Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир - Страница 51
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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.”
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