Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир - Страница 13

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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.

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.

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