Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир - Страница 55

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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.”

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