Alice: The Girl From Earth

by Kir Bulychev

  “I think this is the very same Blabberyap which belonged to the First Captain and which he gave to the Second when they split up.”

  “Could it be that Verkhovtseff was chasing after all the Blabberyaps because he wanted to get his hands specially on this one?” Alice asked.

  “But what did he want this Blabberyap bird for?” I asked.

  “What else! We know the Second Captain vanished without a trace; no one knows where he is. We know that he had the Blabberyap bird…”

  “Of course!” The engineer Zeleny cut in. “That’s it. Our kid’s right on target. There’s no Captain, but the Blabberyap bird is here, and that means the Blabberyap knows where the Captain is. And Verkhovtseff wants to find that out himself.”

  “But why make such a mystery of it?” I asked him. “We’d be willing to help him, with pleasure.”

  The sound of knocking interrupted us. Someone had come a-visiting.

  I went down to the airlock and opened it. The fat man in the black leather suit was standing on the gangway.

  “I beg your pardon for this intrusion,” he oozed. “I would like to make amends for my behavior in the market place. I was so desperate to obtain a living Blabberyap bird that I fear I could not contain myself.”

  “Quite all right,” I answered. “We weren’t offended. But there is no way we could possibly part with the Blabberyap bird.”

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t want you to part with it,” the fat man said cheerfully. “But I simply must do something to better the terrible impression I must have made. Please, you cannot refuse to do me the honor of accepting this as a parting gift.”

  He held out a very rare animal indeed, a diamond backed turtle from Menata. The turtle’s shell was composed of real diamonds and flashed so brightly it hurt your eyes to look at it.

  “Please, accept it,” the Fat Man said. “I still do have three.”

  Naturally I was less than eager to take a gift from such a strange individual one really has to show some caution but there wasn’t a single diamond-backed turtle in any of Earth’s zoos! We had been searching for one for five years, and now we had found someone who just gave us one!

  “Please do not refuse,” the Fat Man said. “Fare thee well. Perhaps we will meet again. Bear in mind, I am known on a hundred planets. My name is Veselchak U.”

  And he stamped his feet on the steps, went down the gangway and jumped up on the moving walkway that led in the direction of Palaputra.

  It had already grown dark; both suns had set almost simultaneously, although from different spots on the horizon, and two sunsets fell over the space port, one prettier than the other, and I found myself thinking how pointless it was to think the worst of people. That fat man, for example, was a true amateur biologist, yet he had not hesitated to give us this rare animal as a gift.

  So I returned to the crew’s lounge in a very fine mood and showed my friends the gift. The turtle moved from one of my hands to the other, and everyone admired the superb play of light on the diamonds that composed the shell.

  “So where do we go from here?” Poloskov asked after dinner.

  “For the Sklisses.” Alice said. “On the planet Sheshineru.”

  “Why not?” I agreed. “We were planning to go there anyway.”

  It was at that moment that the Blabberyap bird, which hitherto had been sitting peacefully in its cage and looking down on us drinking tea, began to speak again.

  “You’re planning to leave,” he asked in the First Captain’s voice.

  “Yes, I’m flying to meet him,” the Blabberyap bird answered himself in the Second Captain’s voice.

  “All right then. Second, if there’s trouble, don’t hesitate to call on me.’

  “If I can.”

  “Take the Blabberyap bird. You can tell him everything. I know how to get him to repeat it. Give the bird all the details.”

  “Until we meet again, then.”

  “Until we meet again.”

  The Blabberyap bird grew silent.

  “Well, you heard it, Poloskov?” Alice asked.

  “Of course I heard it; don’t shout,” Poloskov answered and started to think.

  The Blabberyap bird nodded its golden crown, as though considering whether it should continue or not. Abruptly it spoke very slowly in the Second Captain’s voice:

  “Set course for the Medusa system.”

  We waited in the expectation that the bird might speak again, but the Blabberyap bird closed its eyes and tucked its head beneath its wing.

  “So, the Second Captain got into trouble and sent the Blabberyap bird for help,” Alice said. “Now how can we get it to tell us more?”

  “Hold on,” I spoke up. “Just what is it you’ve decided? Remember, the Blabberyap bird did not fly to Venus where the First Captain is working, but returned to its home planet. That means that no one sent it anywhere. The Second Captain might have just died, and the bird went home.”

  “It really could have been anything,” Poloskov said, and got up from behind the table.

  He left the crew’s lounge and returned in five minutes, carrying with him the Galactic Map. He placed it on the table, pushing aside some tea cups, and pressed the control. The holographic image sprang into existence above the table. He pointed to the edge of the map.

  “Here.” he said, “this is the Medusa system. Completely unexplored. The star has planets. I propose we fly there. If the Captain is alive, we may be able to help him. If he has died, at the very least we will find out what happened! And where.”

  “But he could very well have perished in space.” I objected.

  “And just what could have happened to the great Captain in space?”

  “His ship could have exploded, for example.”

  “And would not the Blabberyap bird have exploded with it?”

  “Well, anything at all could have happened!”

  I fell silent. In the final analysis, the expedition had its own questions, and it was totally unknown if the planets of the Medusa system had any sort of life forms at all. The flight to the star and our return would take up most of the time allotted to the expedition. And we really did not know anything other than what we had heard the bird say. What if the Captain had spent some time there, and then gone off to another part of the Galaxy and perished there? I mentioned this to my colleagues, but the longer I spoke the less convinced I was of the rightness of my arguments, and the more I knew that I had failed to convince either Poloskov or Alice. “Fine,” I said finally. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Just let’s make a stop at Sheshineru first. We really have to find out what a Skliss is.”

  “Agreed.” Poloskov moved his finger through the map. “This is our route, then; along the way we should be able to stop on various planets and search for rare animals for the Zoo.”

  “And now it’s time to sleep.” I said. “We’ll depart tomorrow morning. Are all the animals fed and watered?”

  “A-Okay Boss Expedition Leader Sir,” Alice, who was responsible for the feeding of the animals, answered.

  “And where is the diamond-backed turtle?” I asked.”

  “It was here just a moment ago.” Poloskov said. “Where is it now?”

  We wasted an entire hour crawling all over the ship and only found the diamond-backed turtle with the aid of the Empathicator, who had hunted it down right in the air lock.

  “It’s obvious it wants to run away.” Zeleny said. “Just like I warned. We’ll have to keep a constant eye on this turtle.”

  The Empathicator became a bright yellow.

  I dug out the table listing the Empathicator’s colors and feelings they indicated which the two-headed snake gave me, and said:

  “A yellow color indicates distrust.”

  “Don’t believe the turtle?” Zeleny asked the Empathicator. “Neither do I.”

  The Empathicator became so yellow it outshone even the light of the lamp.

  “Oh well,” I said then. “I’ll confine him in his cage.
”

  The Empathicator remained just as yellow, but black bands ran up and down its spine. The table advised us that black bands on a yellow background indicated disagreement.

  “Oh, all right.” I said. “If you distrust it that much we’ll lock it in the safe for the night.”

  When I spoke the Empathicator turned a delighted dark green.

  Chapter Twelve

  An unfortunate Discovery

  By the time the Pegasus arrived at the planet Sheshineru the gifts and cargo that had filled its holds had for the most part found their way to their diverse destinations. You could finally walk down the corridors and not bump into packages, bags and containers.

  We had crossed about a third of the Galaxy already and found ourselves in regions where scheduled freighters and liners from Earth never ventured.

  The planet Sheshineru lays far from any of the great commerce routes. It’s natural world is notably poor; it’s only been three hundred years now since it was empty and uninhabited, but then colonists came from Rozodor, established oceans and an atmosphere, planted forests and lawns.

  We would not even have bothered wasting time with a landing but Doctor Verkhovtseff had told us, back on the Three Captains World, that he had heard about an animal on the planet called a Skliss.

  The Pegasus landed on the planet in the dead of night, in a field not far from the flickering lights of a medium sized city. We landed silently so as not to awaken the citizens and not to frighten them; very few ships ever reach Sheshineru and only a few of its citizens have ever seen aliens.

  The engines were turned off, the engineer Zeleny stroked his beard and lay down to get some sleep; Captain Poloskov remained on the bridge to make some corrections in navigation charts that were long out of date. Alice began to write a letter to her grandmother, planning to transmit it from Sheshineru, and I went down to the first hold to choose an empty cage for the Skliss and feed the animals we already had aboard.

  The ship was quiet and dark; I hardly made a sound as I walked on the soft carpet and thought about how we had to restock our water supplies on Sheshineru and obtain silk for the Sewing Spider. One of the wander bushes approached me from behind one corner and I told it:

  “Go to sleep right away! Or I will not water you tomorrow.”

  The wander bush waved and rustled its leaves in horror and drew back into its own section.

  Suddenly I heard the sound of someone chewing food. Someone something had crept into the store room where we were keeping the remaining gifts. I stopped and listened carefully. I couldn’t tell which of the animals had gotten out of its cage, and not all of them were the sort I would want to approach with empty hands.

  I very carefully looked into the store room’s open door. The room was empty. But the chewing became all the louder. I went inside. The chewing came from the closed door of the refrigerator where we were keeping the pineapples.

  My eyes widened when I saw that the key to the refrigerator was hanging in its spot on the outside and no one could have gotten into the refrigerator and then closed it behind them without the key.

  Slowly I extended my hand to the latch, turned it and pulled the door open.

  On one of the shelves, shivering from the cold, sat a little green man, his long thin teeth gnawing one of the pineapples.

  In terror the little person raised his eyes and clutched the pineapple to his chest.

  “You will not be able to.” He said.

  “Go on, finish the pineapple.” I answered. “But how in blazes did you ever get in here?”

  “They won’t even let you eat in peace.” The little man said and vanished together with the pineapple.

  I rubbed my eyes. The refrigerator was empty. Three pineapples were gone from the shelves. Something then touched my feet and I jumped back in shock.

  It turned out that it was just one of the wander bushes wandering about the hold.

  “Go to bed!” I shouted at it, although I usually never shout at animals or moving plants.

  The bush picked up its branches and turned on its heels.

  I looked inside the refrigerator again. A little green man stood inside with his back to me, raising on his tiptoes, trying to drag a large pineapple from the shelf.

  “Stop that!” I shouted.

  The little man turned to look at me and I realized that this wasn’t at all the same little thief who had been eating the pineapple three seconds ago.

  “Oh, don’t get in a bother.” The little man said. “I do have permission.”

  And he immediately vanished, carrying away the pineapple.

  Previously in my life I had been spared from such wonders. My head even started to whirl. I looked into the refrigerator with what must have been the stupidest of all look’s on my face; as though someone could hide himself in its depths!

  At the very same moment something touched me; a third green person was standing on the shelf.

  “Don’t get upset.” He said. “My error.” Immediately he reached for a pineapple.

  “Hey, what the Devil’s going on here?” I growled. “Where are you from?

  “I live here.” The little person said, took the pineapple, and vanished into thin air.

  That was more than I could stand. I pressed the button on my com and called Poloskov.

  “Gennady,” I asked, “are you sleeping?”

  “No.” Our Captain answered. “Working. And what’s happened to your voice?”

  “My voice? Nothing.”

  “It’s four octaves higher than it normally is. Has anything happened?”

  “Tell me, Gennady, is the ship’s airlock sealed?”

  “Of course it is. No one can get in.”

  “And Zeleny is sleeping?”

  “He is. So is Alice. I just checked them. Alice was writing a letter and fell asleep halfway done. What’s going on?”

  “Do you know of any cases.. instances… occurrences…of little green men appearing to people?”

  “Little?” Poloskov asked industriously. “The type that sit on your shoulder? With tails perhaps? I do seem to recall reading about that somewhere, in a very old book.”

  “No” I answered, “somewhat larger, without tails, and with a taste for pineapple. And one’s right here now! Here! The fourth!”

  And in fact yet another little robber had appeared in the refrigerator, winked at me, and vanished.

  “ I’m coming.” Poloskov said to assure me. “Don’t do anything precipitate. Get a hand on yourself…”

  By the time Poloskov began is run from the bridge to the hold less than half of our stock of pineapples remained on the shelves, and right away two green, little persons appeared and were giving each other a hand up to get to the refrigerator’s top shelf.

  “Don’t let it frighten you.” Poloskov said. “That has to be a hallucination.”

  “What do you mean calling me a hallucination!” One little green man was outraged. “You can touch me.”

  “Sometimes.” The second interrupted him.

  “Give our regards to Alice.” The first said.

  And the pair of them vanished, just in time to make room for another.

  “Alice is really sleeping?” I asked Poloskov.

  “Definitely.”

  “Then however did they learn of her?”

  “I can’t begin to guess. This must be some sort of madhouse.

  The refrigerator was finally empty. No one else had appeared fora while.

  “Then let’s close the door.” Poloskov said. “It will be quieter.

  I slammed the door of the refrigerator shut.

  “Where could they have learned about Alice?” I repeated. “We only landed here an hour ago and no one has been outside.

  Poloskov and I remained awake, trying to think of an explanation for the strange phenomena, but we thought of nothing. Several times we checked the bolts on the airlock doors and walked around the ship. It remained empty, quiet, and peaceful.

  In any event I
spent the night in Alice’s cabin, an uncomfortable situation because the deck cover was hard and I had to share the space with Alice’s plastic swim fins.

  Fortunately, I got up before Alice and when my daughter opened her eyes I was already sitting in the side chair and thumbing through “Guidebook To The Inhabited Planets” as though nothing had happened.

  “What are you doing in here?” Alice asked.

  “I wanted to check on something in your library what do the locals look like?”

  “Then why do you look like you spent the night on the floor?”

  I flipped the book shut, took a look at myself in her mirror, and hurried off to my own cabin to fix myself up, where, in the process of washing my face, I almost convinced myself that there were no little green men, that it was all a mirage, a dream, a delusion.

  With those thoughts in my mind I went down to the hold to take a look in the refrigerator.

  The refrigerator was open, absolutely empty not a trace of a pineapple remained with a pensive Poloskov standing in front of it.

  “In general, I suppose the locals have learned how to walk through walls.” He said. “Although it goes against all the laws of nature as I understand them.”

  “No, those certainly can’t be the local inhabitants.” I said. “Most likely we managed to pick up members of some sort of parasitic civilization while in space.”

  Right then Alice came into the hold.

  “Good morning, Captain Poloskov.” She said. “Where did you put the pineapples?”

  “They stole them.” Poloskov said. “And we’re considering how to punish the thief.”

  “Who?” Alice was surprised.

  “Little green devils.” Poloskov answered. “Just let me get my hands on them! You can only imagine what they’ll think of me on Rotweiss! They were expecting those pineapples… There’s one, grab him!”

  As he spoke a little green man appeared suddenly in the refrigerator; he took one look at the empty shelves sand said, not even looking at us: “Darn it! Too late!” and promptly vanished.

  “That’s him.” Poloskov repeated. “And you can’t even catch him.”