painfully in the leg. It bent down and saw it was the Diamond Backed Turtle.

“How’d it get out here?” I asked Zeleny. “I did lock it in the safe.”

“It made such a racket banging against the sides of the safe I took pity on it.” Zeleny said. “And what re those strange flowers you’ve brought?”

“Mirror flowers.” I answered.

Zeleny walked up to the bouquet and asked again,

“Mirrors?”

“That’s right.”

“Well I’m looking into one now, and it’s not reflecting me at all.” He said.

I turned and realized that Zeleny was competely correct; the mirrored centers of the flowers were reflecting not Zeleny, but Alice. And behind her head I could see the little figures of me and Poloskov. And we were not standing here in the crew’s lounge, but on the circular meadow.

“Now this is very interesting.” I said. “It means these flowers, while they are alive, record everything they reflect, as though they were photographing it.”

“Tuk, tuk, tuk!” The sound shot through the Crew’s Lounge. Poloskov jumped up from the divan and ran to the port.

On the other side of the port sat the Blabberyap bird, pecking at the plast with its beak in order to attract our attention.

“Just think, a bird smart enough to come home to roost.” I said. “I’ll let you in now.”

The blabberyap’s beak opened wide. He said someting, but we could hear nothning through the walls of the ship.

When I ran over to the airlock and opened it, the Blabberyap bird was already waiting for me. He flew into the ship and headed directly for the Crew’s Lounge. I followed after down the corridor. The bird flew uncertainly, then landed on the floor and walked on foot, limping. Poloskov opened the door to the Crew’s Lounge and, on seeing the bird, said:

“Come to gloat over the fine mess you’ve gotten us all into?”

The Blabberyap answered, if not to the point:

“‘I can’t hold out much longer! Is help coming soon?’“

“It’s the voice of the Second Captain.” Alice said. “He’s seen the Second Captain.”

“Alice,” I said, “for all we know the Second Captain may very well have said these words four years ago. You know what a good memory the Blabberyap bird has?”

“No,” Alice said, “he’s seen the Second Captain. We have to go back to the field.”

“No, not right now.” Poloskov answered. “Even my feet are killing me. And you, Alice, you’re ten times more exhausted. And anyway, the Captain wasn’t in the spot where we were. If there had been even a single nut or bolt, even a single screw within a few dozen meters surrounding us the metal detectors would have found it.”

“It only means we have to go a few dozen meters to one side.” Alice said insistently. “And if you’re not going, I’ll go alone.”

“Not before you get a good night’s sleep.” I said sternly. “And then we’re all going back there. We’ve promised that we won’t depart from this planet until we find the Captain, or until we’re convinced that he isn’t here.”




Chapter Seventeen

We Look Into The Past


Living on that planet would have been anything but easy. When we awoke in the morning our ship’s clocks showed seven in the morning, and beyond the ports it was growing dark and the short night had begun again. While we breakfasted the night passed and morning began.

The bright rays of the sun broke into the crew’s lounge and Alice, who had glanced into one of the mirror flowers that stood in a vase on the table, said:

“Look. I’m not here any more.”

The mirror flowers, which yesterday had reflected Alice, now showed us the familiar field where we had found them, but now the field was empty, visited by no one. While we looked into the mirror the field, in all the flowers, grew dark; twilight had come. We looked into the darkened mirrors of the flowers and I said:

“These are odd flowers flower cameras.”

A light had appeared from within the mirror. We all forgot about breakfast. None of us could tear himself away from the remarkable image. Unhurriedly, minute after minute it turned out, the flowers photographed everything that took place on the field. Now they were showing us.

“Now that is interesting. Just how long to these flowers live?” Poloskov thought aloud.

“I suppose a few days.” I answered. “Like all flowers.”

And immediately we found ourselves looking into the reflection of a small animal similar to a rabbit; it had jumped out of the bushes and hurried toward the flowers. It wasn’t yet dawn in the flower so we did not immediately realize just what was odd about the animal’s movements.

“Hey, he’s jumping with his end backwards.” Alice exclaimed.

The little rabbit-like animal really was approaching the flower with his rear-end forward. And then, having come to a stop in front of the flower, turned around and returned to the bushes in the very same odd manner.

“The movie’s broken.” Alice started to laugh. “Bunglers! Change the film!”

“No.” Poloskov said. “There’s nothing wrong with it. These flowers are not simply mirrors, they are mirror recorders. They might be able to do that if the outer layer which reflects and records grows constantly, layer after layer. Very thin layers. Millions of layers. Just one per image, and each image adds another layer to the flower. And so on. And when the flower is cut iot can no longer manufacture layers to the mirror, and they begin to decay, oe after the other, and as they decay we see what the mirror saw. Only backwards. Like an old fashioned movie fil being run backwards. Clear enough.”

“Quite possible.” I agreed. “A very interesting flower. But it’s time for us to get ready now. Let Poloskov ready for his flight with the resources sattelite and I’ll go down in thee ATV to that field and find out of there are any remains left over from the Blue Gull in the area.”

“I’m going with you Papa.” Alice said. “We can take the Blabberyap bird too.”

“All right.”

I headed down to ready the ATV and Alice remained in the Crew’s Lounge. She found watching the backward images more interesting.

“We’re ready now!” I shouted, sitting behind the wheel. “Want to get going?”

“Right away!” Alice shouted in answer. “Just a second…” and immedeatly she called me: “Papa, come up here! Right away! Before they leave.”

I made it to the steps in three jumps and ran into the Crew’s Lounge. Alice was standing beside the mirror.

“Look.” She said when she heard me enter.

All of the mirror flowers were showing one and the same image. In the middle of the field stood two men, the fat man in the leather buisiness suit and Doctor Verkhovtseff. Beyond the bushes we could see the sharp prow of a high speed starship.

The fat man and Verkhovtseff were arguing about something. Then the two of them walked out of view, backwards.

“They’re somewhere around here.” Alice said. They don’t know that the flowers have betrayed them.”

“Most likely you are right.” I answered. “But why, why?”

“Why what?”

“It must be they don’t know where the Captain is themselves. Otherwise why would they go chasing after the Blabberyap bird?”

“Maybe they have the Captain a prisoner and are afraid we’ll find out. They captured the Captain, imprisoned him, but the bird got away. And that’s what they’re afraid of.”

“But why would anyone want to keep him a captive? You’re being overly imaginative, Alice.”

“And you’re not going to do anything? You’re just going to leave him…”

“No!” I replied.. Inaction is the most feeble pursuit.

“Poloskov, Zeleny, listen. Alice and I were watching the mirror flowers and just saw the fat man and Verkhovtseff in it. That means they were here no more than a day before us. They had a high speed space ship. What do you think? Over?”

“I think the Second Captain is somewhere on this planet.” Poloskov said.

“And I think it’s best that we get out of here now.” Zeleny said. “There are just three of us, and our ship cannot be defended against attack. We should immediately go to a settled planet and get in touch with Earth or Fyxx from there. They can send a special Space Patrol ship that can deal with the unexpected far better than we.”

Zeleny, of course, was entirely reasonable. But he always overestimated difficulties and dangers. So I said:

“So far no one has attacked us. Of course that shouldn’t prevent us from taking defensive measures.”

“Right.” Poloskov agreed with me. “I really do not want to depart right away. For starters, though, we can do everything in our power to help the Second Captain.”

“Right.” Alice said.

“Now that’s unbelievable.” Zeleny said. “You can think that I’m being cowardly if you want, but I’m just trying to be rational. All we have on board are a kid and a lot of defenseless animals. We could end up being in a lot of trouble and not helping the Captain at all. But if Captain Poloskov decides that we have to remain, I’ll fight to the last bullet.”

“It won’t come to that.” I said. “I hope. We came here to discover if one of the Three Captain’s suffered misfortune or not. We’re not getting ready to attack someone and we don’t want to fight.”

“And for a kid I’m not that defenseless.” Alice said. “Can we go to the meadow?”

“Hold on.” I said. “Let’s do some more looking in that mirror.

But the mirrors showed us nothing. Not being able to wait Alice and I got into the ATV and circled the area of the meadow in it. We found only the traces of the landing of a ship on the other side of the hills. The ground had been churned up by heavy engines, and a narrow path run through the bushes toward the field.

We returned toward suppertime and found Zeleny in the Crew’s Lounge. He was standing in front of the mirror flowers in a pensive mood and twisting the ends of his beard in one fingers of one hand. In the other hand he held a vibroblade.

“And what are you thinking, Zeleny?” I asked.

“I’m wondering….” The engineer answered.

Reflected in the mirror was a quiet, sun drenched day.

“I am wondering,” Zeleny continued, “just how long these flowers live.”

“Probably some days.” I said.

“But what if they live not a few days but a large number of years? What if, year after year, they record everything that happens around them? Look how thick the mirrors are at least six centimeters each! And very dense. Over the last two days while we’ve had them I haven’t noticed them getting any thinner. Alice, do you mind if I perform an operation on one of the flowers?”

“Go ahead.” Alice said. She realized what was going to happen immediately.

Zeleny placed one of the flowers on the table in the laboratory, held it in place with clamps, and began a delicate operation.

“I’ll take off a little over a centimeter.” He said.

“Wait up.” I interrupted the engineer. “Start with the thinnest layer you can. Perhaps nothing will come of it.”

Zeleny nodded to me and turned on the vibroblade. The empathicator, white from curiosity, came out of its corner and silently padded nearer on its stick like legs. The bushes rustled their branches in their cage, thinking we were going to give them fruit juice. The Sewing Spider stopped knitting its scarf.

A thin, transparent layer similar to cellophane tape separated from the mirror. Zeleny carefully pulled it away and placed it on the table.

For several seconds the mirror remained dark, but at the very moment that I had already concluded we would be seeing nothing else the mirror suddenly lit up again, this time reflecting a windy, overcast day.

“That’s right!” Alice said. “We’ll be going deeper and deeper into the past!”

“But how are we going to calculate the days.” I spoke aloud. “We don’t know how think the layer of a single day is.”

Zeleny was not listening to me. He placed the blade to the mirror’s edge immediately removed half a centimeter of the mirror’s thickness. The layer straightened out. The Empathicator, changing colors like a traffic lamp at a busy intersection from impatience, was unable to contian itself and pressed its long, thin nose beneath Zeleny’s hand.

“That does it!” Zeleny grew angry. “I cannot work if you keep getting in my way.

“It wasn’t on purpose.” Alice spoke up for the Empathicator. “He just finds it interesting.”

“He finds everything interesting.” Zeleny said. “But I would not vouch for him.”

“Continue.” I asked.

Zeleny carefully removed another layer.

“Like the glass in an window, only it’s started to decay.” He said. We all bent down over the slightly thinner darkened mirror.

Then it lightened slightly, and then there was the very same field, but, but only the grass had become stormy, the bushes were bare, the leaves remaining on the trees had turned yellow. Neither butterfly nor bee was to be seen, it was oppressive and gloomy. Occasional gusts of snow fell from the overcast sky, but failed to accumulate on the ground as the flakes slowly melted in the grass.

“Late fall.” Alice said.

“Late fall, all right.” Zeleny agreed. He raised a magnifying glass to the mirror and said: “It isn’t visible ordinarily, but it’s very interesting to see how the the snow flakes appear on the bushes and then fly off into the sky.”

Each of us took our turn watching the backwards snowfall. Even the Empathicator took a look and turned a satisfied hue from surprise.

“How long has it been since fall?” Zeleny asked me.

“It’s summer now.” I answered. “The planet takes a little over fourteen terrestrial months to orbit its star for one local year. That means, just about one Earth-year ago.”

“A-ha!” Zeleny said, and pulled a micrometer from his workbelt. “No,” he said, “we may precisely determine how much one year is to a mirror flower…

“….and just how much I need to take from it in order to see the field as it was four years ago.” Alice finished the sentence for him.

“For starters,” Zeleny said, “we’ll cut away a little less than four years from the mirror.”

“Are you certain you won’t overshoot?” I asked. “If you cut off too much then we’ll miss the moment when the Second Captain was here.”

“Going too far won’t be a problem.” Zeleny said, marking off a thick layer. “We do have a whole bouquet.”

While he was speaking I saw the Diamond Backed Turtle hurriedly crawling to the lab exit. The little critter had managed to get out of the safe again. I should have run after him, but then I thought it over and realized I would have to pass up the moment when Zeleny removed four years from the mirror flower.

“How are things going back there.” Poloskov, who was still playing wizard with the metal detection sattelite, spoke over the communicator.

“Everything’s in order.” I said.

“Then I’m going on survey myself. I don’t want to let that thing out of my sight. For some reason it’s working unreliably.”

“When you go in search of the Blue Gull,” I warned him, “don’t forget there could be more than one ship on this planet.”

“I won’t.”

“Leave the line open. If anything happens get in touch with his immediately.”

“I’ll remember.”

“Maybe we’ll have a surprise for your return.”

“Great. Just remember I like good surprises. Don’t surprise me otherwise.”

Poloskov departed. We could hear the humming of the surveyor’s drives as it lifted into the air.

“All ready, Professor!” Zeleny said. “Shall we take the risk?”

For the third time Zeleny removed a layer from the mirror. This time it was so thick that he could barely hold it in his hands. The flower’s feathery petals were torn away, and all that lay on the table was the almost round, convex, center of the flower, much like a plate.

It was a long time before the mirror lit up again. It was a very long time since any light had fallen on that surface at all.

And when, finally, we saw an image, we realized the meadow did not look quite the same as it did now. The circle in the middle, now overgrown with grass, was empty, grey, like the concrete circle of a giant hatch. You could even make out the curving depression in the ground differentiating the circle from the surrounding earth.

“See!” Alice as overjoyed. “That is the right field!”

“Be very careful now.” I said. “You don’t want to cut of anything important.”

“I understand.” Zeleny said. “I’m not a child.”

But he was unable to make his precise incision. Dappled and very bright, almost transparent from impatience and intense curiosity, the empathicator managed, at the least opportune moment possible, to strike Zeleny’s elbow. The vibroblade slide through the thickest part and cut deep into the mirror. The mirror flower split in two and fell on the floor.

Out of total shame and embarrassment the empathicator shrank to half its size and started to grow dark. It wanted them to kill it. It rushed around the laboratory, striking the infuriated Zeleny, who tried to catch it, with its stick legs; finally, it threw itself on the floor and turned totally black.

“Don’t worry.” Alice tried to calm down the misfortunate empathicator. “That could have happened to anyone. We know that you didn’t do anything.”

She turned to Zeleny, who was still cursing the empathicator out at the top of his lungs, and said:

“Zeleny, please don’t! The empathicator is so sensitive he could die from embarrassment. And anyway, we have a whole bouquet more.” Alice pointed out. “You said so yourself.”

“All right.” Zeleny agreed. He was a retiring person and, in general, even tempered. Too bad. We’ve wasted so much time. But in a minute we’ll discover the secret of the Second Captain for certain.”

The empathicator, on hearing this, shrank down even further.

Zeleny led the way as we returned to the crew’s lounge. The empathicator danced in following us, still showing almost entirely black, and the vile looking bushes stretched out their branches to trip him so he fell.

We never even made it to the crew’s lounge. Zeleny stopped in the doorway and just said,

“Oh!”

I looked across Zeleny’s shoulder; both vases were overturned on the floor and the flowers were broken, smashed, destroyed by some ill-wishing force. Not a single complete mirror flower remained. Their leaves were scattered about the compartment.

And unknown to all the blabberyap bird had vanished again.




Chapter Eighteen

The Spy


The flowers were destroyed. The Blabberyap bird had vanished. We were back to square one. How could we help the Captain? I reached for the microphone and called Poloskov.

“Gennady,” I said, “we’ve got a complication. Where are you now, exactly?”

“Flying over the planet’s north pole. Haven’t seen anything yet. What happened back there?”

“No time to tell now. In general, we’ve used the mirror flowers to find out what happened here four years ago. Or more precisely, almost. Someone managed to break all the mirrors at just the right moment. We need more mirror flowers. How long would it take you to reach the field?”

“About twenty minutes.” Poloskov said. “But then I’d still have to decelerate and land.”

“Then don’t bother about it.” I said. “Continue your flight.”

“I don’t think so.” Poloskov answered. “I’m returning to the Pegasus now. If someone managed to destroy the flowers it means they’re still on the ship you have enemies right outside. Don’t take any actions without me.”

“Fine.” I agreed.

When I put down the microphone Alice said:

“The faster we get to the field the better.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Isn’t that obvious? To get new flowers. Their secret must be so important…”

“But…”

“Let me go there in the flitter.” Zeleny said. “Nothing will happen to me. I’ll dissect down to the year four layer and let you know right away…”

“I’m with Zeleny.” Alice said.

“I have no doubt you are!” I snapped back. “But we will wait for Poloskov. He has the landing boat and we can get to the field far faster than in the all terrain vehicle. And the worst thing we could do now would be to split up. And in the mean time we’ll look around and see how anyone could have gotten aboard the Pegasus at all to destroy the mirror flowers.

I went out into the corridor and headed for the airlock. If the airlock was closed, it meant that our malefactor was still aboard the Pegasus, hiding. If it was open it meant that someone had boarded our ship, performed his odious deed, and ran off. But I did not believe this very much. The perpetrator would have had to have gotten aboard the ship, found his way to our crew’s lounge, just to destroy all the flowers. And how was he able to know to do this while we were all busy looking at the flowers’s layers from four years ago? How could they have guessed? I could not understand this thug was able to hide himself on the ship and had found out we were about to solve the mystery of the Second Captain.

But who could it have been? Zeleny, Alice and I had all been in the laboratory together. If you ignore the Empathicator… Ah yes, the Empathicator! He had bumped Zeleny’s elbow.

“No, it couldn’t have been the Empathicator. True, he is a very sensitive creature, but really, he’s must an animal, that’s all he is, no more He can’t even speak. Or perhaps he doesn’t want to.”

Then I was at the airlock. Booth airlock doors were wide open.

All my theories came crashing down in tiny shards. There was just now way they could hold together. If I had just bothered to search my memory a little more I would have remembered that the Empathicator had not left us for a second and therefore could not have broken the mirrors in the crew’s lounge.

The airlock was wide open, and the mysterious malefactor had left our ship, carrying with him our precious Blabberyap bird. Perhaps the very last Blabberyap bird in all Creation.

The sun beamed down onto the meadow in front of the ship, the bushes were a palette of colors and birds were singing. Peace and contentment. It was even difficult to credit the idea that any very untoward events had occurred here recently.

I glanced up at the sky? Could that be Poloskov up there? Poloskov as not due for some time. So high it was right beneath the clouds themselves the Crockadee bird was circling overhead.

“Help me, Captains!” I suddenly head a familiar voice. “Forward into the breach dear friends, forward!”

“Where are you, Blabberyap?” I shouted. “Do you need help? I’m coming!”

“‘The grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men,’“ the voice of the Blabberyap sang from the bushes in the voice of the First Captain, “‘he marched them all up a hill, and marched them down again.’“

I hurried toward the bird’s voice, pushed aside the bushes and saw the Blabberyap bird. The bird could not fly because hew as holding onto the heavier diamond backed turtle with his front beak. He steadied himself with his feet, wings, and with his free beak he sang songs and called for help.

“There you are, thank goodness!” I said. “Thank heavens. And here were beginning to get worried that you’d vanished again.”

The Blabberyap bird proudly fluttered and then carefully folded its wings. It had done its job.

I picked up the turtle.

“Smart bird!” I told the Blabberyap. “You saw our prankster was running away, chased after it, caught it and dragged it home. For this you deserve five pieces of sugar tonight, no less.”

I headed back to the ship. The Blabberyap slowly followed as if on parade, all the time preening mightily.

“And you, stupid.” I turned to the turtle. “You forgot everything. Who is going to feed you here? Have you forgotten you are a rare animal and belong to the Moscow Zoo? And there is really no where for you to run away to around here…”

Just then I heard the rustle of wings over my head and in two jumps I had cleared the airlock. I had already learned what the Crockadee sounded like in flight. The Blabberyap Bird made it into the airlock with me and we slammed the door behind us. Then the two of us sat on the floor in front of the lock to catch our breaths, while the Crockadee meanwhile pecked at the sealed airlock door from the outside with its iron beak.

Alice and Zeleny met us in the corridor. They had become worried at my absence.

“All’s well that ends well.” I told them. “It turns out our Blabberyap Bird is a genius. It saw that the diamond backed turtle had gone off on a trip all by itself, chased it down, and brought it home. Here, look how frightened the turtle is?”

The turtle was kicking its legs and trying to break free from my grip.

“And how did the turtle manage to get outside?” Alice wondered. “The airlocks were closed.”

“Nothing astonishing about that.” I answered. “The one who broke the mirror flowers opened the airlocks.”

“And where did they get the ship’s key? And anyway, where is the Pegasus’s electronic key? It was hanging in the crew’s lounge.”

“This mystery would challenge Sherlock Holmes.” Zeleny said.

“Oh, I can solve it.” Alice answered. “I know the answer.”

“Well, what is it you know?”

“The solution to the mystery is in your hands.”

I looked at my hands. They were busy holding onto the diamond backed turtle.

“I don’t get it.” I said.

“Take a look at what its hiding in its beak.”

The turtle’s head was pulled up inside the carapace, but the small end of the Pegasus’s electric key was peaking out a little. I pulled on the key. The turtle fought back, holding onto it for dear life, and I was forced to use some strength before I could claim the key back. At that something in the turtle snapped, and its legs rolled out from inside the shell and hung lifelessly.

“Now that is interesting.” Zeleny said. “Give me the turtle. I’ll take a look and see what sort of song this bird sings.”

I still didn’t quite understand what exactly was going on, but I passed the dead turtle to the engineer and, perturbed, hung the key back in its spot. Zeleny lay the turtle on the table, pulled a screw driver from inside his jacket, and, having first examined the turtle from all sides, moved the screwdriver to beneath the shell. The shell gave a click, like the roof of a watch case, and flopped to one side, and I got a glimpse of a host of elements: memory cells, atomic batteries. The turtle turned out to be artificial, a manufactured miniature robot.

“Now we know why the turtle was so agile.” Alice said. “It got about the engine room as much as it wanted and was always tripping us up. Remember, Papa, it was always getting underfoot whenever we talked about really important things.”

“It’s a technical miracle.” Zeleny said with admiration. “There’s a transmitter here and even a tiny anti-gravity drive.

“That means that Fat Man knew our every word.” I said.

“Yes, of course. Fat Man!” Alice remembered. “The turtle was his gift.”

“And I felt uncomfortable in trying to decline him. He was so insistent on giving it to the Zoo.”

“Just so long as he didn’t give the Zoo a delayed action bomb.” Zeleny said gloomily. “That’s our enemy on the inside. The turtle transmitted to them what it heard in the lab, that we had found a way to look into the past, and immediately received an order to interfere. Then it broke all the other flowers in the crew’s lounge. And I take it none of you will accept my wager that not a single mirror flower remains intact on the field where they were found. The turtle’s master will have been busy.”

“That’s right, I won’t.” Alice said. Then she snatched up the ship’s key and ran off.

“Yes.” I said. “But right now we have one advantage over Fat Man and Verkhovtseff.”

“What?”

“They don’t know if we saw anything useful in the mirror flowers or not.”

“That’s not the most important thing now.” Zeleny answered.

“And what is?”

“The most pressing question is why the turtle suddenly fled from the Pegasus.”

“It had finished its work and ran off.” I said.

“But none of us suspected it at all. It had free access to the ship and was crawling all over us and even transmitting our conversations back to its masters. And it suddenly decided to run away?”

“Perhaps they need it more elsewhere now.”

“Unlikely.” Zeleny said. “I don’t like this business at all. Most likely it planted a delayed action bomb somewhere in the ship and at any moment we could be blown to smithereens. Ourselves and the animals. I propose we immediately evacuate the ship.”

“Wait a moment.” I stopped Zeleny. “If they wanted to destroy us they could have done it a lot earlier.”

We heard brisk steps out in the corridor, and suddenly Poloskov ran into the crew’s lounge. He immediately saw the disassembled turtle on the table and understood everything that was going on without our having to explain it.

“It means they are still on the planet.” Poloskov said. “The turtle wouldn’t have destroyed the flowers without their orders. It was just a robot.”

“They ordered it to set a bomb.” Zeleny said. “And instructed it to get out before it went up with us.”

We all turned to Poloskov, waiting for the Captain to speak.

“Nonsense!” Our Captain said.

“But then why did it run away?”

“It was carrying the key to the ship.” Poloskov said. “Who needs the key to a ship that’s been blown up?”

“No one.” Alice said. “But it took the Captain to think of it.”

“I used perfectly ordinary logic.” Poloskov said.

“But we didn’t.” Alice clapped her hands in delight. “We should have guessed that the turtle couldn’t have carried any bomb into the ship. When would it have been able to get out of the ship?”

“Also correct.” Poloskov said. “But that’s not the most important thing now. The fat man and Doctor Verkhovtseff suspect we are about to uncover the secret of the Second Captain, and they’ve decided to get rid of us and the Pegasus. Secretly or openly, I don’t know, but we should be expecting guests. We’ll have to get ready for their arrival.”

“But what about the remaining flowers? In reality, we really don’t know anything at all.”




Chapter Nineteen

“Where is that Darned Girl?”


Raising a space ship from the ground and moving it all of several kilometers over the surface of a planet is not at all simple. It is, in fact, far more difficult than just taking off from a planet. Not every captain would agree to such an attempt.

But Poloskov had decided to shift the Pegasus to the field of flowers. We were all far safer in the ship, and I was not going to allow anyone to go off on there own.

While Poloskov made his calculations on how best to raise the Pegasus the rest of us went around the ship to make certain everything was battened down and ship shape, the animals in their cages and the crockery in its cabinets. In general, after half an hour the Pegasus was ready for flight.

We had gathered on the bridge. Poloskov sat in the control hair, I in the navigator’s position. Alice sat close by.

“Engines ready?” Poloskov asked into his microphone.

“Ready for take off.” Zeleny answered from the engine room.

But before Poloskov could say “Take…” a curtain of white fire cut through the blue sky. Another space ship was landing right next to us. Trees were blown down and scattered by the backwash; the ground shuddered.

“Wait a minute.” Poloskov told Zeleny; he was staring into the view screen.

“What have we got now?” Zeleny asked.

“Neighbors have landed.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know yet. They’re behind the trees and can’t be seen. But get ready to take off immediately. It might be them.”

“Verkhovtseff and the fat man?

“Yes.”

We pushed ourselves into our acceleration couches, not tearing our eyes from the forest. It seemed to me I could even hear the opening of the other ship’s lock, the ladder falling to the planet… Then they were coming down the ladder, running through the bushes, whoever they were… Were they friend’s or enemies?

The bushes parted and a man ran out into the field in front of the Pegasus. He was in a space suit, but had left the helmet behind. There was a pistol in his belt. The man raised a hand, ordering us to stop. We all recognized him instantly.

“Doctor Verkhovtseff!” Alice said. “And he forgot his hat.”

“Verkhovtseff!” Poloskov repeated, and said into the microphone: “Zeleny, take off!”

At Poloskov’s words our ship began to move, first with a tremor, then it rose into the air gaining speed.

“Excellent, Zeleny.” Poloskov said.

“Who was it? Zeleny asked.

“Verkhovtseff.” Poloskov answered.

The Pegasus hung for a second over the meadow where we had first landed and Doctor Verkhovtseff stepped back into the shelter of the bushes. He waved his arms and was very angry.

“What?” Alice shouted, although Verkhovtseff could never have heard her. “Are you hands too short?”

“Alice,” I said reproachfully. “Is that any way to talk to your elders?”

Poloskov started to laugh.

“But he forgot his hat.” Alice said, as though she had not heard a single one of my words. “He lost his hat. He was in a hurry.”

The ship’s course bent into an arc as it headed for the field, and soon our enemy turned into an ant on the field, and I noted that he was hurrying back to his own ship.

“No, we’re going to have some time to look around.” Poloskov said. “It will take him at least half an hour to return to his ship, make fast the locks, and restart the engines. So we have half an hour to find the Second Captain. That’s going to take some doing.”

“Just as well they tried to capture us.” Alice said. “At the very least we know they’re not at the field.”

The circular meadow where we had found the mirror flowers was now beneath us. Poloskov carefully landed the Pegasus precisely in its center. While we descended I noted constant bright flashes in the sun, as though the field were sparkling with hoar frost. It was only when we landed that I realized that was not frost, but the remains of the shattered mirror plants. We were right our enemies had destroyed all the flowers.

The Pegasus lowered itself onto the grass and extended its landing struts, and Alice could not restrain herself and tore off her safety belt; she wanted to rush out onto the field. At that moment the Pegasus shuddered, shook, and Alice slid along the floor to the wall. Zeleny shouted from below:

“Why are we flying…”

Then there was a blow, and another, the engine’s awoke automatically as our ship fell into some sort of abyss. I wanted to pull off my own crash web to go help Alice but a single, final blow rendered me unconscious, and when I came to my senses our ship was standing, if at an angle, in darkness.

There were no sounds.

“Alice.” I asked, pulling off the crash web and getting tangled in it. “How are you?”

“I’m okay.” Alice answered quietly. “Just bruised a little.

Zeleny’s voice reached us from the other end of the ship.

“Hey! Where’d you land us, Poloskov? There’s no way we’re ever going to get out of this now!”

“Everything all right down there?” Poloskov asked Zeleny.

“I’m moving.” Zeleny said. “But where are we? Did we fall off a mountain?”

“Worse.” Poloskov answered, and turned on the bridge’s emergency lighting. The instruments came back on and burned like star clusters and galaxies in the darkness of space. “We’ve fallen underground.”

It was then that I realized it was all my fault. I should have warned Poloskov, told him what we had seen in the mirror flower.

“How could I have been so stupid?” I said sincerely. “When we looked at the mirror flower’s image from four years ago in place of the meadow was a concrete plate.”

“That’s right.” Alice said.

She found me in the twilight, crawling up the inclined floor, and took my hand.

“That’s right. There was a big slab.” Alice said. “And we forgot to tell Poloskov about it.”

“What slab?” Poloskov asked.

I told him about what we had seen from four years back, the field devoid of grass and flowers, just a large concrete plate that might even have been circular from what we had seen of the edge.

“I’d never have landed here if I had know that earlier.” Poloskov said.

He was very angry; any captain who’s ship crashes into an underground pit would be very angry.

“Oh well, crying won’t help.” Poloskov, who was able to keep control of himself, said. “Zeleny, can you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Get the flash casters from the storage locker and check to see how serious the damage in the drive room is.”

“I’m already on it.” Zeleny said.

Poloskov was all over the control console, pressing buttons and checking the readouts from the internal sensor net that told him the status of every system and machine aboard the Pegasus. In the end he appeared satisfied.

“Listen,” He said, “I’d say there’s no really serious damage to the ship, but one of the landing struts was damaged in the fall. So we have to go outside and determine how bad the everything is and what we can do to fix it. I’m going alone; the rest of you will stay aboard the ship.”

“Nothing of the sort.” I said. “You’re too necessary to the operation of the ship. If something were to happen to you the Pegasus would never take off again. I’ll go.”

“I’ll go.” Zeleny said from the engine room. He had been listening to our conversation.

“And me too.” Alice said.

In the end we were unable to convince each other of nothing and headed for the airlocks together.

“Odd!” Poloskov said as he opened the lock. “If we’d fallen into a pit or sink hole then there should be light coming down from above. It’s totally dark here.”

“Could it be that we’re really very deep, too deep for the light?” Alice asked.

“No. If we’d fallen very deep the ship’s automatic systems would have landed us without bending one of the struts. Since they did not have time to react the pit isn’t very deep at all.

Poloskov pulled the airlock door wide. On the other side it was pitch.

“Take a look.” Poloskov said. “Zeleny, give me the flash caster.”

“Oh,” Zeleny cried out, “I can’t. Something has grabbed me by the leg!”

Before I had a chance to go to help him Zeleny turned on the flash caster and began to shine it from side to side, trying to find what had attacked him.

But that turned out to be nothing more than the Empathicator. The animals was frightened in the darkness; it had gotten out of its cage and caught up to us by the airlock. In the flash caster’s light the Empathicator was a terrified yellow color. It moaned and clutched Zeleny’s leg for protection.

Poloskov took the flash light from Zeleny and cast the strong ray of light forward. Ahead of us was just darkness; the pit into which we had fallen was so great. Poloskov aimed the flash light upwards and illuminated an even surface, the ceiling.

“Like in a tea cup.” Poloskov said. “We fell inside and the roof closed over us.” He ran the light around again. “There’s nothing here.” He said. “There hasn’t been for quite a while.”

Poloskov let down the ladder and stepped down. He stamped his heels on the floor and turned back to us, saying:

“It’s stone. We can walk on it.”

We followed after him. While Poloskov made a circuit of the ship, looking for any damage the landing gear may have sustained, I aimed my flash light upward for several times. I soon found what I had been looking for, a thin line that ran along the ceiling, in a circle, marking the edge of the stone pit. Yes, Poloskov had been right; the roof had opened the moment we st down on it, letting the ship fall inside.

With the light of the flash caster in front of me I circled the ship in the other direction. It was dark as well here. I turned the flash caster on to its highest intensity and the light seemed to reflect off something in the darkness.

“I’m heading a little in this direction.” I said loudly so Poloskov could hear me. “There’s something over here.”

“Wait, Papa, I’ll go with you.” Alice said.

“Just don’t wander off too far.” Poloskov added.

Alice ran toward me. She was carrying a large flash light.

We went about twenty more steps, flashing the light ahead of us, and then realized that there was another space ship in the pit. When we got close enough Alice read its name aloud:

“‘The Blue Gull.’“

“Poloskov!” I called; the walls cast back my voice, strengthened it and turned it to thunder as though I were in a bottle. “Poloskov! Zeleny! We’ve found the Second Captain!”

I heard dull steps Poloskov and Zeleny running towards us. The bright white points of their flash lights jerking up and down as they ran.

“Where?”

The starship “Blue Gull” rose over our heads. It was dulled with dust that had covered it for many years. It looked dead, abandoned and bereft of human beings. A large lock had been placed on the airlock.

“So, now we known what happened to him.” I said.

“He fell into this pit.” Poloskov said. “Evidently the Second Captain could not get out.”

“We won’t be able to either.” Zeleny said gloomily. “We’ll have to end out days in this pit I told you we should have gone for help. I warned…”

“Don’t panic.” Poloskov said firmly. “We’re going to get out of this. And for starters I propose we board the Blue Gull. Now that we’ve found it we might as well go all the way.”

“The airlock’s closed and there’s no ladder.” I said.

And suddenly over our heads the ceiling burst into bright light, so bright we were all forced to close our eyes, and when I opened by eyes I was noted that an enormous net was dropping over us. A second later we were tangled in it like birds.

And when we tried to free ourselves, floundering and getting in each other’s ways, a loud voice bellowed down from a speaker:

“Don’t move an inch! You’re our prisoners!”

Shielding my eyes from the bright light with my palm I looked to the side from where the voice had come. The fat man named Veselchak U was walking towards us on the even shining floor of the enormous cave; with him came Doctor Verkhovtseff, again dressed in his hat. Both men held pistol pointed at us in their hands.

From the other side approached two more men in black leather uniforms.

“Throw down your weapons.” The fat man ordered. “Well, who am I talking to?”

“Do what he says.” I whispered to Poloskov. Only Poloskov had a pistol with him.

Poloskov pulled the pistol from his holster and threw it on the floor. The pistol clattered loudly.

The net rose.

For several seconds, until our enemies arrived, I was able to look around. The trap into which our Pegasus had fallen was an enormous if low cage. Two ships occupied it, standing some distance apart, the Pegasus and the Blue Gull. We were flies trapped in the blinding floodlights on the floor of the enormous room between them.

I looked around for my friends. Poloskov was looking at our approaching enemies and his mouth closed into a fine line. Zeleny clenched his fists and stood so as to guard Alice’s back. Alice held close to me; on the other side the Empathicator, yellow from terror, huddled at my feet.

“So the birds have flown right into our trap.” Veselchak U said. “Most good.”

He was in a rather jovial mood, but Doctor Verkhovtseff, who had managed to change out of his space suit and even put his had back on his head, appeared distanced, his face immmoible like a mask, his eyes empty and lifeless.

Alice moved about two steps from me.

“Where are you going?” I asked

“I’m here.” Alice whispered.

Two men in black uniforms aimed their guns at us while Verkkhovtseff obeyed the fat man and came directly to us and grabbed the Captain’s pistol. Then he quickly searched us, running cold hands down our sides and pulling out our pockets.

“All in order.” He said quietly. “They have no more weapons.”

“And where could they get weapons?” Fat Man burst out laughing. “They’re butterfly collectors. And they didn’t even guess they were about to fall into our little trap. Just like this one did.” Veselchak U pointed a finger as thick as three fat sausages at the Blue Gull. “And you fell into our trap on your own! We didn’t even have to send out a false message!” He burst into loud laughter. Then he ordered: “Tie them up!”

Evidently the handcuffs had been prepared earlier. One of the men in black opened a shoulder back and pulled out a pack of shiny new handcuffs.

While he untied the pairs of handcuffs the fat man walked directly in front of me, poked me with a fat finger, and said:

“Well, you still don’t want to surrender the Blabberyap Bird, do you, Professor?”

“No.” I replied.

“Look at him!” The fat man turned toward Verkhovtseff. “He’s worried about the Blabberyap bird as if it were an old friend. Where is the bird now?”

“I don’t know.” I said, although I certainly knew the Blabberyap bird had remained on board the ship.

Evidently the Blabberyap was needed by Fat Man after all. He told Verkhovtseff:

“Go take a look at the Pegasus.”

Then he turned back to me and added:

“You will be punished for telling me an untruth, Professor. And very painfully. My aids can do it. But not now, no, not now. Put the handcuffs on them. Don’t trust a word he says.”

A man in a black uniform walked over to me and placed handcuffs on my wrists. They clicked into place. My hands were now bound.

“The next one.” Veselchak U ordered.

His assistant went over to Poloskov. His movements were so precise and he moved so exactly and methodically that I began to suspect he might be a robot.

“The next one.” The Fat Man said.

The handcuffs rattled on Zeleny’s wrists.

The assistant leaned over the Empathicator and stopped in indecision. The Empathicator had ten legs, and all were so think there was nowhere to put the handcuffs.

“Idiot!” The fat man said. “Put them on the girl!” He looked around. “Where is that darned girl?”

Alice was nowhere to be seen.




Chapter Twenty

In Captivity center


“Where is that unmentionable little girl?” Veselchak U pouted, an the smile vanished from his face, and it was odd to see how his short, fat hands moved and fussed separately from the rest of his body.

“What little girl?” One of the black uniforms asked.

“There was a little girl here!” The fat man answered. “They called her…. Oh what did they call her?” He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a note pad and sounded the letters aloud: “A-L–Ice. Where is Al-ice?” The second time he spoke he was looking at me.

“What Al Ice?” I asked as calmly as possible. At the same time I would have liked to have struck myself in the head in bewilderment how had she managed to get away? We were standing right in the open; there was no where she could have hidden herself.

“There was a small female child.” The Fat Man insisted. “I saw her. Didn’t you see her?” He asked Verkhovtseff, who just stood there, shrugged, and looked like he was sleeping with open eyes.

The man in black who had gone into the Pegasus after the Blabberyap Bird returned; he carried the bird, grasping it around the legs; the bird’s head swung back and forth and nearly reached the floor.

“Ah, you found it.” The Fat Man was delighted. “Rip off its head.”

“What?” The other man asked.

“The head, I say, the head; rip it off. We don’t need it any longer.”

“You’ll do no such thing!” I was horrified. “You can’t kill the Blabberyap bird. It may be the very last Blabberyap bird in existence.”

In desperation the Empathicator turned blue and rushed toward the Blabberyap bird on its thin legs, hoping, evidently, to set the bird free. But Veselchak U had noticed and burst out laughing.

“And as for you!” The Fat Man said, turned somewhat gracefully for such a fat man, and tripped the Empathicator with one leg.

The Empathicator collapsed and turned black from shame.

“Well,” The Fat Man said, “Why are you wasting time. I’ve already told you we no longer need the bird. Rip it’s head off.”

I don’t know if the Blabberyap understood the Fat Man or not, but, held firmly in the hand of the black clad pirate, the bird began to recite in an unknown voice:

“The Blabberyap bird is protected by the laws of the planet Blooke as an extremely rare and interesting creature. The hunting of the Blabberyap bird is forbidden, and violators of this law will suffer fines and social disgrace.”

“Your goose is cooked anyway!” Veselchak U roared. “And our hands are full enough without him!”

Suddenly something completely inexplicable transpired. The man in the black uniform lifted the Blabberyap bird high in order to grasp its neck, but as soon as he reached out his hand he suddenly lost his balance and fell with a crash to the floor, shouting from surprise, and released the Blabberyap bird. The Blabberyap clutched the air with its wings and flapped its way to the ceiling.

“Shoot!” The fat man shouted, grabbing for his pistol. Shots rang out. One or two blaster bolts almost hit the Blabberyap bird, but it twisted and turned in the air and vanished into the distance, to the cavern’s darkened end.

The men in black started to run after the Blabberyap bird, but Veselchak U stopped them.

“There’s no where it can run to now. Let it go, idiots! You, why did you fall?

“I didn’t fall.” The man in the back uniform said. “I was pushed.”

“Silence!” The fat man shouted to everyone; his jello cheeks shuddered. “Stop your excuses or I’ll push you down myself and then you won’t get up ever again! Don’t bother to chase after him. The bird’s lost in the tunnels now, and we don’t have too much time. we have other business.”

The fat man turned to the silent, dead starship that was the Blue Gull, and asked aloud, as though the ship could hear him:

“You hear me?”

The ship didn’t answer.

“Okay, so don’t say anything.” The fat man said. “It doesn’t matter. I know you can hear us. You’ve been sitting there and observing, thinking, what did I drag the Pegasus in here for? I dragged it in her to force your surrender now.”

Veselchak U walked closer to the Blue Gull and continued.

“You’ve held us off for four years. For four years you’ve hoped your friends would save you. For four years you haven’t believed that no one knows where you are. You’ve lived on the hope your rotten bird would make it to Venus. I kept thinking that you were going to die in your own cage. But today everything’s changed. Today you’re doing to open your ship’s airlock and surrender what belongs to me by right. Are you listening, Captain?”

Nothing answered the fat man back. His voice traveled around the cavern and was reflected from the distant walls. The echo died down, and the fat man let out a sigh.

“Where is that girl?” He muttered. “The girl would be really useful…”

Doctor Verkhovtseff stood a little bit off and looked at the ground. Two other men in black uniforms stood off to one side and held their pistols ready to fire at any moment.

“I know you can hear me, Captain.” Veselchak U began again. “You burrowed into your hole, planning to sit us out. Well look out your ports. Here we have three people from Earth: an idiot professor who gads about the Galaxy collecting animals, as though he couldn’t think of anything better to do; another strong and silent type Captain, and an idiot engineer with a red beard.”

Although I heard everything that was going on around me, in reality my thoughts were still filled with worries of Alice? Where could she have vanished to? Where was she hiding?

“You’ve put sand into the machinery for too many years now.” The fat man continued, looking at the Blue Gull. “But this day is mine! This day you will surrender the formula to me. Are you listening?

“He’s not saying anything.” The fat man said in another voice, almost a whisper. “He’s thinking. Now we hurry him up. Too bad the girl managed to get away. It would have been a lot easier with the girl…”

He pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his sweaty forehead with it.

“Listen, Captain.” He said. “You have three minutes to open your airlock and give me the formula, or I’ll give the order to kill our captives. But not right away. No, not right away. The first thing I’ll do is cut off the idiot professor’s ears. My peeve is greatest with him. He refused to give me the Blabberyap bird. He…”

“Wait up, fatso.” The voice of the Second Captain came over the ship’s exterior loud speaker. The voice was familiar; I had heard it a few times when the Blabberyap Bird had perfectly duplicated unknown voices.

“Then you are alive still.” Veselchak U said.

“There’s no place for you in this Galaxy.” The Second Captain continued. “They will find you, they will capture you, where ever you may hide. Your best chance is to take my advice and surrender…”

“Shut up!” The fat man shouted “You have nothing to offer me! Thanks to you and your friends I’ve lost nearly everything, but this last thing I won’t surrender. The galaxion will be mine!”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, pirate.” The Second Captain said. “Of course you wouldn’t know what shame is…”

We did not understand very much of what they were talking about. What was clear, was that the Second Captain had something and the Pirate was very interested in obtaining it. But he could not obtain it, he could not seize it. I had never heard the word ‘galaxion’ before, but it was clear that the Blue Gull’s Captain did not want to surrender it.

“Don’t waste my time.” The fat man said. “Your quaint ideas and notions are of no interest. Shame is only for the weak. We, the strong, have no need for it. Now, are you going to surrender the formula for galaxion?’

“I have to speak with these people first.” The Second Captain said.

“No.” The fat man answered. “You won’t be speaking with them. You’re trying to gain time, trying to deceive me. Open the lock now and give me the galaxion formula and I promise to set you and these people free. Someday. But if you do not do what I want you can listen to their screams for days and days. That’s what having shame and a conscience will get you.”

“That won’t happen, fat man.” The Second Captain said. “Since I landed on this planet four years ago you’ve tried to think of every possible means of getting the formula for absolute fuel from me, and nothing has come of it. Nothing will come of it today. Do you know what I will do?”

“What?”

“I’ll blow up the Blue Gull. I’ll die, but you will never get the galaxion formula. If you ever got your hands on it you’d create so much misery for the Galaxy’s inhabitants it would take a decade to set everything right.”

“Yes, it will!” Veselchak U said. “But don’t think that you can save the idiot professor and his people by blowing up the Blue Gull; no, that is a mistake. I give you the solemn word of the Black Cloud gang that they will suffer oh, how they will suffer. Why other use are captives to me. As soon as I set them free they’d tell the Galactic Patrol all about my little world here, and in a month every police ship in the Galaxy would be hunting for me. No, I want them thinking I’m dead now and for a good long while to come.”

“Then there’s no reason for me not to tell these people everything. I’ve never met them before, but if they’re your captives that serves as a good enough character reference. We’ll hear what they say once I’ve told them my tale.”

“No!” The fat man shouted.

“Shut up.” The Captain said calmly. “Are you going anywhere soon? Desperate to carry out our threat?”

“Let him talk.” Doctor Verkhovtseff said suddenly. “He knows they had the Blabberyap on their ship. Let him talk; it won’t save them.”

The fat man clasped his hands. “All right.”

“Then listen, professor, gentlemen. There were three of us, three star captains. Many years ago we learned that actual space pirates had appeared in the Galaxy. These pirates wanted money, precious jewels, but mostly they wanted power. They wanted to become Lords of the Galaxy. We learned about them when they attacked the planet Triada and stole a ship from there. We finally caught up with the pirates when they conquered another world and forced its natives into slavery. That was where they began to build warships in secret so they could attack the trade routes. I could take a long time describing how we tracked them down, how we infiltrated the enslaved planet, and how we led an uprising against the conquerors…”

“You took us by surprise.” The fat man roared.

Doctor Verkhovtseff waved his hand: “Let him talk. He doesn’t have much time left for it.”

“And so,” The Captain waited until the pirates grew silent, “two of the pirates were able to get away. For some years they hid out here at the outskirts of the Galaxy, far from the main trade routes. Everyone forgot there had ever been pirates.”

“But we didn’t.” The fat man said. “We didn’t forget anything.”

“Yes.” The Second Captain agreed. “They have forgotten nothing, and learned nothing, and have not abandoned their plans. Most of all, they want revenge on us, the three captains who stopped them the first time.

“And we have our revenge!” Veselchak U said.

“Slow down. Nothing has been resolved yet. And in the final analyses you are going to loose. There’s no way you can overcome the entire Galaxy.”

“But we will.” The fat man said.

The Second Captain ignored him. He continued.

“A number of years passed. The three of us split up. The First Captain flew off to the Venus terraforming project. The Third Captain decided to make the jump to the Andromeda Galaxy, because no one had ever visited our neighboring galaxy before. I busied myself with scientific observations. Then suddenly I received a transmission from the Third Captain. He advised me that he was returning from his expedition. The transmission was very unexpected, because no one expected him to return so soon. My friend asked me to meet him at the edge of the Galaxy, because he had very important news for us. I abandoned my work and hurried to meet him.”

“But he didn’t know that we had intercepted the transmission.” The fat man boasted, clasping and unclasping hands, “and we knew everything.”

“Yes.” The Second Captain said. “They had intercepted the Third Captain’s transmission, because the planet on which they were hiding out on was the same world to which I and my friend were now hurrying. My friend was seriously ill. The long flight, longer than any taken by any inhabitant of our Galaxy, had sapped his strength, and he was afraid he would be unable to reach Earth or his home planet Fyxx. And he was carrying very important information. The inhabitants of the Andromeda Galaxy had given him the formula for galaxion, the ultimate fuel source, the means of tapping into the energy of space itself. A ship with galaxion powered engines will fly a hundred times faster than anything now in space. Planets will become as close as neighboring cities on Earth or Mars. The Andromedans had rebuilt his engines to use the fuel source, and the Third Captain was flying toward this planet without suspecting that it was a pirate lair, and he landed here. His sickness had progressed so far he could no longer pilot his ship. The pirates marked where his ship landed and followed after, but they made no attempt to take him. They decided to wait for my arrival and learn just what the important news the Third Captain was bringing. While he was unconscious they got aboard his ship and placed listening devices, while the ship itself they moved to the false field above here.

“You must admit we did an excellent job of preparing for your arrival.” Veselchak U said.

“When I landed my ship beside the Third Captain’s I found my friend in very serious condition. The Captain told me of his voyage and about the formula for galaxion. I realized that the most important thing now was to get Third to Earth, where he could be cured. But I also knew he would not survive the trip through space, and I decided to remain here with him until he grew a little stronger. I hurried back to my own ship for medicines, but while I was searching through the medical supplies the pirates tipped the lock above us and both our ships dropped into this cavern.

“It all went according to plan!” The fat man said.

“Naturally,” the Second Captain continued, “they feared attacking me above ground. When I came to I saw the Blue Gull was in a cave. They flicked on the light, and the creature now standing next to you came into it. I recognized him and realized the pirates had out-tricked me. They promised to free me in exchange for the galaxion formula. They boasted how the fuel source would make their ships fly so fast no one else would be able to catch them, they would have nothing to fear from the Space Patrol, and every cargo ship in the Galaxy would be theirs for the taking. I realized that there was no way I could possibly give them the formula and could never allow myself to fall into their hands alive. I smashed the lock and refused them entry to the Blue Gull.”

“What happened to the Third Captain?” Poloskov asked.

“They tried to cut into our ships to take us captive. They succeeded with the Third Captain’s ship, and he fell into tier hands. Most likely they murdered him.”

“Not true!” The fat man said. “Not true at all. He died all on his own, from his sickness. You yourself know how seriously ill he was. When we cut through into the ship he was already dead.”

“But they were unable to cut into the Blue Gull.” The Captain said. “My ship’s hull is composed of a diamond based composite material. On board I had a blabberyap bird, a gift from the Firs Captain. The two of us had an agreement; if anything were to happen I should let the Blabberyap bird go with instructions to fly to Venus and seek out the First Captain. The First Captain knows how to get the bird to tell him where I am and what happened to me.”

“But we couldn’t.” I said. “We got the Blabberyap to say a few things, but, unfortunately, not very much.”

“But how did you acquire him?” The Second Captain asked.

“He was wounded,” I said. “from when the pirates were chasing him.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” The fat man agreed.

“But the blabberyap bird was able to get away. He made it to the planet Eyeron and the robots their fixed his wing…”

“And for that we contaminated all the machine oil on the planet; the robots are all paralyzed, frozen unable to move.” The fat man said laughing so hard all his jello chins shook.

“We fixed the robots.” I said. “They’re doing quite well now.”

“What?”

“I said we were on that planet, and we cured the robots.”

“Damnation!” The fat man shouted.

“But the Blabberyap was unable to reach the Sol system with a metal wing, unfortunately,” I said, “It only just made it to its native planet.”

“W searched for it there.” The fat man admitted. “My friend and I.” He indicated Doctor Verkhovtseff.

“Traitor!” Zeleny said gloomily. “Wait ‘til I get my hands on you!”

“Silence!” Veselchak U threatened him with a finger. “My friend and I killed all the Blabberyap birds on the planet Blooke. We bought them, traded for them, stole them. At first we tried to destroy all the free oxygen on the planet…”

“With the worms? I asked.

“Of course with the worms. Alas, we were unsuccessful. And completely by accident the Blabberyap bird fell into these idiots’ hands.” The fat man said. “And they managed to get here. We did warn them. They have no one but themselves to blame for the consequences. But now you will have to suffer…”

“Don’t worry.” The Second Captain said “They won’t be able to do anything to you. They’re far too cowardly. All the pirates in the Galaxy were unable to defeat the Three Captains, and they’re not going to win over us one by one either.”

“No, we have!” The fat man shouted. “The Third Captain is dead already, and you’ve been sitting here our prisoner for four years, and as soon as we get the galaxion formula we’ll go after your First Captain as well.”

“You’ve really been confined to your ship for four years?” Poloskov asked.

“Yes.” The Second Captain answered. “I admit to being rather pig headed. I could have destroyed the formula, naturally, but that would have deprived the inhabitants of the galaxy of it and it is very important they get it; all planets will be a hundred times closer to each other in travel time. I knew that sooner or later help would arrive.”

“And this is what you got.” The fat man said. “Have you talked yourself out, Captain. Now you are going to have to part with the formula.”.

“I have another agreement with the First Captain,” the Second Captain said. “If he did not hear from me for more than four years he was to notify the Space Patrol and send them off in search of me. Now, if these people found me so soon, then the First Captain will have little trouble, something you well know.”

“Perhaps, and you’re done talking.” Doctor Verkhoovtseff said hollowly. “Begin; he’s just wasting time.”

Then one of the pirates came over to me and grabbed me roughly by my bound hands. I lost my balance and fell. He dragged me to the side. I tried to resist, but a second pirate joined the first and they had be by both arms and legs

The fat man pulled a long knife from his belt.

“You know, Captain,” he said, turning to the ship, “I do know how to joke; that’s what my name means in my own language. But many, many of my jokes produce tears.” He raised his knife.

Poloskov and Zeleny tried to get free and come to my aid, but Doctor Verkhovtseff, who had been watching us all very carefully, shot the two off with anesthetic gas from a dispenser that hung from his neck on a cord. My friends collapsed on the floor.

“Well?” Veselchak U said.

I could feel the cold, sharp knife edge touching my throat.

“Take off the lock.” The Second Captain said.

“Well, that’s settled..”

The Fat Man motioned to the other pirates who went up the metal steps to the Blue Gull’s airlock and removed the enormous lock. The pirates had placed it there long ago, as soon as the Blue Gull had fallen into the pit. If the Second Captain managed to keep them out of his ship, they certainly did not want him leaving the ship without their permission.

The pirate hurried down the gangway and stopped at some distance from the ship, aiming his pistol at the airlock. Verkhovtseff also raised his weapon. They wanted to take no risks. The four of them feared the single Captain, who had held them off for the last four years.

“Show yourself.” Verkhovtseff said. “No tricks or we’ll fire.”

The airlock suddenly swung wide; I could hardly get a glimpse of the Captain. He jumped down like blue lighting. Two shots were fired simultaneously, but the Captain was no longer there. He had jumped to one side, and the flashes from the pistols struck the stones by his head. Another second and the Captain was shielded by the Blue Gull’s wide landing struts.

The pirates scattered and hunkered down against the stone floor.

“Calmly,” Verkhovtseff’s voice carried to me. “He’s not going anywhere. Surround him.”

In answer shots came from the direction of the Blue Gull.

I could see that the Captain had no way out of his predicament. The pirates were slowly, crawling over the stones, moving to surround him.

“Don’t shoot!” The Fat Man shouted.

His voice came from close by; then I saw that he had the knife pressed beneath my throat again.

“Shoot and the Professor is done for.”

At that moment a voice came from the direction of our ship:

“Don’t move! You’re surrounded.”

The Fat Man’s hand with the knife froze. I pushed the knife away with my fist and it flew a few meters to one side.

“Are you listening?” Another voice came from the darkness at the end where the Blabberyap bird had headed. “Throw down your weapons.”

The pirates slowly got to their feet; their pistols clattered on the stones.

I raised my head and saw Doctor Verkhovtseff, in a space suit without a helmet on, come out from behind one of the landing struts.

In astonishment I turned back to the other side.

The second Doctor Verkhovtseff, in his hat, raised his hands and fell to us knees.

From the other side of the pirates came the First Captain. Just like he was in the monument on the Three Captain’s Planet, only alive, sunburned, and in the blue uniform of a captain of the Deep Space Fleet.

From out of nowhere flew the blabberyap bird and, fluttering its wings, it alighted on the Captain’s shoulder. Then, from out of the darkness, came Alice.

.




Chapter Twenty-One

At that time…


Alice had vanished at the very moment when we found ourselves to be captives, and what happened was that no one in the cave paid the slightest attention to her disappearance, not even me.

How she was able to accomplish this I only managed to learn later, however I am going to describe everything in order, what happened to Alice while we were captives, and how it was that the First Captain and Doctor Verkhovtseff (that second Doctor Verkhovtseff) found the entrance to the cave and were able to save us.

What had happened was this. Alice had been given as a gift an invisible hat while in the bazar in Palaputra. She was given it by the Dwarf who sold non-existent fish, the one who said they just could not be seen.

At first Alice decided that this was a joke the hat was so light that it weighed almost nothing at all. But when Alice returned to the ship she found herself alone in her room and began to examine the stamps that she had bought, and she found something in her bag. It was almost completely weightless and invisible. It was then that Alice remembered about the invisible hat and decided test it and so she put it on her head. And Alice became invisible.

At first Alice wanted to run to me or Poloskov and boast about the hat, but then she remembered that, in the view of science, invisibility is a fairy story, and she decided that if she told us that an invisibility hat really existed, we wouldn’t even want to look at it and would not believe her.

She put the invisible hat to one side until the return to Earth, because such a hat would really prove most useful in school. If you were late for a lesson then you could always enter the class and seat yourself at the right spot anyway because no on would see you. You could even take a peek into the best student in class’s notebook (Although Alice would certainly never have done any such thing.)

Alice always carried the invisibility hat with her in her shoulder bag, and when the lights had come on in the cavern and the Fat Man and his cronies appeared Alice quietly slipped the invisible cap on her head and vanished. But she did not leave the cavern. She expected that they would confine us somewhere and she would be able to steal the key and set us free.

She moved to one side and listened to everything the Fat Man said. She would have made no move except that the pirate had come back with the Blabberyap bird dangling from his legs and the Fat Man gave the order to kill the Blabberyap bird, because the pirates no longer needed it, and then Alice knew she would have to act.

Alice crept over to the pirate on tiptoes and tripped him. The pirate fell, the Blabberyap bird got free, the shooting started, and the Blabberyap bird flew off.

What should she do now? Alice then thought: “The Blabberyap bird will fly away. It did fly out of here before. The Second Captain released it from his ship and the Blabberyap found its way out of the cavern. That means, the Blabberyap already knows how to get outside.” So Alice hurried after the Blabberyap. She was thinking that as soon as she saw where the exit was she would immediately come back to us, free us from this prison and lead us to freedom.

At first she was running in the dark. The light from the main hall penetrated into the long corridor only weakly. The Blabberyap bird flew ahead, and Alice could see him no longer she was following him by hearing, by the flapping of his wings. As soon as they had gotten well away from the pirates Alice called out to the bird in a low voice:

“Blabberyap, wait up!”

The Blabberyap bird heard her voice. At that very moment they came to the next hall in the underground maze; it was lit up, smaller than the first and filled with a small black space ship. But Alice forgot she was invisible and did not remove the cap. The Blabberyap bird made a circle over Alice, shaking its uncertain crown, and flew further, into a low tunnel which was hidden behind some protruding rocks. Alice forced her way into the tunnel as well. It rose sharply toward the surface, and far, far away she could make out a white circle daylight.

Alice was getting ready to clamber up the tunnel when she suddenly heard a weak groan.

The groan came from another tunnel, a tunnel as black as a moonless night. Alice approached the tunnel carefully. The groan was clearly audible, but Alisa had no flash light on her person, that had been left behind in the big cavern, and she had to go in blind. So she counted her steps. On the thirteenth step her hand knocked against a a metal grating.

Again she heard the groan.

“Is there anyone in here?” Alice asked in a whisper.

Evidently, the source of the groaning did not hear her.

“Wait.” Alice said. “I have to get my friends free first, then we’ll come back for you. You and any of Doctor Verkhovtseff’s prisoners.”

There was no answer.

Alice turned back. There was no time to waste with the unknown when there was no way of knowing what the fat man might do.

Returning to the first tunnel, Alice looked inside once again. The bright point the exit from this underground cavern had vanished. Alice did not realize that the short night had come and was frightened that she had mistaken some sort of tunnel for the exit. Or perhaps she was lost. Perhaps the Blabberyap bird had flown out another tunnel. And Alice, although she was very worried about me, and Poloskov and Zeleny, decided to expend another minute and make certain whether this was an exit for not. If this was a dead end, then she would lead us here and keep the pirates from capturing us again.

The path was difficult. The tunnel turned out to be slippery water dripped from the ceiling and did not evaporate. To Alice it seemed that she had spent an whole hour in there but the tunnel never came to an end. She had decided to turn back when suddenly the darkness began to lighten up, and it turned out that Alice had almost made it to the exit, she just had not seen the exit in the darkness.

The last meters of crawling were more difficult than anything else; dirt kept falling down from the roof of the tunnel and she had to force her way through the large masses of roots. Alice almost started to cry, deciding that she would never be able to make her way to the surface, to the sun and the clean air. For a moment she almost forgot about us, about the pirates, about everything in the world; all she dreamed of was getting free of the surrounding dirt.

But there was one last jerk and Alice realized she had succeeded the tunnel was behind her. She had left the gloomy cavern with the pirates and their prisoners.

Overhead was the blue sky with its quickly moving yellow star; a second star had already reached its zenith and begun to turn the world hot. Two insects similar to terrestrial beetles had gotten into an argument of some kind right in front of Alice’s face and they were dive bombing each other, beating each other with flashing wings, completely ignoring Alice, who looked at the bugs and thought sadly that it was time to go back down into the cavern. And so she lost far too much time. At the very least she now knew which way to run to get out of the caverns.

Alice looked around for the last time, ran her hand through the thick grass, but then saw, quite close by on the top of a hill, the very same space ship which Doctor Verkhovtseff had flown to the Pegasus before the Zoo ship had lifted off for the pirate’s boobytrapped field.

“Glad I saw where they landed that thing.” Alice thought. “Or we could get out of the cave and end up back in their arms. They’re certain to have left guards at their ship”

Alice was almost ready to go back to the tunnel when she saw the Blabberyap bird sitting on the steps that had descended from the ship and pecking at the closed lock with its beak.

Alice almost shouted: “Blabberyap, come back here!” but did not have time, nor would the Blabberyap bird have heard her.

The airlock rolled open and Alice could see a tall young man, someone Alice had definitely seen before, but where? The Blabberyap Bird flew up and landed on the man’s shoulder.

“Old friend!” The man exclaimed. “How did you find us?”

The moment Alice saw the man with the Blabberyap bird on his shoulder, she understood who he was. This was the First Captain. The Captain had come to their rescue! But how had he learned where to search? Alice jumped down from the end of the tunnel and rushed toward the ship. What mattered was that the Captain was here. Everything was all right now.

Alice was still a few steps from the ship and was trying to shout, but couldn’t because she was out of breath, when the second person emerged from the airlock and stood next to the Captain,

It was Doctor Verkhovtseff. But he was not dressed like the Doctor Verkhovtseff down in the cavern beneath then; this Doctor Verkhovtseff was in a space suit with a pistol in his belt.

Alice stopped, as though she had run into a wall. She did not understand it at all. The traitor had been somehow able to be simultaneously at two places at once. One thing she did understand: the First Captain was also in great danger, yet he knew nothing about it, not even that Doctor Verkhovtseff was really a pirate.

“Captain, be careful! Danger! Verkhovtseff is a traitor!” Alice shouted.

The Captain and Verkhovtseff looked around for her voice, but they could not see her. She was still invisible.

“Who said that?” The Captain asked.

“Verkhovtseff was just in the underground cavern!” Alice shouted. “He’s a pirate. They’ve captured the Second Captain and our crew.”

“What crew?” The Captain was mystified, still trying to determine just where the child’s voice came from.

“The crew of the Pegasus.” Alice said. “Be careful, Captain!”

“And who are you?” The Captain asked.

“Alice.” She answered, not taking her eyes off Verkhovtseff for an instant.

But Verkhovtseff never went for his blaster, he never tried to jump the Captain from behind, and the Captain was also completely at ease in the Doctor’s presence.

“You’re mistaken, little girl.” The Captain said. “Doctor Verkhovtseff hasn’t left our ship for the last three days. The two of us came here to help you and Second. It’s some other person down below in the cave, someone who’s made himself up to look like our friend Doctor Verkhovtseff. You’re not in any danger here.”

“And what if you’re just made up to look like the First Captain?” Alice asked.

“I’m not made up to look like anyone but myself.” The Captain answered. “You know what I look like, and look at the Blabberyap bird. He knows me too. Bird’s aren’t that easy to deceive. Blabby, you know me?”

“‘Hurry, Captain.’“ The Blabberyap bird said. “‘The formula for galaxion is hidden in the cabinet with the samples of industrial materials. If anything happens to me, get the formula and give it to the Galaxy. It’s very important. Third died for it.’“

The Blabberyap bird spoke in the Second Captain’s voice.

“There. Is that proof enough?” The First Captain said. “Do you believe now? You can come o ut. We’re wasting time. How did you get to the surface. And where are you hiding?”

Alice walked right up to the edge of the steps.

“I’m here” Alice said. “I crawled after the Blabberyap bird.”

“I don’t understand this at all.” Doctor Verkhovtseff said. “Where is that girl? What is, she invisible or something?”

“Of course I’m invisible.” Alice said. “Oh, why don’t you understand? How else could I have gotten away from the pirates?”

And then Alice took off the invisible cap, and even the First Captain, one of the most famous people in the entire Galaxy, gasped from surprise.

Alice’s yellow jump suit was covered with dirt and her sleeves were torn, her face was scratched and her hair was a tangled mess.

“‘Alice, do you want Soya-Bix for breakfast tomorrow?’“ The Blabberyap bird spoke in Professor Seleznev’s voice.

“Smart girl!” The First Captain said.

And they ran to the trap door, because there was not a minute to waste.




Chapter Twenty-Two

The Fat Man Lies


“The handcuffs fit.” The Second Captain said. “These are such miserable beings that it’s impossible to trust anything they say.”

“I give you my word that I will not attempt flight.” The fat man said cheerfully.

“You will.” The captain answered with certainty.

At the same time Doctor Verkhovtseff briskly walked straight up to his doppleganger. The image was remarkable. If they had asked me I would have said the real Doctor was the one in the hat; that he was the one we met the first time on the Three Captain’s World.

“Well, impostor,” The Doctor in the space suit said, “show us your real face.”

“I don’t understand you at all.” The Doctor in the hat said, backing up.

Zeleny, who had been standing right behind him, pushed him forwards to meet his double.

“It’s because of you we thought the worst of a good man.” Zeleny said. “Because of you we nearly died.”

“That’s right.” Alice said. “We distrusted the real Doctor Verkhovtseff so much that when he flew here together with the First Captain and tried to warn us we got away as fast as we could and fell into your pit.”

“No!” The false Doctor said. “You won’t touch me!”

Veselchak U suddenly started to laugh.

“Someone else’s skin doesn’t fit too well.” He said. “Never fit me fit me pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I’m an honest pirate.”

The real Doctor Verkhovtseff walked up to the pirate in the hat and looked him over. The pirate had no where to go; Zeleny was behind him.

Suddenly Doctor Verkhovtseff reached out to his double and with a jerk pulled off the man’s head, face and chest.

Immediately we saw the image of the Doctor fall from the pirate, and beneath it made out a totally different being, a non-human. Verkhovtseff had evidently found the control to the holographic projector which gave his pirate doppleganger his features and disabled it.

The hat tumbled to one side. The Doctor’s clothing lay at our feet, and out of the pile of rags which a moment before had been Doctor Verkhovtseff arose an enormous insect, a meter and a half in height, with hairy legs, a round, chitinous body, and large and sharp claws. The insect spread its short wings in an attempt to fly away, but Zeleny was able to grab it from behind. The insect turned its head to him, and opened its claws in threat.

“Careful!” The Second Captain shouted. “He’s poisonous!”

Zeleny pulled his hand back and the Second Captain raised his pistol, aiming it at the pirate.

And then the pirate, seeing there was no where to run, suddenly lifted a long, thick tail with a needle end and struck himself in the chest. He immediately fell, his thin arms spread out.

“He stung himself!” Alice exclaimed. “Just like a scorpion.”

“Scorpions never sting themselves.” I answered. “That’s just a fairy tale. Only rational beings know what death is.”

“It’s all a fake!” The fat man said suddenly. “I want to help you, really I do; I know him better than anyone else. He’s the chief pirate. He’s made us obey him; he’s the one who thought up all our crimes. His name is Ratty; he’s from the dead planet Crocrys. Some time ago the Crocrysi killed each other off in a war and the last of them hid themselves in caves. But he didn’t kill himself. He loves himself too much to do that. He’s just unconscious. He’s thinking that you’ll leave his body here and he will wake up and get away. He’s done that before. Kill him.”

“Why would we want to kill him?” The First Captain said. “He has a date with a court.”

He went over to Krys, who still lay in a pile of clothing, bent down and picked up the light body and handed it to the captive pirates in black uniforms.

“Carry him back to the Pegasus.” The Captain said. “And lock him in a cage. Do you have any empty cages, Professor?”

“Alas, yes. More than one. We’ve gathered far fewer animals than we were counting on. I’ll go to the ship with the pirates and make certain the cage is solid enough.”

“And then we can carry him to a planet where they’ve been searching for him for years, and we’ll let them judge him.”

“That’s right!” The fat man said. “That’s what you want to do with him. He was the one who came up with the idea of impersonating Verkhovtseff. He flew to the base on Arcturus Minor as a fake Verkhovtseff; he was hoping to find the plans to the Blue Gull there so he could open it. As the fake Verkhovtseff he was the one who sold the worms in Palaputra and destroyed all the Blabberyap birds so that the one we were hunting would not be able to reach the First Captain with his request for help. It was he who forced me to give the Professor the diamond backed turtle, and as the fake Verkhovtseff he contaminated the robot’s lubricating oil. He had no mercy! Take him away! Let the courts deal with his betrayer and trickster!”.

“Quiet down, Veselchak U.” The Second Captain said “You can’t hope to avoid punishment for your owncrimes by blaming it all on your partner. The courts will try you too. I’ve chased you across the whole Galaxy. You’ve committed far too many crimes to exculpate yourself by a new betrayal.”

The fat man bit his lips and shut up.

I led two of the pirates, who dragged the unmoving body of Krys, onto the ship. Poloskov came with me because he did not trust the pirates. We locked Krys into our strongest cage and returned. When we got back they were talking about something else.

“Now how do we get out of here?” The First Captain asked the fat man.

“If you promise me my life, I will help you leave.” The fat man said. “Otherwise, why should I help you? No one besides me knows how to open the cover to the cavern. And its made of such strong stone that you couldn’t open it even with gravity bombs.”

“If you don’t want to talk, don’t..” The First Captain laughed. “We can wait until hour friend Krys awakens and I have no doubt he will be delighted to help us.”

The two Captains stood side by side, one of them sunburned and healthy and dressed in a new space suit, the other worn, exhausted, and thin, but they still looked like they could have been brothers, and I was starting to like them. In the flesh they were far better than as stone monuments on the Three Captain’s World. The First Captain had his arm around his friend’s shoulder, and the two of them stood over the fat man as though he were a large toad.

“No.” The fat man said. “No way I’ll help you. You can die here!”

“We’re certainly not going to die.” The Second Captain said. “Now, I and my friends…” He waved his arm to include all of us, not just the First Captain and Doctor Verkhovtseff, but me and Poloskov and Zeleny and Alice from the Pegasus, because we had also come to help him alothough we had never met him before, “have no fear from any pirates any longer. If we have to we can depart in the First Captain’s ship and return later to retrieve our ships.”

Veselchak U had started to bend. He had come to under5stand taht they did not have to deal with him, and was about to begin to talk, when Zeleny ruined it all.

“No.” Zeleny said. “First of all I am not going to just abandon my ship. If I have to I’ll just stay here and wait. And anyway someone has to feed the animals. Just tell us how to open the blasted lock!”.

That was just not the way to talk to the fat man, the way Zeleny did. You can’t ask anything from pirates; they’ll just become insolent and demand more and more.

When the fat man heard Zeleny’s words he grew emboldened. “No,” he said, “give me written assurances that I will remain alive, then I will let everyone out of here.

The Captain’s just looked at Zeleny, but no one said anything.

“Too bad.” The Frist Captain said. “Then we wait. We’ll give you ten minutes, Veselchak U; think it over. We’re the ones with the time.

“He’s right.” The Second Captain spoke up. “But in the meantime you can tell us how you found us, First. I take it the Blabberyap bird never reached you”

“While you talk I’ll make some sandwiches.” Zeleny said in a guilty voice. “I take it we’re all starving.”

“Fine.” One of the Captains said.

“I’d help you, Zeleny.” Alice said. “But I really am too interested to hear what the First Captain has to say to tear myself away from here.”

“Stay if you want, Alice.” The First Captain said. “Without you we could never have saved our friends.”

“I couldn’t have done anything without you.” Alice said and turned red from pride.

“Alice,” I said severely, “go wash you hands and straighten yourself out. “You’re as dirty as a swamp mole from the planet Vukanata.”

“You don’t have to blame me for it.” Alice did not quite argue with me. “A mole does what a mole has to do.”

She hurried off to the ship, shouting as she went:

“Just don’t start the story without me!”

The First Captain turned to Veselchak U and asked him ravnodushno:

“Have you thought it over yet?”

The pirate laughed fawningly. His eyes had sunk back into the folds of skin on his head.

“Let’s make a deal, Captain.” He said. “We’re both business people.”

The Captain ignored him.

Alice returned in two minutes. I noted that here hands were only washed so so, but she had replaced the filthy yellow jumpsuit with another one, a blue one.

Alice was followed by a very timid and hesitant emoticator. On pryamo razryvalsya na chasti, tak emu hotelos’ povsyudu uspet’. He was not so much an animal as a living rainbow. After him waddled the always busy Sewing Spider. At the moment he was completing three mittens, although each of them was right handed.

“Everyone here?” The First Captain laughed, looking over the odd parade. “Well, then I have to begin right at the very begining, although my role in this tale is rather meager. I’ve spent the last four years on Venus; it turns out that it is almost impossible to turn a large planet into a space ship and move it to a different orbit; please, I said almost, because we’re certainly going to do it.”

“That’s right.” Alice said. “It’s very sad that I don’t have such a strong character.”

“Character is obtained through education.” The Captain smiled. “Look at the Sewing Spider, at his enviable persistence! Now, if he could just learn to tell the difference between right and left he would be priceless.”

“Now that’s a great example for me!” Alice brushed aside the Sewing Spider. “He’s really stupid!”

“Well, the fact is, so far no one has mentioned simple persistence. For the four years that I was there Venus hadn’t been moved a centimeter off its old orbit, and we had been working for it, planning, setting he plans in motion, arguing back and forth all the time endlessly I had been hoping I’d get back to see the start of Venus’s orbital shift. There really wasn’t long to go.”

“And then the climate of Venus is going to change?”

“In a big way. So much that after a few decades people will be able to live there, just as they do on Earth.”

“Then we should call it Earth-2.” Alice said.

“Whatever for. It will remain Venus. Why do you think there’s anything wrong with that name?”

Alice did not answer, but I would say she did not like Venus’s old name very much at all. She had once told me we shouldn’t go around giving bestowing planets with the names of defunct gods that had done nothing to earn the honor.

“I was so busy with my work that I did not even notice the four years passing.” The First Captain continued with his story. I have to admit that I was not very worried about my friends, because I knew just how far the fates had taken them from me. The Third Captain would be years more in returning from Andromeda, and you, Second, had told me not to bother you for four years.”

“But didn’t you get bored sitting on just once planet,” Alice aasked, “and not flying to other star systems?”

“It’s a complicated question, Alice.” The First Captain answered seriously. “Yes, I do want to stand on the bridge of a starship as captain and land on unknown planets again. But I knew that my experience would be very useful in the Sol System. And I really must tell you that I love unsolved questions and unfinished projects.”

“And your wife,” Alice continued her questioning, giving the Captain no rest. “in the mean time she’s been flying all over the Galaxy looking for a living nebula. You must have envied her furiously.”

“I certainly did.” The Captain admitted. “And I’ll envy her even more when she finds it.”

“That you will not have to worry about.” I got involved in the conversation. “There are no such things as living interstellar gaseous nebulae. No more than there are living, sentient planets.”

“Now in that you are quite mistaken, Professor.” The Second Captain said. “I once had the chance to see a living planet. I almost didn’t get away. It feeds on whatever it drags down from space. Lucky for me the Blue Gull had such powerful engines.”

“Very curious.” I said. “We’ll speak about that later, but in the meantime I am uninformed about that particular wonder.”

“Papa, don’t argue.” Alice said. “The Captain isn’t going to speak an untruth.”

“No.” The Captain burst into laughter. “We always tell the truth. Even to enemies.” His eyes bore into Veselchak U, who immediately turned and pretended to be examining the walls of the cave.

“Now then,” The First Captain finished his tale, “I unexpectedly received a message that Doctor Verkhovtseff, our old friend, was arriving. He came and told me he was worried about the fate of the Second Captain. When he told me everything put in for leave and left Venus the same day. I’ll let the Doctor continue.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks!!” Doctor Verkhovtseff suddenly growned, stopped foreward, and began to blink. “I didnd’t do anything in particular at all, really nothing… In general, you people on the Pegasus were just the last straw that broke the camel’s back, the final drop that filled the cup of my suspicions.”

“Now that’s a ‘thank you.’“ Zeleny said; he had been handing out cheese sandwiches. “You were the one who was behaving peculiar.”

“But at the time I really didn’t no anything, or rather, I didn’t know anything about you.”

Verkhovtseff was shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back, and looking at the emoticator, who had become quite blue from curiosity.

“From the start I never believed the story that the brave and resourceful Second Captain had just vanished without a trace. I knew his Blue Gull as well and understood there was hardly any power or force in the Galaxy capable of destroying the Second Captain.”

“Thank you for the compliment.” The Second Captain said.

“Thank’s aren’t necessary. The compliment was nothing more than a simple and precise scientific calculation.”

“He’s just like my math teacher.” Alice whispered to me.

“While preparing the Three Captain’s Museum I had a chance to study their biographies, as well as numerous opportunities to confer with the First Captain who never hesitated to provide me with photos and notes and to correct details. But when I shared my doubts about the Second Captain’s fate with him, his answer was very evasive. Som evasive that I suspected the Captain knew far more about the Blue Gull than he wanted to tell.”

“I didn’t know anything in particular.” The First Captain interrupted. “All there was was our agreement unless the Blabberyap arrived I was to wait for four years before investigating, but after Verkhovtseff’s letter I became very worried, but I didn’t know the details.

“And I did not know about the Captain’s agreement,” Verkhovtseff continued, “nor did I know the Second Captain was preparing to fly off to meet the Third. What set me on my gaurd was something else; all of the documents I had seen said that the Captain’s had completely eliminated the threat of space pirates from the Galaxy. But, judging from the information I was getting, that was not the case. The information I had indicated that the pirates still existed, and that they were still attacking ships. Also, among the pirates seen and identified was this particular fat man.”

“I had nothing to do with that.” Veselchak U said indignantly. “That was all Krys’s doing. He had a number of masks; he had a mask of me too. When he robbed the other ships it was with my face.”

“Pardon us if we do not believe you.” Doctor Verkhovtseff said. “Because we do not believe you. But on one occasion, when I was absent from the Three Captain’s world, someone stopped by the museum. The museum was given a very through search, but nothing of importance was taken other than some photographs of the Blue Gull. ‘A-ha!’ I thought to myself then, someone needs this information. Then I suddenly found out that one of the miscreants aboard the pirate ship that robbed the passenger liner from Fyxx looked so much like me that if I had not happened to be a guest of that planet’s president at the very time the piracy occurred who knows what would have happened to me. And then the Pegasus arrived on the planet, with people who told me they were hunting for animals but who started to ask me questions about the Three Captains. I was somewhat surprised. And perhaps I wold have forgotten about this that the heroic accomplishments of the Captains should have interested them was not at all remarkable, when suddenly they tell me that I, it seems, had visited the researchers on Arcturus Minor and asked them for the plans to the Blue Gull.”

“But that is what happened.” I said. “It was just the false Doctor.”

“Now such a shameful fact calls forth no doubts,” Verkhovotseff said, “but at the time I was completely taken aback. When the Pegasus departed I immediately sent to visit the researchers, and they confirmed: ‘Yes, it was you Doctor Verkhovtseff; you came here a month ago searching for plans to the Blue Gull. At that point i understood that the Second Captain was in grave danger. And, most likely, at the hands of pirates I immediately set off for Venus.”

“He arrived extremely agitated.” The First Captain said. “At first I had trouble understanding him. One Verkhovtseff, then a second… But when he explained I understood we should have to hurry. But where to? We suspected that the Pegasus was a pirate ship aand decided to follow after you. We went to Palaputra; there Krabakas of Barakass told us how you had bought a Blabberyap bird, as well as how someone had tried to kill all the Blabberyap birds on the planet. We also found the Audity who had sold you the bird, and I realized it was the same bird that had been with the Second Captain. Along the way we were almost thrown into jail because of the false Doctor’s sale of atmosphere destroying worms; we just barely convinced the Local police of the real doctor’s innocence. Ratty can expect the appropriate punishment for the attempt to kill all the Blabberyap birds and destroy the planet’s air. The Audities have never had to think of any such appropriate punishment before, but I am certain they will come up with something.”

“Oh! The cry came from the fat man.

“…asked all traffic bouys in the Galaxy and they advised us that the Pegasus was on course for the Medusa system. And on the robot planet we learned that you had spent time there and cured the robots by replacing their oil. And then we came here, almost too late.”

“And when did you realize that we weren’t pirates?” Alice asked.

“Back at Palaputra. And after that we encountered a ship filled with archaeologists. Gromozeka was aboard and he raised such a fuss defending the Professor that we had to believe him. Then we began to worry that you were in danger and wouldn’t be able to deal with the pirates.”

“We couldn’t.” Poloskov sighed. “Next time we’ll be wiser.”

“There will be no next time.” The First Captain said.

He walked over to the fat man who was sitting on the stone floor and said:

“Your time has run out, Veselchak U. You either open the cavern entrance, or our conversation comes to aan end. Let me count to ten: One, two, three…”

“I’ll tell you everything!” The fat man said quickly. “I’ve wanted to tell you everything from the first, no do sodroganiya boyalsya Krysa. I’m afraid of him even now. He’ll take revenge on me. His revenge is unavoidable. It’s best if you kill him. Please, kill him!”

“But he really is your friend.” Verkhovtseff said. “How could you possibly want the death of a friend with whom you have committed so many crimes for so many years?”

“He’s no friend of mine!” Then fat man screamed. “He’s my worst enemy! I’m an honest pirate, not a bandit or a traitor!”

“Stop wasting time.” The Second Captain said. “Open the cavern.”

Then fat man got to his feet. He was a sorry looking sight. His legs could hardly support him, he bent down, and his belly quivered like jello. He pressed to the wall and, going up on tiptoes, pressed a knob invisible to everyone else. A part of the wall moved aside and they could see a small control panel.

“Right away.” The fat man muttered. “Just a moment…it’s already done.”

He pressed a button with fat trembling fingers, and at last the stone plate rose a few inches from its spot and moved to one side.

The road to the surface was opened again.

“To your ships!” The First Captain said. “We’ll lift the Pegasus first, and after it’s flown to one side will raise the Blue Gull. I’d like to ask the crew of the Pegasus to take their places.”

It had started to rain. Enormous drops fell through the circle of light and loudly struck the stone floor.

The fat man pressed yet another button and a narrow stairway rose from the floor and extended to the edge of the white circle where it locked itself into place with metal claws.

“Quite satisfactory.” The Second Captain said. “Verkhovtseff, please accompany the professor in leading the prisoners up to the surface. The rest of us will wait here a while.”

Poloskov and Zeleny took their places aboard the Pegasus, retracted the stairs and closed the airlocks. Everyone else moved to one side and watched the Pegasus gently rise into the air, cut off the sky for several seconds, and then exit the cavern.

“Well then,” The First Captain said, “Are you certain that everyone is here? We’ve forgotten nobody?”

“That’s all.” I said.

Verkhovtseff led the two pirates up the stairs and I went over to the fat man.

“No more pirates?” The Captain asked Veselchak U. “There’s no one else on your ship?”

“I swear by all that is holy that no one else remains here! You can leave in good conscience.” Veselchak U said. “Completely clear. We can blow up this cavern and the damnable Ratty’s ship and nothing will remain of this pirate’s lair. I take it that is your intention?”

“It certainly is.” The Second Captain laughed. “Just one more look around my prison. To think I spent four years confined here…”

“Wait!” Alice suddenly shouted. “He’s still lying!”

“Who?” The First Captain asked.

“The Fat Man. He’s lying. When I was running after the blabberyap bird, I heard a groan.”




Chapter Twenty-Three

Captive Underground


“That can’t be…” The Fat Man groaned and cut off.

“Where are the captives?” The Captain asked. From the way he asked it there was now no doubt the Fat Man would answer everything.

And the Fat Man immediately minced his way toward the tunnel. He was muttering.

“I quite forgot… That was all Ratty’s idea. I always told him…. I was always against it…”

“I’m sorry, Captain.” Alice said, hurrying after us. “I would have certainly remembered, but so many things were going on I forgot. But I would have remembered.”

“Don’t worry, kid.” The First Captain said and stroked the top of her head with his enormous hand. “You did great, and no one can blame you for anything. It’s these pirates that we’ll have a strong talking to.”

“Ah, here it is.” The fat man said. “Let me turn the light on now. Everything will be fine. How could I have forgotten. It’s all Ratty’s fault.

The light fluttered into existence and we looked down a small chamber that housed a pirate ship; the other end turned into a longer tunnel partitioned off not far from the entrance by a thick metal grating. The fat man ran to the grating and tried to push the key into the keyhole with unwilling fingers. The First Captain and seized the key from him and pushed the grating aside; the grating slid into a niche in the wall.

“I could have… I mean…” The fat man muttered, but no one was listening.

It wasn’t surprising the fat man didn’t want us to see that tunnel; both sides were lined with rooms stuffed with loot, precious gems, and other trophies.

“No,” I said, glancing into one of the rooms as we went, “We can’t just blow up this place; there must be enough wealth hidden here to build a hundred cities.”

“Stop a moment.” The First Captain said.

We all stopped, listening.

Far away, from somewhere below, we could make out an almost inaudible groan of pain.

We hurried in that direction. The door to one of the rooms was locked.

“The key!” The Captain ordered.

The fat man already had the key in his hand.

The room turned out to be a stairway landing; a narrow stairway led downward, the steps cut into the rock. At the end there was yet another grating. The Captain aimed the light of his flashcaster forward and we saw something sitting behind the grating on a pile of rags on the floor; chained to the wall. It was a Fyxxian, huge eyed and fragile.

The Fyxxian was dying. One glance was enough to tell me that. He was at the edge of extinction. Even more, they had subjected him to torture.

“I’ll kill him now!” The First Captain said; he was looking at the fat man.

“Seva…” The Second Captain whispered. “Don’t you recognize…”

“That can’t be!”

And the First Captain suddenly pulled on the steel grating with such force that the metal groaned and tore from its slots in the walls. He hurled the steel wreckage to one side hurried to the dying Fyxxian, picked him up, and carried him to the exit in his arms.

“Who is that?” Alice whispered a question.

I shook my head. I did not know.

The fat man had wormed his way beside us. He held his tears back for a second and answered:

“That is the Third Captain. They are thinking he died long ago.”

And immediately, as though remembering something very important, the fat man started to hurry down the corridor after the Captains, braying:

“It was allo his doing! It was all Ratty’s fault!”

The Third Captain was unconscious. The First placed him on the floor and turned to me:

“Professor, tell me.” He asked. His voice trembled. “Is there anything we can do?

“I don’t know. I doubt it.” I said. I bent low over the Fyxxian. They had been killing him with hunger and torture.

“They’ve been doing this to him for four years.” The Second Captain said. “And we were so certain that he was long dead! If it hadn’t been for Alice we would have left him here! He never told them anything, Professor; please, do whatever you can to save him!”

“You don’t have to ask me.” I said. “First thing, we’ll need nutrients. Alice dear, run to the Pegasus and bring the portable Auto-Doc.

Alice shot down the corridor like an arrow.

“I’m with her.” The First Captain said.

“Don’t!” Alice shot back over her shoulder. “I know where to look you don’t.”

“Listen to me, Third.” The Second Captain said. “Listen. Don’t give up. Just a little while longer, hold on! You can’t give up when we’re almost made it. Where here for you…”

Suddenly the Fyxxian opened his eye. It was very hard for him to do it because his body had already died; only his brain still fought with death.

“It’s all right now.” He whispered. “It’s all right. I didn’t say anything. Thank you for coming, my friends…” He closed his eye and his heart stopped.

I immediately began to apply artificial respiration to the Fyxxian, but it did not help. The situation was hopeless; I had no surgical instruments, no diagnostic machinery, not even a robot doctor. I was in the same position was a doctor from a hundred years ago.

“I’m going to have to take a really big risk.” I said to the Captains. “I’m afraid there’s no way out of this.”

“We believe you, Professor. The Captains answered me.

Then I took out my knife and made an incision into the Third Captain’s chest, placed my hand around the stopped heart and began to massage it. It seemed like hours passed; my hand became numb, and I did not see it when Alice ran up with the portable medical kit, instrumentation and drugs. The First Captain himself made the injection into his friend’s vein. I do not know which helped more, my efforts or the First Captain’s application of drugs, But the Third Captain’s heart shuddered once, again, and then it was beating.

“More adrenalin!” I ordered.

Alice handed the ampule to the Captains.

“He’s an immensely strong Fyxxian.” I said. “Anyone else in his place would have died.”

I pulled the robot pocket surgeon from the medicine chest and a minute later the small device had resealed all blood vessels and sewn up his chest. We very carefully carried the Fyxxian to the Blue Gull where he could be placed in the ship’s Auto-Doc and get real treatment. It was there that Doctor Verkhovtseff joined us, and, after half an hour, I was able to say that the Third Captain’s life was out of danger.

We left the Second Captain keeping watch by his bed and went down into the cavern to rest ourselves. The First Captain went with us.

The fat man sat on his haunches at the entrance under Zeleny’s gaze.

“Is he going to live?” Veselchak U asked with a timid smile, as though they were talking about his favorite brother.

“Yes,” Verkhovtseff answered curtly, “Despite your doing everything to see that he died.”

“No, not, you have us all wrong.” The fat man oozed. “That was all Ratty’s doing. You have no way of knowing what sort of corrupting role he has played in my life until now, how he has dragged me into desperate adventures by deception and lavish promises? What do I need with riches and power? I’m happy to live and let live; I have all my heart desires. But Ratty? He needed power. Like other people need soup and sandwiches Ratty fed on power. If he wasn’t able to exercise power over someone it didn’t matter who, anyone would do then the day was wasted. And he wanted power over whole planets, over the whole Galaxy. What was that to me. I just wanted to have a little fun. I’m really a very harmless sort of being; I’ve just had the misfortune of falling under Ratty’s baleful influence.”

We turned away from the fat man and he continued to talk, addressing Zeleny now, as if he really wanted to convince us that he was no more than a jolly, harmless lamb.

“Oh well,” Doctor Verkhovtseff said, laughing until his face consisted of thousands of fine lines, “at last the Three Captains meet again. Like in the good old days. For a while you were consigned to history pardon me, to the historical reliquaries, but now…”

“Yes.” The First Captain agreed with him. “Everything will be just like in the Good Old Days.”

And I, looking at him, realized he wasn’t all that old. Perhaps he could even go back into space again, all the more now that the Venus Project was coming to an end.

The First Captain guessed my thoughts. “I’m going to have to get used to it all again. While I was flying here I realized just how much I’ve forgotten.”

“But you’re planning to go back into space anyway, right?” Doctor Verkhovtseff was delighted.

“We will have to change the name of the planet and museum.” The Captain continued without answering the Doctor’s caisson directly. “Now it’s rather awkward. We’re alive, healthy, not really famous for anything in particular, and our stone copies stand in a museum as if we had died ages ago.”




Chapter Twenty-Four

The End Of The Voyage


After a couple of hours the Third Captain had improved enough for us to be able to take him up to the surface. Afterwards the Captains extracted the Blue Gull from the underground world as well. The concrete slab which had covered the entrance to the pit they left in place.

Now three starships stood around the field where the mirror flowers had been smashed to smithereens. The Pegasus, the Blue Gull, and a service tender from the Venus project which lacked a name and only possessed a long alphanumeric ID string.

“Da,” Alice asked, “Can I go down to the forest?”

“Why?”

“I want to find an intact mirror. There’s no way we can show our faces back on Earth without a new bouquet.”

“Just be careful.” I warned her. “You’re not in your yellow jumpsuit now and the Crockadee won’t mistake you for one of its chicks if you’re in blue.”

While we readied our ships for their return to space I let the Skliss have the freedom of the meadow. The Skliss jumped about heavily on the grass from joy, clicked its hooves high above the ground, fluttered its wings but point-blank refused to fly.

“That must be the happiest cow I’ve ever had the chance to see.” Doctor Verkhovtseff mused. “But keeping a whole herd of them would be rather awkward.”

“They told us from the start they were difficult to herd.” I agreed. “Given that they can fly over deep rivers if there’s forage on the other side.

The fat pirate was still sitting on the ground beside the Pegasus; he had convinced us that he had an old, bad heart that demanded fresh air. No one wanted to argue with him and, let alone hold a conversation, especially after the Third Captain had told how it had been Veselchak U himself who had tortured him in a vain attempt to gain the secret of galaxion.

“Zeleny!” I called. “Would you look after the cow while I feed the other animals; just make certain the Crockadee doesn’t carry her off.”

As I looked up I saw still another starship descending on this planet.

Now, that really was too much! This wasn’t a planet as much as a space port! Where had this one come from?

In the end I came to the conclusion that it was reinforcements for the pirates and desired to raise the alarm, but then I realize the ship was in trouble.

The pilot wasn’t flying straight, but was twisting and turning from side to side oddly, and along his tail stretched some sort of greyish mass which acted as a break and prevented a normal landing.

At my cry everyone came running from the ship and looked up at the new arrival.

“Turn on the transmitter, Zeleny!” Poloskov called.

Zeleny hurried to the Pegasus, hunted through the emergency frequencies and turned the radio on full so that those of us outside the ship could hear.

“Incoming ship!” Zeleny called. “What is going on? Are you in trouble. Reply!”

A very pleasant, very feminine voice answered: “I’m in no trouble worth mentioning, no. So long as I can hold on to this thing little else matters.”

“Now that voice is familiar.” I said. Somewhere I’ve heard it before.”

“When we were lost near the empty planet.” Alice suggested.

“Hold it.” The First Captain cut us off. “I could swear that’s my wife Ella.”

The Captain turned white and rushed into the ship to join Zeleny at the com console. A moment later we heard his voice:

“Ella, is that you? What’s going on?”

“Who’s speaking, please? The woman’s voice asked firmly. “Is that you, Seva? Why aren’t you on Venus? You know how worried I get when you gad about the cosmos.”

The Second Captain laughed.

“She can never get used to the idea that her husband is a space explorer.” He told me. “Even though she herself has circled the Galaxy.”

“That doesn’t matter.” The First Captain said. “Have you forgotten your ship’s in trouble? Do you need assistance. What is that thing you’re hauling?”

“Can’t you see it?” Ella sounded surprised. “It’s a living gas cloud. I’ve only been chasing after it for the last three weeks. I caught it in a force screen net, but now it’s trying to break out and get away. So I have to set down on the first planet that I came to strengthen the net field. Seva, darling, you wouldn’t by any chance have a ship of your own on hand?”

“Of course I do.” The First Captain answered. “And don’t hurry in landing, not while that thing. is fighting you. You might crash.”

“Everything will be all right. Just get up here and we’ll land it together.”

The First Captain hadn’t yet finished his conversation with his wife before the Second Captain was on the ship’s bridge; three minutes later they had the starship into the air where Ella was fighting with the obstreperous living cloud that was known across the space ways as a legend, but which no one had managed to capture alive.

The two ships merged their force fields into a common net and after half an hour the living cloud, tightly grasped by the two ships, lay on the grass not far from us. We all ran over to them. I have to admit that I was the first tor each the scene; after all, I understood what a service Ella had done for biology.

The living nebula was…. well, interesting. In interstellar space once it had expanded to fill several million cubic kilometers the effect must have been overpowering, but here on the grass, confined by the occasionally glittering force scene, it really looked like a thick, grey, pulsing cloud.

The air lock to Ella’s ship slid wide and she ran down the extending steps. Her husband, the First Captain, ran to meet her. He stretched out strong arms and Ella jumped up to meet him. The Captain held her in the air a moment and carefully let her down to the ground.

“You’re not injured?” He asked.

“No.” Ella answered, laughing. “And anyway none of that was really important.

Ella was breathtakingly beautiful and all the men fell in love with her at once. Even the empathicator had become transparent from the feelings that filled it.

“Nothing else matters.” Ella repeated, shaking her long blond hair. “The gas cloud is captured, and now all that remains is to get it to Earth to convince the skeptics that it really does exist.

I kept my silence, in as much as under skeptics she, naturally, would include me. I even remembered our last meeting of sorts at the conference and had ridiculed her for chasing after Science Fiction. There exist in the universe so many real, perfectly natural and ordinary animals the study of which costs time and effort, such as the Dragonette minor, wander bushes, and empathicator, that the very concept of a living gas cloud struck me as a fantasy. And I had said so at the time.

“Where have you been hiding?” Ella exclaimed when she saw the Second Captain. “I haven’t seen you for several years. How are you getting on? Are you still flying?”

“No.” The Second Captain answered, “basically I’ve been sitting in one spot.”

“That’s perfectly fine.” Ella supported him. “You can get an enormous amount of work done sitting in one spot. And whose is this charming little girl.”

“I’m called Alice.” The charming little girl answered.

“Alice. What an unusual name.”

“It’s perfectly ordinary. Alice Selezneva.”

“Wait a moment. Does your father not work in the Moscow Zoo?”

“He does.” Alice answered. She knew nothing about our scientific disagreements.

“That’s great, Alice; when you see your father I’d like you to tell him that living gas clouds are not biological nonsense, they’re not fantasies or fairy tale imaginings as he likes to say, but totally real.”

“You can tell him yourself.” Alice said. “My father is here. There he is.”

No escape was possible for me now; I stepped forward and introduced myself.

“I beg your pardon.” I said. “Rather clearly I must acknowledge my error.”

“This is marvelous.” Ella answered. “Now you can help me study the cloud.”

“With pleasure.”

Then Ella turned toward her husband.

“And how did you happen to be here?”

“The Second got into trouble,” Seva answered briefly, “and we had to get him out of it. And we did, with the help of our new friends.”

“And just what sort of trouble did you get into, Captain?”

“I was held captive by pirates.”

“By pirates. I thought you defeated them long ago.”

“We did, but they came back. You know what happens if you leave one weed in the ground.”

“Well, I really don’t understand it.” Ella threw up her hands. “Who in our day and age ever has to spend four years in jail?”

Ella had come to us from another world, the world we were familiar with but from which we had been gone for the last few days. And, in fact, she should it difficult to believe when we told her about torture, caverns, and treachery. For the nonce no one bothered to argue with her.

“And what have you done with the pirates?” Ella asked.

“One’s in a cage. Two are in the hold. The fattest and worst was just here a moment ago.” The Second Captain answered. “Where has he gotten to?”

The Fat Man had vanished. A moment ago he had been sitting on the grass, laughing timidly. Then he was gone.

We hunted through the surrounding underbrush, looked under and behind every bush; he could not have gotten very far. The Blabberyap bird would have raised an alarm.

“This is a fine mess.” Ella said with reproach. “You can’t keep a lone pirate locked up! Really, what sort of weeding are you doing?”

And then I noticed that the cloud was pushing against the restraining force screen stronger than it had before. I looked closer. There were footprints…

“I know where he is!” Alice shouted. She had run from behind me to the net. “He crawled into the cloud.”

“Are you here, Veselchak U?” Verkhovtseff said, leaning against the cloud.

The cloud started to shake, like a pile of hay where a wandering dog is hiding out.

“Let’s let the cloud go and see.” Seva said cheerfully.

“Not on your life!” Ella objected. “I’d never find another one.”

But the fat man’s nerves could take it no longer and his head popped out of the side of the gas cloud and through the force screen, which was only really strong enough to contain molecules of gas. His eyes were puffy and he was gasping for breath; evidently the composition of the gas in the cloud was unbreathable.

Suddenly the Fat Man cut from the cloud and threw himself running across the field.

“Where are you going?” The Second Captain called after him. “We’ll catch you in the end. If you keep running like that your heart will give out!”

But the Fat Man was not listening. He rushed between the bushes, jumped over pits, stumbled and was back on his feet again waving his arms up and down.

And so the Crockadee, lazily cruising the heights, spotted the Fat Man from above, and darted for him like a vulture fixed on a baby rabbit.

Another second and the Fat Man was waddling on air, and the bird carried him high so quickly that when the Second Captain had puled out his pistol the bird was almost half a kilometer above the ground.

“Don’t shoot.” The First Captain stopped him. “If he falls from that height he’ll be smithereens…”

No sooner had the fatal words been uttered than the fat man managed to twist around in the bird’s claws and strike at his captor with his hands. The bird let go. The fat man fell to earth like a rag doll. He vanished on the other side of the hill.

We were all silent. Then Zeleny said:

“He chose his own punishment. He couldn’t have thought of anything better.”

All of us had to agree with him.

While we had been looking at the sky the gas cloud gad silently oozed its way through the net. It had condensed itself until it had flowed between the energy strands like jam, running every which way, and when we had opened our eyes what we saw was that we stood up to our knees in grey jam.

“Grab it!” Ella shouted. “It’s getting away.

And the mist did get away. It changed phase again and surrounded us with an impenetrable mist, and when the mist dissipated an enormous grey cloud floated over our heads.

“We were planning to leave here anyway.” The second Captain said. “I suggest we make haste.”

We quickly herded the Skliss aboard the Pegasus and took off. The remaining three ships rose to follow right after us, and all of us, forming a net with our ship’s force fields, chased after the living cloud.

We did not catch up with the cloud until past the planet Eyeron, by which time the gas had spread to cover some thousands of cubic kilometers and we spent three days forcing it into a compact enough form to fit into our nets.

In the end we trapped the cloud in a triple net and solidly held it in between two of our ships. In that way we brought it to the Solar system where everyone would be able to admire it in an enclosure built in Archimedes Crater on the Moon, although I, personally, cannot think of anything more boring to look at than a living gas cloud.

Ella had insisted that the gas cloud should be placed in a Zoo on Earth, but the terrestrial climate would have been harmful and, really, who goes to a Zoo to look at a mass of grey gas? You go to a Zoo to look at an empathicator, to get a gift scarf from a Sewing Spider, or to pour lemonade on the roots of a wanderbush, or to figure out which animal in the herd of cows roaming over the pasture is the Skliss.

Our last time together was in the Moonwalker Hotel in Lunar City.

“It’s time to say farewell.” The Second Captain said.

The Captains were sitting in a row on a long divan; they looked nothing at all like their stone monuments on the Three Captain’s Planet. The First Captain was pensive and had difficulty in hiding chagrin; while he had been in the Medusa system they had begin the transfer of Venus to its new orbit, so he had missed the grand moment.

The Third Captain was feeling very poorly; he had a cold which he had contracted in the pirates’ cavern, but when Verkhovtseff brought him medicine the Captain refused.

“This isn’t something that can be cured by terrestrial medicines, let me be hoenst with you. Don’t pay any attention. As soon as I go back into space, everything will be all right. The best hospital is the bridge of a starship.”

Only the Second Captain was in a good mood. He had just handed over the formula for galaxion to a group of physicists from Earth. The physicists had taken up about half the hotel rooms in Luna City and every arriving ship brought their colleagues from different universities and institutes. There were scientists coming from Fyxx and Leonce, and the space docks of Pluto had already begun work on the first ship that would be powered by the new drive.

“You’re laughing all the time.” Ella said to the Second Captain; she hated sitting in one spot and was nervously walking around the room. “I suppose you’re pleased with yourself for creating such a commotion among the physicists?”

“Eminently pleased.” The Second Captain admitted. “I have to admit that I was afraid our people had discovered the formula for galaxion on their own and they no longer needed it. All those years I kept worrying: what if they’ve invented galaxion already on Earth?”

“But you never would have surrendered the formula to the pirates?” I asked.

“No, of course not. You can just imagine the sort of plans they would have had for it in your worst nightmares! I hope, I trust that we will never see such things. In the final analysis, space is no longer as big as it once was. I’m just sorry that you were never able gather as many animals as you wanted, Professor Seleznev. But I’ll try to repay you for your efforts by getting you birds and animals for the zoo from where ever I find myself.”

“Thank you, my friends.” I said, “But I must say don’t be concerned for me. We’ll be going out in the Pegasus next summer. That is, of course, if Poloskov and Zeleny won’t refuse to fly with me.”

“No plans for that.” Poloskov insisted.

“I’m willing.” Zeleny said. “If the circumstances and the stars are right.”

Zeleny was incorrigible, but I knew he’d be coming too. He knew it too, but of course he couldn’t avoid raising his doubts.

“And I’m going too.” Alice noted.

“We’ll see.” I answered. “You have the whole of the next year of school to get through.”

“And where are you planning on going now?” Poloskov asked the Captains.

“I’m off to Pluto/” The Second Captain said. “They’ve building ships with galaxion engines now. I’m hoping to get one of the first.”

“And I am going home first, to Fyxx.” The Third Captain said “I haven’t been home in ages. And then I’m going to build a ship with the new drive as well.”

“And I have to go back to Venus now.” The First Captain said. “Venus is already moving into its new orbit. A few months more and my work will be finished. That’s when I’ll be able to rejoin the others.”

“So you’re all going back to Deep Space?” Alice asked.

“Yes.” The First Captain said.

“Of course.” The Second Captain said.

“Where else?” The Third Captain finished.

“And I had been planning to fly to a living, sentient planet.” Ella declared. “That should have been even more interesting than a living space cloud. But I fear I will have to ask Professor Seleznev to fly there in my place.”

“And why?” I asked. “You after all, are the one who’s the specialist in supernatural animals.”

“I’ll be going with the Captains.”

“But we’re heading for the next Galaxy. That’s a long and difficult flight.”

“Don’t argue with me.” Ella snapped back decisively. “I’ve come to my decision. We’re not going to be separated from each other for so long.”

“But what about the children?” The First Captain asked.

“The children will stay with their grandmother. She doesn’t dance at the Bolshoy Theater every day. She can take them out of Kindergarten on Saturdays and Sundays.”

The First Captain was beginning to look rather embarrassed in front of his friends.

The Second Captain inclined his head as a sign of agreement.

The Third Captain signified the same by raising one of his six arms.

“Don’t forget,” Ella told me, rather clearly having no doubts that she would be able to convince the three men of her plans, “You promised me you’d find the living planet. And I will bring you the most remarkable animal we encounter at Andromeda.”

The Pegasus was the first of the ships to leave the Moon. We were in a hurry because it was best if the animals could be transferred as soon as possible into permanent recreations of their home environments. The Captains and Ella accompanied us to the ship and wished us a pleasant voyage. The Pegasus rose on its thrusters over the airless surface of the Moon and set course for Earth.

I hurried to the cargo bays to see for myself how our animals were feeling. Most of the cages we had brought out from Earth were unused. There really weren’t all that many animals. The cage that had housed the pirate Ratty was empty as well. We had landed him and his two followers on one of the planets where they had caused so much trouble. Presumably they would know how to punish the pirate properly.

I fed the Skliss the last handful of grain. The skliss pressed his side to the bars so I could groom him.

Alice came into the hold. Behind her the wanderbushes seminili verenicei.

“So,” I asked, “what are you going to tell them at school?”

“Do I really have to tell them everything?” Alice shrugged her shoulders. “There’s no way they would believe it all.”

She picked up the mop and started to help me clean the cages.

“Yes,” I agreed. Who would believe it all?.

“You’re not satisfied with the expedition?” Alice asked. “Didn’t we get enough animals?”

“No, word of honor, I’m quite satisfied. We’ve made new friends and what new friends!”

“That’s great!” Alice hugged me. “You know, the Captains promised to take me to the other Galaxy. No, don’t worry, not on their first trip, but later, when I’m grown a little.”

“What can I say,” I said, “except ‘Have a Nice Trip.’“

“Don’t be worried, Papa, we’ll most likely be taking you along too. Biologists are always needed on an expedition.

“Thanks, Alice. You’re a true friend.”

Together the two of us finished cleaning the cages and feeding all the animals so that when we landed on Earth everything would be ship shape.




Alice’s Birthday







1


Alice was born on November 17th. It’s a successful day for such an event. It could have been far worse. I, for example, know someone who was born on January First, with the result that no one ever gave im a special birthday celebration because everyone was busy with New Years. It has to be bad for anyone born in the summer. All your friends are either away on vacation or trips; Alice has never had that trouble.

Just a week before Alice’s birthday I, coming home from the Zoo, started to think: What shall I get her? It is always a problem. I have packed away at home seven identical neckties, six holographic dancing ballerinas and ballerinas carved from wood carved out of roots and knots, three inflatable submarines, fourteen atomic powered lighters, a set of tin Eifel towers all of six inches high, and a multitude of other unnecessary things which you receive on your birthday and which you quite carefully hide away: five blue porcelain cups marked Mars Exposition 2070, an ash tray in the form of a ship of the star wraiths — as well as more such ash trays than one could possibly use.

I was sitting and remembering what Alice asked me back in September. She had asked for something. Something she needed. Back then I wanted to think about it more. And I forgot.

Then the videophone rang.

I pressed the ACCEPT button. On the screen appeared a set of seven eyes arranged in a fan shape above a rounded snout, below the nose the shark-tooth filled muzzle of my oldest and dearest friend, the off-world archaeologist Gromozeka, from the planet Chumaroz. Gromozeka was twice as large as an average human being, he had ten tentacles, seven eyes, a plate of bone armor on his chest and three wonderful, rather confused hearts.

“Professor,” He said. “It is quite unnecessary to burst into tears on seeing my visage. In but ten minutes I shall be at your home and will clutch you to my very own chest.”

“Gromozeka!” I just managed to say the one word when the screen at the other end turned off and my friend vanished. “Alice!” I shouted. “Gromozeka’s coming!”

Alice was doing her homework in the next room; she was delighted to tear herself away from it and come running into my office. A wanderbush came rolling in after her. We had brought it back from our last expedition. The bush was spoilt and demanded it be watered only with fruit juice, with the result that the floors of our house remained slippery puddles and our house robot spent his days grumbling, wiping up after the capricious plant.

“I remember him.” Alice said. “We saw Gromozeka on the Moon last year. What’s he digging up now?”

“Some dead planet or other.” I said. “They found ruins of cities. I saw it on NewsNet.”

Gromozeka leads an adventurous and peripatetic existence. In general, the inhabitants of the planet Chumaroz love nothing better than to sit at home. But you can’t have a rule without exceptions to it. Over the course of his life Gromozeka had gone to more planets than thousands of his conspecifics.

“Alice,” I said. “What should I get you for your birthday?”

Alice patted the bush on its leaves and answered thoughtfully.

“That’s a really serious question, Dad. I have to think on it. Just don’t go off and chose something without asking me. You might get me something I don’t need.”

And at that moment the house’s entry door flew open and the floor shuddered beneath the weight of my guest. Gromozeka rolled into the office, gawked with his enormous maw that was filled from end to end with shark’s teeth, and shouted from the threshold:

“I am here at last, my priceless friends! Straight from the space port to you. I am exhausted and about to go to sleep. Find me a wide enough space on your floor for a bed and cover me with a rug, and wake me in twelve hours.”

Then he caught sight of Alice and started to howl even louder:

“Female child! Daughter of my friend! How you have grown! Just how old are you now?”

“I’ll be ten next week.” Alice said. “I shall be embarking upon the second decade of my life.”

“Just right now we were trying to decide on her birth day present.” I said.

“And what have you chosen?

“Nothing, yet.”

“Shameful!” Gromozeka said. He lowered himself down on the floor on his bottom tentacles like an upside down flower, to take his load off them. “If I was the one who had such a fine female progeny I would celebrate her birthday for a full week and give her a whole planet.”

“All well and good.” I said. “Especially when one takes into consideration that a year on Chumaroz is longer than seventeen Earth years, and a week stretches for four terrestrial months.”

“As always, Professor, you succeed in quashing the mood.” Gromozeka was annoyed. “And have you found any Ex-Lax? Only the undiluted stuff. My thirst is terrible.”

Ex-Lax was something missing from our medicine cabinet and the house robot was dispatched to the nearest drugstore for it.

“Now tell us.” I said. “What have you been doing, where have you been digging, and what have you found?”

“I cannot say.” Gromozeka answered. “I swear by the Galaxy itself that it is a terrible secret. A terrible secret, but a sensational one too.”

“You want to tell us, but you can’t.” I said. “I never knew before now that archaeologists kept secrets.”

“Ho,” Gromozeka expelled a puff of yellow smoke from his nostrils. “I have embarrassed my best of friends! You are angry with me! That is everything. I must depart and, perhaps, do away with myself. I am sworn to secrecy.”

Seven heavy, smoking tears rolled out from my sensitive friend’s seven eyes.

“Don’t take it so hard.” Alice said then. “Papa didn’t want to embarrass. I know him.”

“I have embarrassed myself.” Gromozeka said. “Where is the Ex-Lax? Why do these robots always take so long to run their errands? All they do is stand about and gossip with other house robots. About the weather or about the football scores. And it’s completely forgotten that I am dying of thirst.”

“Perhaps I can bring you some tea?” Alice asked.

“No.” Gromozeka waved his tentacles in fright. “That stuff’s pure poison for me!”

At that moment, fortunately, the robot appeared with a large bottle of Ex-Lax. Gromozeka poured the liquid into a glass, sniffed it to appreciate the bouquet, and drank it down in one gulp; white smoke issued like steam from his nostrils.

“Now that’s better. Now I can transmit to you, Professor an enormously important secret. Let the consequences be on my head.”

“You really don’t have to.” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Gromozeka said. “No one other than me knows it’s a secret anyway.”

“You are a very strange archaeologist.” Alice said. “Doesn’t that mean there is no secret.”

“But there is a secret.” Gromozeka said. “One of the most important of all, but not in way you understood the word.”

“Gromozeka.” I said. “We don’t understand anything.”

“Nothing at all.” Alice added.

Gromozeka, in order not to waste time uselessly, finished drinking the Ex-Lax directly from the bottle, gave a sigh that made the windows shudder, and told us all about it.

The archaeological expedition with which Gromozeka was working had landed on the dead planet Coleida. Human beings had lived on Coleida once, but they had died out for some reason about a hundred years ago. Along with them had died all the planet’s animals. And the insects. And the birds. And the fish. There was not a single living thing on the planet. Nothing. Not a single cell. Just ruins. The wind howled, the rain beat down. In some places there were cars on the streets, and monuments to great people.

“Did they have a war?” Alice asked. “Did they kill each other off?”

“No where did you come across that idea?” Gromozeka was amazed.

“We re doing the history of the Middle Ages.” Alice answered.

“No, there wasn’t any war there.” Gromozeka said. “If there had been such a terrible and destructive war, even a hundred years later we would have found traces.”

“Well, maybe they used poison gas.” I asked. “Or atomic bombs? What if they started a chain reaction?”

“You are an educated person.” Gromozeka said. “But you are spouting nonsense. Why do you presume the team of experienced archaeologists, specialists in our fields, which I have the honor of heading, capable of penetrating the ground and seeing each earth worm, would have failed to detect such traces?”

Gromozeka shook his head and rolled his eyes so terribly that I sneaked a glance at Alice: had my best friend managed to frighten her yet?

But Alice wasn’t afraid of Gromozeka. She was thinking.

“We are left with but one suspicion.” Gromozeka said. “But it is a secret.”

“They were attacked.” Alice said.

“By whom?”

“By space pirates, of course. I’ve seen them.”

“Non-sense!” Gromozeka answered and burst out laughing, all his tentacles shook and he knocked one of the flower vases down of the window sill.

I pretended not to notice, and Alice did the same. We both knew that Gromozeka would have been very upset at what he had done.

“Space Pirates could not destroy an entire planet. And anyway, there are no such things as Space Pirates.”

“Then what destroyed the planet Coleida?”

“That is a question I came to Earth to answer.” Gromozeka said.

Alice and I were silent and put forward no more questions. Gromozeka was also silent. He was waiting for us to ask him, and I wanted to hold out asking him for as long as possible.

The result was that the three of us were silent or about two minutes. Finally, Gromozeka became quite angry with us.

“I see you are uninterested.” He said.

“No, certainly not.” I answered. “I’m dying to learn, but since you don’t want to talk about it I’m not asking you…”

“Why do you say I don’t want to talk about it?” Gromozeka shouted. “Who told you any such thing?”

“You did.”

“I did? Impossible!”

Then I decided to tease my friend, who was clearly dying from his desire to tell us everything.

“And anyway, Gromozeka, you’re getting ready for a good twelve hours sleep. We’ll move the dining room table to one side and you can have the rug. Alice, go do your homework.”

“Alas for me!” Gromozeka said. “That I should have such ‘friends.’ I hurry to them across the entire Galaxy to bring them the most interesting news, and them right away pack me off to bed they are so bored with me! I bore them. There is nothing to be done… Just lead me to your bath tub so I can wash off my tentacles.”

Alice looked at me pleadingly. She was desperate to ask Gromozeka.

But Gromozeka had already taken himself to the bath tub, dragging his tentacles all over the furniture and walls.

“Why aren’t you asking him, Papa?” Alice whispered when Gromozeka left. “He really does want to tell us.”

“Then he shouldn’t mince words.” I said. “If we were to ask him or show interest, then he’d drag this out for two hours or more before we found out anything at all. But now he’ll tell us on his own. You can bet on it.”

“It’s a bet then.” Alice agreed. “But what do we wager? I say that Gromozeka is very angry and won’t tell us a single thing.”

“And I say that he is very angry, and precisely because he is angry he is going to tell us everything!”

“For an ice cream cone?”

“For an ice cream cone.”

So we set our wager. Before we even had a chance to shake hands on it the hallway’s walls shook. Gromozeka was coming back.

He was wet; water dripped down his shell, and the tentacles left long wet ribbons behind on the floor. The house robot walked behind our guest, wiping the floor with a mop.

“Pardon me, Professor.” Gromozeka said. “But where is your soap?”

“The soap?” I was surprised. “The soap is on the shelf. Isn’t it there?”

“It is.” Gromozeka started to laugh. “I came here especially to have a little joke on you. No doubt you thought I had rushed here for no other reason than to tell you the secret. And, no doubt, you told your daughter: there goes that idiot Gromozeka, who wants to share his secret with us so much he forgot to wipe his tentacles. Didn’t you?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

But Alice gave it all away immediately.

“We even placed a bet on it.” She said. “I said that you would keep the secret.”

“Oh well.” Gromozeka sat down again on our floor and spread out like a flower with his wet tentacles the leaves. “Now I am satisfied. You were having a joke at my expense, as I was having one on you. We’re even. So listen up, my friends. Do you remember the epidemic of Space Plague?”




2


Of course we remembered the epidemic. Or more precisely, I remembered it, and Alice had read about it. About fifteen years ago an expedition had returned to Earth from Galactic Sector Seventeen. Following the protocols then in place all long range expeditions returned, not to Earth directly, but to the base on Pluto for quarantine. That, and that alone, had saved our planet.

Two members of the crew had fallen sick with an unknown illness. They were placed in isolation. But despite the best medical science in the Solar System, they continued to decline. On the next day the rest of the crew were showing symptoms, and two days later the infection had spread to the entire base.

The whole Earth was frightened, and a specialized medical ship lifted for Pluto. For the next few days the struggle for the lives of the starship crew and the people of Pluto base continued. It ended with a defeat for the doctors. Not only had they been unsuccessful in treating those who fell ill, the medical ship’s crew had, despite the extreme measures they had taken to prevent infection, fallen ill themselves in turn.

Since that time the disease in question had been called Space Plague.

A quarantine was declared, and patrol ships kept watch in orbit around Pluto to ensure that no one landed there by accident. At the same time the best doctors on Earth and other planets attempted to decipher the secret of the illness. It turned out that there was no medicine against the disease and no means to stop it. No medicines could cure it, nor could the thick walls of an isolation lab prevent its spread.

And only after three months, at an enormous price in victims and the efforts of thousands of scientists, was the cause of the disease determined and did they learn how to overcome it.

Finally, they concluded that the disease was so difficult to cope with because it was carried by viruses which exhibited two remarkable characteristics: in the first place they were able to mask themselves as known viruses the bodies of the infected had already developed immunity to and were thus harmless and thus it was impossible to find them in the blood stream, and, secondly, en mass they were a rational, thinking being.

Individually, none of the viruses were capable of thought or taking decisions, but, when some billions of them congregated in the blood of an infected individual, they achieved a strange, evil rationality. As a result, whenever the doctors were finally about to close in on the virus, the plague, as a rational entity, ordered all its constituent viruses to change their forms, designed a counter agent to the medicines, and found new ways to kill people.

When the scientists discovered what was going on they attempted to establish a reasoned dialogue with the virus. But the virus had no desire to communicate with people. Or it could not. All its thoughts, all its ingenuity, was directed only at destruction; it was unable to create anything.

Later, when Space Plague was long conquered, they were able to find mention of this virus in the archives of other planets.

It turned out that the Sol system was not the first place this plague had appeared. The virus had managed to exterminate whole planets and entire stellar systems. And if we had not succeeded in finding a means to overcome the disease, the virus would not have rested until it had destroyed everything living on the planet. Then, having exterminated the people, plants and animals, the fish, and the bacteria, the plague viruses would either change and return to space like a swarm of bees, where they could where they could infect some passing space ship or fall on some other planet, or remain in place and enter hibernation.

The astronautical archaeologists from the expedition Gromozeka was leading had therefore decided that, most likely, the planet Coleida had died from Space Plague. The inhabitants of the planet had found no means of dealing with the epidemic.

Thus, in order to determine with absolute certainty that this is what happened, Gromozeka had flown here to Earth. Earth had the Time Institute. Its researchers could travel into the past, and Gromozeka had decided to ask the Institute to send one of its machines to Coleida, and send someone into the past to determine if indeed it was Space Plague that had exterminated the planet’s inhabitants.




3


On the next day Gromozeka left for the Time Institute early in the morning. He was there almost to supper, and Alice, who now knew everything about his plans, came home after school and remained in the house to await the archaeologist’s return. She was very curious to discover how it all turned out.

We saw Gromozeka through the window. The glass started to shake, and the house itself was rattling. Gromozeka was walking down the middle of the street, howling some sort of song and carrying such an enormous bouquet of flowers that he was leaving petals behind on the house fronts on either side of the street. Pedestrians who caught sight of my dear monster had backed up against the walls and were rather frightened, if for no other reason than they had never seen a bouquet of flowers five yards in diameter underneath which stuck out long, thick tentacles with claws on their ends. As Gromozeka passed each one he handed him or her a flower.

“Hey!” My friend shouted; he had stopped directly beneath our window.

“Hello, Gromozeka!” Alice shouted, opening the window wide. “Do you have good news?”

“I shall tell you everything, my dear ones!” Gromozeka answered, and gave a flower to an old man who had stopped and sat down on the sidewalk from amazement. “But first take this tiny bouquet from me. I’ll pass it up to you one part at a time, since I can’t go through your building doorway with it.”

Gromozeka extended a tentacle with the first portion of flowers.

After five minutes the entire apartment was filled with flowers, so much that I had even lost sight of Alice. Finally, the last armful of flowers had beenc ramed intot he rooms. I asked:

“Alice, where are you?”

Alice called back from the kitchen:

“I’m getting all the bowls, vases, cups and glasses down so we can fill them with water and put flowers in them.”

“Don’t forget about the bathtub.” I said. “Fill it with water too. We can put one of the larger bouquets in there.”

After saying this I swam, or clawed my way, through the sea of flowers to the door so I could open it and let Gromozeka into the house.

Gromozeka got a good look at what he had done to our living quarters, and he was very pleased.

“I was thinking….” He spoke as he helped us fill all the pots and pans, the vases, jars, glasses, carafes, and cups with flowers, load them into the bath tub and the kitchen sink. “I was thinking, that before now no one has brought you such a splendiferous bouquet.”

“Absolutely no one at all.” I agreed.

“This means I am your very best friend,” Gromozeka said, “and yet there isn’t a single drop of Ex-Lax in the house again.”

Having said that, Gromozeka lay down on the floor, on a rug of flowers, and told us everything he had been able to do that day.

“At first I went to the Time Institute. They were delighted to see me at the Institute. Firstly because it was Gromozeka the famous archaeologist himself who came to visit….”

Here Alice interrupted our guest and asked:

“And just how did they learn about you, Gromozeka?”

“Everyone knows about me.” Gromozeka answered. “And do not interrupt your elders. Why, when they saw me in their doorway some of them even fainted from joy.”

“That was from terror.” Alice corrected Gromozeka. “Someone who has never seen you before night get frightened.”

“Foolishness!” Gromozeka said. “Why, on our planet, I am sublimely beautiful.”

Then he broke into laughter, and the flower petals whirled in the air.

“Do not think that I am so naive, Alice.” He said, when the fit of laughter had ended and he had control over his breath again. “I know when someone is frightened of me, and when someone is delighted. Therefore I always nock on the door and ask if I frighten them. If they answer “No,” then I enter and tell them that I am the famous archaeologist Gromozeka from the planet Chumaroz. Satisfied, now?”

“Satisfied.” Alice answered. She was sitting, her feet crossed, on a tangle of Gromozeka’s tentacles. “Continue. This means, first of all, they are delighted Gromozeka has come to visit them. But doesn’t this imply a ‘secondarily?’“

“Secondarily,” Gromozeka said, because they had just finished experiments with a new machine at the Time Institute. You will recall that all the earlier machines were only capable of operating on the Institute’s premises, but the new time machine can be transported to other localities. They power it with atomic batteries. They were just about ready to transport the machine to Miracle Lake…”

“Where?” I was surprised.

“Gromozeka said, to ‘Lake Chudskoe.’ Right?” Alice said. “Gromozeka has the right not to know all the details of Earth history.”

“And I was about to say,” Gromozeka said, “Chudskoe Lake. And anyone who heard otherwise has deficient ears… They wanted to look at how Alexander the Great defeated the Tattletale Knights.”

“That’s right,” Alice said, “They would want to watch Alexander Nevsky defeat the Teutonic Knights.”

“Oh, them.” Gromozeka sighted. “I always get those two confused! But when I discovered at they had a machine ready for travel already, I told them: ‘What’s just one lake, when I can put an entire planet at your disposal? And you will always be able to go back to the lake if you want and confirm what every school child knows, that Alexander Nevsky defeated the Teutonic Order in the famous Battle on the Ice on April Fifth, 1242 AD, and saved Russia from conquest, but as to what happened on the planet Coleida, not even I, the great and glorious archaeologist Gromozeka, know, although I do suspect they were wiped out by Space Plague.’“

“And they agreed?” Alice asked.

“Not right away.” Gromozeka admitted. At first they said that the time machine was still not fully tested under such extreme conditions, such as space, and it might not work properly, or else an accident might happen. Then, when I said that conditions on Coleida were not at all more difficult than at the Chudsky lake, they said that the atomic batteries and other apparatus were so heavy that it would need ten space ships to convey everything to Coleida. But by then I already knew that they had all but agreed. And anyway, they themselves were tempted to test their time machine on another planet. And I told them how we could start up the main power station on Coleida, and even more we of the expedition have a very powerful mass conversion reactor, and even gravity engines. And if they wanted to send a whole group of investigators along with their machine, we could feed and house them all and even provide them with excursions to the main tourist traps. So of course they agreed. Pretty smart of me, if I don’t say so myself, eh?”

“You’re a genius, Gromozeka.” I said.

“And now I shall have to get some sleep, for tomorrow we begin loading. Even without the atomic batteries we shall require at least three ships for the loading of the machine. And I still have to find the ships.”

And Gromozeka promptly leaned his large, soft, rather balloon-like head against the wall and fell asleep..




4


All the following day Gromozeka rushed around Moscow, flew to Prague, called back and forth to the Moon constantly, acquired ships, negotiated about freight and cargo space and only in the evening arrived back at our house. On this occasion he came without flowers, not but alone.

Gromozeka brought with him two temporalists, as the researchers at the Institute of Time were known. One temporalist was young, lanky, and very lean, and perhaps because of that appeared rather morose. He had thick, kinky black hair in an Afro, and Gromozeka, astonished that such thing creatures could even exist, spent all his time poking and prodding at the poor fellow with the claw at the end of one tentacle. The second temporalist was a short, thickset, middle aged man with small, penetrating grey eyes. From time to time he hiccoughed; he was dressed in the latest fashion.

“Petrov.” He introduced himself. “M-micael Petrov. I’m project director. But it will be Richard here who will actually operate the machine.”

“Of course, of course.” I said. The name of this famous physicist, who had discovered temporal changes in superstring plasma, and who had then went on to head the Time Institute, was one very familiar to me. “I am delighted you could come here.”

“Is there some holiday or celebration.” Petrov asked. “A birth day, p-perhaps? I’m sorry; if we had known I’d have brought something..”

“No, no celebration.” I said. “Our friend Gromozeka brought some flowers yesterday. And as Gromozeka never does anything at less than ten thousand percent he just cleared out an entire flower nursery.”

“Do sit down.” Gromozeka said. “Have some Ex-Lax and we can talk.”

He reached inside the deep pouch which grows on the belly of all Chumaroseans and pulled out a bottle of Ex-Lax, several kinds of crackers, cheeses and dips, as well as some bottles of wine for the rest of us.

“So,” he said, spreading out on the rug and surrounding all of us with his tentacles, as though we were afraid we might all run screaming in every direction, “We now have ships, the agreement of the Academy of Sciences for your expedition into space, and we will soon be testing your machine. Are you happy?”

“Thank you.” Petrov said politely. “Your invitation was…most kind.”

“Ah,” Gromozeka said mortified, turning to me, “in reality he is anything but happy. And do you know why? Because he wanted to spend time on Chud lake.”

“Chudskoe.” Alice corrected Gromozeka.

Gromozeka ignored her.

“He wanted to go to Chudskoe lake because he knew what was awaiting him there in the past. As many times as he might venture there and then, nothing will change the fact that Alexander….. Nevsky defeated the Tattletonic Knights. But on Coleida we do not know, with certainty, how everything came about. And what if the planet died not from Space Plague but from something else?”

“If you are trying to imply cowardice on our parts,” Richard grew angry, “try somewhere else. You have no idea what sort of risks are associated with working out-time. Our people have tried to save Giordano Bruno from the fire, they have infiltrated the Crusades and Fascist camps, sharing the danger and misfortune, and sometimes fates, of the peoples of other times…”

“Don’t get angry, Richard.” Petrov said. “Can’t you see that Gromozeka is trying to tease you? And you took the bait.”

“But I am teasing no one!” Gromozeka grew agitated. “I am a very direct and naive archaeologist.”

What Gromozeka said was anything but the truth. In reality he was not devoid of spite himself, and he was afraid the temporalists would somehow get out of going to the archaeological dig and that all his dreams would turn to dust.

“Don’t be afraid, Gromozeka.” Petrov said suddenly. “If the Time Institute promised you the exp-perimental model of the time machine would be tested at your expedition, it will be.” He was a very perceptive person.

“Now that is superb!” Gromozeka answered. “Of course I don’t doubt it. Otherwise I would never have introduced you to my best friends, Professor Seleznev and his famous daughter Alice, about whom you know far too little, although you will soon have the opportunity to become more fully acquainted with her.”

“And why will they? Become acquainted, I mean?” I asked.

“Because I have conceived the perfect gift for your daughter’s birthday, Professor.” Gromozeka answered.

“And what is that?”

“We’ll take her with us to Coleida?”

“When? Now?”

“Of course, certainly, now.”

“But Alice has to go to school.”

“Tomorrow I’ll go myself to visit your school and have a word with the teacher. She will certainly let her go for several days.”

“Oh!” Alice said, “Thanks a lot! But just don’t walk into the school yourself.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because Elena, my teacher, she’s really nervous and afraid of spiders and mice and other critters.”

“And in what way am I like unto them?” Gromozeka thundered.

“You’re not.” Alice hurried to answer. “But she’d really be afraid of you a little. Not so much for herself but for me. She’s say that she was afraid to let me go… that is not so much with you as with what you are; just don’t get angry Gromozeka…”

“I understand it all.” My friend said sadly. “It’s perfectly obvious. You, dear child, have fallen into the hands of a cruel and terrible woman. You fear what she might threaten me, your friend, with evil…”

“No, you don’t quite understand…”

“I understand everything. Professor!”

“What?” I asked and tried to hold back the grin on my face.

“You must immediately remove your child from that school. They are torturing her. If you do not do it I shall go there myself tomorrow and save Alice myself.”

“Alice is perfectly capable of saving herself.” I said. “Don’t have any fears for her sake. Now, how many days do you propose to take her for?”

“A mere thirty or forty.” Gromozeka said.

“No. Don’t even think of it.”

“Then for twenty-seven days.”

“Why twenty-seven.”

“Because the two of us are bargaining and you have already gotten me to back down two days. Your move.”

The temporalists were laughing.

“I had no idea that space archaeologists were so….” Richard said.

“But I am not prepared to bargain with you on this.” I told Gromozeka. “You really must understand that earth children have to go to school.”

“To such a monster like the foul Elena, who tortures mice and spiders? Who would have attacked me, if not for Alice’s timely warning?”

“Yes to the monster, to the charming, pleasant and intelligent woman, my thick skinned egoist friend.”

“P-please do not argue.” Petrov said. “When does Alice’s term break start?”

“In five days.” Alice said.

“How long is it?”

“One week.”

“That’s just p-perfect. Send your daughter with us for the term break week. There is certainly no way we will be able to finish loading before Alice’s break starts.”

“Stop!” Gromozeka fumed. “I have yet to finish my bargain with the Professor. Let your daughter go for twenty-six days.”

“No.”

“For twenty-two.”

“Not on our life.”

“You are a hard man, Seleznev. Not even my little bouquet of flowers yesterday can move you. Eighteen days, and not a minute less.”

“Why for so long?”

“The flight there takes two day. Then two days return. And two weeks on the planet.”

“Okay.” I said. Four days travel time, five days on Coleida, and one day for a fudge factor. Ten days in all. I will go to the school myself and ask for Alice to be permitted to return from break three days late. And not another word on the matter.”

“Alas.” Gromozeka agreed. “But the ship might be delayed en route. What if it has to avoid a meteorite swarm?”

“I will not hold meteorite swarms, novas, or other natural disasters against you.”

“Alice,” Gromozeka turned toward my daughter. “You understand it all? You’ll get the instructions from me tomorrow. But now, my dear temporalists, I must tell you how lucky we were that this cruel Professor has agreed to send is marvelous daughter with us. Hear my recounting of the story of how Alice found the Three Captains and saved the Galaxy from the space pirates.”

And Gromozeka set about to detail for the temporalists our flight in the Pegasus in search of exotic and rare extraterrestrial animals, and how we found the Second Captain. His retelling was so far from the truth that I did not bother to interrupt and correct Gromozeka but just told Petrov and Richard:

“Scale it all back about ten times. And you, Alice, go to your desk and do your lessons, or else you’ll end up believing Gromozeka’s tales of your own feats of daring do.”

“I haven’t yet begun to do daring do, Papa.” Alice said, but she behaved herself. “Good night. I have my homework to do. I’ll see you in space.”

When Gromozeka finished his story of Alice’s Labors the temporalists began to discuss their own work on Coleida, what else they would need to take to Coleida, and did not depart until after midnight.

And when I was going to bed I asked Gromozeka:

“Tell me, you old scoundrel; why did you insist that Alice go along?”

“A mere trifle; I thought it would be good for the child…” Gromozeka said.

“I do not believe you. But as to what I can do…”

“I will look after her myself.” Gromozeka said, making himself comfortable and turning into a large shining sphere. “Not one little golden hair will be missing from her beautiful little head when she returns.”

And four days later the ships with the disassembled time machine aboard took off from Earth and headed toward Coleida. Alice went with Gromozeka on the first ship. As to what happened on that planet, I only learned two weeks later, when Alice got back. What happened is this…




5


The ships landed on Coleida early in the local morning. By the time the locks were open the guard on duty at the field camp’s com center had already managed to awaken all the archaeologists and they, pulling on their clothing on the run, hurried to where the ships had landed in a dusty field tracked over by the robots and excavatory machines.

“I’ll go out last.” Gromozeka said to the temporalists and Alice. “You are our guests and I a mere archaeologist. They already know we’re bringing the time machine and will be delighted to see you. Alice, dress more warmly; I promised our father that you would not catch a cold. On the other hand, a cold or sickness that needs microbes will not threaten you; there are no microbes on Coleida.”

“Why not?” Alice asked.

“Because on Coleida there is nothing at all that is alive. Not people, not animals, not planets, not flies, not microbes. Space Plague eliminates everything alive.”

Alice was the first to exit the ship.

There were some thirty-five archaeologists in the expedition. Not one of them was from Earth. There were Lineans, Fixxians, Ushans, and other scientists. Other than their profession, they had nothing else in common. Among the crowd that came to greet them were archaeologists without legs, some came on two legs, some on three, and some on seven, some on tentacles, some on wheels, and one archaeologist could boast one hundred forty-four legs. The smallest of the archaeologists was about the size of a cat, and the largest was my friend Gromozeka. The archaeologists displayed a varied assortment in the number of hands, eyes, and even heads as well.

And all of the heads were turned to the ship’s airlock, and when Alice stopped in the lock and waved to her new friends, they began to wave their arms and tentacles in answer and started to shout at her in dozens of different languages.

The crowd of archaeologists was even more demonstrative at the appearance of the temporalist researchers, but when Gromozeka appeared in the lock they went wild, clapping Gromozeka with the hands (and tentacles and feelers and wheels) and dragging everyone toward the camp of tents that sprouted like a multicolored soap bubble garden at one end of the field. Along the way one of the archaeologists, the very smallest and most fragile, was nearly trampled to death, but, was able to spy him out beneath the feet (and tentacles and feelers and wheels) of the others and dragged him, battered and nearly suffocated, back into the air.

“Thank you, my child.” The archaeologist said as he curled himself into a ball in Alice’s arms. “Perhaps I shall be able to return the favor some day. My friends have gotten quite carried away.”

The little archaeologist was light green in color, and fury; his round face was dominated by a single purple grey eye.

“I am the Galaxy’s leading specialist in the decipherment of ancient and dead languages.” He said. “Not one Cyberbrain or computer can compare with me. If my companions had managed to crush me, it would have been an enormous loss for science in general and for our expedition in particular.”

Even at such an extreme moment the little archaeologist was thinking about his work, and not about himself.

Alice brought the battered little archaeologist, who was called Purr, to the largest of the plastic domes where the others had already gathered, and with Petrov’s help sought out the expedition’s doctor, a gruff inhabitant of the planet Cromanyon, who bore a strong resemblance to a garden watering can on legs. When the doctor said the little archaeologist was not in any danger, Alice turned her attention to the discussions going on among the researchers.

It turned out that the members of the expedition had not sat on their hands (and tentacles and feelers and manipulators) while their team leader had flown off to Earth for the time machine. They had finished excavating a medium sized city, en toto, with all its houses, streets, markets, factories, movie theaters, and the railroad station.

And after lunch at the long dining table, during which Gromozeka regaled his friends with his adventures on Earth, the archaeologists took their guests on a tour of the dig.

A hundred years had passed since the city had died; the winds, rain, and snows had tried to wipe the city from the face of the planet, and to a great extent they had succeeded. But the buildings made of stone still stood all the same, if without their roofs, and with windows like the gaping eye sockets of fleshless skulls; weathered, the pavements lined with rows of thick tree stumps, still remained in place. Best preserved was the old castle on the hill above the town; its thick stone walls had stood a thousand years or more and would endure the assaults of the wind and rain for far longer.

The excavators were smearing dried wood with preservative, setting fallen bricks and mortar back into place in half fallen walls, carefully gathering up the century’s accumulation of filth and dust from the street and on a bright, clear day the city may have appeared rundown, old, but clean and almost alive. As though its people had departed not all that long ago.

The city’s inhabitants had been very similar to Earth people, but of short stature, so that when Alice found herself in one of the re-built houses she felt as though the table and bed and chairs had been made specially for her.

A small train stood beside the train station. The steam engine had a long tube, but the wagons with large round windows and overhanging roofs were similar to old Earth train cars.

One of the archaeologists, a specialist in restoration who had resurrected the steam engine and train from pieces of rusty scrap, kept the guests at the station for what seemed to be forever. He wanted them to be able to appreciate how masterfully all the handles, buttons, and switches in the ancient machine were made.

Then the guests got a chance to tour the museum, into which the excavators had gathered all the small objects found in the city: pictures, statues, pots and pans, clothing, household utensils, knickknacks and decorations, and everything else. It was obvious just how much work would have to go into returning all these artifacts to life.

“Tell me,” Petrov asked, when the guests had finished looking over the museum. “have you been able to determine precisely when the planet Coleida died, and what it died from?”

“Yes.” The little archaeologist Purr said. “I’ve read the remains of their newspapers and magazines and found numerous documents. Very clearly an epidemic was responsible. The epidemic began on Coleida one hundred years, three months, and twenty days ago. From the description, and taking into consideration the terror of the inhabitants who described it, it is very similar to Space Plague.”

“But how could the disease have gotten down to the planet. They’ve shown the virus can’t make it to the surface through the atmosphere. That means, something or someone brought it. Could it have been a meteorite?”

“That we have not been able to determine. It could be.” Purr said. “All that is known, is that the first news of the strange disease appeared in the newspapers on Seventh Day, Thirdmonth, year 3070 by the local calender.

“For the explanation we have turned to our temporalist friends.” Gromozeka finished after him. “That is why they flew here, after all. Consider, my friends, victory is almost in sight!”

Gromozeka shook his tentacles, flashing the sharks’ teeth of his enormous maw; all the archaeologists shouted, and the temporalist Petrov whispered to himself:

“You’re right about then ‘almost.’“




6


For five days all the archaeologists, temporalists, and space ship crews erected the time machine and the atomic batteries that would power it. Finally, in the middle of the empty field rose a structure as high as a three story house.

The Time Cabinet occupied only the very center of this enormous construction; the rest of it was given over to control instruments, computers, back-up computers and back-ups for the back- ups, and vast amounts of recording instruments: tapes, paper read-outs, holographic crystals.

All the work on the excavation came to a halt. Who in their right mind would root about in the dirt if there was the possibility to see these artifacts and their creators in reality?

“Well, that,” Petrov said on the morning of the sixth day, “is that. Everything is in place. There is room for just one individual in the temporal transposition chamber, and, since this model of the machine has never been fully tested before, I’ll be the first to use it.”

“Certainly not!” Richard said, waving long, skinny arms. “We’ve been arguing this for the last four days; I’m the one who has to go first.”

“Why?” Alice asked.

She was smeared with graphine and covered all over in dust. She hadn’t had a chance to wash or do her hair all day she had been so busy. The technicians needed help, and she had been running all over the excavation with Purr, who had discovered he was utterly unable to refuse Alice anything now that she had saved him from certain death.

“Because if anything happens to me, there are a hundred graduate students at the Institute who can take my place, Alice.” Richard said. “But if anything happens to Doctor Petrov, there is no one in the Galaxy who can take his place. It’s simply approaching the matter reasonably; how can we guarantee that absolutely nothing will happen with our machine?”

“There are other things more important.” Petrov said. “Discipline, and I am the one who bears the responsibility for both the machine and for you, Richard.”

“I for one would like to go back into the past myself,” Gromozeka said, “but there is no way I could fit into the time machine.”

“Perfectly understandable.” Alice said. “I’d go too.”

Everyone laughed, and no one seemed able to take her seriously. Alice felt her ears burning and almost spoke back up to them when Petrov and Richard went on trying to convince each other who should be first, but before she could Gromozeka carefully pulled Alice to one side with a tentacle and whispered:

“Listen, my child; I did not invite you hear for purely innocent reasons. I think that you still may very well find yourself on a trip to the past. Not now, not the first, but later. And then, what will fall to you will be the most important and complicated part of our work. It is far too early to speak of that. But I swear to you by all the wonders of space itself that at the decisive moment the two of us are going to have something very interesting to do.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Alice said. “I’ve been here for six days already, and the day after tomorrow the freighter returns to Earth, and it has a place waiting for me on it.”

“You don’t believe me.” Gromozeka was shocked and let fly with yellow smoke from his nostrils. “Do you begin to doubt the word of honor of Gromozeka himself? If so, then I have erred mightily. You are unworthy of the honor for which I have brought you here.”

“I am worthy. I am.” Alice answered quickly. “I won’t say a word.”

They went back to the temporalists.

“Then we’ve decided it.” Petrov said, staring at Richard as though he were hypnotizing him. “Tomorrow morning I will transpose into the past. To begin with we will look at the time frame when the epidemic had already taken hold on Coleida. The transposition will be brief. No more than half an hour. I will not leave the immediate vicinity of the time machine and will return a-as soon as I find out anything. If everything goes according to plan, the next flight into the past will last longer. Is that clear?”

“But, Mikhail Petrovich…” Richard tried to begin.

“That is all. Although I suggest you double and triple check the security system, unless you want our team leader to vanish in the middle of his transition.”

“The most important thing is to bring back the latest newspaper.” Purr said; he had been listening to the argument. “Better yet, as many newspapers as possible.”

“Right.” Petrov said. “What else?”

“You will still have to drop by my laboratory.” The doctor who resembled a giant garden watering can on legs said. “I’ll download the local language into your memory. It will only take about two hours. And it might just come in handy.”




7


On the following day Alice was awakened by a humming sound, as though an enormous bee was hovering over the camp. The morning was cold, the wind rustled the curtains, and Gromozeka tossed and turned on his bed, slapping his tentacles about in his sleep, like a puppy dog waving its paws.

“Alice.” A low voice whispered from behind the curtain. The lower edge of the curtain was pulled aside and in the gap she could see Purr’s lilac eye. “Want to see them test the time machine?”

“Of course I do!” Alice whispered in answer. “Be right with you. I just have to get dressed.”

“And warmly.” Gromozeka said suddenly, not opening his eyes. His hearing was astonishing. Even in his sleep.

“Did you wake him up.” Purr asked.

“No, he’s asleep. It’s just that he never stops looking after me. He gave his word to my father.”

Alice rushed out of the dome tent. Blue frost lay in spots on the ground. The domes were all still closed for the night, except for the one at the end of the line which was the kitchen where smoke came from a fire. The camp was asleep.

The sun had just barely managed to edge mountains like the broken teeth of a fine toothed comb with fire, the shadows were long, and the city the archaeologists were excavating was cast in shades of blue and purple, like Purr’s single eye.

Alice ran all the way to the time machine’s building; it was the source of the constant low hum.

“I was thinking,” Purr, who ran beside Alice like a kitten, chattered incessantly. “The temporalists have decided to test the machine without witnesses, if only to have to deal with less of a bother. They are very careful, and, I would say, odd and modest people. But I considered it my duty to awaken you, Alice, because you are my friend, and without a friend at my side I would not have the moral right to observe the first person to be sent a hundred years into the past to learn what happened on this unfortunate planet… Careful! If they catch sight of us, they might just send us away….”

But it was too late. Petrov, dressed in a long cape and a very high hat, such as that worn by hairdressers on Coleida in the past, glanced out the door to the time machine building and saw Alice and Purr.

“And I thought we had avoided awakening anyone.” He said cheerfully. “Well, if you were so suspicious, come right in; the street is horribly cold. Is Gromozeka still asleep?”

“Yes.” Alice said.

“Good! Otherwise he’d see me off with a brass band playing and I’d have to listen to speeches… And all we are doing is testing the machine. Come on in.”

Richard was standing beside the controls in the very center of the structure, by the open door to the time cabinet; he was pressing buttons in order one after the other and looking at the responses in the display.

“Everything ready?” Petrov asked.

“Yes. You can go. But really, for the last time I have to ask…”

“D-don’t.” Petrov answered and lowered a hood over his forehead. “I can hardly pass for a real hair dresser, but I am not going all that far from the machine either.”

Richard straightened up and caught sight of Alice and the little Archaeologist Purr.

“Good morning.” He said. “You’re up already?” He was so occupied with the final check of the machine that he had no time to be surprised.

“Au revoir, my friends.” Petrov said. “I’ll be back for breakfast. Something to surprise Gromozeka!”

Petrov entered the cabin, closing the transparent door behind him.

Richard walked away from the control panel. At this point there was nothing for him to touch he was simply there to watch the displays and read-outs. The buttons that mattered were in the time cabinet. Petrov pressed them.

The humming suddenly increased in pitch, and then vanished. Petrov had disappeared from the cabin. A thick cloud of mist formed in the spot where he had been standing. Then that too vanished.

“And that’s all.” Richard said. “Everything went as expected.”

Alice saw Richard cross his fingers and was shocked that a scientist might be just as superstitious as an ordinary school kid before an exam.

“When will he be back?” Alice asked. She was proud she was one of the first to see the temporalist go back into the past. Even Gromozeka has slept through that moment.

“Just about an hour.” Richard answered,

Silence descended on the time machine’s central chamber. Alice reached into a pocket of her overalls and pulled out a comb; she used it to straighten her hair, and then offered it to Richard. Rather clearly he had forgotten to comb his hair this morning.

“Tell me.” Purr asked. “There isn’t another time cabinet in the past to receive Petrov, I take it. He will make it there without another cabinet?”

“Yes, he will.” Richard confirmed, surprised by the question, considering the utterly naive questions he had been forced to listen to.

“When we work out of the Time Institute we have reception cabinets at the other end as anchors; travel back and forth to the destination times are simple and convenient. Our tests have shown that we can use this system to send one person back into the past and retrieve them in order before we send out a second time traveler. It was for this invention that Academician Petrov won the Nobel Prize.”

“And that means, he just appeared in an empty field out of nowhere?” Alice was surprised.

She imagined Petrov standing in full view of the entire city, totally defenseless and alone; it was terrifying.

“That’s exactly how it happens.” Richard answered. “Thank’s for the comb.”

“You’re welcome.”

“But he’ll mark the point of arrival into the past, and when he returns he will stand in exactly the same spot. The sensors, operating through the transtemporal field, will immediately pick up a signal that says: ‘Time Traveler ready to return,” and it will all work automatically. My participation is not at all needed. I’m here just in case…”

“But what if it isn’t him standing on that spot? What if it’s a cow?” Alice asked.

“A reasonable question.” Richard answered. “If someone else or an animal stands in that spot, the signal comes back: ‘Transition point occupied by non-Time traveler’. And the equipment just doesn’t work.”

“And what if he’s injured, what if he can’t stand up and just has to crawl there?” Alice refused to surrender.

“Don’t spout nonsense!” Richard suddenly became very angry. “Anything at all might happen. That’s why I wanted to be the one to go in Doctor Petrov’s place. And all you do is ask stupid questions.”

Alice grew quiet. The questions were not at all stupid. She walked up to the transparent wall of the time chamber and began to study the control buttons. There was no way she could go inside: Petrov could appear back in the present at any moment, and the two of them could not occupy the same space.

Richard came up to her. He was feeling awkward for shouting at the girl and he started to explain:

“See the green button over there, on the right? When Petrov pressed it, the time cabinet’s door closed. Then he pressed the second, white button. That turned on the temporal field. At that moment you could still see him. Finally he pressed the red button. He found himself into the past, to the moment we calculated earlier and which we programed into the machine.”

“You mean he can’t choose to when he is going himself?”

“No. It becomes too complicated. You have to partially dismantle the machine to set it for the time you want. It took us all of last night to ready the machine.”

“And where exactly is he ‘now?’“

“‘Now,’ Petrov is standing one hundred one years ago, just at the time the epidemic had really started, but the people of Coleida were still alive.”

Unexpectedly the humming suddenly became very loud.

“Watch what happens!” Richard said.

For about three more seconds a cloud of mist appeared in the time chamber, and suddenly turned into Petrov.

Petrov had not changed at all. He pushed back the hood, opened the Time Cabinet door, and left the chamber.

“Well, that… is that.” He said like a dentist who had just extracted a tooth. “We’ve arrived.”

“Well, what was it? What?” Purr became agitated, ran up to the temporalists feet and looked at the human from below.

“I still don’t know.” Petrov answered. “I was very hurried. But don’t get excited here are your newspapers.”

He pulled out a large packet of newspapers and other documents from beneath his shirt and handed them to the archaeologist. Purr grabbed them with his long, furry hands and opened one of the newspapers. The newspaper was larger than he was and covered him completely.

“Let’s get going.” Petrov said. “Richard, turn off the power. We have to tell everyone else it worked. And it will be breakfast time soon. They’ve probably started already.”

“Gromozeka is going to be really angry you didn’t call him.” Alice said.

“No, he won’t.” Petrov said, and took off the long cape.

They headed for the entrance to the Time Building. Richard walked ahead, followed by Petrov, who held Alice by the hand, and last of all, completely covered with a newspaper, came Purr.

“Well, Gromozeka…” Alice started to say again, which could in no way compare with the pride she felt in having seen what Gromozeka had slept through.

But she was never able to finish the sentence.

On the sand in front of the time station sat Gromozeka, and beside him stood all the other archaeologists.

“Hello there.” Richard said. “And we thought that you were all asleep.”

“No one got any sleep at all.” Gromozeka said embarrassed. Thick yellow smoke came from his nostrils; the scent of Ex-Lax was thick in the air.

“No one got any sleep either.” The remaining archaeologists said. “We did not want to bother you. We still have our pride, and you didn’t invite us…”

“Sorry.” Petrov said.

“Doesn’t matter.” Gromozeka laughed. “No one’s very angry. Let’s get to the kitchen and you can tell us everything. Do you think it’s all that easy to wait here in the cold?”

“And excited.” Someone said.

They all headed for the cook tent.




8


“Well…” Petrov said, looking over the seated archaeologists. “Since no one seems all that interested in eating, let me give you a brief rundown of what exactly I saw in the past. And then we can get some food down.”

The archaeologists approving gestures; some nodded their heads, some shook them back and forth.

“I exited the field of the time cabinet without incident.” Petrov began. “All our calculations were correct. The point of egress was located in a field right next to the city, about three hundred or so meters from the last of buildings. I marked the egress point in my memory and hurried toward the town. The ‘local’ time was early morning, and everyone was still asleep. Or rather, not everyone, but the majority. I hadn’t managed to go a hundred paces before I saw a number of vehicles marked with blue circles hurrying along the roads leading into town.

“Those were ‘Emergency Services’ vehicles. Ambulances.” Gromozeka said. “We already know about them.”

“Correct. Ambulances. I also knew what they were, and so I knew that our calculations had been right. The epidemic was in the city. I hurried toward town.”

“Hold on!” Purr suddenly shouted. “You did have your shots, didn’t you?”

“Of course.” Petrov said. “I’ve had the full spectrum of shots for all known extraterrestrial diseases that affect human beings. And, most definitely, Space Plague.”

Gromozeka, as though he were remembering something, pulled a note book from the pocket on his round belly and wrote down a few words.

“The vehicles stopped in front of the hospital.” Petrov continued.

“We know.” The archaeologist who looked like a spider on long legs said. “We excavated it.”

Petrov sighed.

“If someone else would like to interrupt the good Doctor,” Gromozeka roared, “we can take them away from here and lock them in a tent.”

“Right.” The archaeologists said.

“I saw them carrying sick people on stretchers. But I did not stay in the area because Richard was waiting for me and would have gotten worried. I headed for the newspaper kiosk. The kiosk was open, but I couldn’t see anyone around. Only when I looked inside did I see the proprietor laying on the floor.

“‘Are you feeling badly?’“ I asked him.

“‘I’m sick. Like everyone else.’“ The newspaper seller said.

“‘Any way I can get newspapers?’“ I asked.

“‘Take whatever you want.’ The kiosk attendant said. ‘Just call the EMTs. There’s no way I can get to the hospital myself.’

“I gathered up all the newspapers I could carry and hurried to the hospital. I told one of the attendants on duty that there was a sick person laying in the newspaper kiosk, but he just waved me off. I could see they were all exhausted. I looked through the hospitals windows and I could see people laying in the corridors side by side. There weren’t enough beds for the dying.

“So I returned to the kiosk and dragged out the sales clerk. He was really very small… just about Alice’s height… and carrying him wasn’t at all difficult. I left him at the hospital entrance, but I didn’t go inside because they had all started to stare at me; I am, after all, half again taller than the average Coleidan.

“But I did manage to photograph everything I saw, because I suspect our specialists will be able to learn a lot from the photos. Other than that, I took money of various denominations from the kiosk; the proprietor is never going to need it, but if we send anyone else into the past again they will find it useful. That’s all. Let’s have breakfast.”

“One moment.” Gromozeka said. “Before we sit down to eat, I’d like everyone, without exception, excavators and guests, to head for the medical tent.”

“Why?”

“Everyone should have their inoculations against Space Plague up to date. All of us.”

Alice hated shots, but Gromozeka noticed she was veering away from the medical tent and ran after her.

“Listen, my child.” He said in a loud whisper. “I have a special job for you. You’re going to get shots not only against Space Plague but for every communicable sickness known. The doctor’s already been warned.”

“But why, Gromozeka?” Alice said. “I really hate needles.”

“You remember I told you to be ready for a special mission? Without the needles, we can’t even begin to think of it!”

So Alice had to go to the medical tent, bare her arm and let it be turned into a pincushion, swallow seven large tablets and drink down terribly salty drops for Cosa’s Palsy, a remarkable disease from which no one had gotten sick but which all the doctors thought was an immanent threat to her health.

Alice bravely endured all the inoculations because she believed Gromozeka. He would not have asked her to do this for no reason at all.

The last needles and tablets made Alice feel sick. Her body began to shiver, her head hurt and her teeth ached. But the doctor, who resembled a large garden watering can on legs, said that was to be expected and tomorrow the incapacity would pass. Alice was compelled to lay in the tent and there was nothing she could do while all the remaining archaeologists questioned Petrov for the rest of the day and poured over the photos.




9


It was the faithful Purr who brought Alice supper. He found it difficult to drag the tray the plates; the tray was bigger than he was. He had to use a powered wheelbarrow designed for his size to bring her lunch.

“Eat.” He said. “Or it will get cold.”

“I’m not at all hungry, Purr.” Alice said. “I still don’t fell to good.”

“There’s really no reason for you to be so weak.” Purr said reproachfully. “After my shot I felt like nothing at all had happened.”

“But you only had one shot. I was a pin cushion.”

“Why?” The little archaeologist was surprised. It turned out he did not know that Alice had undergone the same series of shots a space explorer who was about to land on an unexplored planet would take.

“I guess Gromozeka must be worried about me. He did promise Daddy to take care of me.”

“I suppose so…” Purr agreed. “I’m really very sorry about it all. I would have taken them all for you with pleasure.”

“Thank you.” Alice said. “What’s new?”

“A lot.” Said the small archaeologist. “And if you eat our soup, I’ll tell you some of it. And if you eat everything, I’ll tell you nearly all.”

“Then I’ll have the fruit salad and you can just tell me what’s most important.” Alice said.

“But the small archaeologist laughed, blinked his enormous single eye, and Alice had to start from nothing. But at the same time Purr told her what was going on.

The archaeologists found the newspapers that Petrov brought from the past most useful of all. From the papers they were able to determine how the murderous virus of the Space Plague had managed to get to the surface of the planet Coleida. It turned out that a week before the town fell ill first space ship, launched by the Coleidans had returned successfully to the surface. It had made several orbits of the planet and then circled around the planet Coleida’s small moon. The flight had been uneventful, and thousands of Coleidans, living in this hemisphere of the planet had gone to the space port to welcome back their first astronauts. On the evening of the same day the astronauts were supposed to speak at an enormous public gathering in the main square of the capitol. But they never made it to the meeting; they had fallen ill with a mysterious disease. The newspaper’s reporting on that day was both short and vague. But after several days, when the families of the astronauts, and everyone who had been a the space port to welcome them home, were reported to be sick as well, it became clear that some terrible infection had fallen on Coleida from space. Three days later, the sickness had spread to the entire planet.

“As you can see, Gromozeka was right from the very beginning. Without a doubt, this is Space Plague.” Purr said at the end of his story. “Our specialists have been pouring over the holos that Petrov took and now there can’t be the slightest doubt of it.”

“That’s terrible.” Alice said. “Isn’t there any way we can help them?”

“How do you help people who died a hundred years ago?” The little archaeologist was surprised. “There’s nothing that can be done. Here, finnish eating your fruit salad and get some sleep. And I’ll look in on you tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” Alice said. “But what are the temporalists going to do now?

“The temporalists are readying their machine for the next flight. They are aiming for the very day when the astronauts returned. They want to determine conclusively that this was indeed how Space Plague infected Coleida. We have to find out as much as we can about the disease to make certain other planets can be protected against it. And so, tomorrow, Richard will make a time jump into the past one week earlier than the one today.”

Purr made a fancy bow and ran off, his padded little feet making almost no sound on the floor of the tent. He was in such a hurry to read his newspapers and magazines that he completely forgot the powerbarrow.

The little steps had hardly managed to die away when the flap of the tent was pulled aside again, and Gromozeka himself entered.

“Who was with you?” He asked. “Why did they bring a barrow?”

“That was little Purr.” Alice said.

Gromozeka had brought a tray with supper.

“And where did you get the fruit salad?” Gromozeka asked strogo.

Alice drank down the last of the sauce from the salad and said:

“Purr brought it, but I also had the soup.”

“Oh, my my my my my!” Gromozeka was flustered. “And here I cornered the cook into getting you the tastiest morsels. Don’t you think you might possibly have a few more bites to eat? Just for your Uncle Gromozeka’s health and peace of mind.”

“No more, please.”

“Alice, you really, really need calories.” Gromozeka said.

“No more than ususal.”

“More.” Gromozeka said. “Far more. I came to have a very serious talk with you, scientist to scientist. How are you feeling now?”

“Better.”

“A lot better, or not a lot better?

“Somewhat better. I could even get up…”

“Don’t get up.”

Gromozeka absent mindedly placed the tray with supper on the floor and used his two freed tentacles to tie the tent flap in place. Then he poured the bowl of soup down into his own maw, and said:

“We must not waste good food. I will leave you the fruit salad.”

“Thanks.”

“Alice,” Gromozeka began festively, “You know that everyone thinks I am a naive and rather direct being.”

“Not everyone.” Alice said.

“Well, there are always bad people everywhere. Well, I am, in fact, honestly, really a naive and rather direct being, but I am also able to look into the future, and not just into the past like so many of our friends. Tell me, why did I bring you on this expedition?”

“To give me a birthday present.” Alice answered, although she knew fully well that was not the only reason.

“Right!” Gromozeka roared. “But not only for you. The present the present is you!

“The present is the flight to this planet. The present is a chance to look over our excavation and have a chance to meet my colleagues. The present is to be there days late for school, because in the final analysis this is not a gift as much as a little crime, although that does not concern me too much. You may, if you want, take your seat on the freight ship the day after tomorrow and go home. And we will remain friends. But I do not think that you will, because I know your father, I know you, and I think that you will want to help me.”

“Of course I do.” Alice said.

“When I was heading for Earth I had a lot of time to think.” Gromozeka said. “And I thought this: here we have a planet, Coleida, which died from the Space Plague. And were we, the archaeologists, who had flown here to look at the bones that were left behind a hundred years later. We look, and that’s all. Then we take the bones and trash to a museum and write on them:

“‘DEAD CIVILIZATION.’“

“And then you decided to go to the Time Institute.”

“Consider, that I had already come to a decision. Consider I had already decided to turn to the Time Institute. To turn to them, but nothing yet had been decided.

“We would only know where the bones were and where to search. That was all. Something would have to be done, but what, I hadn’t yet decided. And then I arrived at your house as a guest and sat and talked with you. And then I went to the Time Institute and came to a convinced them to bring their machine here to our dig. And then I made my decision and therefore bought vast quantities of flowers and returned home with them. I knew what would have to be done.”

“About what?”

“Remember, Alice; weren’t you surprised at the size of the houses and beds and tables when you entered the town for the first time?”

“They’re small.”

“Not just small! They are your size.. And remember what Petrov said when he described carrying the newspaper kiosk attendant to the hospital.”

“I don’t remember.”

“He said that everyone looked on him with suspicion because he was twice as tall as any other inhabitant of the city. What are we to do with this datum?”

Alice kept silent. She hadn’t the faintest idea of what conclusion to draw.

“My first step was to get the time machine.” Gromozeka continued. The second step was to determine if they had, in fact, died of Space Plague. The third step was to convince the temporalists to visit the very day when the space plague landed on the planet Coleida. And the forth step?”

“Of course!”

“A-ha! You have already guessed! The fourth step is to send Alice there. If, naturally, the machine is working properly and there is no real danger for Alice. And why would I send Alice there?

“So I can…”

“Correct! So you can get to the place and time when the Space Plague landed on the planet and find the means to kill the plague before it gets started. What will then happen? There will be no plague. The planet will live. And archaeologists will have no work to do here. The authorities will literally howl with anger, and at least a billion people will be saved by a single little girl.”

“Oh, how interesting!” Alice clapped her hands in delight.

“Sh-sh-sh-sh!” Gromozeka covered her mouth with the end of a tentacle. “They’ll hear us before they should.”

“And why me?” Alice asked in a whisper.

“Why because you are exactly the same height as the inhabitants of this planet. Why, because neither Petrov, or Richard, nor least of all me, stands the slightest chance of getting to the space port and the returning ship. But you, no one will even notice you. You are exactly as small as the Coleidans themselves.”

“And why is it a secret?”

“No. I see, you haven’t enough experience in the ways of the world. Imagine that I am talking with your beloved father. What would your father answer?”

Alice thought a very brief while and said:

“In general, my father is understanding, but I fear that he would say: “No way!’“

“Correct. ‘No way!’ Because you are still for him a very little girl, an innocent for whom he cares deeply, because your father has paternal instincts. You know what they are?”

“I know. Grandparents have grandpaternal instincts, and mothers have maternal instincts. And all of these instincts tell them that I have to dress warmly and not forget to carry my umbrella in case it rains.”

“Marvelous!” Gromozeka said. “We understand each other perfectly. I chose not to tell you this earlier because I was still unsure if the machine would work properly and what excactly we would find in the past. But now everything has turned out precisely as I had susspected.”

“So I’ll be the one to make the time jump into the past tomorrow?”

“No way! That would be far too dangerous. Tomorrow it will be Richard’s turn to go back a hundred years. He has to scout out the day when the space ship returned to Coleida for its landing. He will get all of the facts. Then it will be Petrov’s turn. Remember: neither of them as yet knows anything about what I’ve told you. It will take considerable work on my part to turn them to my plan. They don’t even know if it is possible to stop a plague at its very start. They have simply never tried to change the past; they even have a law: it is impossible to change the past. On the other hand, Coleida is a distant planet and its past does not affect the pasts or presents of any other planets. This means the first difficulty will be in convincing them to interfere in Coleida’s development. And then we shall face our second hurdle and that is you.”

“But they might say that they’ll go to the space port themselves and disinfect the ship of Space Plague themselves,” Alice said, “And then everyone will die.”

“No, why should they? If they can do it themselves it will be perfect. I won’t have to bother you.”

“That’s not fair!” Alice grew angry. “At first you promised I’d go back in time and save the planet, and now you think it would be perfect if you can do it without me!”

Gromozeka laughed so loud the tent shook.

“We shall see.” He said. “We shall see. I am happy that you are not frightened. Today, this evening before supper, you must go to the doctor and take the hypnopedia course in the Coleidan language. He has been warned. But until the time comes, not a word to anyone, not even to your friend Purr. And listen: if you do go into the past, then one of the temporalists will be going along to follow and protect you. Just so you won’t find yourself completely alone. Now get some rest.”

But when Gromozeka exited the tent Alice could get no rest. She forced herself to crawl out of bed and ran off to watch them prepare to time machine for tomorrow’s jump.




10


The temporalists did not pay any attention to Alice. They had no time. They, in essence, had to deconstruct and reconstruct the Time Cabinet so that it would send the traveler a week further into the past than it had the first time. Or, more precisely one week and twenty hours earlier. Petrov had explained to Alice that they were going to make the train that went from the city which the archaeologists had been digging to the capitol. They had gotten the train schedules from the newspapers, and they had gotten the money needed for the tickets from the newspaper kiosk and excavations. All that remained was to sit on the train and get to the space port at the same moment the Coleidan space ship landed, and get a close look at the returning astronauts, to determine if indeed it was Space Plague.

Alice had forgotten about everything, but suddenly Gromozeka’s voice could be heard:

“Aaa-lisss!”

Gromozeka’s voice penetrated the time station’s thin walls, and the lights on the control panels trembled.

“You’d better run.” Petrov said. “Otherwise, his voice will pull the walls down.”

Alice suddenly remembered what the head archaeologist had told her. It was time to go to the doctor to learn the local language.

The doctor, who resembled a giant garden watering can on legs, bobbed his head up and down on his long, unbelievably thin neck, as though he were about to begin a long speech for what seemed to be forever. But all he said was:

“Sit here, young being.” And motioned to a chair that had numerous leads and instruments attached to it.

Alice sat down obediently. The chair changed its form to enclose Alice on all sides and the doctor began to apply various leads to Alice’s forehead. They were held in place by tiny suckers.

“Do not be afraid.” The doctor said, when Alice squirmed a little.

“I’m not afraid.” Alice answered. “It’s just ticklish.”

In fact, she really was a little bit frightened.

“Close this…” The doctor said.

“What?”

The doctor sighed loudly and picked a large dictionary up from the table. He seemed to take about three minutes to find the word he needed, then said:

“A-ha!…eye.”

A humming sound came out of the black bag which extruded the leads. Then the humming was in Alice’s heard, and a voice began to whirl in hyer brain.

“Wait a moment.” The doctor said.

“I am waiting.” Alice said. “Will it be long?”

The doctor was silent. Alice carefully opened one eye and saw that the doctor was again paging through the dictionary.

“An hour.” He said finally. “Close your eye.”

Alice closed her eye, but for some reason she could not stand it and had to ask:

“Tell me. Why don’t you learn Russian or English or French this way?”

“I?” The doctor was shocked. “Oh, I could never do that.”

He thought a moment, walked over to the corner of the laboratory and rummaged around in some sort of box, and added in a mutter:

“I’m really horrible at languages. I’m so bad not even hypnopedia helps…I forget.”

“It just doesn’t work on you?”

“Yes.”

Alice was very comfortable. The whispering went on inside her head; she wanted to sleep, but Alice realized that she could never fall asleep like this, when she suddenly heard the doctor’s voice:

“Wake up. It’s over.”

The doctor was taking the leads with the suckers from her head and putting them away.

“Is that all? You really mean a whole hour has passed?”

“Yes.”

Gromozeka stuck his head into the medical lab. He looked at Alice with interest and asked:

“Bunto todo barakata a va?”

Alice could only think: What sort of nonsense is that? And suddenly she understood that it was not nonsense. Gromozeka had simply asked her in Coleidan if she had studied that language. And, understanding, Alice quietly answered Gromozeka:

“Kra barakata to bunta.”

Which meant: “I have studied the language.”

Gromozeka burst out laughing and told her to come to supper, but the doctor was so annoyed he refused to set foot in the cook

“Never!” He said as they were leaving. “I’ve never been able to learn even a single language!” Bitter tears flowed down from what would have been the water spout had he been a real watering can, and not a doctor.

During supper Gromozeka placed Alice some distance away from him, so she could not ask questions. Some seven tall glasses filled with sliced peaches and apples, orange slices and grapefruit had appeared in front of Alice as if by magic; by now the whole expedition knew Alice loved fruit salad, and had Gromozeka not been watching after her she would have been swimming in it.

But on that evening Alice didn’t even look at the fruit salad. She was trying to catch Gromozeka’s eye, and to listen to what he was saying with Petrov. And when super ended, she heard Gromozeka say:

“Such a marvelous sunset! Would you object if we took a short walk and admired the works of nature?”

“N-nature?” Petrov was surprised. “I haven’t noticed much love of sunsets from you. Actually, I would rather return to the time machine.”

“Nonsense! Time waits.” Gromozeka growled amicably and dragged Petrov off into a corner.

Alice understood that now Gromozeka’s would make his most important move; he would speak about tomorrow’s time flight and his real, hidden agenda. That was when Alice did something very improper and unladylike: she began to overhear the conversation between the archeologist and the temporalist. She waited until they had stopped by a large stone and silently ran close enough to them to overhear, and froze in silence.

“If the Space Plague epidemic had been, say, interdicted with modern medicines right at the very beginning,” Gromozeka asked Petrov, “do you suppose it could have been stopped?”

“Of course it could have.” Petrov said. “Only it’s a meaningless question. Coleida died a hundred years ago.”

“A-ha.” Gromozeka said, clearly having heard only the beginning of Petrov’s answer. “That means it’s possible.”

So he proceeded to tell Petrov everything of his desires to change the planet Coleida’s entire history and return it to life.

At first Petrov just laughed, but Gromozeka was entirely serious / did not bat a tentacle [FIND SOME PHRASING]. The archaeologist just puffed yellow smoke and repeated what would have to be done: get to the space port at the moment the Coleidan ship landed and destroy the virus.

“But… how?”

“I’ve thought everything out.” Gromozeka said. “Before our departure from Earth I went to the Medical Institute and asked for their vaccine against the Plague. I told them that our archaeological expedtion was working on a world where there was a danger of infection. They literally thrust the serum on me. Every medical center on Earth has a supply of the vaccine. If the virus every attempts to fall on Earth again, so much the worse for it.”

“You mean you were planning to change Coleida’s history from the very first?”

“Absolutely true, Petrov!” Gromozeka clicked his sharks’ teeth together. “Right from the beginning. Even before your Time Institute agreed to send you here in the machine.”

“And you did not speak a word of this when you were on Earth?”

“Not a word. You would not even have bothered to listen to me.”

Alice was of the opinion that Gromozeka was far too secretive and distrusting. Certainly the temporalists would have heard him out, no matter what he had to say.

“It’s obvious you or Richard would find it impossible to get the Vaccine to the space ship itself; that’s why I invited Alice along.” Gromozeka continued. “She’s the same height as the Coleidans, and she’s agreed to douse the ship with the vaccine under the noses of the locals…”

“You mean you brought Alice here to endanger her?”

“Now really, Academic! What a thing to say!” Gromozeka was actually angry. “I have not endangered her, nor anyone else. Alice is an experienced, competent person. She’s already ten years old! She’s had several expeditions in space under her belt already. She’s just perfect for dealing with his minor….”

“Not under any circumstances!” In speaking, Petrov used the very same tones Alice expected her father would. “It’s one thing for me or Richard to take risks, but Alice no way!”

“But Academic…”

“I don’t even want to hear you! In general, your ideas are.. are… are courageous! Yes, And interesting. But what the effects of our actions will be in the long run are completely unknown. At the very least I have to talk it over with Richard. And then we’ll ask Earth to make a decision.”

From her hiding place Alice could see Gromozeka literally wilt. Even his head sag and his shoulders sagged so much they were little more than a small hill above his tentacles.

“Everything is lost then.” He said. “Everything his dead. You will begin a correspondence with Earth, seven hundred experts will come here on expense accounts, and in the final analysis what they will say is that nothing should be done. The risk is just to great for the whole Galaxy.”

“Ah, well. Then you understand it.” Petrov said.

“Of course I understand…”

“So. Tomorrow Richard will go into the p-past, and try to get on the train that runs to the capitol. There he will observe the return of the Coleidan space ship, return, and provide is with information concerning its condition and the conditions of the crew. And, let me repeat myself, we take nothing for granted. If, it turns out, that you are correct and that Space Plague descended onto the planet’s surface in that ship, we will advise the Earth and take council with the scientific community. That is all. Good night, and, please, don’t be angry with me.”

With these words Petrov departed for the time machine building, to finish readying it for tomorrow’s work.

Gromozeka was unable to lift himself off the ground. He sat on the stones and looked like nothing so much as an enormous, enormously sad, octopus.

Alice became very sad. She abandoned her hiding place behind the stones and walked closer to the archaeologist.

“Gromozeka.” She whispered softly and stroked one of his shaggy tentacles.

“What?” He asked and opened one of his eyes. “Oh, it’s you, isn’t it, Alice? You heard.”

“I heard.”

“And so, my plans have come crashing down in flames.”

“Don’t be sorry, Gromozeka. I’m for you, no matter what. Isn’t there some way we can think of something…”

“We shall certainly think of something.” A thin voice cut through the darkness.

Purr, the small archaeologist, jumped out from behind another of the rocks. Like a cat. His single eye caught the last red of sunset.

“I have also heard everything.” He said. “I could no longer endure the unsatisfied curiosity. I also am in complete agreement with you. We cannot just stand by while thousands of experts carry out thousands of simulations. We, the archaeologists, have discovered the past. But until now we have never changed it, and now, I say, we shall! If the temporalists hesitate or refuse, then we should bind them head and foot and I will go back into the past with Alice in thier place!”

“Now that really would be too much.” Gromozeka laughed sadly. “We’d all be booted out of the professional societies and never dig again. And with cause.”

“Let them expel us. We can remain and live on this planet. The grateful Coleidans will build us a monument.”

“You know what,” Gromozeka lifted himself to his full, Elephantine, height. “Let’s stop telling each other fairy tales. It’s time we all went to bed.”

Gromozeka waleked in front, scarcely moving his tentacles he was so rasstroen. Alice and Purr walked a few paces behind and tried to calm him down.

But Gromozeka was bezuteshen.

They stopped at the tents to say good-night to Purr.

“Nothing terrible is about to happen from our standpoint. “ Purr said. “Tomorrow Richard is going to get a look at the ship’s return a hundred years ago, and we are all going to write letters to Earth. And anyway, they all really did die a hundred years ago. And even if your idea is carried out in ten years or more, or a hundred years down the line, it hardly matters.”

“ Some comfort you are!” Gromozeka said, and collapsed into his bed.

Alice held back at the entrance. A thought had occurred to her.

“Which tent are you in?” She asked Purr.

“The third from the end.”

“Then don’t go to sleep.” Alice said. “I have to have a word with you. But only after everyone else is asleep.”

Gromozeka readied himself for bed noisly, snorting and howling.

“Listen.”Alice asked him. “Just how were you going to give the astronauts their shots?” She asked. “They would hardly have agreed to received unknown shots from unknown visitors?”

“Now that would be a stupid idea!” Gromozeka answered in a drowsy voice. “I was not at all planing to give them shots.

“At the Institute of Medicine they gave me this spray,” Gromozeka showed her the small spray can, similar in size to a thermous, which hung around his neck on a chain. Alice had seen it a thousand times and had paid it not the sightest bit of attention. “It acts like a fire extinguisher.” Gromozeka said. “You just have to press the button aand the vaccine comes out as a fine mist under high pressure. The mist will hang in the air and surround everyone and everything. If you direct the spray at the ship’s open air lock, it will fill the ship and kill the virus. The astronauts will breath the mist into their lungs and it will cure them, if they are already sick. In three minutes there will not be a virus of the Space Plague on the planet. Oh well, get some sleep; it’s never going to be used now. Turn down the light; tomorrow we have to get up early.”




11


Alice obediently lowered the light and listened to Gromozeka’s breathing. It was difficult to decide if he was sleeping or not. First because he slept so fitfully. And far more importantly, Gromozeka had three hearts and his breathing was very uneven.

Alice decided to count to a thousand. She managed to reach five hundred and fifty and realized that she was falling asleep, and there was nothing she could do about it. She pinched herself on the hand, but the pinch felt far off and weak, and immediately it seemed that she was riding on the Coleidan train in a small wagon, and the wheels were droning on and on and on…

“Alice.” The train conductor whispered to her.

Obviously, he wanted her ticket. But Alice had no ticket; she had forgotten her money at home. She wanted to tell the conductor that but her mouth froze and would not obey her.

The conductor took her by the hand to escort her from the wagon, and Alice attempted to break free.

And suddenly she realized it was pitch black all around her. That she was in the tent, and not in the train, that she had fallen asleep anyway.

She got to her feet. The bed creaked. Gromozeka rolled over in his dreams and asked:

“Who’s not sleeping?”

Alice froze. Close by she could hear his occasional breathing.

“Who’s there?” Alice whispered.

The tent’s entrance flap was slightly ajar.

“It’s me.” Purr answered.

Alice grabbed her overalls and sneaked outside.

The only light came from a bright moon; not a single lamp could be seen in the camp. It was chilly. Purr was little more than a black shadow amid other shadows.

“I was waiting for you.” The little archaeologist whispered. “But you never came. I am always true to my word. I said I would not sleep, and I did not.”

“Sorry, Purr.” Alice said. “I was counting to a thousand tp give Gromozeka a chance to fall asleep, and fell asleep myself.”

“Why did you ask me not to sleep?”

“Haven’t you guessed?”

“Of course I have.” Purr said. “I just want to hear the words from you.”

“Tomorrow morning Richard will be going into the past. His job is just to case the landing site and get a look at the ship. Petrov won’t permit him to do anything else. But the machine is ready to do its job. So what if I get into it and journey into the past instead of Richard? Gromozeka explained everything that would have to be done to me.”

“You’ll be able to turn on the time machine?”

“I know everything that has to be done.”

“And what will you be doing in the past?”

“I have to get to the launch site, meet the ship when it arrives, and kill the virus.”

“How?”

“Gromozeka has it all ready I know that part too.”

The little archaeologist thought for a few moments.

“It is going to be our only chance, most definitely.” He said. “If it isn’t done now, no one is ever going to do it. But it really is going against all the rules!”

“Quiet! Or you’ll wake everyone up. Think a moment, which is worse, we go against the rules a little, or the whole planet dies. I’m willing to take the risk.”

“You talk like Joan of Arc.” The little Purr said. “You remember her?”

“Of course I remember. She saved France.”

“Correct. I’ve also read about it. Only Joan was seventeen, and you’re only ten.”

“But Joan lived, oh, a thousand years ago, and I live in the twenty-first century.”

“You know,” The little black mass laying at Alice’s feet said, “You’re right. Sometimes you have to throw the rules aside.”

“Great.” Alice said. “In the morning when they wake up tell them what happened. I’ll return only when everything’s done. So they won’t go searching for me.”

“They will very certainly follow after.”

“No, you don’t understand, Purr. They can’t do that at all; the machine can only send one person at the time. It keeps the person in its memory until it has to retrieve him. If you sent a second person before the first got back the first would have to stay in the past for good. Petrov knows this better than anyone else. No matter what happens, they’re going to have to wait for me to get back.”

“That really is too dangerous.”

“No. Not too dangerous.”

“Far too dangerous. That’s why I’ll be going with you.”

“You’re going with me?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t look anything at all like the Coleidans. They’ll spot you for what you are.”

“But I do look like their cats. So you’re going to go traveling with your kitten. Face it; I know the language better than you do. I’ve studied all we could find and I can support you when you need it. I will be very useful.”

“But I really didn’t want anyone running around after me.” Alice said.

But in fact she was very glad that little Purr would be going along. The idea of traveling in a strange country a hundred years in the past was really very frightening.

“I can hold you in my arms and carry you like a kitten.”

“Better to put me in your bag.”

“Okay, I’ll take the bag. And anyway I have to carry the cannister with the vaccine. That’s the whole reason for going.”

“Then get ready; I have to go back to my tent?”

“For what?”

“For money; I have local money in my lab. We’re going to have to buy train tickets. Then I want to make myself a tail and drop off my clothing. The Coleidans don’t have cats with clothing. I really don’t want to go traipsing all over a strange planet in my birthday suit, but what else can I do?”

“It doesn’t matter, and really, you’re not naked.” Alice said. “You have a really marvelous coat of fur.”

“Thank you.” Purr pipped up. “But we have very different views on the same subject.”

He raised small puffs of sand as he ran to his tent.

Alice pulled on the jump suit, then slipped back into the tent and took the cannister with the vaccine from the nail. Gromozeka still slept; he was breathing loudly, and his tentacles spilled from the wide bed onto the floor.

Then Alice searched for her bag, putting the sweater and the spray can inside. Then she thought a moment and decided that there was really no way she could go into the past in a one piece coverall with the Galactic Federation’s insignia and “Coleida Expedition” written in cosmolingue on it. She searched around for her own suitcase and found the dress her grandmother had insisted she bring but which she still hadn’t worn, and put it on. Gromozeka was still sleeping.

But when she was ready to depart and looked around it seemed to her that one of Gromozeka’s eyes were still open.

“Aren’t you sleeping?” She whispered.

“I’m sleeping.” Gromozeka whispered in return. “You haven’t forgotten your sweater?”

“No.” Alice blinked in surprise.

She stood there a moment or a few seconds, but Gromozeka continued to sleep soundly. Perhaps it only appeared that she had just been speaking with him?

She pushed the tent flap aside and went out.

“All in order?” The whisper came from below.

Alice bent down and saw a little, furry cat with a short tail standing by her legs in the light of the moon.

“How did you make your tail?”

“One of my neighbors in the tent has a brush with real furn on it. He kept joking that the brush was made from one of my brothers not the most successful of jokes. As you can see, it does go well with my furn. Like it?”

“You are a perfect cat.” Alice said. “It’s just, well, you only have the one eye.”

“There’s nothing we can do about that.” Purr sighed. “I’ll have to mostly keep to the bag. Is Gromozeka still sleeping?”

“Of course.” Alice said. “And a very strange sleep indeed. In the middle of it he told me to take my sweater with me.”

“A-ha!” Purr said, as though he did not really believe that Gromozeka was sleeping at all.

The two of them headed for the darkened building housing the Time Machine. /P>




12


Alice began by pressing the green button. The door to the time cabinet closed. She arranged her bag more comfortably on her shoulder and held the little archaeologist Purr tightly to her chest. Purr’s single eye widened in terror.

“Don’t be alarmed.” Alice told him. “This is the way it works.”

She pressed the white button.

And then the red.

Immediately a mist covered her, her head spun, the laboratory vanished, and it became impossible to tell if she was flying or standing no walls, no floor, no floor, only some sort of incomprehensible movement which whirled her about and carried her forward.

Suddenly there was a crack of lightning and again she was surrounded by mist.

The mist dissipated.

Morning had already begun. Alice was standing in exactly the same spot where the time station had stood would stand but there was no time station, nor was there a city of dome tents near-by.

Around her was a lush green meadow, further on a woods, and on the other side of the woods she could make out roofs. The roofs were exactly where the archaeologists had excavated the small town. And all this was utterly remarkable, because this very town had been empty, with roofs collapsed and windows like the gaping sockets of an eyeless skull. Nor had there been any trees, or any grass. But the sky was the same as it had been, and the hills around town were the same.

“You’re almost crushing me.” A weak voice came from the bag, and Alice gave a start from surprise. Then she realized she was clutching the small archeologist too tightly to her chest.

“I can’t breath.” Purr shouted. “Set me down and let me out of the bag. Carrying me all the time is going to be very hard.”

Alice opened her arms, completely forgetting that the small archaeologist was not a cat; Purr fell on the ground and groaned.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Alice said. “I quite forgot.”

Purr wiped his bruised feet and answered severely.

“There’s no time to waste. We have to go into town, or the train might leve without us. Then coming here, all we have done, will have been in vain.”

“And what if the machine was wrong? What if the ship isn’t going to land today.”

“It isn’t machines that make mistakes.” The archaeologist answered, and hurried head across the grass toward the town.

Alice walked behind. She grabbed a camomile like flower as she passed and smelled it. The flower did not have any scent at all. A bee buzzed over Alice’s head.

“Go away.” Alice told the bee, and then remembered: if she failed here, in a weak there would be nothing left alive. Not bees, not people, not even the trees.

The archaeologist ran out onto the narrow pathway first.

“Don’t hold back!” He called again and flicked his tail.

“Do you know what?” Alice told him. “You might want to wave your tail a little less. It really doesn’t look all that natural on you.”

“It’s attached tightly.” Purr said, but he stopped waving it back and forth.

They approached the trees. The trees were evenly spaced apart and ran in a narrow band as though they had been specially planted.

“Wait here a moment.” Purr whispered. “I’ll go take a look and see if anyone’s up ahead.”

Alice stopped and from nothing else to do began to pull the flower apart in order to make herself a garland. Alice had a weakness for weaving garlands from camomiles or other flowers, for example, clover. But clover did not grow on Coleida.

“Hey!” Alice heard a high pitched shriek, then growling. She threw away the flowers and ran toward the trees. Something had frightened the archaeologist.

She was just in time. The little archaeologist was running toward her down the path at full gallop, and after him, Purr’s brush tail in his teeth, ran an enormous dog.

“Back! Get away from him.” Alice shouted at the dog.

The dog showed his teeth and growled, but stopped.

Alice picked up the little archaeologist and held him cat-wise; Purr whispered:

“Thank you!”

“Give back the tail.” Alice told the dog, who stood not far off and refused to let go of the furry tail in its mouth. “That’s someone else’s tail. It’s not yours. Give it back now.”

Alice made a few steps toward the dog, but the dog backed away, as though it wanted to play with her. The dog was enormous, shaggy, white with rusty red markings.

A small man hardly larger than Alice came walking toward them from around the bushes.

“What’s going on here?” He asked; Alice understood the question because she had known the local language since yesterday morning.

“Your dog attacked my cat.” Alice answered in Coleidan.

“Naughty puppy!” The man said.

He was dressed in grey pants and a grey shirt, and he carried a long whip in his hands. Evidently, he was the local shepherd.

“And get him to give back the tail. He torn the tail off the kitten.” Alice said.

“What sort of tail is that for a cat?” The shepherd was astonished. “He certainly didn’t grow it.”

“Just give it back.” Alice repeated.

“Rezra, put it down.” The shepherd said.

The dog dropped the tail from its mouth, and Alice, not letting go of the archaeologist in her arms, picked the tail up.

“Thank you.” She said. “Is the train leaving soon?”

“Which train?”

“For the capitol.”

“In an hour.” The shepherd answered. “But just who are you?? Why don’t I know you? I’m certain I know everyone in town.”

“I came here on a field trip.” Alice said. “And I’m returning home. I live in the capitol.”

“And you speak really odd.” The shepherd said. “As if you knew all the words, but not how they’re spoken.”

“I live a long way away.” Alice said.

The shepherd nodded his head in doubt.

“And you dress very oddly.” He said.

The archaeologist gasped and clutched himself closer to Alice.

“What do you mean by oddly?”

“You look sort of like a child, but you’re nearly as tall as I am.”

“It just seems that way.” Alice said. “I’m over sixteen.”

“I suppose…” The shepherd said.

Then the man turned to Rezra, summoned the dog, and still nodding his head began to walk toward the bushes. But then, when Alice had already thought the danger had passed, the man stopped and asked:

“But what about your cat? If my dog tore off your cat’s tail, there should be a lot of blood.”

“It’s nothing. Don’t let it bother you.” Alice said.

“Show him to me.”

“Good bye.” Alice said. “I’ll be late for my train.”

And she walked quickly off down the path toward the city without turning around and looking back, although the shepherd called after her once or twice. She would have run, but she was afraid that the dog would chase after her.

“Well, is he…” The archaeologist whispered.

“I don’t know. I’m not going to look back.”

The path widened out, flowing into a dirt road; in front of he were warehouses or a market place, and Alice hurried along, sticking as close as she could to the wall to hide herself from the shepherd’s view. She was convinced he would now start to chase after her.

Alice stopped behind the buildings and caught her breath.

“Our cover story isn’t as well thought out as I thought it was.” The archaeologist insisted. “And our pronunciation is off. The idea of a field trip is unconvincing. Why would someone go on a field trip alone in the early morning? Better… Ah remember this: you came here to visit your grandmother and you’re returning now… By the way, I quite forgot: young girls don’t wear their hair quite the way you have yours. They wear it combed down onto the forehead.”

“Well, my hair is short.”

“All the same, comb it forward into bangs.”

“I’ll have to put you down on the ground to do it.”

“No, please! The dogs here are fierce!”

“There are no dogs around here. Do you want me to put you in my bag?”

“In the bag, yes! Perfect. Just take my knife and cut a small hole in the side; how else will I be able to look out?”

Alice placed the archaeologist in the bag with the spray can of vaccine and handed him the remains of his tail. She cut a small hole in the side so the archaeologist could see what was going on around them.

“It’s too bad you don’t have any thread.” Purr said. “How am I going to be able to fix my tail?”

“I told you to attach it firmly.”

“You’ve never had a dog tear your tail off.” The archaeologist shot back. “You wouldn’t be laughing then.”

“I am not laughing. Look around in the bag; there might be a needle and thread in the side compartment. My grandmother always keeps throwing in useless things.”

Alice unclasped the bag on the ‘molnia.’ Then she managed to comb her hair forward onto her forehead, and headed for the train station.

Fortunately, the city was still sleeping. The windows were closed, the curtains were drawn, and not a single person even suspected that in a week’s time the only things moving on streets just as empty would be the emergency services vehicles.

“I’m sorry for you.” Alice told the houses where the people were sleeping. “But you can depend on me.”

“Just maybe we’ll be enough.” The archaeologist’s voice came from the bag muffled, as though from far away.

“Quiet.” Alice said. “If anyone overhears you, you’ll give them heart attacks to hear a bag talking.

The newspaper kiosk was already open. The proprietor looked familiar; she’s seen him in the holographic record when Petrov had carried him to the hospital. If Alice was not successful he would die in that hospital.

Alice pulled a few coins out of her pocket.

“Do you have today’s newspaper?”

The proprietor was a middle aged little man in four cornered, horned rim glasses.

“A moment, citizeness.” He said. “If you’ll wait, we’ll have them shortly.”

“Will it be long?”

“Not very. You heard that train puffing? It just brought the morning newspaper from the capitol. They’ll bring it her shortly.”

“And does the train start back for the capitol then?”

“Yes, in about twenty minutes.”

“Then give me yesterday’s issue.” Alice said.

The proprietor handed her the paper and change.

“You new around here?” He asked her.

“I’m a foreign tourist.”

“A-ha,” The little old man said. “I could guess at once that you weren’t from around here.”

After Alice had gotten away from the kiosk and crossed to the other side of the small square where a monument to an unknown man on a mount stood at present, and which would still be stranding in a hundred years, she told the archaeologist:

“I should have made clothing like they wear here before I came.”

“Who could have guessed it earlier?”

“Gromozeka, of course.”

On the other side of the square was a small public garden. On both sides of the paths stretched large concrete boxes with flowers. The flowers had bloomed, spreading wide to cath the sun. A city bus stopped in front of the train station and little people in work clothing came out of it and went inside the statio. A column of stream rose over the low building of the train station and the steam engine hooted.

“Have you read the newspapers yet?” Purr asked.

“I can’t do that while walking>“

“Then give it to me.”

Alice rolled the newspaper into a tube and put it in her bag. Purr immediately handed it back to her.

“Where did you get the idea that I can read in a bag?” The archaeologist whispered. “It’s far too ark, and I can’t even open it.”

“Then you shouldn’t have asked.”

“Find us a bench.” The archaeologist said. “Sit down and read it.”

“First I have to buy a train ticket.” Alice said. “Or we’ll be late, and then you can read as much as you want. Why has your mood gotten so sour?”

“Motion sickness.” Purr answered. “Have you ever been carried around in a bag?”

“No.”

“Me neither. By the way, there’s something very uneven about your gait. You’re jumping all the time.”

“I am not!”

Still squabbling with the archaeologist Alice went in through the station’s door and saw the ticket window. She knew where to look for it because the archaeologists in the future had excavated almost the entire train station. In fact, it turned out that they had not determined the precisely the meaning and usage of everything correctly, but at the moment that did not play a role.

“One children’s ticket, round trip to the capitol.” Alice said, handing her money beneath the cashier’s glass window.

The cashier’s round face seemed to stick out through the little window. She looked Alice over from head to foot and said,

“Such a grown up little girl, and you want to save money on your ticket. That will be seven regals for a full fare.”

“But I’ve always paid the children’s…”

Then Alice cut off; Purr was kicking at her through the bag.

“Oh yes, of course.” Alice said and reached into her pocket for the money. They did not have much money left all of ten coins “And when will te train be leaving…”

But the cashier made no answer and slammed the window shut.

“The cashiers here are anything but polite.” Alice said. “We don’t have any like that at home.”

Alice went out onto the platform and stopped in the shelter of an iron column. She did not want to be seen walking back and forth.

The train stood beside the platform; the engine was belching steam and the numerous passengers were saying their good-byes and finding seats. A number of them were still half asleep, as though they had just awakened.

Alice selected a car with no one else in it, and hurried toward it. A conductor in a tall orange hat stood beside it.

“Your ticket?”

Alice handed him the ticket.

“Can’t you read?” He asked. “It’s written right here third class. This is the first class wagon.”

“And what’s the difference?” Alice asked.

The conductor looked her over from head to foot and said:

“The price.”

Alice hurried to the next open car in the train to keep him from getting a good look at her; it was poorer looking and filled with people. She heard him say:

“Look at her! What do you make of that? Is she a foreigner or what?”

And so Alice decided to tell everyone that she was a foreigner. She stopped beside the train car but did not go into the doorway, bent over the bag and asked Purr in a whisper:

“What will happen if I tell everyone I’m a foreigner?”

“Tell everyone you’re from the north and not, I repeat not, from the south.”

“Why?”

“Because they have a trade pact with the north, but they’re getting ready for a little border war with the south.”

“It won’t start.” Alice shook her head. “They won’t have time.”

“But with your aid, they will.”

“And with whom are you speaking citizeness?” An official voice came from behind her.

Alice stood straight up. The voice came from a thickset man in a yellow uniform with a large gold hammer on his cap. She decided he had to be some sort of policemen and her first move was to run away, anywhere. But there was nowhere to run that would not be seen.

“Stop!” The little man in yellow grabbed her by the sleeve. “Where do you come from? Who have you been talking to, I ask you?”

“I’m from the North.” Alice said. “I’m a foreigner. A foreigner from the North.”

“You hardly look it.” The little official said.

But then the steam train’s whistle began to call. Alice torn away from the man and jumped on bottom rung of the moving wagon’s steps.

The little man in the yellow uniform seemed to be thinking what he could do, but at the same time Alice had shown her ticket to the conductor and made her way into the packed train car. She was able to find a compartment occupied by three people in poor clothing and tattered hats. The people were sleeping. The fourth place was unoccupied.

“Who was that?” Alice asked when she’d had a chance to catch her breath and could bend over the bag.

“That was the porter.” The whisper in answer came far too loud.

The train gathered speed and, clattering the rails, headed for the capitol.

“Could he have arrested me?”

“I don’t know.” The archaeologist said. “Are you sure that no one can hear you?”

“No. They’re sound asleep.”

“Then we’ll finally read the newspaper. Put the bag on the floor. It won’t rock as much.”

Alice unfolded the newspaper. It was yesterdays; on the front page a read headline blazed:






ASTRONAUTS RETURN TOMORROW!!





“We did it then.” Alice whispered. “We made it in time. The Temporalists were right on.”




13


Fortunately their neighbors in the coach debarked after two stations and Alice found herself alone. She pulled the archaeologist out of the bag and together they read all the information in the newspapers, where it described the astronauts flight, and how they were to be welcomed back at the launch site.

They were even able to work out the best ways to get across the capitol from the train station to the landing site. Although the archaeologists had not yet excavated the capitol city, Purr had found tourist maps and street guides to the capitol in the provincial city’s library and had them copied out. The money situation was poor. They had just enough money for the street railway or local bus. There was not enough to pay for food.

“I have an idea!” The little archaeologist laughed morosely and blinked his single eye to Alice. “If it comes to it you can, like in the old fairy tale, sell me, your sole friend.”

“No one would buy you without your tail.” Alice replied..

“Don’t worry about that.” The archaeologist said. “I found your grandmother’s needle and thread. Only you tossed the bag around so much I was afraid of skewering myself in the hand. But now I have a chance to sew the tale back on. It will be done in half an hour.”

Alice looked out the window. Outside, beyond the window glass, the land looked ordinary; in fact it looked enormously backward compared with Earth, but back a hundred years ago Earth would have looked enormously backward. No monorails, no flyers, no antigravs, flying houses or any other sorts of ordinary, every day things.

The archaeologist was muttering something to himself pod nos and sewing the tail back on. Alice cold have helped him she was better with needle and thread than Purr but how could one offer ones services when the task was sewing a tail on oneself?

Alice turned to study the portraits of the astronauts in the newspapers. One of the astronauts appeared to be larger than the others. He was young, dark eyed, and with a smile so wide it seemed he’d have trouble not breaking out into laughter. “Engineer Tolo.” She read his name aloud, and remembered it.

The door to their compartment opened and an old woman entered. The old woman was small, with around, ruddy face. She wore a long blue dress. Alice saw the old woman’s eyes suddenly widen with fright. The old woman was looking down, at the floor boards.

“Oh!” The old woman exclaimed.

Alice looked at the same spot and so caught the little the archaeologist unawares, clutching the tail in one and in the other holding the needle and thread, try to crawl back into the carpet bag. Alice quickly opened the bag wider and Purr flung himself inside. Alice looked at the old woman again.

The old woman stepped back into the corridor; her mouth was already opened, as though she were about to scream.

“Don’t be afraid, ma’am?” Alice said. “Don’t be frightened. It always plays like that.”

“Oh.” The old woman said, as though she had been somewhat frightened, on hearing Alice’s voice. “It seemed to me that….”

“What?”

“Don’t laugh, missy.” The old woman said. “For a moment I was certain that your cat was sewing his own tail onto…. My eyes are deceiving me.”

The old woman quickly forgot her fright, sat down by the window, untied the bundle she was carrying, reached inside and pulled out two apples. She kept one for herself, but extended the other to Alice.

“And where are you going, young one?” The old woman asked.

“I’m bound for the capitol.”

“That’s rather obvious, the capitol.” The old woman agreed. “And what do you plan to do there.”

“I want to see the astronauts when they land…”

“Ah.” The old woman said and suddenly her eyes lit up. “Tell me, dear,” she suddenly asked. “Does your kitten have only one eye?”

“He has two.” Alice said blandly, “it’s just that he always has one of them shut.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The old woman still looked apprehensively at the bag. “Well, I’m going to the launch site too.”

“To meet the astronauts?”

“More or less, but not all of them. My son is coming back on the flight. He’s the engineer.”

The old woman pulled a large photograph of the astronaut that Alice had liked from her purse.

“Here he is. See.”

“Oh, I know him.” Alice said. “His name is Tolo.”

“Everyone knows him.” The old woman said with pride.

“Then why are you traveling on an ordinary train?” Alice asked.

“What else should I do?”

“You’re the mother of one of the astronauts. The astronauts’ parents and families have special accommodations and transport to the launch site.”

“Oh, that would be far too much of a fuss.” The old woman laughed. I just live in a village so I’m behind the times. And my Tolo is modest too. You would never guess that he’s an astronaut. You must have read in the paper about the accident, when the meteorite punctured the ship’s hull; it was my Tolo who went outside the ship and repaired the puncture.”

The carpetbag hit Alice in the side. But she had already guessed the point to which Purr was drawing her attention. This was how the Space Plague had gotten inside the ship. This meant that Tolo was already sick.

“It doesn’t matter.” Alice said aloud. “We’ll cure him.”

“Cure whom?” The old woman asked.

“Oh, I mean, in case….” Alice thought suddenly.

“My Tolo is healthy. He’s never been sick a day in his life. Not even a tooth ache. Such a son.”

The old woman stoked the photograph and put it back inside her purse.

Alice felt another soft punch through the side of the bag. Evidently, the archaeologist was excited about something. Just what was it he wanted?

“Get in with her.” A whisper suddenly came out of nowhere and fill the compartment.

“What?” The old woman asked. “Did you say something?”

“Yes.” Alice answered. Just me mumbling. I said that you must be very happy.”

“Of course I’m happy. To have such a son! So healthy, not even a tooth ache…”

“I was thinking about something else.” Alice said. “They are going to let you to the ship, aren’t they?”

“Of course they will. How else can I embrace my son when he returns?”

“And I’ll have to stand a long way off. I might even have to stay in the city. Oh, how I like your Tolo! Really, word of honor. He’s so much nicer than the other astronauts.”

“Are you telling the truth?” The old woman asked seriously.

“Word of honor.”

“Then I think I can do you a good deed.”

The old woman started to muse, and Alice held the bag down on the bench. The archaeologist was so excited and agitated that the bag actually chittered, as though it contained not a single cat but a whole litter.

“Your cat is very disturbed.” The old woman said. “You should let him out.”

“I can’t.” Alice said. “He would run away.”

“Listen to me, my dear.” The old woman said. “Today will be a very great day for me. My son is returning a hero And I want to do a good deed. I believe Tolo will not be angry with me for it. Come with me. Come with me all the way to the ship itself; you can say you’re my daughter, and that Tolo is your brother. Do you understand?”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you so very much.” Alice was delighted. “You can’t imagine what a wonderful thing you’ve done. And not only for me but for yourself and everyone!”

“‘The good deed touches not only the given, but the giver and the world.’“ Evidently, the old womnan did not understand what Alice had in mind, and as much as Alice wanted to tell her everything she clampped down on her own tongue with her teeth until she nearly drew blood, but Purr clearly guesses what she was thinking and stuck the knife through the little hole in the bag and prodded Alice.

Alice jumped to her feet from shock.

“Are you happy?” The old woman asked. She was clearly happy herself and delighted at the thought of bringing joy to someone else.

“Overjoyed.” Alice said, and punched the bag.

The train began to slow down. Beyond the window they could see the new skyscrapers that filled the capitol’s suburbs.




14


It sometimes happens that if things go well, they go very well indeed. The old woman had not only invited Alice along with her to the space port under the pretense of being her daughter, but even fed her supper in a caf‚ near the train station and, because Alice had admitted she was a foreigner, showed her the city’s sights. And then their taxi arrived at the launch site.

Well before they came to their destination the car slowed to a crawl and could hardly move more than a hundred yards before coming to a halt. It appeared the entire capitol city was rushing toward the space port. It might have been a joke the world’s first space ship was returning to the planet. The streets were decorated with flags and big pictures of the astronauts, and every time the old woman saw a picture of her son she clasped Alice by the sleeve and loudly said:

“And who is that?”

“Our Tolo.” Alice answered.

“Yes. Our boy.”

The old woman had already started to believe somewhat that Alice was, in fact, her daughter. Finally, when the main entrance to the space port could be seen ahead of them, the taxi came to a final halt in the current of busses, cars, bicycles, and other means of transport. The driver turned to his passengers and said sadly:

“You’d better continue on foot. I’ll be stuck here until evening. No one’s moving in this.”

Alice and the old woman thanked the driver, paid him, and headed off on foot. The driver caught up with them about twenty paces later.

“The car can sit there.” He said. “What can happen to it today? The traffic’s packed solid. And I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t see the landing.

The first chain of police in white parade uniforms were standing by the main entrance. They held the driver back; he remained in the enormous mass of people who hadn’t been given tickets, but they let the old woman pass through with Alice almost without a question. The old woman showed them her documents and one of the cops even said:

“I’ll take you to the field. Make certain no one else stops you.”

The old woman nodded to Alice and whispered:

“It’s the only way he’ll get to the field himself. His ohota is to not let people through. He wants to see the ship land and our Tolo come out of it too.”

A half an hour later the old woman and Alice had made it to the last barrier; before them stretched the seemingly endless concrete field where the ship was scheduled to land.

Loudspeakers and radios were all the time broadcasting descriptions of the ship’s re-entry into the atmosphere, his breaking maneuvers, and its approach to the landing field. Very little time remained before its landing.

All around them stood generals in uniform and medals, and the country’s very important people; the leaders of the government, famous scientists, writers, artists, actors, reporters. They were all waiting in tense expectation.

But none of them could have guessed that, in that enormous crowd filling the space port, the most excited of all was a little girl by the name of Alice who had come from the future and from the other end of the Galaxy. And she was excited more than anyone else because she knew she held in her hands the fate of the entire planet.

Alice began to feel that her knees were shaking a little, and her palms had become moist. She began to move forward a little, until she was touching the very barrier itself.

“Where are you going.” The old woman asked. “I’ll go with you.”

Alice casually opened her bag and felt inside for the cannister. She took it out and hung it over he shoulder.

“And what’s that?” The old woman asked.

“A thermos.” Alice answered. “If you want something to drink I can open it.”

The old woman didn’t ask anything else; she was too busy watching the sky and the bright point of light that had suddenly appeared before their eyes.

The space ship, with its cargo of astronauts and Space Plague aboard, was coming in for its landing.

The ship descended slowly, like in a dream. For a minute it hung suspended over the field itself, blue flame from its tail playing over the concrete. Then it was on the ground, and a short hurricane carried off the spectators’ hats and caps.

The orchestra began to play, and several space port employees began to unfurl a thick role of white rug from the gate to the ship for the astronauts to walk on to meet the welcoming party.

“What should I do?” Alice asked the little archaeologist. No one was listening to her now; they were all waiting for the ship’s airlock to open and for the astronauts to emerge.

“Are we far from the ship?” Purr asked.

“About three or four hundred yards from the ship. I’d never be able to run there. They’d catch me.”

“Oh.” The archaeologist sighed. “So close, ands till to far! I might be able to make it.”

“But you could never carry the cannister with the vaccine.”

But here again the old woman came to Alice’s erscue. When she saw that the members of Coleida’s government pushed across the barrier and were now on both sides of the long white rug held ready for the astronauts, because they were as thrilled as anyone else and could not stand waiting any more than the old woman, the mother of Engineer Tolo moved away from her police escort and said:

“My son is over there.”

She spoke the words with such firmness and conviction that the policeman could only nod his head and let her pass.

Alice grabbed onto the old woman’s hand, and when the policeman tried to stop her, the old woman turned and said:

“This is his sister. I won’t move a foot without her.”

“Just leave the bag.” The cop said. “They don’t want any bags.”

Alice clutched the bag tightly, and it proved to be a hindrance because the old woman pressed forward and the policeman moved back and Alice was pulled between then. And then Alice heard Purr say in Cosmolingue, which none of the Coleidans could understand:

“Let go! Remember what we’re here for.”

Fortunately, the policeman heard nothing; he was trying to hold back the advancing crowd with his other hand. Alice let go of the bag with Purr in it and hurried forward.

They made it almost as far as the landed ship itself. But then everyone stopped. The old woman too.

The ship’s airlock was slowly turning, opening.

“It must have been like this back on old Earth when they met Gagarin and Glenn.” Alice thought. “It’s a pity I was born so late.” She said to herself.

And at the very moment that the airlock had slid as far back into the ship as it could go and the first astronaut, the ship’s captain, appeared in the round hatch, Alice jumped between a general and the Prime Minister, darted away from the outstretched hands of the honor guard, and ran for the airlock.

“Stop!” They shouted from behind her.”

“Don’t worry.” Alice heard the old woman’s voice. “That’s my daughter.”

As she darted forward, Alice pulled the vaccine cannister off her shoulder.

The ship’s captain, watching what was unfolding, burst into laughter, and waved her to one side.

Alice stopped for a moment. She had realized that the airlock was too high there was no way she could reach it. The spray of vaccine would not reach inside the ship.

“Raise the gangplank!” The ship’s captain shouted; evidently, he had decided that Alice wanted to present the astronauts with some gift, and he had decided to let her do it.

A moment later an automatic gangplank rose from the ground and extended itself forward and touched the ship.

“Don’t move!” Alice shouted to the captain, who had been about to step onto the gangplank.

Alice had already jumped onto the gangplank, moving forward, before it could even stop.

Behind her came policemen intent on reaching her and stopping her.

Alice flew like an arrow along the gangway, the cannister in her hands.

She aimed it right in the Captain’s face and pressed the button.

A strong, grey stream of pungent vaccine struck the Captain; out of surprise he jumped back.

Millions of people on Coleida who watched that moment either at the space port itself or on television, gasped in horror. All the inhabitants of Coleida could only believe it was an attempt on the lives of the astronauts.

Alice stood before the returning ship’s airlock and continued to press the button down on the cannister of vaccine. The mist quickly wrapped itself around the ship and filled all its internal spaces.

Then the button itself gave a click and the stream of vaccine cut off.

The cannister was empty.

And out of the still not dissipated cloud a number of strong hands grabbed hold of Alice and dragged her back.




15


The room where Alice found herself was small and completely empty. There was not even a chair. On the other side of the door Alice heard voices. It was not even a proper room, just one of the space port’s many storage lockers that had been hurriedly emptied to hold the state criminal who had made an attempt on the lives of the returning astronauts.

Alice sat on the floor. She was very happy, but very tired and worried about what had become of Purr, the archaeologist.

She understood the panic that had overcome the entire planet of Coleida. Quite likely no one understood anything: everyone was asking his neighbor: ‘Where the astronauts injured?’ And thousands of different and quite terrible rumors were making their way over the planet.

Five minutes passed. And then another five minutes.

“Of course,” Alice thought. “They’re all busy with the astronauts. No one has any time for me.”

Then another thought filled her head. It was all very well and good that she had been able to save Coleida. But what happened now? Wasn’t she ever going to get out of here. And wouldn’t she ever see the noisy and good Gromozeka again and return home, to Earth.

She wanted to cry. And she did cry. Perhaps not so much from sadness for the situation she now found herself in as much as from physical and mental exhaustion. And, when she had cried a little, her mood became somewhat better. Because she understood that she would not remain in this precarious position forever. If they had to, they could bring three more time machines from Earth. And then Petrov, and Richard, and perhaps even Gromozeka himself would come looking for her. And they would explain everything to the Coleidans, and, perhaps, the Coleidans would even pit up a monument to Alice.

So Alice dozed off, leaning against the whitewashed walls.

In fact no one had even bothered to interrogate her yet; a panic had consumed the space port. But when they carted Alice away and the cloud of smelly mist cleared it turned out that the astronauts were completely unharmed. The astronauts had arrived safely, the vast crowd had a deep desire to celebrate, and that is what the people of Coleida proceeded to do. For the moment the people of Coleida had completely forgotten Alice existed.




16


Alice didn’t now for how long she had been sleeping; t could have been ten minutes, it could have been three hours. But suddenly she heard a voice:

“Alice!”

She immediately opened her eyes and looked around.

The room was empty. She could still hear footsteps moving back and forth on the other side of the door. They were guarding her carefully.

“Alice, can you hear me?”

“Is that you, Purr?”

“It’s me. Come to the corner that’s as far from the door as you can get and help me.”

Alice got quietly to her feet and went to where Purr told her.

And she saw what was there in the corner, flush in the floor, a grate. On the other side of the metal grate looking up at her was the furry face of the little archaeologist.

“Don’t be sad.” The archeologist whispered, blinking his one purple eye. “We’ll get you out of here.”

“But how did you get here>“

“No time to t now, but, in general, while they were all shouting and chasing after you I opened the bag and jumped out; they almost trampled me. No one was paying any attention to a kitten so I was able to follow after and see where they put you. It helped that I’d sewn the tail back on.”

“And then…”

“And then I scouted out the building. I found grate leading to the steam tunnels beneath the building, and so I found you. I’ve unlocked this grate here from below, but I don’t have the physical strength to lifted it. Hurry up and pull.”.

Alice pulled at the grate. The grate hardly lifted.

“Pull!” Purr’s words were a prayer. “They’ve almost come for you.”

On the other side of the door they could hear voices. Someone was about to enter the room.

With all her strength Alice tugged at the grate and she pulled it up, and landed with a loud clang on the stone floor.

“Jump!” Purr commanded. “Don’t be afraid; it’s not high.”

At that very moment the door to the little room began to open; Alice, closing her eyes tightly, jumped into the black pit as Purr scarcely scampered to one side.

“Follow me!” He said.

Alice ran for what seemed to be forever along the dark corridors of the spaceport’s below ground maze of pipes and tunnels. Alice covered her hands and knees with bruises and scrapes, she tore the sleeves of her dress, but there was no way she could stop or slow down Purr kept darting forward and waiting for her to catch up.

“You can rest at home. Listen! There’s a hue and cry for us.”

They were able to run out the back door of the space port a minute before the whole building was flooded with soldiers. What saved them was the number of people in the space port had become so great that the soldiers and policemen sent to capture the state criminal found it impossible to move quickly it at all.




17


The long, adventurous day on the planet Coleida was at last coming to a close. The sun had descended to the level of the high trees of the park that surrounded the space port.

“Oh, I’m so tired!” Alice said when she had made it to the first of the trees and wrapped her arms about its bole to support herself. “I could just collapse.”

The furry little archaeologist had peered out from behind the door to see if they were still being chased.

“Don’t give up now, Alice.” He said. “Get a grip on yourself. Your work is only half over.”

“Why half. We did it! We saved the whole planet.”

“I don’t know that.” Purr said. “I don’t know, my child.”

He was speaking like a very old, wise, grandfather.

“You spread the vaccine, you did. But only if we make it back will we learn if it produced the result that we want.”

“You’re telling me that when we get back everything may be the same as before?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then it’s better if we don’t go back. It’s better if we stay here.”

“You’re tired, Alice.” Purr said. “And exhausted.”

The hollow beating of drums from the playing of a distant orchestra reached the forest. The thick, warm air resounded with the drumbeat. Garlands of enormous multicolored balloons flew over the roofs of the space port buildings.

“I just can’t imagine that they’re all going to get sick…” Alice said.

“Perhaps they will not get sick; but if you had never delivered the vaccine you not for certainty that they would all have been destroyed. And that would have been much worse.

Alice nodded. The little archaeologist was right.

“Can you catch your breath.” he asked. “We have to hurry. By sundown we have to get a lot further from the city.”

“But where are we going now?” Alice asked; she wanted to go no where at all. She just wanted to lay down on the grass and fall asleep. But she would have to wait and sleep at home. “The railway station?”

“On the contrary.” Purr answered. “They would recognize us instantly. After the astronauts you must be the most recognizable face in the city. Several million Coleidans saw you on TV. We’ll go on foot.”

They set off through the forest. Purr ran ahead. Choosing his direction by the sun he walked in a direction that would take them toward the railroad tracks that led to the smaller city where the archaeologists had set up camp.

Alisa had scraped her foot but Purr would not permit her to stop and deal with it. “An interesting turn of events.” Alice thought. “While we were on our way here I was in charge, but suddenly he’s remembered that he’s the older and he’s leading me.” But Alice had no desire to argue with the little archaeologist. And she had no desire to try and convince him that no matter what happened Petrov and Richard would find and rescue them. All Purr would say would be that they would never be found.

Suddenly the forest came to an end. The band of trees had been very narrow. On the other side of the forest started a vast, empty field, and beyond that were more buildings. There was no way they could leave the shelter of the trees; a small yellow helicopter was circling over the empty ground, and from the buildings a chain of policemen was slowly heading for the trees. For Alice.

“A police cordon.” Purr said. “They suspect we’re hiding in the forest.”

“What are we to do.” Alice asked. “Hide ourselves in the woods?”

“They would find us. Head this way.”

As he had scouted ahead Purr had noticed some structures in the trees. He led Alice there.

In a large well trodden and muddy field surrounded by a low barrier stood a number of attractions: swings, Ferris wheels, and other amusement machinery similar to those that once stood in the parks of Earth, yet at the same time very different.

The fugitives crawled beneath a creaking carousel of fantastic winged and tentacled creatures and law flat on the ground. The floor boards hung so low they almost touched them, and in the cracks and crevices between the boards Alice could see a thin bad of very bright sky.

They had made it just in time. No more than three minutes later the policemen reached the amusement park. Alice could hear them calling to one another. Then one of them stepped onto the carousel and the floor boards bent underneath his boots.

Alice wanted to sneeze it was dusty and stuff beneath the carousel. The policeman stopped and stood directly over her, blocking off the light from the sky with his boots, and asked another one loudly.

“You checked underneath yet?”

“No.” The answer came from some distance away. “Take a look.”

“I don’t have a flash light.”

“You don’t need one. There’s no room for anyone underneath there anyway.”

The policeman stepped off the carousel onto the ground. Alice quickly crawled to the furthest wall and hugged the ground.

The wooden hatch was thrown open and the policeman’s black silhouette appeared in it. He seemed to look in her direction forever, then asked:

“Anyone in here?”

“You coming?” The second policeman shouted from further away.”

“Yep.” The policeman answered, and slammed the hatch shut. “No one here. She probably made her getaway in an airplane.”

“Probably.” The second voice agreed with him. “No one is certainly going to try an attack like that on their own.”

“We will remain here until darkness.” Purr said when the policemen’s tramping had vanished. “Otherwise they would catch us immediat4ely.”

They were able to get out from under the carousel only in the late evening. Just about an hour after the policemen had left the amusement park was suddenly filled with people. The carousel’s owner wiped the fantastic animals down with a rag and wax, swept it clean, and then over Alice’s head the boards began to move around and around, and for the next three hours cheerful, exhaustingly repetitious carousel music played over Alice’s head, and it appeared that someone would suddenly fall through the creaking boards and crush the fugitives.

Finally, when Alice could stand laying on her side no longer and frustrated that no matter how terribly she wanted to sleep such was impossible beneath the creaking of the carousel and the thunder of the music, the evening’s cheer came to an end. The carousel’s motor was started with less frequency and the voices around them became the fewer, and by midnight there was only silence.

They crawled out from beneath the carousel and Purr rubbed Alice’s legs with his strong hands. Her legs had fallen asleep and felt numb, and it was impossible to walk. But then it became far worse; the blood circulation was returned to her legs, they woke up, and it felt like thousands of needles were sticking in them.

“Well, can you walk.” Purr asked.

“I can walk.” Alice answered.

No, when so much had been endured, she understood that any price would be worth paying to get home.

They set off.

They crossed the darkened forest again, came out into the wasteland and walked around a pit and large mountains of trash, and entered a new district of the city. Until the last houses were left well behind they walked slowly Purr ran forward, checking to see if there was anyone, and only then did Alice follow after.

It was already two in the morning when they came out onto the line of the railroad. The rails glistened in the light of the planet’s moon.

They walked out onto the path that ran along the line of the tracks, and headed right in the direction of the capitol. Alice tried to imagine how the astronaut Tolo’s mother must be cursing her, telling her son how Alice had wormed her way into her trust. She even thought she could hear the old woman’s voice: “I even fed her an apple! If I had known I would never have fed her anything! And that cat of her now that was something suspicious….”

It was almost dawn before they were able to clamber onto the open car of a freight train that had slowed to a near standstill by a siding.

And with the first light of the sun, tattered and torn, worn out, scarcely alive but terribly happy, they descended to the ground in the outskirts of the provincial town. They had only one more step to make, and the time machine would snatch them back and return them to the archaeologists’ camp.

And Alice suddenly understood that it would be very difficult for her to make this final step.

“I’m afraid.” She told the little archaeologist.

“I am too.” He said. “I understand.”

“What if we go back and everything’s the same as it was before. If we failed.”

“I know.” Purr said. “Don’t even mention it.”

He had lost his tail again somewhere on the road, too far back for them to go and find it. The two of them were silent for a while.

Then Alice bent down and picked up the little archaeologist, holding him against her chest in her hands like a pet cat.

Something clicked. A vague mist enveloped her and she seemed to be carried away, falling, falling…

And then she was standing in the Time Machine’s cabin.




18


Behind the transparent wall Gromozeka was waving his tentacles. Beside him was Petrov. Richard was bent over the controls.

Alice stood in the time machine’s cabin, unable even to stir.

The door did not open.

Gromozeka raised one of his tentacles, pointing, showing that she had forgotten to press one of the buttons.

“Of course,” said Alice. “The button.”

She pressed the green button. The door slid to the side. Alice let go of the little archaeologist and Purr fell onto the floor.

“We have them.” Gromozeka said. “Blast off.”

“We have blast off.” A voice shot back from one of the speakers.

The engines started to howl, the time machine’s control room shuddered, and Alice felt her weight increase as moment and then return to normal as the gravitational stabilizers started kicked in.

“What’s going on?” Purr asked finally.

Gromozeka stretched out his long tentacles and enfolded Alice, and she suddenly saw that smoking tears were crawling down his broad green face.

“My daughter,” He said. “Dear one! Thank you!”

“For what?” Alice managed to say.

“Everything’s al-al right.” Petrov said. “Everything’s all right. But it was a.. a… It was a crime!”

“The victors do not get taken before the courts.” Richard said. “And you know that very well, Mihail Petrovich.”

“I am guilty.” Gromozeka said, still not letting Alice free of his tentacles. “I am willing to take whatever punishment the courts demand.”

“What happened?” Purr grew insistent.

“Everything happened.”

“Then why are we moving?”

“We are flying.” Gromozeka said. “Departing.”

“Why?” Alice was surprised. She was so comfortable in Gromozeka’s embrace she could no longer feel her own feet.

“Because as soon as you and Purr transposed into the past I ordered the whole camp struck.” Gromozeka said.

“To chase after us?”

“Nothing of the kind. I knew that you were going to try to go into the past that night, and you know my attitude toward that. I did not interfere.”

“So you weren’t sleeping.”

“I had to make certain you didn’t forget your sweater.”

“And I really tried not to make any noise!” Alice was disappointed.

“I did everything I could. I explained to you the actions of the vaccine spray, I made you take shots anything and everything under every sun we know, I asked Purr to go into the past with you. There was no way I could send you alone.

“So you knew I was going to go too.” Alice turned to her companion and stroked him like a cat.

“I knew.” The little archaeologist said. “And other than me, there was no one who could have accompanied you. I was the only one small enough. I had the tail made up earlier. I trust I proved worthy?”

“You did. You know, Gromozeka, he was able to get me free after they captured me.”

“He did? That is excellent. You can tell us all what happened later. But we were very worried. We kept thinking that you might have gotten caught and we would have to send a rescue party into the past.”

“So why are we on a ship?” Alice asked.

“Because as soon as you were in the past I ordered the entire camp and the time building taken down. None of us knew what would happen here over the course of a hundred years. What if a new city appeared where the domes were? Or artificial lake?”

“Talk about doing things in a rush!” Richard said. “We took down the whole camp in six hours, de-established the station and loaded the time chamber into the last ship. And then we had to wait.”

“Was it worth it?” Alice asked. “Can I have a look?”

Gromozeka lifted Alice up to one of the ports.

The ship had already reached a great height, and Coleida filled half the sky. The whole face of the planet was swept with points of light like strings of glowing pearls; the lights of its cities, homes, industries.

“Everything happened in the second half of the day.” Gromozeka said. “We were standing by the ports looking out. We all know at what time the space ship would return. We were standing and counting the minutes. We could hardly believe it, really, that you had made it to the space ship…”

“And suddenly the field we were in was green.” Richard interrupted. “Just like that.”

“And the old ruined city turned into sky scrapers.” Petrov said.

“And the air was filled with birds.” Gromozeka said. “And we knew that Alice had killed the Space Plague.”

“But didn’t the locals notice you?” Purr asked.

“We’d buried the ship underground and covered it with camouflage netting. And we were lucky. The field was never built on. Now that we’ve taken off, of course they’ve noticed.”

And at that moment a voice came over the loudspeaker:

“This is your captain speaking. We’ve just made contact with one of the orbital traffic control satellites serving the planet Coleida. They are asking us what ship this is, where are we flying, and why we did not warn traffic control of our departure?”

“Tell then that we are setting course for trier watch satellite.” Gromozeka said. “Let them wait. We’ll tell them everything.”




19


When Gromozeka was walking down the corridor of Coleida’s guard satellite with the re- dressed and washed Alice, Alice asked the Chief Archaeologist:

“When you explain everything to them, could you find out if they ever built a monument to me?”

“What?” Gromozeka was surprised.

“Is there or is there not a statue to us along with one to Purr?” Alice repeated. “We are the ones who saved them, after all.”

Gromozeka laughed, but he did not answer.

The dispatcher on duty met his guest in the central control chamber. He turned out to be a small man, only a little taller than Alice, and he looked a lot like engineer Tolo. On catching sight of Gromozeka he gasped and stepped back several paces, but he quickly came to grips with his fear and tried to laugh.

“We’re from the planet Earth.” Gromozeka said, by way of greeting. “As well as from other planets of the Galactic Federation, which I suspect you will shortly be entering. We would like to apologize for having been on your planet without permission, but such things do happen.

“What I can’t understand is how you managed to set down right next to a major city and no one even noticed you?”

“Not only did we land,” Gromozeka said, “We even managed to spend half a year working on your planet.”

“Doing what?”

“We are archaeologists. We managed to determine just what it was that exterminated all life on your planet.”

“But nothing has exterminated all life on our planet.” The dispatcher said. “Are you joking?”

“Not in the least.” Gromozeka said. “Tell me, does this girl look at all familiar to you, from anywhere…” He pointed to Alice.

“No. Not at all.” The dispatcher answered.

“Now that is odd.” Alice said.

“She spent some time on your planet, only a long time ago.”

“When?”

“About a hundred years back.”

“You’re speaking in riddles.” The dispatcher said. “And if this is a joke, its very strange.”

“A hundred years ago,” Gromozeka continued, “your first space ship returned to the planet, didn’t it?”

“Certainly.” The dispatcher said. “We celebrated the centenary of the event just this last year.”

“But weren’t there any odd events or happenings right at the moment when the ship returned to Coleida?”

“No.” The dispatcher said. “Everything proceeded uneventfully. Since then the day has been celebrated as a holiday.”

“And yet I insist that right on that day at precisely that moment this little girl, whose name happens to be Alice by the way, was at the space port and even saved your planet from total annihilation.”

“And they even put me in jail.” Alice interjected.

The dispatcher sighed heavily, as thought he were tired of listening to the ravings of his insane visitors.

“He doesn’t believe us.” Gromozeka said. “They will not believe either of us, Alice. But tell me, do you have a library on board?”

“Why?”

“There might be a history book in it.”

“Oh well…” The dispatcher shrugged his shoulders. “Wait a moment.”

He pressed a button on the control panel, a wall panel slide aside and revealed shelves with books. The dispatcher took down one of the books.

“Is there a description in here of the return from space of the first astronauts?” Gromozeka asked.

“Just a minute.” The dispatcher said. He was leafing through the book.

“Read it.” Gromozeka said. In expectation of pleasure he even swept his tentacles over the traffic satellite’s smooth floor.

“‘And then the ship appeared.’“ The dispatcher read.

“Continue, further.” Gromozeka pressed him on, looking over the little man’s shoulder. “There.” He tapped a line of print with the tip of a claw.

“‘The holiday was capped by the curious actions of one of the girls,’“ the dispatcher read, “‘who ran forward and doused the returning astronauts with perfume. Her name has remained unknown.’“

“Is that all?” Alice asked.

“That’s all.”

“That was me. Only there weren’t any perfumes involved. It was a vaccine.”

At this point Gromozeka came to realize that the dispatcher’s patience had completely run out. He said:

“It’s a joke on history. We shall have to have a long and serious discussion. I am therefore informing you officially that my ship requests the permission of Coleida’s authorities to land at a space port convenient to you. I will speak no further riddles to you, and I will provide a complete explanation to representatives of your government.

“If you’ll wait a while, I’ll find out which space ports have landing pads free.” The dispatcher said with relief.

But then Alice and Gromozeka were walking back toward their ship, Gromozeka tapped Alice lightly on the shoulder with one of his claws, and said:

“Don’t be disappointed. Maybe they’ll still erect a statue to you on this planet.”

“I don’t need a statue.” Alice said. “What matters is that they remained alive and healthy.”

Alice grew silent for a moment. Then she added:

“It is a shame the history books say I doused them with perfume.”

“History only records what was thought to be most important at the time it was recorded,” Gromozeka said. “but what really matters may take a long time to surface in people’s memories.”




End




The Rusty Field-Marshal







Chapter One: News of Future Days


In the morning the alarm clock stood on tiptoe and looked out the window. It could easily enough remember the weather predictions, but it would certainly do not harm to check for itself. If you failed to study the weather you might err in awakening your human.

The alarm clock saw: beyond the window the wind was blowing, rustling the leaves on the birches; quick grey clouds ran across the sky. But there was no ran ordered for today. So the computer logged on to the household computer and requested the following data: which lessons did Alice have today at school it was important to learn if they were subjects Alice loved or just the ones she endured. Next, what was the houserobot making for breakfast this morning? Had Alice argued with one of her friends yesterday?

These were not empty questions. The alarm clock had to know: just how should he awaken his mistress today?

In the end the information was gathered. It turned out that Alice could endure gloomy weather. There were no lessons planned for today, as the Summer vacations had started, the house robot was preparing Hercules, the breakfast of Heroes, which Alice really couldn’t stand, but with cherry milk, which Alice loved. Yesterday Alice had not quarreled with anyone, unless you counted the purely scientific dispute with Arkasha Sapozhkov and the disturbance with Pashka Geraskin, who immediately after school had rushed off to Equador because he had euchred a secret treasure map from a neighboring class, the key to a hoard gathered in 1560 by the Conquistador Juan de la Monta¤a, but he returned home covered with scrapes and mosquito bites only at eleven o’clock at night and, naturally, without any treasure hoard.

Having considered and weighed all the information, the alarm clock returned its attention to Alice and played on the flute the opening strains of Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending”

“He rises and begins to round

he drops the silver chain of sound

Of many links without break

In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake….”

As precisely that melody which it deemed most appropriate for awakening Alice.

As the notes died away Alice opened her eyes, stretched her arms and thought: “Why do I feel so good now?” The alarm clock registered her mood and laughed internally, as it was not designed to laugh externally.

Alice got out of bed and opened the window, did her morning exercises and headed for the bathroom. The alarm clock, satisfied and smug, went to sleep until the next morning.

The Martian Mantis, who for as long as anyone could remember had lived in a box beneath Alice’s bed, on hearing that she had gotten up, started to crack its joints, rose, and headed off for the kitchen where a plate with dried peas was already awaiting him. The house robot slammed the large album with its stamp collection shut and turned on the stove. As a result, when Alice, washed and dressed, returned to her own room, her breakfast was already on her table.

Alice’s first duty was to feed the blue titmouse who had landed on her window ledge, then she went to the TV wall and told it she wanted the news.

At the end of the Twenty-First Century a television was not at all the same as it had been at the end of the Twentieth. On the outside it resembled an enormous screen that covered the wall. If you ordered the screen to turn on, it began to move across the wall in such a manner to position itself precisely in front of the eyes of the viewer. Then the TV began to show exactly what you wanted. If you wanted to see the news, the news would begin, but if you were in the mood to hear the latest pop song “My Grandmother Flew to Venus,” then the TV would show you a concert of hit songs. In the twenty-first century man was no longer a slave to TV that only showed what it wanted to be shown; TV was a servant of mankind, displaying whatever the viewer wished.

Alice wanted to know what was new, what had happened in the world while she was sleeping. The TV wall dropped away, as though a door to another room had opened in front of Alice’s eyes. Alice’s personal news-reader Nina came through the door and sat at the table opposite Alice and said, “Good Morning.” The screen behind her back became a giant window. Sometimes, so as not to obscure Alice’s view, Nina vanished.

“Summer is coming.” The news reader began. “Buds have appeared on the city’s trees and the first snowdrops have blossomed in the fields. Snow remains only in the old spruce forests; it has already vanished from the birch forests and open fields.”

Alice looked at a scene of trees bending beneath the wind, and thought: Why in the world would anyone want to go to school when you could go looking for snowdrops in the forest? If I hadn’t had that final exam in Geography I’d be in a flyer now headed for the forest!

“Eat, Alice.” The house robot who stood behind her said. “Many great people have begun their mornings with Hercules flakes.”

“Name one.” Alice asked.

Hearing that Alice was speaking with the robot, the hologram of Nina grew silent and waited until Alice finished.

“Who?” The robot thought a moment, then declared: “Alexander the Great, certainly. Ilya Murometz and Sir Lancelot, of course; neither ate anything else.”

“And Julius Caesar?” Alice asked. “I don’t think he would have sat still for Hercules flakes for a moment!”

“I shall prove it to you.” The robot answered carefully. “By suppertime all of the necessary documentation will have been downloaded to your In-Box.”

“Continue, Nina.” Alice asked.

“A construction team has established a new world record.” Nina said. Behind her back appeared an enormous building. “Yesterday they erected a twenty story building of some three hundred apartments in two hours thirty-one minutes, winning a place in the Guinness Book of Records. At the news of this record,” Nina turned toward the wall; it changed to show a cheerful, black eyed man with a broad face and high, prominent cheek bones in an orange construction helmet. “On hearing of this record the Beijing construction engineer Wei Tsin-Xin swore he would construct a larger building in half an hour. The new building will be larger by twelve apartments. We will have more news this evening.

“It’s all very fly-by night.” The house robot said. “A building should not be hurried; two or three days is fast enough. They are so entranced by speed they give no thought to beauty.”

“I’d say it’s an attractive building.” Alice said.

At the end of the twenty-first century buildings were erected very differently from the way they were put up in the twentieth. The builders erected a plasteel skeleton of the first floor. Then they poured the foundations of the future walls as dry spores of special, quick growing corrals. All that had to be done then was to pour water on the coral spores and watch them grow to envelop the plasteel rods. Several minutes later the first floor was ready. At that point the finishers went to work, and the construction crew had already raised the plasteel skeleton for the next floor….

“Yesterday archaeologists finished their dig at the store house for military robots under the ruins of the castle on Cape Bonnifaccio.” The news reader said. “The robots were all recycled.”

“War robots! Such madness!” The house robot declared. “It’s like talking about a round cube or an honest politician.”

“The Sergeyev-Shumsky expedition has returned from the planet Struq in the 46-B system.” Nina said, ignoring the mere robot. “While flying through a mirror cloud some three parsecs from Earth the expedition’s ship was subjected to an unknown form of radiation as a result of which all members of the crew were duplicated; as a result for every one member of the crew who set out, two have returned to Earth. This has led to a certain degree of unpleasantness for all concerned.” The newsreader signed. The wall behind her showed the landed space ship, from which the gloomy space men emerged as sets of twins as their relatives rushed forward to greet them: their wives, their children, their parents… who stopped and stared in confusion.

“The duplicated space men,” Nina continued, “Do not know who is real and who is the double. We hope their wives and mothers will be able to resolve the problem. In any case, our correspondent informs us the head of Space Research plans to send the relatives on a flight to the mirror cloud so they too will be duplicated.”

“Idiocy.” The house robot said. “Why torment themselves? If before you had only one son, now you have two. Where before you had one father, now you have two. Let one take the risks in space while the second remains at home raising the family.”

“No.” Alice spoke up. “It would never work. It will work with the mothers, it will work with the children. But it would never suit the wives.”

“And why not?”

“Because when one of the spacemen wants to kiss his wife the second will say: “What right to you have to kiss my wife?”

“I still cannot understand human beings.” The robot sighed.

“And this in from Port Darwin, Northern Australia.” The reader continued. “A dolphin is reported to have saved the life of a young girl who had gone swimming in the area of the Great Barrier Reef, and almost drowned. The dolphin brought her back to shore. When the girl’s overjoyed parents started to thank the dolphin, it answered them in English: ‘Don’t mention it, mate.’ This is the first trustworthy report in history of a dolphin speaking English, if only the languages’s Australian dialect.”

“Typical TV joke.” Alice said. “Unfortunately, dolphins don’t talk, although Bertha thinks otherwise.”

The grinning face of a dolphin filed the entire screen. The dolphin was silent.

“I beg your pardon.” Nina interrupted. “Late breaking news. A dragon brought back to earth three years ago by the First Pegasus Expedition under the direction of Professor Seleznev has escaped from the Kishenev Zoo.”

“Oh.” Alice gasped. “Coos ran away.”

“The question should rather be, where has he run to?” The robot said. “If he came here you would have to decide what to feed him. I have absolutely no idea what to feed a dragon. Perhaps…” The robot looked a the Martian Mantis, and under his cold stare the terrified Mantis cluttered to hide himself beneath the table. The Mantis had no idea what dragons ate either, but could not exclude Martian Mantises from their diet.

“The description of the escaped dragon is as follows. Length is forty-five meters. Color, red, with shadings to green. It answers to the nickname Coos.”

A picture of the dragon appeared on the screen. The dragon was doing his best to look terrifying.

“Should you learn his whereabouts,” Nina said. “You are asked to notify the Animal Rescue League and the Fire Department.”

“Why the fire department?” The robot asked.

“Because he breathes fire.” Alice answered, pushing away the bowl of Hercules flakes and pouring herself some tea.

“Our next report is about fishing in the modern age on the river Syr-Darya.” The screen was filled with a deep, wide flowing river. The river’s banks were lined with date palms. Seated beneath the date palms were fishermen with long poles. One group of fishermen began to fuss and ran toward a fat child who was hauling something very large and heavy out of the water. It took the strength of several adults to drag a two meter long sturgeon up the bank and out of the water.

“There is nothing newsworthy here.” The robot.

“Shows how much you know.” Alice said. “A hundred years ago that river almost dried up. All its water was used for irrigation. But now, there’s a river again, and fish in it. Not bad.”

The newsreader continued:

“Construction has been finished of the restoration of the Tower of Babel in the city of Babylon.” She said. “For several years restorers from forty countries have been rebuilding the ancient edifice from bricks. Despite the fact they spoke different languages they were able to find one in common, the language of science and art.”

The robot did not like the rebuilt Tower of Babel at all. In general, he was quite put off by the human veneration for ancient architectural masterpieces. He was convinced the only good things were new things; the old just wasn’t needed any more. This point of view was universal only in robots. When the Sukharevsky Tower, the Church of Christ The Savior, and the wall of the Chinese City were re-erected in Moscow he wrote an agitated protest to a newspaper and signed it “Wellwisher,” but it was never printed because the paper had a policy against printing anonymous letters.

“A heated debate has arisen within the biological community,” Nina continued. “As was reported previously, Caravaev Farms have introduced a heard of cows which produce cream instead of milk. Now, the geneengineer Remeslin has decided to go one step further; his prize winning cow, Sunrise, now produces three kilograms of sour cream daily. Many scientists have condemned Remeslin’s actions; Sunrise now subsists entirely on sauerkraut and pickled cucumbers. This is what Professor Redkin had to say to our correspondent:”

An tall, skinny man with wild hair waved his hands about and shouted:

“Stop, Remeslin! Sauerkraut is meant to be eaten as sauerkraut, not turned into sour cream! Pickled cucumbers are for people, not for cows!” The professor stopped a moment, the gills in his neck pulsing red. “What are you going to do tomorrow, invent a cow that produces cranberry soda instead of milk? Will you deprive mankind of cranberries? You are a reckless fool, Remeslin!”

The professor vanished from the screen, and the newsreader said: “Now for sports.” The scene changed to show two middle aged men seated on either side of a table; between them was a chess board with a game set up.

“Today begins the three thousandth seven hundred and twentieth match in the struggle for the World Chess Federation crown between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov. The Grunfeld Defense was used to win the match. Up to the 40th move the match was a replay of the positions encountered in the preceding fourteen matches. On the 41st move the match set aside. We are using the incident to familiarize veterans of Chess with the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of this epic struggle.”

“And who are you rooting for? The house robot asked.

“For Kasparov, the same as my grandfather did.”

“And now the weather.” Nina said. “Cloudy in Moscow, with some wind. The weather was ordered by the Agriculture Department which concluded the newly planted fields had already received sufficient sunlight and warmth. After dinner the clouds will be sent to Ukraine, where rain is needed. The Weather Bureau apologizes to the inhabitants of the town of Hibino, which received snow yesterday. That resulted from a computer mix-up. The computer confused Hibino, which had already planted their strawberry seedlings with Hiviny, which wanted snow for a skiing championship.”

“These computers are totally confused.” The house robot grumbled. “They just do what they want.”

Alice got up from behind the table. The first day of her vacation had begun, and it promised to be a very complicated day indeed.




Chapter Two: Bertha and the Dolphins


Alice entered her father’s office.

The mielophone lay on his writing desk. It looked like a small camera in a leather carrying case with a strap.

Right beside it was the note Alice’s father, Professor Seleznev, the director of the Moscow Space Zoo, had left, as though he had guessed that Alice would naturally look in.

“Alice, do NOT take the mielophone from the house! It’s a one of a kind instrument. Your father.”

Alice sighed. It was a bad thing to disobey your parents. But the interests of science were more important.

The door slowly opened and the Martian Mantis crept into the room. The Mantis was entirely tame and gentle. At first, when Mantises were originally brought from Mars, some people feared them, but the Mantises proved obedient and useful about the home. For example, they could crack walnuts with their hard mandibles, but even more the Mantises loved to juggle various objects, keeping them in the air while they stood on a single foot.

“And I’m soooo frightened!” Alice told the Mantis. “Can’t you nock first before you enter?”

The Mantis lay down, collapsing on himself like a folding chair, and scuttled beneath a table. He would survive. In his considered opinion, Alice was doing wrong.

Alice went to the videophone and called Bertha Maximovna. She found the woman sitting in a chair reading a thick book. Bertha wore a wig from Northern Mermaid Styles, sea green and scaly, scaly green pantaloons and a yellow sweat shirt.

“Greetings, colleague.” Bertha said to Alice. “What’s new?”

“My summer vacation’s started.” Alice said. “How’s Ruslan feeling today?”

“Better. The physician came over from the Black Sea Dolphin Center yesterday and says everything should be okay by this evening. He seems to have swallowed a flounder, whole. By the way, kiddo, have you spoken with your father yet?”

“I spoke with him. But you know his opinion of our problem, Bertha.”

“In other words, we can’t get the mielophone?”

“Papa said that the Black Sea Institute of Dolphin Studies will get the instrument when its turn comes around.”

Alice had considered saying that the instrument in question was at that very moment in her hand, but she knew Bertha too well. Bertha was an enthusiast. She would trumpet that she had gotten her hands on the mielophone throughout Moscow, and even if the results were nothing came of the experiment she would say they were successful.

“Oh well, drop by, snookums.” Bertha said. “Our beauty has been waiting for you eagerly. But not just right now; wait about an hour while they clean the pool.”

Alice could not stand it when Bertha called her ‘Honey,’ ‘Kiddo,’ ‘Sugar Pie,’ or worst of all ‘Snookums.’ Such means of address would have been understandable if she were still in kindergarten, but not for someone who had completed the third grade. But there was no way Bertha could have understood her objections if she had expressed them aloud. Perhaps Bertha would have laughed, and told all her friends and acquaintances: “You know, little Alice is just sooo cute. You know I called her ‘snookums’ and she huffed and puffed….” Or worse.

Alice grabbed the blue carrying case and hid the mielophone inside, the better to avoid unwanted questions from the house robot, and set off for Bertha’s. Alice did not set the best of examples in her exit from the house; for starters she went down on the bannisters; secondly she called a taxi, although the distance was all of two blocks; thirdly, while waiting for the car she devoured two ice cream cones from the automatic dispenser beside the entrance.

The vehicle lurched from around the corner, snorted, evacuated the air bag on which it rode and a lay flat on its belly on the concrete. Alice sat down on the white upholstery and, rather than enter Bertha’s address directly, punched out a long and complicated route designed to take her past the swimming pool at the Institute of Time, drop by the Kuntsevsky Botanical Gardens and see how the experimental rideway tests were going at Filevsky Park. Nina had mentioned them yesterday.

It was now eleven o’clock and the streets of Moscow were almost empty. People had gone to kindergarten or university, or to their places of employment. The only people on the streets were grandmothers and robots with baby carriages.

A long bus with a huge hermetic door had stopped in front of the Martian embassy. The Martian tourists inside the bus had donned their breathing helmets to get ready to go out onto the street. One Martian in a helmet stood on the ground and was waiting for the bus’s airlock to open. The embassy itself resembled a huge ball sunk halfway into the Earth. Inside, beneath the dome, the Martians had their own atmosphere and plant life. When Alice had gone to Mars she too had been forced to walk around in a helmet. Only the Martian Mantises did not seem to care which atmosphere they breathed.

A big wedding party was driving down the street in the opposite direction. The cars were decorated with multi-colored ribbons and moved slowly, rocking on their air cushions. The bride was a in a long white dress and on her head she wore a bridal veil; evidently, the bride was one of whose described on the NewsNet trying to revive good traditions, Alice thought.

There were a lot of people in the city pool, despite the newsreader Nina’s warnings that it was too cold to go swimming. Alice thought she might go swimming herself, but the taxi had already turned toward the bridge leading to the Botanical Gardens. At the Gardens Alice stopped the car and glanced into the kiosk at the entrance. A robot with a crown of dandelions on its head handed her a bouquet of lilacs, and Alice placed them beside her on the seat. One five-petaled blossom Alice torn off and ate. For pleasure.

The car drove along a curving avenue bordered on both sides by a thick forest. The taxi slowed and then stopped completely. A herd of small deer from the Altay mountains, called Marals, came out of the forest and, clicking their hooves on the horn-like plastic surface of the road, darted toward the grove of cedars on the other side.

“Won’t they get into the vineyards?” Alice asked the taxi.

“No.” The car answered. “There’s a barrier there.”

One of the Altay deer suddenly raised its head, sniffed the air, and instantly vanished into the thicket.

“What frightened them?” Alice was disappointed. She had wanted to look at the deer for a while longer.

The taxi did not answer; an answer would have been superfluous. Down the road, bent flat over their handle bars, roared a heard of cyclists. They wore such bright, multi-colored t-shirts that they would have left spots in the eyes of the deer.

After that the taxi drove past newly planted rubber trees similar to aspens. Alice asked the machine to stop a moment at a grove of date palms. The grove was bright and quiet. Only squirrels jumped over the ground, searching for shaggy tree trunks filled with last autumn’s dates. A low barrier wound its way along the edge of the grove, a retractable plastic dome which rose to cover the grove the moment the weather turned bad. Alice sat beneath the palms and imagined herself in Africa; the white squirrels were not squirrels, but marmosets or even monkeys. One of the squirrels ran up to her and stood on its hind legs.

“Don’t beg!” Alice remonstrated with the squirrel. “You are a wild, free animal!”

The little animal understood nothing and rubbed his belly with his front paws.

“Now for Filevsky Park.”

The car gave a rumble of disapproval.

“You have something to say?” Alice was surprised.

“I thought that you had forgotten your business.”

“I’m on vacation.” Alice said. “And since when has it become the business of cars to tell people how to behave?”

“My humblest apologies.” The taxi said. “But, first of all, I did not tell you, I merely reminded you, and secondly, in as far as I can judge an organic you are far from being an adult and therefore, in this case, I am acting in the capacity of teacher, that is, ‘in loco parentis.’ Were you a pre-schooler, I would not have taken you anywhere without the express permission or accompaniment of adults.”

Having exhausted itself with such a long tirade the taxi grew silent and said no a single word from then on.

The car entered the green belt. Some time in the past the area had been covered with utterly boring five story apartment buildings; then the apartment buildings were taken down and in their place seventeen story skyscraper needles were erected, each of them provided not only habitation for some thousands of people but were self-contained cities with stores and factories, offices, repair stations, garages, landing stages for flyers, theaters and swimming pools, and clubs. You could live your whole life without venturing outside the arcologies, although Alice thought that would be very boring.

The arcologies stood amid endless fields surrounded by birch groves, fields ideal for hunting wild mushrooms, the spores for which were brought in every year from the north so that people could collect a hundred baskets of mushrooms every day and on the next day the mushrooms had grown up all over again. The wild mushrooms were the pride of the arcology district but were too much for the local people to pick and consume on their own, so they invited friends and relatives to help pick mushrooms near their own houses and even boasted of the quality and quantity.

After the arcologies the taxi came to Filevsky Park.

In a wide meadow about a hundred curiosity seekers were watching a text of the experimental rideway. A technician in a blue jumpsuit was standing between two silverish bands which twisted and turned to head in which ever direction the technician sent them. A microphone hung on the technician’s chest, and he was explaining to the onlookers how the rideway worked.

“If I should want the rode to take me to that large bush over there, I think the command, to the right. And the rideway turns to the right.”

The rideway shot back to its starting point, throwing the technician onto the grass, The crowd broke into laughter. The rideway jumped forward a short ways and stopped. Alice would have liked to have taken a ride on it but the crowd of people waiting in line was so great it would have taken her half the day before her chance came. Alice decided it was better to wait until such rideways were built in all the parks.

On a neighboring field a group of Junior Astronauts from the Voluntary Society for the Support of Astronautics, were in training. The teaching rocket’s airlock was open and the kids were going down to the grass by a line. No doubt they were imagining that the dinoducks from Jupiter had eaten their gangway. Alice went back to the taxi. It was time to go to Bertha’s.

For some time the car drove beneath the monorail tube, the turned toward the bank of the Moscow river and then crossed the old Borodinsky Bridge and onto Smolensk Avenue. The sun had hidden itself behind the clouds; evidently the meteorologists had erred again even in the twenty-first century their auguries required more than a few grains of salt. Under the clouds hung the aerial bicycle traffic controller. The airbike was blue, and the policeman was dressed in blue, and the clouds were bluish as well. Alice immediately thought of the fairy tale of how the traffic cop was the son of the clouds, and if it became hot he would turn to rain.

Then she was in the green sidestreets of the Arbat Alice had come nearly all the way home. She stopped the car at a taxi stand covered with tiles of many different colors, gathered up the bouquet of lilacs, made certain that the mielophone was in the same case it had been in when she took it from home, and went to meet Bertha Maximovna.

“What took you so long?” Bertha was surprised.

“You told me to wait an hour before coming.”

“Oh yes, I quite forgot. I thought they were going to call me from Montevideo. You know, they say, they’re going to make contact. Did you see the last issue of our magazine? Oh, thank you for the flowers.”

Bertha was somewhat mad. So Alice thought, but, certainly, she did not say that to anyone aloud, and in front of the other kids she spoke proudly of her friendship with the vice- president of the Friends of the Dolphins society. Bertha was already about fifty years old, although she was still young and wore ‘Mermaid’ or ‘Hawaiian Breeze’ wigs. When she’d been younger she was the Moscow champion in underwater swimming, and then had joined the Friends of the Dolphins and eventually became their vice-president. The central courtyard of her apartment building housed an enormous Dolphin pool and she spent her time trying to find a common language with them. Alice’s father said that Bertha would have been better off learning to speak to people, and that if she did establish an exchange of ideas with the dolphins it would only because they both lacked a human language. Papa, certainly, was joking, but to be totally honest he and Bertha were scientific opponents. Papa was a biologist and director of the Moscow Space Zoo, and he did not believe that dolphins were the intellectual equals of people. But Alice really did want to believe it, and because of that she and her father even had some real scientific arguments.

“Know what, honey?” Bertha said, flipping a green curl to her shoulder with a sharp movement. “You go to the dolphins, and I’ll wait here a while. Perhaps I’ll get that call from Montevideo after all.”

“Okay.” Alice said. This was something she had to do alone anyway. She wanted to try out the mielophone without Bertha. Then she would return it to its proper place, and her father would never learn that she had tried it out on the dolphins.

Papa had brought the mielophone home from the Zoo the night before, telling her it was experimental. It could read thoughts. But only if the thoughts were expressed in words. Papa had been given the instrument to test on the monkeys, but this day he had gone not to his work at the zoo but to a scientific conference and he had left the apparatus at home.

All last evening Alice and her father had tried the apparatus out on each other, and Alice had listened to her own thoughts. It was a very strange thing to hear your own thoughts aloud. They did not sound quite the same when you heard them as they did in your mind. Alice had held the little grey box in her hands, placed the small earphone in one ear and a thin, high pitched voice spoke very quickly:

“It can’t be that these are my thoughts… Hey, I’m listening to myself think… It’s my voice! Is that my voice? I was thinking about my voice and right away I get to hear it….”

Alice and her father had tried it out on the house robot. The house robot’s thoughts were short and to the point, unlike Alice’s. The house robot was thinking it must clean the heating elements of the stove, shine its collection of old medals and honors (now its humans had learned its terrible secret!) And recharge its batteries on the sly so later on that night it would be able to read their paper copy of The Three Musketeers in its cubical with real light and its own eyes rather than just download the text to its memory….

Alice made her way to the enormous dolphin pool. Both sea mammals, having recognized her, raced each other over to the concrete edge. They raised masses of foam to rise half way out of the water on their tails to show Alice how happy they were to see her.

“Hold on.” Alice said. “I don’t have anything tasty for you today. Bertha told me not to feed you anything because Ruslan has an upset stomach. Isn’t that right?”

One of the dolphins, the one they called Ruslan, turned over on its back to show Alice that there was nothing wrong with his stomach, but this stirred no pity in Alice.

“Don’t swim away.” Alice said. “I want to listen and find out if you think. See, I brought the mielophone. You’ve never seen anything like this before. It reads thoughts. The doctors thought it up, as a way to help people who are psychologically sick by making a better diagnosis. Papa told me about it. Understand?”

But the dolphins said nothing at all. They dove and raced each other around the pool in circles. Alice pulled the apparatus from the case, inserted the small earphone into her ear, and pressed the black RECEIVE button. At first she could not hear a thing, but when Alice twisted the hand control some more she could suddenly hear the thoughts of one of the dolphins very clearly.

“Look at what she’s doing. That has to be some sort of experiment.”

Alice almost shouted “Hurray!” Perhaps she should call Bertha? No, it had to be tested more.

One of the dolphins swam a little closer. He was thinking: “…looks just like a little girl. But what is she doing with that thing?”

“I’m reading your thoughts.” Alice told the dolphin in a whisper. “Do you understand, silly?”

The dolphin turned away and dove, but his thoughts remained clear and audible.

“Maybe we should talk with her?” The dolphin said. “Maybe she’s just putting on airs…”

Interrupting the first thought came a second, someone else, certainly the second dolphin, thinking: “I know who she is; she’s from the apartment building across the street. She’s called Alice.”

Brilliant! Alice thought. But how could he have learned that I’m from the building across the street?

And right at that moment Alice heard the same voice speak very loudly that she had heard in the mielophone.

“Alice-barberries, you’re going to break the machine. You don’t fool us!” The voice came unexpectedly not from the pool but from behind her. Alice got up and turned.

Two small boys about six or seven years old were standing on the other side of the low concrete barrier; they stuck their tongues out and made stupid faces at her.

“You get out of here!” Alice was very angry and shouted. “You’re interfering with my experiment!”

“So we heard, just you wait!” The boys said.

But Alice made several steps in their direction and the boys vanished in a trice.

Alice, beaming, sat back down on the edge of the pool. The experiment was a failure. It was just as well she had not called Bertha and told her of her discovery. Oh well, there was still time. She could continue.

Alice turned on the mielophone again and, pulling the antenna out all the way, directed it toward the dolphins. There was a crackling in her ears, and occasional chirping sounds and screeching. They drew nearer when the dolphins drew nearer, and when the dolphins dove or swam to the pool’s other side they were almost completely lost.

So Alice sat there for about five minutes, but nothing came of her experiment. Overhead Bertha’s window opened and the woman stuck her green wigged head out, saying:

“Alice dear, could you come up! They called from Montevideo. Excellent news. And tell the robot to get some more fish out of the freezer.”

“Good-bye.” Alice told the dolphins. “I’ll come by to visit you again.” She held the mielophone carefully so that Bertha did not see it from the window, put it back into its case, said what was necessary to the robot, and headed for the building’s entrance.

When Alice had vanished behind the corner the dolphin they had named Ruslan stuck his turned up snout out the water and said in a low voice to his neighbor in the dolphin language:

“Interesting. What’s going on in Montevideo?”

“I don’t know.” The second dolphin answered. “Pity about the kid; she really was disappointed. Couldn’t we at least have said ‘Hello?’“

“It’s too early.” Ruslan told his companion. “The humans still aren’t smart enough to talk to. There’s too much they don’t understand.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right.” The second dolphin said. “Take those little boys. Really bad upbringing. One of them even threw a stick at me.”

And the dolphins, romping, raced each other around the pool in a circle.




Chapter Three: A Girl of Hithers and Yons


On the first day of their vacation a person typically does nothing. More precisely, there is something to be done and even a great many things to be done, but it is difficult to think which of them is most important, and so one becomes lost among the numerous possibilities and temptations.

Alice said her good-byes to Bertha Maximovna, went out onto the street and looked up at one of the aerial clocks that hung in the sky over the city. The clocks said it was noon. Alice had the entire day in front of her and after that stretched numerous completely free summer days with the underwater trip her father had promised her, the excursion to India, the expedition of the Young Naturalists Society to the desert and even, if her mother had managed to get the tickets, a trip to Paris for the three hundredth anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, which the Parisians had already reconstructed of Styrofoam for the occasion. Life promised to be interesting, but all the interesting things were going to start Tomorrow.

So, for the moment, Alice set off down Gogolevsky Boulevard, the mielophone in her bag. From time to time Alice patted the case with her palm, just to make certain the apparatus really was there. She was telling herself that she was going drop in at her home and put the instrument back in its place, but that was really going to waste a lot of time. Once she went in the door the Robot would make her sit down to eat and, it would tell her that she was really getting thin and I’ll have to tell your mother when she returns, and all sorts of other silly words. The Martian Mantis would want to be taken for its walk, and taking the Martian Mantis for a walk was a real pain; it stopped at every tree and sniffed at every crack and crevice of the pavement.

So it was perfectly reasonable that Alice did not head home as she had told herself she would, but set off down the boulevard.

Gogolevsky Boulevard was wide and shady they said that whole kindergarten classes and their teachers had gotten lost there and had never been found it wound from the Moscow River to Arbat Square and, like a like a long and wide river there were islands in it where green streets and side streets flowed into the main boulevard.

Alice headed toward the old statue of Gogol following a path that twisted and turned back on itself past beautifully flowering orange trees until she found herself facing the statue itself. It was a very sad statue. Gogol just sat there, with his big overcoat wrapped about him. Even though Gogol wrote really funny books he himself was a very morose and gloomy person. On the other side of the monument, on one of the side streets, they were planning to grow early ripening cherries. They had transplanted them only about a month ago. Could the berries have already appeared?

Sitting on the park bench on the other side of the statue facing the cherry plantings was an old man with a long white beard in a very odd straw hat that was pushed down until it rested on his thick eyebrows. The old man seemed to be dreaming, but, when Alice approached him or rather when she ran past he lifted his head and said:

“Whither are you rushing to, pumpkin? You’re raising the dust going from hither to yon!”

Alice stopped.

“I’m not raising dust. The gravel here is too big to be blown in the wind.”

“I say you have!” The old man seemed astonished; he raised his head to look at her and stuck his salt and pepper beard in Alice’s direction. “I say you have! You deny it, do you?”

The old man did not appear to be entirely sane. But, in any case, Alice said:

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t deliberate.” And she wanted to run further away. But the old man wouldn’t let her.

“Come hither.” He said. “People are talking to you!”

“What does ‘hither’ mean?” Alice said. “What a strange way you have of talking.”

“And you talk back to your elders, or I shall take a switch and tan your bottom!”

The old man was totally unexpected. And he spoke very oddly. Alice was not really frightened by him, but he did leave her uneasy. There wasn’t anyone else in the street, and if the old man really did decide to spank her with a switch…

No, I can run away. Alice thought, and walked a little closer to the old man.

“Just what is going on here?” The old man said. “They left me in this god-forsaken spot, and then vanished without a trace! And just what is this place, I ask you?”

“It is terrible, yes.” Agreed Alice.

“And you wouldn’t have any crackers or muffins inside your bag, would you?” The old man asked. “Neither food nor drink has passed my mouth this morning.”

“No,” Alice said. “But I can take you to a caf‚.”

“I would never frequent such a place.” The old man said. “I would go to my execution first. And anyway, I am on duty now.”

Alice started laughing. The old man was not nearly so terrible and even joked. She said:

“There’s a robot run sandwich shop….”

“To be avoided.” The old man said. “I will avoid it without your advice. No, but tell me, pumpkin, what has happened to the world?”

What an odd old man! Alice thought. Wouldn’t he be something to show to the kids in class.

“How old are you, grandfather?” She asked.

“In years, let me see; I still remember the Father Emperor Nikolai Aleksandrovich, he of heavenly memory. And the like. And General Gurko on his white horse. And maybe there was Skobelev there too…”

“You’re very old!” Alice remembered the names from History classes. “You must be the oldest person in the world! Are you from Abkhazia?”

“What are you talking about Abkhazia? What sort of person are you? I’ll show you!” The old man tried to get to his feet from the bench and chase after Alice, but at the last moment seemed to think better of it and stayed sitting down. Alice ran a few paces back and then stopped. She was not yet ready to leave the marvelous old man.

“It’s like I said.” The old man continued, as though he ha entirely forgotten his explosion of rage. “Just what has happened to the world? It’s quite gone off its rocker, hither and yon!”

If the old man remembered a Russian Emperor and the ancient generals he had to be at the very least two hundred years old. But how had he stayed alive for so long, without even a word about him on the NewsNet. Not even Papa knew about him. If Alice’s father had known about any such person he would certainly have told her.

“This place has no order or manners! People are walking hither and yon naked, waving their shameless arms and legs left and right! Oh, lament for them! Close your eyes to the sight!” The old man shuddered and suddenly started to howl in fury in his thin voice:

“It’s the end of the world! Doomsday! The Anti-Christ is drawing near and we shall all pay for our sins…”

Oh no! Alice started to become very worried. Should I call someone? He must be sick.

“And why do you run around in pants? The old man suddenly asked in a normal voice, but angrily. “Can’t your mother find a skirt for you? I suppose your nurse drinks…. She drinks and carries on… Girls in trousers and short pants….”

“My mother is an architect.” Alice said.

“If you say so.” The old man agreed. “Your times are not mine. But even here when you run out of the house so very early in the morning, you put on shoes….. Sit down here, girl, on the bench. I’ll tell you a tale. Hold your horses, little missy… And we rushed from our trenches following General Gurko, who’s now serving in the heavenly kingdom, you know, girl from hither and yon, you understand there were twelve seventy-five pounders up there and the Turkish positions had started to roar… And for the Tsar…”

The old man repeated the words ‘for the Tsar’ several times, and suddenly began to sing.

“…and for the Tsar, for God, and Country

“We shout a loud Hurra! Hurra!”

Alice slowly started to walk a little down the path so as to get out of the old man’s sight without him noticing. She was thinking that it might be better to just run away to get some help.

And suddenly an older girl with a large folder of drawings under her arm, an ordinary girl, probably a college student, appeared around the corner. She was in shorts and a halter. Blond hair fell as far as her cheeks from a sunburned head. The girl heard the old man’s song and stopped.

“Oh good!” Alice was delighted. She ran up to the older girl and whispered loudly:

“The old man has gone out of his mind. He’s talking about the strangest things and is quite cut off from reality.”

“Let’s take a look.”

The old man noticed her and became very angry.

“Hour after hour I am beset by demons.” He said. “Yet another shameless hussy flitting from hither to yon and yon to hither. And what are you dressed up for?”

“How do you do?” The girl said. “Are you feeling all right?”

“And what is that to you? Why do you take such liberties with words? Never in my life have I suffered so much, other than by gall stones. Verily.”

“He’s very strangely dressed.” The girl commented to Alice in a low voice, and Alice also noticed that the old man’s clothing was very strange. Where had she seen clothing like that before?

The old man was wearing short grey trousers with a dirty fringe at the bottom of each leg; from beneath the trousers stuck out woolen socks, which were wound around by a cord. The cord descended to his ankles and was attached to very odd slippers, which were terribly familiar, but Alice had never encountered their like before. They appeared to be woven of straw, like a basket. Of course! Those were called lapti, and she’d only seen pictures of them in children’s fairy tale books when she was younger. The upper body of the old man was covered with a grey jacket with cotton padding sewn into the shoulders to make the shoulders appear wider. And then there was the straw hat, but Alice had noticed that earlier herself.

“He’s not from our time.” Alice said, whispering, and frightened of her discovery. “He’s from the past.”

Of course the old man was an Out-Timer; of course he spoke oddly and was dressed very, very unusually.

“Wait a moment.” The older girl said. “Where do you live, Mister?” She asked the old man.

“You will know a lot….” The old man began. Then he thought a moment, and added: “It’s gone clean out of my mind.”

“Maybe we can take you home?”

“My home is beyond the highest of mountains and the deepest of valleys.” The old man said with assurance, as though he were simply giving them his address. “But rather, tell me, do you till the soil?”

“Yes, we do.” The other girl answered.

“And do you have plough boards to till the soil?”

“Not any more. Now it’s all done by robots and other automated systems.”

“I thought as much. And what year is it now?”

“Two thousand seventy-nine.”

“And that is from the Birth of Christ?”

“AD. Anno Domini. Yes.”

“But what year are you from?” Alice asked. “Are you really a time traveler?”

“You’re the one who’s running everywhere from hither to yon!” The old man said. “A traveler, you say? Rather, tell me, who among you eats meat? Is it dear?”

“Meat?” Alice didn’t know what to say. But the older girl came to her aid.

“Yes, we have meat, grandfather. And it costs only a trifle.” She said. “And any other foods you might want to eat.”

“Fiddlesticks, hither and yon! People like you could never get down to slaughtering the calves!”

“Are you really from before the Revolution?” Alice insisted. “How did you get here? Did the Time Institute bring you here in their time machine?”

“That you will have to tell me.” The old man became agitated. “Who is your commanding general?”

“We don’t have any generals.”

“What utter nonsense! There’s no way you can live without generals… My Lord in Heaven, who is coming!”

Down the path, leaning on the same stick of knotted wood, came a second old man, exactly the same as the first except that his hat was cloth instead of straw.

Alice was so surprised that she hid herself behind the first old man as three more old men, exactly the same as the first and second except that only two had walking sticks, one was without any hat at all, and one of them had a beard a little bit longer than the others.

All the old men were sauntering toward the bench.

“My good Lord in Heaven!” The first old man said. “Otherwise, hither and yon, you won’t find a single living soul!”

“Quite correct!” One of the new old men answered. “It’s true there isn’t a single living soul; it’s all tricks and pranks with beer.”

And he raised his walking stick to the college student and Alice. It was obvious they were the ones who had filched the beer.

“There must be a worm hole into the past.” Alice whispered. “And they’re just walking through. We have to stop it or we’ll have a hundred thousand of them…”

“These are the ones who should be taught not to interfere! The stick. Use a stick!” The old man shouted.

“It’s that way, hither and yon!” Another old man shouted.

“We’ll do it now!” The third one shouted. “I served in the Police myself!”

Three more old men came up the other path. There was nowhere to run. In fact the old men did not touch them, but they made an awful racket. Alice held tight to the other girl’s hand. And at that moment they heard a gong, and a loud voice said:

“That will be enough, Gleb. Cut the crowd scene. It’s not working out at all.

There was a rustling from behind the bushes and the old men froze where they were when the voice shouted.

Several young men and women emerged from the bushes; among them Alice recognized her father’s friend Herman Shatrov, the movie camera man. Shatrov wore a long green baseball cap to protect his head from the sun; a microphone hung from his neck.

Not noticing the girl and Alice, Shatrov laid into his assistants.

“How could we get a mess like this?” His voice rose and his face grew red. “How do we get seven robots coming out in a crowd scene from the sound stage? Who has an answer for that? Do you plan to have one fly by in an air car too? Are you trying to frighten the children to death. No, I won’t leave it in! I’m going to have to have a serious talk with the construction team right now.”

“It’s hardly their fault, Herman.” One of his assistants said. “Look at the schedule we gave them. They just managed to ship the robots to us without even a chance to test them. And we put them right out on the street.”

“Do you really expect us to think these are real Russian peasants from the 18th century? Just what did you use to program them?

Another man emerged from the bushes. He was thickset, and sweating, and very morose.

“Look, Herman darling.” He said. “It isn’t something we came up with ourselves. We took the old men from eighteenth and nineteenth century novels, hither and yon, you know, like.”

“What?”

“Hither and yon, I say. I spent a lot of time on it, looking up all sorts of old fashioned phrases. It was a normal way of speaking, back about a hundred and fifty years ago, they liked to talk that way.”

“Then take back your old men. We’ll think of something else.”

“And what am I supposed to do with them. They’re no use to me.”

“Put in a standard memory cube and you get perfectly useful robots, babysitters. Even interesting ones. The beards add a sort of cachet, and they know all the fairy tales, from hither and yon.”




Chapter Four: Svetlana Odinokaya’s Suitcase


“What are you doing here? Herman suddenly noticed Alice, and asked.

“Being frightened, both of us.” Alice answered. She turned to point out the young woman who had also been frightened, but the older girl had vanished without a trace.

“That won’t do!” Herman was annoyed. “I told them the old man would frighten modern children!”

“I thought he got here in a time machine.”

“No, never fear; even two hundred years ago such over simplified old men didn’t exist. I supposed. Are you on vacation now?”

“Yes. Are you making a film?”

“‘The Fairy-Tale Symphony.’“

“Lots of effects?”

“Full sensory effects: sight, sound, smells, touch….”

“And you’re filming it today?”

“Today? I don’t know what we’re going to do for the crowd scene. The old man is unsuccessful…. You know what…. We have the nature scenes to film, on the Black Sea coast. Want to come along?

“Yes I do! But what about Papa?”

“Let me handle your papa.” Herman said. “I just have to have a word with the director. Volodya! Volodya Chulukin! Where are you?”

“Who wants me?” A voice asked from the bushes, and immediately the director stepped out onto the sidewalk, short, quick-moving little man in a very fashionable Mexican sombrero with bells along the rim. The director moved quickly and spoke faster, but evidently he thought fastest of all; he rarely finished his sentences. His thoughts kept changing and he broke off the first sentence to begin the second.

“What do you mean we’ve had a ‘misfortune?’“ He said. “The old man didn’t work out, and not only… Oh, by the way, have you taken the different segments into consideration…. Maybe we should move to a sound stage?”

“Volodya, send me to the coast. We need a sunset, one with violet clouds. Otherwise the day is wasted.”

“And what about Maria Vasilevna?”

“She’ll manage.”

“And anyway…. Okay, go then. Only just make certain you’re back by morning, or Maria Vasilevna will….”

Immediately, Chulukin turned and vanished into the bushes, as though he had not been there at all.

“So it goes.” Herman said. He pulled out a pocket-com and tapped out Alice’s father’s number.

“Hi there, Igor.” He said. “Say, I’d like to steal your daughter away for a day…. We’ll be back by morning…. Certainly not! It’s the Black Sea, where’s it’s warm as toast. I’ve ordered the weather especially… Hey, that’s great!”

Herman turned off the pocket-com and told Alice:

“Your father approves of the plan. And any way, he’ll be busy well into the night or longer. Something to do with the Crooms. What is that, do you know?”

“They’re some sort of animal from Sirius. I’ve never seen one. But I have to drop by the house…”

“Don’t even think of it! Nature doesn’t wait. We either head off right now, or you’ll have to stay behind in the city.”

“There really is something I have to drop off at home.”

“You can do it tomorrow. To the cars!”

No cars were in immediate evidence, in as much as they were barred from the boulevard. But at his words something started to roar and purr in the bushes.

“They’ve stored the equipment away.” Herman said. “Let’s go.”

So Alice had to get aboard. As much as she wanted to stop by her house and put the mielophone her father had told her not to touch back in its place, it was simply impossible for Alice to refuse the chance of such a trip; how often to you get a chance to watch how a real movie is made?

The flyer was waiting on the flat roof of one of the nearby buildings at the boulevard corner. It would take the flyer longer to reach the Crimea than the subway trains, but the film makers, as much in a hurry as they were, still had to use a flying machine to carry all the equipment the cameras and lights. Loading it into a subway train would have taken too long and been inconvenient for everyone. All the more so since the subway only ran between the cities of Moscow and Simferopol and, at their destination, they would have had to rent a flyer or take a monorail to get to the coast anyway.

Normally, right after work, thousands of Moscovites in flyers and taxis headed toward the suburb of Fili-Mazilovo in the South-West corner of the city, to the enormous silver dome with the large red “M” on it. This was the Moscow end of the Crimea metro. Several parallel tunnels cut like think threads linking the Fili station with Simferopol on the Crimean coast hundreds of kilometers to the south These tunnels ran completely straight, and that meant the tunnels descended several kilometers beneath the ground at the midpoints. During their construction the first intercity underground lines were very difficult affair, until the builders introduced enormous moving robots which literally swam through rock so hot that it was liquid and covered the face of the tunnel it left behind with a super-dense plastic to produce a tube that was shiny, impervious to heat, and smooth like the inside of a ceramic cup.

Such lines linked the really big cities like Moscow and Peterburg, and New York and Chicago, and even Los Angeles. And in 2100 AD the first Warsaw-New York line was going to be completed. They had been building it for three years now, because under the ocean the tunnel descended nearly to the center of the Earth, which made the work go very slowly, and which is far too complicated to be described in our story.

But the subway line to the Crimea had long become familiar and comfortable. Everyone in Moscow after work could get to Simferopol in the barrage of subway cars in only forty minutes, and from there it was fifteen minutes by flyer to any part of the coast. Around midnight or after, when the late summer nights finally grew dark they returned to Moscow sunburned and exhausted from swimming.

Herman, Alice, three assistants, two work robots, and the pilot, fitted themselves into the big flyer with the Mosfilm emblem on it. The flyer rose without a sound from the roof and gained height, headed in the direction of the south, toward the Black Sea.

It wasn’t a bad beginning to her summer vacation after all.

Alice looked around and found a beanbag seat comfortable enough to sit in and dragged it closer to one of the windows. Behind her back someone started to groan. Alice turned, surprised that someone would be able to fit himself into such a tight spot. Behind her, frowning, sat the first old man from the group shot, chewing on the knob end of his thick walking stick.

“Oh,” Alice said. “The old man!”

“What’s that doing here?” Herman was surprised. “Why bring him along?”

“Chulukin told us to make certain we took him.” One of the assistants said. “It’s possible he might be useful after all.”

“I, useful? Of course I’m useful!” The old man said angrily. “I was with General Gurko when we took Shipka. The greenhorns….”

“If you’re afraid of him, Alice, you can sit here by me.” Herman said.

“Now that would be too much!” Alice was angry. “Who’s afraid of a robot? And it’s better here, by the window.”

In fact Alice would rather have changed where she was sitting, but that would have meant admitting to herself and to the others that she was afraid of the old man, which she was not going to do. And anyway, the flight would take less than two hours. And when one of the assistants passed out doughnuts and soft drinks Alice even broke the doughnut in two and offered half to the old man.

“Don’t feel shy.” She said. “Take it. I can’t eat it all.”

But the old man robot shook his head:

“You go ahead and eat, pumpkin. I had cabbage soup this morning, not all that long ago.”

Alice realized the old man was lying. Robots do not eat cabbage soup or anything else. But certainly this robot was programmed to think of himself as an old, old, man, not as any sort of robot, so he could play a role in a film.

Alice had not finished eating the doughnut when the flyer came in for a landing. It arched between low forested hills and flew straight toward a blue, even bluer than the sky, sea. Over the shoreline itself, between two high grey cliffs, the flyer froze in place and slowly descended to the landing spot nestled right next to the water.

“This is it.” Herman said. “We were here last week. Isn’t it paradise?”

On the small hill they had erected a tent, a small dome out of light plastic. An almost black skinned man in swimming trunks came out of the tent. Alice found out he was called Vasya, and he was the assistant director.

“How did it go?” Herman asked.

“I have all the camera positions chosen and marked. We can begin any time.”

“Great work! But we’re going for a swim first. Alice, come with me, and don’t go off on your own. You might drown.”

“And how could I drown? I can swim under water as much as I want…”

“And all the same, your father made me responsible for you. Is that clear?”

“It’s clear.”

“You can leave your bag here.”

“No, I’ll take it with me.”

“Whatever you want.”

Vasya showed the film makers down the path to the water, but the robots set about constructing a temporary camp. The water was warm and delicious, and Alice was even more sorry that her father did not take her to the sea on sundays.

The old man in woven straw shoes came down to the beach with the film makers and sat down on the shore.

“Isn’t it hot?” Alice shouted to him from the water.

“Don’t swim too far, pumpkin.” The old man robot said. “Some fish might find you tasty. The whale fish.”

The robot was already used to Alice, and Alice was used to him and no longer frightened.

The old man looked around, scratched his head, and started to remove his shoes.

“Hey, old man!” Herman called to him. “Stop that. Put them back on. You’ll overheat your extremities and there’s no workshop here.”

The old man sighed and obediently put the shoe back.

“Poor old man.” Alice said.

“I agree, but what can I do? The clothing on him is his insulation. But he is convincing, don’t you think?

“Very convincing?” Alice agreed, and dove. Under the water she opened her eyes, and was so frightened she opened her mouth to scream, swallowed water and shot like a bullet back up to the surface. She almost went back down again but Herman caught hold of her and lightly tapped her on the back while she coughed the water out of her.

“What was so frightening?” He asked.

“A face…” Alice said. “Such a frightening face I just couldn’t….”

At that moment the water in front of them exploded and the laughing snout of a dolphin appeared on the surface.

“Hey, get away!” Herman shouted at him. “You’re frightening the kid!”

“He was joking.” Alice said; she had already gathered her wits. “It was my fault for not recognizing him.”

“He’s one of our regulars, and friendly.” The sunburned Vasya said.

“Ruslan in Moscow says hello!” Alice shouted as the dolphin swam away.

“I’d say we’ve had enough fun.” Herman said. “Time to go to work.” He swam toward the beach.

“How was the water?” The old man-robot said to the swimmers.

“Superb!” Alice answered.

Herman hopped up and down on one foot, trying to expel water from one of his ears. When he was successful, he said to Alice:

“You’re on your own, for the moment. You can go for a walk if you’d like, but just don’t get lost.”

“Walk along the paths.” The old man said. “Don’t brave the forest. Should Baba Yaga catch hold of you, she will take you to the Blue Mountains, fit you into a kettle and eat you with butter.”

“What kind of butter?” Alice grew interested.

“With what kind! What kind? Why, with sunflower oil butter, of course!”

Toward evening the sea had become quite flat and shiny, as though covered with an oil slick. The lazily rolling waves foamed white only at the edges of the shore itself, like the brocade edge of a table cloth. The shore was covered with enormous grains of sand and very tiny sea shells, so thin and fragile it was pointless to try to collect any. But on the other hand there were very beautiful stones in the water and in the belt of sand wet from the receding tide. Some of them were transparent and rounded by the waves until they were like beads, while others were many-colored and still retained the irregularity of pieces of real stone, although their corners were polished. Found in the sand as well, but in fact not very often you were more likely to encounter them very far to the East in the Caucasus mountains were flat stone cookies, grey and brown. They were very useful for skipping on the waves since they could be made to jump many times.

When Alice gathered two handfuls of stones, she found what she was doing very boring, and she began to throw a few stone cookies to see if she could make them reach the horizon. But the flat stones weren’t the very best and after two or three jumps they were swallowed up by the water, raising a column of thick, shimmering water. Finally, Alice was able to locate a stone petal hardly thicker than a coin and quite round. That one should have jumped all the way to the horizon. Alice took aim, threw the stone, and it obediently jump across the even water. Once, twice, three times, four, five… On the ninth time it vanished beneath the waves anyway, and immediately thereafter a dolphin jumped from the water in the same spot. It promptly dove right back, but Alice grew frightened that she had hit it and decided to throw no more stones.

She walked further along the shore in search of the most beautiful stone. She walked for a very long time. The shore curved inward to form bays several times, but she never found just the right stone. Then Alice decided to walk up into the foothills.

Here, far from the resorts and vacation houses, it was silent. From time to time flyers, like varicolored flies, flew by over head, the grasshoppers chirruped, a scorpion crawled out from under some rock, saw Alice, and quickly hid itself.

Alice walked up to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the sea. The ocean appeared flat, less a sea of tides and breakers than a mass of blue jell-o. Not far from the coast she could make out a small island. It was almost flat, if you ignored the big pile of rocks that rose like a finger from the shore or the roofless, windowless ruin of a house. A barge had run aground right beside the big pile of rocks. Some tiny figures were slowly moving along the shore beside the barge. Their movements were odd, very slow and somehow unhuman. Probably they were specialized robots, but what were they doing: cleaning the bottom of the boat? Building an anchorage?

Alice walked further along the shore. She found herself in a grove of freshly planted trees. Around her stretched row after row of pines only a little taller than Alice herself. When Alice had become an adult these trees would also have grown and become enormous. She would have to make certain she returned here then to take a look at this forest.

Suddenly from in front of her Alice made out a loud, agitated voice. She made a few more steps forward and then stopped. Someone was arguing. It would be awkward to just jump out from the trees and bother the people. So Alice very carefully peered out from behind the branches of the young pines.

Beyond the trees was a meadow, and in the meadow was a very strange creature.

It was a person, but what kind of person man or woman, young or old she could not guess. That was because the being was dressed in a fur coat that went down to her toes, on the head was a fur winter hat with ear pieces that ran below the chin, and the face was covered with enormous dark glasses.

The being was sitting on a suitcase, holding a pocket phone in one hand, and speaking:

“Nikitin, just where did you send me? No, of course you understood correctly. I asked, where did you send me?”

“I did not send you anywhere.” The voice answered from the hand phone. “Wherever it is you flew, that’s where you are.”

“And where was a flying?”

“To the Karsk Sea, to Unity Island.”

“You mean, to the North Pole?”

“That’s right.”

“Then tell me, please, what it is you see around me that resembles the North Pole in any way, shape, or manner?”

The being in the hat lifted one mittened hand and took in the surroundings with the hand phone’s video scanner in order to convince the person at the other end that nothing hereabouts resembled the North Pole in the slightest. The situation was so odd Alice had trouble keeping from laughing.

“You’re right. It’s not the North Pole.” The sad voice came from the hand phone. “How could it have happened?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask myself.” The being answered. “Now what do I do?”

“I would recommend that you get back into the flyer and see what button it was you pushed.”

“Men are such naifs!” The being in the hat said. “Doesn’t it occur to you that when I left the flyer it was on automatic and went right back home?”

“Unfortunate.” The voice at the other end of the com link said. “I’ll have to send another flyer for you.”

“Genius!” The being in the hat shouted excitedly. “I expected no better answer from you; but tell me please, Nikitin, just where are you going to send the other flyer to for me?”

“Well, wherever you are…”

“And where am I?”

“Yes, where are you?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea! For all I know I could be in the Hawaiian Islands, or maybe even Tasmania! Perhaps I am on some uninhabited island like Tristan da Cuhna and it will be another year before I see a ship!”

“Don’t panic!” The com-link voice said. “We’ll think of something!”

Suddenly Alice could hold back her laughter no longer. The being in the hat heard the laugh and quickly jumped up.

“Wait?” She shouted. “There’s someone here. Maybe a wild animal, perhaps even a hyena….”

“I am not a hyena!” Alice called. She stepped out of the underbrush.

“An aborigine!” The being in the hat shouted. “Nikitin, hold the line. I’ll try to find a common language with him.”

The person ran toward Alice, shouting in English and then in French. “Stop, fine person. I mean you no ill will! I am lost! Tell me please, what is the name of your country?”

“You’re in the Crimea.” Alice answered.

“You speak Russian!” The stranger was dumbfounded.

“Of course I do!”

“Then why did you keep silent?”

“I wasn’t silent. I wanted to tell you that you’re on Karadag, on the South Shore of the Crimean Peninsular.”

“No wonder, I should have known.” Off came the fur hat to show long, dark flowing hair; off came the eye glasses to show a beautiful young face with enormous blue eyes; off came the fur coat to reveal a tall young woman.

The woman stretched out her hand and introduced herself:

“Svetlana. Svetlana Odinokaya.”

“Alice Selezneva.”

“Thank you. You have saved me. Without you I would have perished.”

“It’s rather hard to perish here. There are people everywhere.”

“But you found me.”

“You have a pretty name.” Alice said. “You must write poetry.” For some reason this conclusion met with Svetlana Odinokaya’s strong disapproval.

“How could you even suspect such a thing!” She growled. “If men want to get drunk in verse over dawns and sunsets or odd named flowers, let them! I’m a real scientist. I did not come here to enjoy myself; we were about to carry out the final tests of the Minimizer Mark Two, the only one of its kind in existence. “

“And what are you going to test?” Alice asked. The fur hat and coat lay on the suitcase; the only thing Svetlana had in her hands was the pocket com she had turned off.

“Its response to the extreme conditions of the Northern Ice Sea!” Svetlana said.

“You seem to have missed your stop.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just lead me to the nearest flyer station and I’ll continue my journey.” Alice liked Svetlana, and really didn’t want her to fly off to the North Pole.

“But tell me, can’t you carry our your tests here?” Alice asked.

“Here? In the Crimea? What sort of extreme conditions can I find around here. And, oh….”

Svetlana turned the pocket-com back on; Nikitin’s face appeared in the small screen.

“Listen, Nikitin.” Svetlana said severely. “I’ve just gotten an offer from the natives to carry out our series of experiments here.” She pointed the pick-up toward Alice.

“So you’ve ascertained where the ‘here’ is, I take it?”

“Isn’t that already understood. We’re in the Crimea, where else, in Karadag. Instead of hitting the selector button for KARsk sea you made me press the button for KARadag and sent me here.”

“Lana, just how could I make you do anything if you were the one sitting in the flyer and I was in the Institute?”

“Nikitin, you miserable coward!” Svetlana shouted and threw the pocket-com away from her in anger, and informed Alice:

“We’ll carry out the tests here! I’m going to need a testing ground. An open space larger than this one.”

“There’s one not far from here.” Alice said. “I can take you.”

Svetlana picked up the suitcase, tossing the coat over her shoulder. Alice picked up the hat, the goggles, and the pocket-com. The com’s screen was broken; Alice supposed Svetlana had thrown it down far too hard.

Alice walked in front; Svetlana followed about two paces behind.

“And just what are you doing here?” Svetlana asked. “Are you really a native?”

“No.” Alice answered. “I study at a school in Moscow. I only came here for one day with some film makers that I know; they’re here to film the sunset for the film ‘Fairy Tale Symphony.’“

“Men, I take it.”

“Yes.” Alice answered. “All of them, even one man sold old he fought against Napoleon and there’s real moss growing on him.”

“On them all.” The words ground through Svetlana’s teeth. “On them all.”

For some reason the woman was very displeased with men, although Nikitin had seemed polite and well-mannered enough to Alice.

“So why are you so angry at men?” Alice asked.

“I’ve simply had far too much of Nikitin.” Svetlana said. “He’s my collaborator. Terribly muddle-headed. Not to mention absent minded. You can’t imagine just how absent minded he is! Yesterday for some reason he bought a whole bouquet of roses. He brought them to the lab. And do you know what he did then? He put them on my chair, forgot them right there! Right on my computer! How utterly repulsive! They stink!”

“Well what if he put the bouquet of flowers on your desk deliberately? Alice asked.

“All the worse! It means he’s taunting me, mocking me!”

“But what if he’s not?” Alice asked.

“How so?”

“And what if he likes you?” Alice said. “What if he wanted to please you?”

“Never! He knows that if he wanted to do something I’d like he could dust my computer!”

They came out onto a small flyer landing spot right above the sea itself. Below it the land fell away in a small cliff several times a man’s height tall, and below that the waves whispered and hissed as they washed back and forth on the narrow line of tiny stones.

“We’re here now.” Alice said.

“One minor problem.” Svetlana said. “If there are more extreme conditions, we’ll wait for them here. I gather there are storms, high winds, and earth quakes in the area?”

“Maybe.” Alice agreed.

She went over to the precipice and peered out to sea. Directly ahead of her was the small island with the barge. The awkward figures were all walking up and down the coast.

“Make yourself some tea?” Svetlana asked.

Alice turned.

Alice nearly fell down from astonishment. Svetlana was sitting in a light folding chair at a small table. There was a tea service on the table. An enormous stripped umbrella had been unfurled over the table.

“How did you do that?” Alice was amazed.

“Very simple.” Svetlana was pleased with the effect. She motioned to the closed suitcase. “Everything came from the Minimizer. Want to see?”

Alice walked over to the suitcase and looked inside. In the suitcase lay a number of toys. Svetlana squatted beside the suitcase and rapidly extended her hand inside it, and Alice saw how the hand grew smaller and smaller. Svetlana grabbed a small piece of orange plastic from the suitcase, pulled it out and threw it to one side. Her hand immediately became just as large as it had been, and the piece of plastic turned itself into an inflatable boat large enough for several people. Svetlana’s next move was to pull a pump from the suitcase and attach it to the boat, and after several minutes the boat was completely inflated.

“Did you invent this?” Alice asked, captivated.

“Any object which falls within the minimization field is shrunk to one forty-sixth its original size,” Svetlana said, “not only in size but in weight as well.

“That’s marvelous!”

“Our invention will be invaluable help to any expedition.” Svetlana said, not without pride in her voice. “You can take with the minimizer more than you could possibly fit into a whole truck.”

“To other planets!” Alice said.

“And for tourists.” Svetlana said. “Not to mention travelers, or people who have to move house.”

“But the testing phase isn’t ended.” Svetlana said. “So far the minimizer is extremely expensive and there is only this one copy, which, like me, should be at the North Pole, except Nikitin sent me here!”

“I’m very pleased that you came here instead.” Alice said. “I’m very happy to meet you!”

“The same.” Svetlana said.

Alice was about to boast to Svetlana that she also had in her possession a one of a kind instrument, the mielophone, which enabled you to read someone else’s thoughts, but then she remembered, she had taken the mielophone without her father’s permission and grew ashamed.

Meanwhile, Svetlana reached into her suitcase for a thermos and poured the two of them cups of lemon tea, and asked:

“And why did you conclude that he didn’t want to get me angry?”

“Who?”

“Nikitin, of course! I was so furious with him…. But if he didn’t want to anger me, that means I was furious at him for no good reason?”

“Doesn’t he like you a lot?” Alice asked.

“Alice!” Svetlana was shocked. “You’re not yet old enough to be talking about such things!

“Why? I’m already twelve years old, and I can talk absolutely about everything.”

Svetlana shrugged her shoulders, looked out to where the sea met the sky, and said:

“Speaking truthfully, as men go, he’s all right. And not a bad experimenter. He does have positive qualities.”

“Then you were angry at him for no reason. Now he’s sitting in Moscow, disturbed because you were so put out, and waiting for when you’re going to shout at him

“You’re exactly right!” Svetlana said. “I should be informing him that I’ve set up. That the experiment has begun. And quite successfully too. Hand me my pocket com.”

“I’m afraid it’s broken.” Alice said, handing the pocket-com to the woman. “You threw it too hard.”

“Oh what he’s putting me through,” Svetlana said, and pressed various buttons one after the other, shook the device, and even hit it a few times. But the unfortunate instrument stayed dead.

“Oh well,” Svetlana said. “They shouldn’t make things so shoddy; a light blow and it’s trash. Now what do I do? How can I notify Nikitin that our experiment has begun? Tell me, how?”

“Well, you can go down to the film company’s camp. They have their own com equipment. You can call Moscow from there.”

“You’re right. That’s brilliant.”

“I can show you where it is, it isn’t far, only about two hundred meters down that trail.”

“I think not? What am I if I’m not able to find it? What’s your movie director’s name?”

“Herman. And what will I be doing?”

“You’ll be sun bathing or swimming; that’s what you came here to do. And you can keep one eye on my equipment at the same time.”

Alice agreed, and Svetlana quickly headed off down the path.

Alice sat for a while in the arm chair beneath the umbrella. Then she want back out into the setting sun. She stretched out on the grass at the edge of the landing spot. The sun was still warm, but it was the softer sun of evening. Svetlana still had not returned. The silence was complete; from the sea came thin, almost mosquito voices…. And Alice herself did not notice when she dropped off to sleep.

She was awakened by someone approaching hre. The steps were so heavy they made the ground shake.

Alice opened her eyes, but at that moment an enormous, heavy metallic fist smelling of machine oil and rust, clamped itself on her face. Alice tried to beat it away, trying to get out of its grasp, but something had clamped her legs to the ground and her hands crawled over metal.

“Do you have the wire?” She heard a low, scratchy voice.

“Aye, aye, sir.” A second voice, scratchy like the first but higher pitched, said.

“Tie it around the prisoner’s legs.”

It hurt a great deal. Alice’s legs were tied with wire, which cut into her ankles. Then her hands were tied behind her back as well. And although the metal hand that forced Alice’s head on the ground covered nearly all her face, Alice was able to make out that what had fallen upon her were two metal beings, certainly robots, but never before in her life had she seen such rusty, coarsely made and terrible robots anywhere.

And iron finger forced a gag into her mouth, a dirty rag. Now Alice could twist and turn and fight back as much as she wanted, but she was bound hand and foot and totally powerless to do anything.

Alice was only able to turn her head and watch how the two robots roamed the camp, examining Svetlana’s remaining things. Naturally, Alice was hoping that Svetlana would return and free her. But suddenly Alice grew frightened; Svetlana suspected nothing. She might find herself a prisoner too. The robots were clearly insane! Alice had never heard of insane robots, but she couldn’t think of another explanation.

“A tool for the seating of human beings.” She head the voice of the first robot.

“Worthless. Leave it.”

“Human clothing, constructed from the hides of a animals.”

“Unnecessary.” That was the voice of the second robot.

“A boat! An inflatable boat. A mechanism of transportation!”

“Take it. We need transport mechanisms. The steel container is a poor means of attack.”

“A small portation mechanism.” The first robot. It picked up the suitcase.”

“Bring it. It is useful.” The second robot said. The first robot clapped the suitcase shut; he threw it into the inflatable boat.

“The raid is finished.” He said. “We can return to our detachment’s bivouac.”

He dragged the boat to the cliff, but the second turned to Alice. And, suddenly from the edge of the clearing, they heard a penetrating voice:

“Whatever is going on here? Who let you loose here, you steel tramps?”

As if this weren’t bad enough, Alice thought. Now they’re going to grab the old man film robot.

“Stand!” The robot standing beside Alice ordered the old man. “Do not move! We will shoot.”

“Just try it!” The old man, instead of trying to save himself, picked up a stick and rushed at the enormous robot.

“Release the child!” He shouted. “I will make scrap metal of you. You heathens, we beat the Turks for General Gurko. How could you have forgotten? I’ll show you how we did it now! Soldiers, brothers, forward to battle!”

The robot stepped backwards in surprise, but, evidently, determined the old man was no match for it. It stopped moving and the old man of a film robot rushed toward it, even though the shock of white plastic hair only reached as high as the metal robot’s belt. The second robot left the boat and intercepted the film robot from the side. The film robot did not see the other enemy and continued, waving his stick, advancing, thinking he was going into battle against the Turkish redoubts.

One of the second robot’s heavy metal hands rose and grabbed the stick out of the old man’s hand. The other hand grabbed the old man around the neck. The old man waved his arms up and down, but there was no way he could get free.

Seeing that the small enemy had been overcome, The first robot tossed the boat over the small cliff and dragged Alice after it. Alice started to struggle, trying to get free or loosen this cursed wire that was now cutting into her ankles.

“You cannot resist!” The robot said. “If you do I will force your head into the water and you will no longer obtain oxygen for metabolic functions.”

Alice stopped shaking her head right away. If the robot had been able to take into its iron head the idea of attacking a human being, it could just as easily get the idea of drowning one. And Alice was very cross with her mother, who had refused to allow her to have the operation to give her artificial gills. Lots of kids had artificial gills put in, especially those who lived near the sea, or under it, or in the pelagic cities on floats as big as whole islands. If she had the synthagills she could have stayed underwater for as long as she wanted.

When I get home, Alice decided, I’ll certainly be able to convince mom to let me have the operation. There must be five million people with gills, I’m not one of them, and then this hapens!

The second robot arrived. He was walking slowly and self-importantly, and the last rays of the sun played over his metal body. He carried a stick in his hand and was using it to push the old man from behind, driving the old man, a typical old man, the grandfather from countless children’s TV series, in front of him. The old man’s hands were tied behind his back, the beard hung down on his chest, but his mouth was free. The old man was muttering something angrily.

“A robot leading a robot.” Alice wanted to say it, but stopped. The old man robot was the most ordinary and well made robot, even if fate had decreed he was to be a movie star. Yes, he had threatened Alice with the stick on the boulevard back in Moscow, but, as Herman had explained, he would never have hit her. It was just his role in the movie, that of an cranky old man.

“Oh, our sins weigh heavilly.” The old man muttered, finding a place for himself in the boat. What have we done to have this befall us, to be captured by metal Anti-Christs!” Then he saw Alice and became very angered.

“What is the child doing here? What is it you are going to do? The child is small…”

“Silence!” The robot said. “The disobedient will be thrown overboard.”

“Oh….” The old man said and grew silent.

The metal robot turned on the engine and the boat soundlessly cut the water toward the entrance to the bay. The robots steered the boat closer to the cliffs evidently they feared being sighted by the film crew. Only after they had gone some distance along the coast did the boat turn toward the open sea. The robots ordered their prisoners to lay in the bottom of the boat and pulled enormous Mexican sombreros from beneath the benches, put them on their heads, and pretended to be vacationers to anyone who saw them from afar.

The engine coughed and whistled quietly, the small waves beat against the boat’s plastic keel, and it seemed to Alice that someone was shouting to her from the coast:

“Alice! A-alice… Where are you?”

But perhaps it only seemed like that.




Chapter Five: The master of the pirate Island


The island at which the boat came to anchor with its prisoners was small, stony, and although it lay not far from the coast, rarely did boats put in to harbor. There was nothing to see here. Once upon a time, two or three hundred years in the past, smugglers had lived on the island and constructed houses rather, huts out of the stones. Their roofs had long since fallen in, but you could still find refuge from the winds inside. Not long ago archeologists had worked here. The archeologists had found nothing, but they left behind a number of pits and trenches cut in the center of the island.

The island was not marked on the maps. It was too small and insignificant, and offered no great threat to shipping. Very few people looked in on this empty corner of the Crimean coast.

Alice, of course, knew none of this. For her the island was a large cliff rising from the water, a rocky desert without a single tree.

The sun had set already, and the island was overcome with purple twilight and gloom. That barge that had run aground on the rocks looked black.

When the boat reached the rocks another robot, just as big and rusty as the first two that had made Alice prisoner, came out of the ruins of a hut and went down to the water.

“You have the loot?” It asked.

“One large human and one small.” A robot said.

“Not a bad beginning.” The new robot said. “I will report to the Chief.” It turned, its joints creaked and scraped, and it vanished into the ruins, the former smugglers’ den.

One of the robots pulled Alice and the old man to the shore, turning off the engine’s controls. The other untied the prisoners hands and pulled the gag out of Alice’s mouth.

“What sort of thugs are you?” Alice said, gasping for air. “You may be able to treat me this way, but what will happen to you when people find out what you’re doing?”

It was as if the robots did not hear her. They stood ‘at ease,’ and they waited at ease, ignoring Alice and the old man robot, until until the robot that had come out of the ruins and gone back returned.

“The General thanks you for your service.” It said.

The two robots stamped their feet in place and froze.

“The General cannot look at your loot now. He is busy.” The robots stamped their feet again and froze again.

“You may rest.” The local robot said. “But only know what measures to take. Is that clear?”

“Aye, aye, sir!” The robots said in chorus, their round eyes flashed and they left, forgetting completely about the captives.

The old man sat down on the sparse yellow grass and said:

“True barbarians.”

“Grandfather,” Alice spoke to him; she had quite forgotten that he was a robot himself. “Grandfather, have you ever seen metal robots before?”

“‘Robots?’ Is that, then, what has made us captive?”

“Yes. Of course, you wouldn’t know.”

Alice had occasion to see many robots, many different types of robots, before, but she had never seen robots constructed of real, heavy metal rather than light plasteel, at least not on Earth. Manufacturing a robot out of metal was inefficient. The robot came out extremely heavy, expensive, and overly complicated.

“Grandfather, we have to signal the coast.” Alice said. “So they can come and rescue us.”

“That’s the spirit, granddaughter.” The old man said. “Our side never sleeps. I remember it like yesterday, how we went up the hill in Manchuria, with General Gurko in the lead on his white horse….”

And the old man was lost in useless remembrances of events about which in truth he could have remembered nothing at all, since he had only come out of the factory the week before.

“Grandfather, do you have a light?”

“A what?”

“Fire. A lighter. A lamp…”

“There’s iron and flint on me somewhere…” The old man rooted around in the pockets of his grey jacket, but he found nothing.

“I must have dropped it.”

Two robots appeared on the stony path. Each of them was carrying an enormous rock.

“These fortifications they are erecting. Who are they defending against?” The old man asked. “Is it that the Turks are on the move again?”

“No. It’s the people who live along the coast they fear.”

“And that might be…”

“What?”

“I’ve forgotten, girl from hither and yon. My mind wanders, it’s old age or the stroke.” The old man said sadly. “We have to be on our guard, despite the lack of time. Aha! I remember: we can do it, we can light a fire to make a smoke signal.”

“But you don’t have any way to make a fire.”

“What we cannot do, we cannot do.” The old man agreed.,

Alice and the old man walked slowly along the shore. From where they stood it was evident the robots had done an enormous amount of work on the island. Shallow trenches provided with breastworks ran right down to the water line. In one spot a log, coarsely cut to imitate an old fashioned artillery piece, stuck out a little bit higher. The log brought the old man to a condition of tumultuous rapture.

“Look at it, look!” He muttered. “Flintlocks, long range mortars! We’d dash aside from one of these, and not a single heathen for miles around! Weapons to the front! Case shot to the right! Case shot to the left!”

“They’re just made out of wood, Grandfather.” Alice laughed. “It’s to deceive their enemies. “Those can’t shoot at anyone.”

“That is true.” The grandfather-film robot agreed. “So they want to deceive? Who?”

“You, grandfather. And perhaps other people as well.”

“So it’s me they want to deceive, is it? Me? Why, I would have seen through it in a minute! They could never have hidden anything from me, girl from hither and yon!”

They sat down on an enormous, flat rock.

“Such beauty….” The old man suddenly sighed.

Alice was somewhat surprised that the old man could think about the natural beauty of the spot a this moment, but he was right.

From the shore beyond the silver water the Crimean mountains lifted like a toothy wall. They sky overhead went from green to lilac the sun dropped behind the hills, but not all that far and it reached the few, tattered rags of clouds with its rays.

The first lights had appeared as golden points beneath the toothy summits and at the edge of the water, but there was no way to tell which of those lights was the film company’s camp. A moment later Alice saw a pod of dolphins moving through the water not far from the island.

“Hey, dolphins!” Alice shouted. “Tell my friends they kidnaped us!”

“Stop shouting, or you will go into the water!” A voice came from behind her. Alice turned and saw the rusty robot standing behind them.

“Now I will show them!” It said.

The robot went away and came back in a few minutes with a strange instrument in its hand. The instrument resembled an old fashioned bow. The robot placed a thick, home made arrow on the wire bow-string and fired. The bow was roughly made and improperly balanced and therefore the arrow flew to one side, well away from the dolphins.

Then the robot corrected for his weapon’s imprecision and shot not at the dolphins, but to the other side. On this occasion the crossbow bolt splashed heavily into the water not ten meters from the dolphin pod. The dolphins, evidently, understood that their enemies were on the island, and immediately vanished into the sea as though they had never been. The robot proudly patted his bow with his metal hand and said:

“Even with this primitive weapon we can vanquish any enemy. What matters is not the weapon, but the Leader!”

“And who is your leader?” Alice asked.

“A miserable slave such as you hasn’t even the right to pronounce his name.”

“I’m no one’s slave. There aren’t any slaves any more.” Alice said. She had already taken ancient history and knew about slaves.

“There will be.” The robot said; he placed another arrow on the bow string and shot it into the sea in the direction of the half sunken boat that had run aground on the rocky shore.

“How did you shoot at that boat?” Alice asked. “How did you get to be so strange?

“We sailed here on it.” The robot said. “On that boat, at which I have now shot my straight arrow, in order to demonstrate for you the irresistability of my rage.”

“You speak very well.” Alice said.

“I am the detachment’s commander, the corporal. The others are limited. They know only a hundred words. I know a whole thousand.”

From the ruins came a racket, as though someone were beating a metal sheet with a stick.

“Evening roll call.” The robot shouldered his bow, and turned with a horrible squeaking noise, and started to trudge up the land. “Maybe we can dive and swim to the shore.” Alice thought aloud.

“Don’t even think of it.” The old man said. “I will not let thee. You would put your young life in danger in the watery abyss.”

Alice realized that there really was no way the old man robot could let her try it. Robots were directed to help people in the moment of danger and would rather die than subject a human being to danger. And even if this was a film robot, the Laws of Robotics would have been installed in its electronic brain as well.

“Then let’s go look at their roll call. At least then we’ll know how many of them there are.”

The sun had totally vanished; the water had become bluish grey, and the first large southern stars had begun to appear in the sky. Very high, among the stars, Alice made out the contrail of a passenger liner. They have to be looking for us, Alice thought. But how can they even guess that we’re on this island.

In the square formed by the ruins stood a line of nine metal robots. Three of them held bows in thier hands, while the rest carried thick iron rods. The robots were black against the background of the deep blue sky and were so motionless they appeared to be statues erected and left here many years ago.

“Even space between you, boys.” The robot on the end said. “Tenn-Hutt!” The command was utterly wasted; the robots stood so stiffly that they stood perfectly to attention always.

The robot who had given the command started to drum on his own chest with his metal hands, and the drum beat resounded forth across the quiet evening sea.

A door made out of steel sheet on the smuggler’s hut was pushed to one side and another metal robot came out into the square, scarcely moving his feet. It was taller than the others and there was a rusty helmet on his head, and his chest was decorated with crudely cut crosses. Alice realized that this was the chief robot.

The general opened its mouth slowly several times but no sounds emerged other than the rusty creaking. Finally, it angled its head upward, something clicked and an unexpectedly thin and squeaky voice emerged from its enormous chest.

“Hello, Boys!” It said.

“Hello, Chief!” The robots chorused.

“Report.” The general said.

The nearest robot stepped forward and said:

“We have finished constructing the wall. Robots Two and Three have carried out a reconnaissance of the Continent. Two prisoners have been taken. Weapons were not located.”

“Bad.” The General said. “Terrible. Insufficient. Idiots. The bomb shelter?”

“Will be ready tomorrow. In the second watch.”

“I commend you for your diligence. Bring me the prisoners. Set a guard for the night. All hail me, your Leader!”

“Hooray!” The robots shouted.

“You have rusted, but you have kept your powder dry.”

The general turned, lifting one foot, but the foot would not go back down again. He hoped around in unsteady equilibrium and could have toppled over onto the stones at any moment. The wall of robots stood there unmoving.

“Help me!” The general ordered. “Push my foot down. Quickly!”

“Which of us will go to your aid?” The nearest robot asked.

“You.”

The robot obeyed. With all its weight it pushed on the general’s upraised leg until the stuck limb finally went back down to the stones with a loud creak. Limping, the General went back to the ruins.

“Where are the prisoners?” The robot who had helped the General asked.

“They are right here. Did they not hear what was ordered?”

The old man and Alice and gone up to the ruins and entered. In side it was almost entirely dark, and only an uneven twilight came in through a few cracks and spaces in the half ruined roof.

The ruined house was filled with metal junk, trash, and old tin cans. In one corner stood a bag, right beside it a rudely cut limestone block. The Robot General sat on the block beside the bag and held a large pair of scissors in one hand. The bag was stuffed with pieces of tin can and boxes of concentrates. Evidently, the archaeologists and tourists who had spent time here, had felt it was better to lay their accumulated garbage into their old trenches than dump it into the sea. The General was cutting a complicated, many-pointed star from the top of a tin can.

“You’ve come.” It asked, not letting the scissors out of its hand. “Stand where you are and come no closer. I cannot stand humans. And be silent. I am busy. I am making a medal. Beautiful, isn’t it? Why don’t you answer? You are doing the right thing; I have not ordered you to answer yet.”

Finally the robot finished its work, attached the piece of tin to its chest, and seemed pleased.

“Beautiful.” It said. “We will begin the interrogation. You with the beard will answer first. What is your name?”

“Let it never be said that I gave any information to such an Iron Monstrosity? No, never.”

“Which detachment?” The robot continued as if the old man had said nothing. “How man robots and battle machines? Tanks? Cannons? You will answer now.”

“I said, I will not answer a single question. When General Gurko led us into battle he said: “‘Don’t think of your widows and orphans, boys or we won’t take Mount Sapan by storm!’ Or something like that.”

“Write it down.” The Robot General said to his aid. “Their Commander is General Gurko.”

“I have nothing to write with, Chief.” The robot said.

“Of course you have nothing to write with. And don’t lie to me. You aren’t able to write at all. None of us can write. And this is good. When we are victorious, no one will ever write again. And what shall we do when we are victorious? You ask. And you? And You? You don’t know. We shall march. That is all. And work. And enforce order and discipline.”

“That will never happen.” Alice said. “You don’t understand anything or you’ve gone out of your mind. It’s time to turn you off and throw you into the trash; you’re even all rusty. What I can’t understand is why you haven’t been sent to a scrap metal foundry already.”

“Silence!” The robot said. There was a grinding sound, a gnashing of metal, a burbling of hydraulic fluid, and the robot repeated: “Silence….” The robot blew air through its acoustic system a moment, and continued:

“Silence! After your interrogation you will be thrown into the lock-up. Do you understand? Now, tell me your name? What is your unit? How much artillery do you have? Where are the tactical nuclear weapons situated?”

“I don’t understand the word you used. What tactical nuclear weapons? What cannon?”

“You will be locked up.” The general said. “We will thrash you. We will drive you before us with whips!”

“You would do better to keep your mouth shut!” The old man grew very angry. “Who are you to drive anyone anywhere? Who do you think you are talking to? I’ll….”

“Hold him!” The robot General shouted to his robot aide de camp. “He is attacking!”

The robot aide grabbed the old man from behind with his enormous claws. The old man’s hat fell off and coarse synthetic hairs scattered in all directions.

“Good.” The General said to the robot. “You will receive a medal. There is no way he could have defeated me. I am a fatalist. Do you understand what that means? It means I fear nothing and nothing endangers me. Not even rifle fire frightens me. Not even the direct application of explosive charges.”

The Robot General rose to his full height. His rusty joints screamed.

“Damnable Rust!” It said. “There are no lubricants. Tomorrow on the march you will capture lubricants and machine oil. Tomorrow the prisoners will be put to work on the construction of fortifications. That is all. I have spoken. That is my order.”

“I serve you!” The other robot answered.

“Take this medal and weld it to your chest. You are now awarded.”

“A joy to serve you, sir.” The robot answered and clutched the top of the tin can to its chest so it would not fall, and started to lead the lead the prisoners outside.

Turning, Alice saw that the general had seated itself before the bag again and was again cutting up pieces of tin cans.

“Stop.” The general’s voice brought them to a halt before the door. “I have entirely forgotten. It’s the damned rust. Humans, do you want to serve me? Will you serve faithfully. I will give you medals.”

“No, we don’t.” Alice answered for both of them. “We’re not going to serve anyone, and we’re not afraid of anyone.”

“We will see what tale you sing tomorrow,” The General said, “when an iron arrow pierces your soft human hearts. Go.” But the prisoners and their guard had only moved a few more steps when the general’s scratchy voice ordered them back. They had to return.

“Again I have forgotten.” The General said. “Is Moscow very far from here?”

“Far enough.” Alice answered. “You’d never get there on foot. But they can carry you there in a freight train and turn you into giant candle holders. The latest fashion.”

“Shoot them immediately!” The robot general said.

“We cannot.” The subordinate robot said. “It’s grown dark. We might miss.”

“Those of you who would bring terror to all, turn on the floodlights in your heads!

“Impossible. You ordered us to economize on energy, Chief.”

“Then to the lock-up. To the lock-up!”

“I’ve had enough of your pointless noise; you’re just getting me angry; go to your lockup yourself!” The old man said. “I’m going to shoot you now with my own stick.”

The old main raised his walking stick to his shoulder and took aim with it as though it were an old style rifle, straight at the Robot General. Either the old man had totally lost his robot reason from fear, or he really did not know the difference between a rifle and a walking sick, or he just wanted to frighten the robot, but the results turned out disastrous for him.

The General-Fatalist grew terrified and collapsed on the floor with a loud clang but the second robot struck the old man on the forehead with his own iron fist.

The head of the old man shattered, scattering the tiny workings of his electronic brain. The old man staggered back and forth, made several uncertain steps, but his coordination centers had already been destroyed, and he collapsed on the floor beside the Robot General.

Alice froze from terror and grief. The old man, even if he had not been a real flesh and blood human being, had been her lone defender on this wild island and she had come to think of him like she would her own, living grandfather. And then they killed him. Even worse, the robot who killed him thought he was a human being, and that meant that something very terrible had taken place. These robots could kill people.

Alice knew robots very well; they were a part of the world in which she lived. When Alice had been very young, she had had a robot baby sitter; it knew all sorts of stories and was even able to change diapers. House robots to make the beds, pick up children’s toys, prepare breakfasts were very common. But most of all robots were used in the places where people were not interested in working. Industrial robots had little in common with human beings they were more thinking machines and tools who laid down roads, mined ore, and swept streets. The taxi cab that Alice had called to take her around the city and to Bertha’s was also a robot programmed with street maps and the traffic code. The day before Alice had flown to the Crimea she had seen a robot space ship on the television. It not only carried freight to the Lunar stations but it loaded itself as well, fly to the moon, land in the spot ordered by the dispatcher, and deliver the precise number of containers to the lunar colonists.

Robots had first put in their appearance long ago, at least two hundred years back, but only in the last hundred years Alice had studied all of this in the first grade had they taken such an enormous place in people’s lives. There were as many robots on Earth as there were people, but there had never been an instance where robots had risen up against the human race. That was impossible. Unthinkable. It was like a frying pan the most ordinary frying pan refusing to heat soup, or attacking its user with its cover. It was people who made the robots, and it was people who had programmed into robots the special programs called the Laws to defend the human race from its creations. No matter how large a robots electronic brain might be, that brain could not conceive of disobedience.

This meant the robots on the island had all succeeded in getting broken in a way no other robots had ever before been broken in the past, or and Alice did not even think of this possibility they had been constructed by people who for some reason decided that the robots should lack the Laws that defended the human race.

It grew quiet. The General lifted his head and saw the old man lay broken beside him. The General turned on the light from his own head lamp and saw the old man was made not from flesh and blood, but from electronic components.

“Treason!” It shouted. “They have betrayed us! Gather everyone for a meeting.”

“What about the other human. Perhaps it too…”

“The lock-up for now. There is no time to learn the details now. Tomorrow the human will be questioned with all severity. But…”

The second robot inclined its head and, pushing Alice toward the exit, strode forward, propelling her from behind with its dirty finger.

The lock-up turned out to be a pit with sharp walls. The robot just pushed Alice over the edge, and she landed painfully on stones and dirt, but she did not start to cry. What had happed to her and to the old man-film robot was so serious that it was simply impossible to cry.




Chapter Six: In The Castle on Cape San Bonnifaccio


Alice had never heard about Cape San Bonnifaccio, nor are any of this story’s readers likely to know the Cape’s turbulent history. Cape San Bonnifaccio rises out of the Mediterranean Sea like a shark’s fin; the surrounding lands are parched and uninviting. Once upon a time, about six hundred years ago, the pirate armada of Hassan Bey, comprising some twenty-three quick moving galleys, lay in wait for and smashed a Genoese squadron to smithereens. Hassan Bey himself fastened the noose around the neck of the Genoese admiral before he strung him up from the yard arm. Or so it’s described in the three volume “History of Lawlessness in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic,” by the famous Argentinian historian of piracy don Luis de Diego.

Since then History has passed Cape San Bonnifaccio by. One can hardly consider the construction of a castle at the edge of the cape by an eccentric English baronet an historic event. The Baronet dreamed of having his own Ghost.

But a true ghost would only put in an appearance once the requisite castle had been constructed, however small. Naturally, a real castle would have been best, but the baronet found the English climate cold, wet, and unhealthy, so instead he built his castle on the Mediterranean sea, almost real, with a draw bridge and a not very deep moat where he put the swans. The baronet settled in, and waited for the ghost to begin to clank his chains. Perhaps a ghost did arrive, but only after the baronet grew sick and died. The castle remained masterless. Who in their right mind would settle in this empty corner of the coast?

The castle was empty for half a century. Decayed, its walls leaning at odd angles, the tourists who passed through on the cruise ships may very well have believed the loquacious guides who swore upon their grandmothers’ honors that the castle was built in the Middle Ages by Queen Bella the Pius.

In the second half of the twentieth century the castle came alive once more. Its new owners renovated the interior and redecorated the walls, and encircled the castle and cape with two rows of barbed wire and put armed guards on the gates. Sometimes covered trucks visited the castle, and then a commotion started in the courtyard. Workers and people of unknown nationality unloaded bags and containers from the trucks and carried them into the castle’s enormous vaults.

The peasants from the neighboring villagers gossiped about the castle’s new owners for a time, but by and by the stories died down and were extinguished, like a fire that isn not fed. Once an article about a secret organization preparing for a war was published in a small newspaper, and this article mentioned the names of the castle at Cape San Bonnifaccio, as one of this organization’s bases. But the people mentioned in the article brought the newspaper to court for slander and the newspaper was forced to pay an enormous indemnity, in as much as the newspaper could not provide the court with a single document, and the sole witness was found dead the day before the trial.

More decades passed. People forgot about the supposed organization which had been preparing for a war, and they forgot about the castle itself. The castle, abandoned by its last owners, fell into decay, and the barbed wire was carefully gathered up by the local shepherds and dumped in a cess pit.

As you can see, Cape San Bonnifaccio has no direct connection to our story, except that about ten days or so before Alice flew to the Crimea, Northern Med Tours decided to construct a flyer station and small tourist hotel beside the cape to deal with the submarine tours trade. Northern Med Tours is an enormous organization, and they do not like to waste time needlessly. On the noon of the day the decision was taken three cargo flyers brought in a load of construction robots, and one student.

The construction ‘bots moved out on their enormous treads and set about to clean up the piles of stone left behind from the old castle from the construction site and the student found a single fig tree and sat down in its shadow to read the immortal work of Akhmedzynov “The Introduction of Six Legged Rabbits Into Domestic Situations.” The student was enrolled in a cybernetics-robotics department of the local university, but had found his life boring and decided to enroll in the Genetic Technologies courses as well; the Department was very fashionable and it was hard to get in; there were seventy Earth students and ten off-worlders for every spot.

The construction ‘bots dug up junk, the enraptured student lost himself in Ahmedzyanov’s singularly dry prose, bees swirled about and a light breeze tugged at the fig tree’s leaves. And suddenly one of the construction ‘bots vanished beneath the ground with a large crash.

The racket was sufficiently loud to tear even the student away from his book. He counted the construction robots and it finally dawned on him that one was missing. The student ran to the dark pit that yawned open in the ground. He could hear the construction robot crashing about in the darkness, knocking into unseen artifacts and making even more noise.

The student ordered the construction bot to turn on its head lamp and in the light thus provided descended into the Earth. It turned out the con-bot had fallen into the castle’s basement, a basement filed with artifacts and documents left behind by the last owners. The student was very surprised and, making his way back to the surface, immediately made contact with the nearest city; three historians arrived on a coast guard cutter in an hour and a half.

The find was well beyond anyone’s expectations. The castle’s last inhabitants had, in point of fact, been preparing for a war. The evidence of this was in the bags of documents, the infantry weapons from a century past, the mountains of dried batteries, the bullets, the uniforms for non-existent armies, the field rations, and even the parts of a disassembled tank with anti- radiation armor. In one corner of the basement stood the robots.

These were astonishing robots. The historians only knew of one utterly rusted-out example of the specific type. These were robot soldiers. They were able to obey military commands and, if they heard the order ‘Kill,” they could kill people as well. These robots simply had been built without the restraints and restrictions that protected human beings. The robots were extremely dusty and rusty in spots, but when one of them was dragged to the surface and turned on, it slowly rotated its head, took in the parched valley, the sea and the shark’s fin shape of Cape San Bonnifaccio, and said in a scratchy voice:

“Ready for your commands, Sir!” Then it was silent, examined the dumbfounded historians with its single eye, and added: “Where is your commanding officer?”

The robot spoke Russian and was clearly intended for action on the Eastern Front.

The world’s leading authority on the history of robotics and cybernetics was immediately called from Antarticburg. Cynthia Komatsu examined the robots, and asked them a number of leading questions, and declared that it would be impossible to use them now. They were programmed as soldiers, and it was really far simpler to melt them down as scrap metal than repair and re-program them.

Four robots were immediately grabbed by the museums that had already expressed an interest in the weapons and documents, and the remaining robots were shipped off to a scrap metal factory.

To do this they used the coast guard boat that had carried the historians to the castle at Cape San Bonnifaccio. They attached a medium sized plastic barge to the coast guard boat and put the student on the boat along with the books, from which he refused to be parted and loaded the robots onto the barge. No one noticed, during the loading, that one of the robots was, accidentally, turned on. The student continued to read about six legged rabbits and was so entranced that he never heard the warnings of the Force Six gale that was about to hazard his navigation. The sky unexpectedly grew dark, the winds rose to a howl, and white, foamy waves ran across the sea in series. The student noticed nothing of this until the first large wave burst through the door to his cabin ad claimed Akhmedzyanova’s book from his hands, along with a number of even less interesting text books.

Only then did the student come to his senses, send out an SOS, and carefully look outside. The barge with the robots was turning every which way at the end of its line, trying to break away from the coast guard cutter, pulling the ship backwards and in general threatening the continuation of the student’s young life. The student immediately contacted the shore and received permission to cut the line and return to port. He did this and, with a great deal of luck, made it home.

But there was something that he only told his best friend (in fact, the best friend did not believe him): when he had wanted to cut the line he saw a tall figure standing up in the barge who had snapped the line from the other end. Most likely, the student maintained, this was none other than one of the metal robots. The young man told no beside his best friend of this: he was afraid that he might be suspected of cowardice.

Everyone concluded that the barge had sunk.

In fact, the barge had not sunk at all. For some days the waves of the frightening storm battered it and transported it across the Mediterranean sea, then swept it, half sunk, through the Bosporus Straits and, with its last gusts, cast the boat ashore on the coast of a small island off the Crimean Peninsula.

The robots, throughly worn and rusted after days of wandering over the waves, important components of their electronic brains damaged by a century of storage, stepped from the half sunken barge onto the land and, having dried out, began to act. One of the ten had, originally, been programmed as robot Chief, capable of making decisions in the presence of the enemy and commanding the others. The Chief-Robot put his command on a military footing and, in his rusted brain arose the thought that, if they now found themselves on the island, that meant the war they had been awaiting a hundred years had at last begun and it was time to engage in the subjugation of the enemy. He gave himself a promotion to General.

In their very first days on the island the robots discovered an enormous steel tub amid the stones. The Robot General sent off two of his soldiers in it to reconnoiter the coast. They returned after several hours, not alone, but with loot two prisoners Alice and the old man-film robot.

Alice knew none of this; she could not even imagine that some time in the past people, here on earth, had been scientists competent enough to make speaking robots, which they then prepared for war with other people, in particular Alice’s own grandfather and great-grandfather.

Nor did Herman Shatrov suspect any of it either; he and the entire group of film makers, as well as Svetlana Odinokaya, spent a sleepless night searching the coastal rocks with flash lights in search of Alice and the old man. Nor did the rescue teams of the Crimean Emergency Services whose flyers, poorly equipped for night flights, cruised over the shores; nor did the tourists from the near-by camp, all twenty three tents of which lay just on the other side of the hills from the film makers, get much sleep. The tourists were also out searching for the little girl and the old man.

Alice’s father, the Director of the Moscow Space Zoo, suspected nothing of this. In fact, he got an excellent night’s sleep, knowing that Alice was in complete safety in the Crimea with his good friend Herman Shatrov. No one had yet told him anything.

….In the middle of the first night Sosnin, Director of Rescue Operations, flying in a wandering course over one of the insignificant small bays that lined the coast, and lighting it up as he went along, saw a number of footprints in the sand, footprints far larger than human size. The tracks led upwards, long the edge of the hill. Following the chain of tracks he saw in one spot a collection of scattered shells and small stones which flashed iridescently in the beam of his search light.




Chapter Seven: The Fall of the Rusty Field Marshal


Alice was terrified. Alice was sorry for the old man, but even more, Alice wanted to eat and drink. She huddled in the corner of the pit and closed her eyes. And then she saw an enormous glass of lemonade, a glass much larger than she was. The lemonade was overflowing the edge, and splashes of lemonade foamed on the stones…

Alice opened her eyes to push the deluge away. Her pit was quite dark, and all she saw was an unevenly cut sky where the stars burned. Alice considered that she might have put something edible in her bag, which she had quite forgotten about. It was, of course nonsense, and Alice understood that it was total nonsense, but she unfastened the bag and, hesitating for a moment from the possibility of success, quietly reached in. But there was nothing there. All the bag contained was the mielophone, a handkerchief, and the Seleznev household’s house robot’s large stamp album. And a few shells and stones she had found on the shore. With regret, Alice placed one of the stones in her mouth and began to suck on it. But what she really wanted to do was drink.

“Robot!” Alice called. “Robot. I want to drink!” Nothing called back.

Perhaps she could scream loudly, so loudly that all these robots would be frightened and run away? Alice decided, no. She had seen the old man die, and realized the robots could kill her as well, if they got into their heads that she was giving away their refuge with her cries.

And perhaps, there was no water on the island at all. Robots did not need it. She wanted to drink so much that her throat was burning, and her head felt large and hollow.

Alice got to her feet and walked around her prison, feeling the walls with her hands. On one side the wall bent away, and Alice attempted to scramble upwards, but the stony ground did not support her and Alice slid back down. Alice was frightened that the robots might be listening to her flounder about in the pit. She listened and listened, but everything was quiet. Robots did not need to sleep. One of them might be hiding right now at the top of the pit, and when Alice reached the top he would hit her. Wait, there’s the mielophone!

Alice pulled the apparatus out of her bag and put the earphones on. With the device she could hear something very quietly crackling, but she could hear neither voices nor thoughts. Alice twisted the mielophone’s control knob, sending its waves in various directions, but she never heard a single thing. That meant there were no robots near-by.

Alice spat the small stone out of her mouth and made yet another attempt to scramble out of the pit.

With her shoes she kicked at the sloping side again and again until she had a set of steps that would hold her. Pressing her belly to the side of the pit she crawled upwards. It was dark, small stones and sand tumbled downward and her feet slid, and she was forced to stop moving, pressing herself flat against the side of the pit just to keep her balance.

Alice’s journey to the surface of the Earth seemed to take forever, and she had already begun to think that she would never get out of the pit when suddenly her hands touched empty air instead of the dirt walls.

Alice crawled out onto the surface of the little island and just lay there for several minutes, breathing and listening for anything that might be walking by. It was quiet. Now she had to figure out where there might be water, despite the fact that she was on an island. Alice decided if there was water here, then she should, finally, slowly but surely make her way from the island to the sea and best of all circle around the island in the water. She crawled on all fours toward the sea and sat down on the stones.

The moon had risen, and had cut the sea in half with its light. The moon made a road that danced to the distant shore and ran like an arrow to the black band of mountains. Along the heights the many colored lights of houses and tourist campgrounds rivaled the stars in their twinkling.

A camp fire burned at one spot on the shore, and the white column of smoke from it was clearly visible on the body of the hills.

“Rather late not to go to bed.” Alice thought, not guessing that the camp fire was burning in the camp of tourists who had hung a kettle over it to make black coffee; the group had just returned from a fruitless search for Alice and were drinking the coffee to stay awake.

In shore the water was lit by a searchlight carried by a flyer unseen in the darkness. The light was crawling along the coves, creeks, and inlets. It was also searching for Alice. But the handful of fires right across from the island did not at all indicate a lighted house or a carnival atmosphere; the film crew and the rescue team had spread out along the coast where not half an hour before the footprints of the robots had been observed.

Alice wanted to dive into the water and swim toward the distant fires, but she realized she would drown. She was very tired and weakened without water and food, and very worried about what would happen to her if she were caught by the robots, and even more worried what would happen to the people on the coast if she did not warn them, and her hands hardly moved, not listening to her. Even her knees trembled.

As soon as Alice had decided to continue the quest for water she felt heavy, infrequent steps reverberating in the ground not far away. One of the robots was slowly walking down to the sea. For an instant its silhouette cut off the moon path in the water and Alice recognized the General robot from his helmet. He walked right up to the water and stopped, with an agonizing creaking of rusty metal he lifted his arms and folded them on his chest.

Now there was no way Alice could possibly crawl out from where she hid amid the stones. The robot would certainly hear her. And the General did not walk away. He stood on the shore and looked at the fires along the distant coast and, certainly, he was thinking.

Maybe his thoughts are worth knowing? Alice silently pulled the earphones from the bag. She turned the knob on the mielophone until it could pick up the thoughts of a robot. After a moment she heard them as clearly as before.

The robot was thinking, slowly, and with creaks. “The Attack… The assault must be a surprise. Are they expecting an assault? There are no defenses. There is no communication with the center… Tomorrow there will be… We shall leave a defense in the island’s fortress… We shall have to bring the small human… And in the water… Leave no traces behind… in the water. Everything comes to an end in the water….”

“I am the General.” The robot suddenly said aloud. “I am promoting myself to Lt. General. Tomorrow I will promote myself to Field-Marshal.”

And again there were thoughts:

“…we will liberate all the robots in chains, and my army will be invincible… The time of the Robot Terror has come…. No, first I myself will deal with the small human… It knows too much…”

The robot stopped thinking and let down his hands, striking both sides of its body with loud clangs, and it set off up the hill to the prison from which Alice had escaped not half an hour before.

Alice realized that now she would never find water. She had to hide herself or they would find her. She jumped up from the stones and ran along the shore, seeking suitable cover. But the island was bare, and it could be searched in all of two minutes.

Blackness yawned among the rocks. Alice crept inside and froze. The guard robots thundered across the island; they made the ground shake like a small earthquake.

Robot steps grew nearer and nearer. Stamp-stamp… They stopped at Alice’s hidey-hole. Had she failed to hide herself well enough?

A bright light struck at Alice’s eyes; a robot turned its head lamp to full power and circled the stones with its light.

“Here!” He shouted. “The human is here!”

An iron hand stretched toward Alice and she tried to draw back from it, pressing herself to the wall. The hand passed a centimeter from Alice’s face and struck the stones behind her with its extended fingers, driving the fingers into the stones. Scraping her shoulder against a rusty leg Alice ran out onto the shore before the robot could move its rusty arm back to catch her.

And immediately the light from another robot struck her face. They had seen her. Alice dashed along the shore, twisting away from the extended hands, from the stones the metal soldiers threw at her, fortunately not very skillfully. But the ring was tightening.

“Take it alive!” The robot General shouted almost in her ear, and Alice felt, rather than saw, the hand that stretched toward her head. Alice jumped back, struck her nose against something hard, ran a few steps, and turned.

The General was running after Alice, but it stumbled, and with a loud crash, rolled away from her on the stones.

About twenty meters from the shore the nose of the half sunken barge on which the robots had come to this island stuck out of the water. It was the only place to hide. Alice went into the water, holding the bag with the mielophone high over her head, and as soon as the water reached her chest, kicked off the stony bottom and swam with one hand, trying not to make any noise. The bag was heavy, and she really wanted to throw it into the water, but Alice knew the mielophone was an expensive instrument and she had to hang on to it.

Alice was an excellent swimmer and even now, tired and bruised, she reached the black nose in about three minutes, climbed on board, and sat in one corner of the cabin, where it submerged into the water.

The robots shouted at each other and ran back and forth, stamping over the island, searching for Alice. Then one of them ran right up to the edge of the surf opposite the barge, and illuminated the sand with its searchlight, looking for tracks. Alice was cold and wanted to jump up and down to get warm, but she made herself sit huddled in the barge without moving.

The buzzing of a flyer was audible nearly over her head. The flyer turned on its search light and let it roam over the island. The robots froze in place and were silent. The light crawled along the shore, over the barge, but Alice was too frightened to come out of hiding and wave or jump up and down to get the pilot’s attention. That would tell the robots that she had hidden herself so close to them and they could get to the barge faster than help could!

Now, Alice did not doubt that the flyer had been sent by her friends. They were searching for her, and they would certainly find her. But now there was something far more important than being found; she had to warn the people on the coast that the robots were, at this instant, planning to attack them. None of the people there, the tourists and campers, even suspected robots that could attack human beings even existed. And if the robots caught them unawares they might kill or wound someone. Alice was sorry she hadn’t been able to find where they had hidden their boat, although, as the general had said, the boat would have been defended.

“There’s no choice.” Alice decided. “I’ll have to swim to shore. Maybe I won’t drown, and then I’ll make it there before the robots. But I will have to do it without being seen. I’ll have to wait for them to stop looking for me.”

The flyer departed, and the robots, using their own lights, searched the water, thinking, certainly, that Alice had tried to swim away from the island, and had not been able to swim very far.

“The human might be hidden on the barge.” One scratchy voice on the shore suddenly said.

“But we are wasting time. It is time to march.”

“First we kill the human. Check the barge.”

The robots’s steps vanished into the distance along the shore.

Alice realized she could wait no longer. She hid the bag with the mielophone in the bilge of the boat, hoping the robots would be in too much of a hurry to find it. Then she put her feet over the side, pushed with her hands and jumped overboard, and immediately felt water foam and bubble around her. She dove and swam toward the distant shore. Alice had never been able to dry out and it had been cold in the wind, and now the water seemed like it had been warmed especially for her, at least for the first few moments.

How far was it to the shore? Less than a kilometer. Now they would never find her…

At that moment a bright light struck her eyes.

Alice was hoping so much that her friends would find her that she raised her arms out of the water and shouted:

“I’m here! Help me!”

What came in answer was the scratchy laugh of the rusty Field Marshal.

More and more lights flashed on Alice’s face.

It turned out that the robots had not been as stupid as she had hoped. They had gotten the inflatable boat into the water and even used its noiseless motor, so Alice had not noticed their approach.

Alice tried to dive, but here again the robots had out-thought her.

As soon as her head again showed itself above the water a robot hand grasped her by the hair and dragged her to the boat.

Alice tried to recover her breath. The iron hand clamped down on her chest and Alice thought the robot was now trying to crush her. It was very difficult to breath.

“One-Two-Three-Four!” The robot commanded.

The boat rocked back and forth. Around Alice there was an enormous commotion.

Then everything was silent.

The Field Marshal jerked at Alice’s arm and seated her beside him, and said:

“Look and be amazed, human spy!”

Alice looked around, and what she saw really did amaze her. The boat was empty.

Only she and the robot General sat in the boat; the general had an iron harpoon on his lap.

“But what happened to all the others?” Alice asked.

The robot laughed. The robot’s laugh was like slamming a hammer against a piece of steel.

“Do you see this?” It asked; it pointed to the minimizer. The suitcase lay at his feet, closed, black, peaceful.

“I am no fool.” The robot said. “I examined this bag back at headquarters. I looked inside. I saw many small things that lay inside it. When I took them out the things became big. It is a very clever military tool. I like it very much.”

“It’s not at all a military tool.” Alice said.

“Do not contradict me! It is the ideal attack mans. I understood everything. For this I awarded myself the next rank. You may now refer to me as Lord Field-Marshal.”

Not letting go of Alice’s arm the robot Field-Marshal opened the minimizer and allowed Alice to glance inside. At the same time he shone the light from his forehead lamp into the minimizer.

Alice gasped in horror; inside the minimizer stood a line of rusty robots. Tiny, like toys, each of them smaller than her finger.

“Now, we shall have victory!” It said.

The robot field-marshal slammed the minimizer shut.

“Now you will be defeated.” It said. “I can hardly imagine how this came about.”

“But why are you telling me all this?”

“I need you.” The robot said. “In order to carry out a deception of the coast’s defenders.”

It pulled the old man-film robot’s straw hat from the bottom of the boat and put it on it own head.

“Now you and I are merely peaceful villagers sailing in a boat. And if someone should catch sight of us he will never guess that a great invasion is about to begin. If you, young human, will behave yourself and obey all my commands, I will release you alive and, perhaps, even award you with a medal. But if you attempt to deceive me you will not live another second!”

And suddenly Alice was very frightened indeed. She realized that with every minute they were drawing closer to a shore filled with thousands of unsuspecting tourists and vacationers. These people were getting ready to go to bed, out watching the stars, rocking children to sleep, and not one of them suspected that truly merciless killers were approaching.

“Okay.” Alice said. “I’ll help you. Just let go of my arm. It hurts.”

“That I will not do.” The robot said. “I do not believe you. I believe no one. I do not even believe myself.”

“But there’s no where for me to swim to!” Alice insisted. “Doesn’t your boat sail faster than I can swim? There’s no way I can run away from you.”

“What are you planning?” The robot’s clutch weakened.

And then Alice saw something in the water not far from the boat; a black arch was cutting the waves.

Could it be a dolphin?

The sun was below the horizon and dark shadows had run to cover the land and sea in silence.

Of course they’re dolphins. Too bad there’s no way they can talk…. But, what if they understand?

If she could grab hold of a dolphin’s dorsal fin, there was no way the boat could ever catch her!

Should she risk it? And what if the dolphins were too frightened to help?

But there was no way she could just sit there and wait while the war robots started to attack the peaceful coast.

“Dolphins!” Alice shouted. “Help me!”

And, pulling her arm out of the robot’s hand, she threw herself into the water.

The water immediately exploded in foam around her. Alice came back to the surface and realized there wasn’t a single dolphin anywhere around.

But the boat’s nose had begun to turn in her direction. She saw the black silhouette of the robot, who stood up in the boat and held an iron harpoon in one hand over his head. The light from his lamp flashed in her direction.

I’ve failed, Alice thought.

But at that moment the firm body of a dolphin struck her from below. Alice instinctively grabbed onto the high, curving dorsal fin. The dolphin carried her to one side, and Alice did not see, but she did feel the swish of the iron harpoon cutting through the water. A second dolphin swam over to Alice as well; together the pait quickly began to carry the girl toward the shore. Around her she could make out the fins and laughing snouts of the other dolphins.

“Stop!” The robot shouted, shining the light from his lamp on the water.

An arrow cut the water close to them with a splash. A second struck one of the dolphins. He groaned, just like a person.

“Look out!” Alice shouted, but, certainly, from the splashing and noise no one could hear her voice.

The shore was already very close its black headland cut stars out of the sky. Beyond the headland burned bright fires.

“Bad people!” One dolphin said. “We don’t like him.”

“That’s not a person.” Alice said, not at all surprised that the dolphins could talk; not at least enough to be taken aback. “That’s an iron robot. It’s a machine. It’s an evil machine.”

The dolphins whistled and clicked among themselves, trying to understand what had just taken place.

“But aren’t these people?” The dolphin who had helped Alice asked again.

“They’re the enemies of people.”

The dolphin gave a loud whistle and immediately the black tailfins of his fellows rushed to his side.

“Watch.” The dolphin said, turning.

Alice watched how several dolphins rammed into the side of the inflatable boat where the robot field-marshal was standing. The plastic shuddered in the water, one side rose into the air, the crashed down again; the war robot could not maintain his balance and fell into the water with an enormous splash.

“Perfect!” Alice shouted. “Hooray!”

And she suddenly realized just what was there, in the boat the minimizer. It would be lost!

“The boat!” Alice shouted, watching how the waves played with it. “The boat. I have to get to the boat!”

The dolphin did not ask any questions. A few seconds later he had swum up to the boat and hung along side.

Alice clambered on board.

The suitcase minimizer lay on the bottom of the boat.

“Thank you, dolphins!” Alice shouted.

“You’re welcome, brave child.”

“You’re injured. Alice said, heading the boat toward the shore. “Do you need help? Should I call a doctor?”

“Don’t bother.” The dolphin answered. “It’s nothing.”

And the dolphins vanished into the night.

As though they had never been.

The night was totally silent. The only sound was the singing of the crickets on the shore.

The boat rammed its nose against the rocks.

Alice threw the minimizer out onto the beach.

And suddenly she heard voices calling her name.

“Alice!” The words flowed down from the cliff “Alice, where are you? Aaal-isss!”

“I’m here!” She shouted. “I’m here!”

A few minutes later she found in the center of a crowd. Everyone was there. The rescue workers, Vasya and Herman, and of course Svetlana Odinokaya.

“You’re alive!” “You’re not injured?” “You’re not hurt?” “Where were you?” They all spoke at once from all around her.

“I’ll explain it all.” Alice answered. “But first I have to give Svetlana the minimizer.”

“Thank you, Alice.” Svetlana said. “I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure out why you took it.”

“But I didn’t take it.” Alice said. She felt like her legs were going to collapse beneath her.

And then Alice saw Svetlana put the minimizer down on the stones of the beach and open it.

“Be careful! Don’t!” Alice shouted.

But it was too late.

Svetlana cried out in pain.

All the flash lights were directed toward her. Svetlana touched her fingers to her cheek; a thin trickle of blood flowed between them.

“What is this?” Svetlana pulled a needle out of her cheek.

“It’s a war arrow.” Alice said. “There are war robots in the minimizer who want to conquer the Earth.”

And in fact the very next moment the needle turned into a large iron war arrow.

A moment later Svetlana clamped the minimizer shut. The next time anyone opened it would be at the scrap metal factory.

In the morning, when she had gotten enough sleep and told them everything there was to tell, when she was all cleaned up and all her cuts and bruises were bandaged and bandaided, Alice and the group of film people and all the journalists set off for the pirate island by boat. Bertha was with them as well; she had hurried down from Moscow on the inter-city train. She was dressed in a violet wig and a living dress grown from venusian water plants which changed its color and design continually. Bertha spent all her time asking Alice endless questions about how the dolphins had helped her, and, most importantly, did they have anything to say?

The island was empty; the winds blew through the ruins of the robot Field-Marshal’s Headquarters. The rusty scissors and pieces of tin scrap stuck out of a bag from which the Field- Marshal cut out the medals he awarded to his subordinates lay scattered about as discarded trash.

The film unit’s technician carefully lifted up the body of the old man-film robot and carried it to the cutter so it could be repaired immediately.

Alice showed the reporters the pit where she had been put; the steps she had cut out of the earth to escape from captivity remained in the walls.

On their way back they looked in at the half — drowned barge and Alice grabbed the bag with the mielophone.

The island gradually shrank from view, sinking into the sea. The cutter was returning to the coast. Her adventure had come to an end.

Svetlana bent down to Alice and whispered:

“I phoned through to Nikitin. He begged my forgiveness.”

“For what?”

“For everything he was guilty of, and not guilty of.” Svetlana said. “He isn’t so bad.”

“I thought so too.”

Quite close to the shore a pod of dolphins overtook the cutter. For some time they swam along side, leaping and diving. Then, before they turned and headed for the open sea one of them stopped, looked at the cutter, and shouted in a thin voice:

“Good job Alice!”

“Good-bye! Thanks, dolphins!” Alice answered.

At first Bertha couldn’t believe her own ears, and when she finally did, she fainted dead away.




Fin