Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир - Страница 43

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“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.”

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:

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