Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир - Страница 62

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“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.”

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.”

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