by Kir Bulychev
I walked over to the port and looked out into the half darkness. The plain was a barren waste people were slowly walking toward our ship across down the valley. They were Earth humans or very close, without space suits and helmets, in very strange clothing. They were carrying on a conversation among themselves and, it seems, had not at all noticed the ship. I whispered:
“Alice, take a look.”
Alice threw her book down on the couch and ran to my side.
The people came closer and closer and we could make out that they were dressed in camisoles, with enormously broad brimmed hats on their heads, and on top of the camisoles they had short capes. Four of them were men. Behind the men came a woman, slowly as if she were unwilling, with her hair done in an elaborate style on the top of her head and wearing a wide dress that went down to the ground. The men were arguing heatedly, the woman was silent.
“Alice, could this be a hallucination?” I asked, not believing my own eyes.
“No.” Alice answered. “Don’t frighten them off. I know them.”
“Seleznev!” The loudspeaker barked. “Seleznev, are you sleeping?”
I recognized Poloskov’s voice.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“On the bridge. Take a look out the port. Do you understand what’s going on.”
“I’m looking now.” I answered. “And I don’t understand anything at all. Where could people have come from out here?”
“But I understand it.” Alice said. “I know who these people are.”
I turned toward Alice.
“How come you don’t know them, Papa?” Alice sounded astonished. “Okay, maybe you’d forget the woman, but the second man from the right you have to know!”
“No I do not!” I answered. “Stop fooling around and tell me!”
“The second from the right, that’s Porthos.” Alice said. “Look, see how he’s bending down to d’Artangnan, listening to him. They must have decided to execute Milady de Winter after all.”
“What are you talking about, Milady de Winter?” I started to shout. “I must have gone mad. Where would Porthos have come from out here?”
“I don’t know.” Alice said. “But that’s them. The Musketeers of the King. If they had been the Cardinal’s guards we’d have known right away.”
“Poloskov, are you listening to this?”
“Of course I am.” Poloskov said calmly. “I’d say that Alice is completely correct. You could tell the Cardinal’s guards apart from the Musketeers right away.”
While we were speaking the four Musketeers had walked right up to our ship. I pressed my nose to the port to see what they would do next. The Musketeers stopped, and one of them I would guess it was Aramis, the handsome man with the thin moustache, waved his hand in an elegant bow to ask Milady to go forward.
“All very interesting.” Alice said, standing on tiptoe to get a better look down. “Are they going to execute her or not? What do you think, Papa.”
“I’m not yet thinking anything at all.” I answered. “Poloskov, can the steps be lowered?”
And suddenly the Musketeers walked further, right into the wall of the ship and vanished.
“They’re walking right through the wall.” I heard Poloskov’s excited voice.
Astonishing Captain Poloskov is difficult. He’s seen things ten times larger, ten times more amazing, ten times more mysterious than the ordinary man. Neither the Dragonelle Minor, Iely Jellybladders from Iely, nor space pirates frighten him. But Musketeers of the King, taking a stroll through the very walls of the Pegasus, are something he’s never seen before.
“Maybe they’re time travelers too, like the Sheshinerians?” I asked.
Alice ran over to the other side of the Crew’s Lounge and looked out the portal opposite.
“There they are.” Alice said. “Just like I thought. They walked right through the ship and didn’t even notice it.”
I ran to the other side of the Crew’s Lounge myself. And in fact the Musketeers had alked right through the ship as through it were not there, their swords glistening under the light of the two moons. They passed some rocks and vanished down a gorge.
“Let’s go up to the bridge.” I said to Alice. “We can get a better look from there.”
“All right.” Alice said and picked up the book she had been reading all night from the divan. The book’s title read The Three Musketeers.
That started me thinking.
“Hand me that book.” I told Alice.
On our way up to the bride I flipped through the copy. I flipped it open immediately to a picture which illustrated one of the King’s Musketeers D’Artagnan in a cape with his sword.
When we ran up to the bridge Poloskov, who had been standing beside the main port, raised his hand and called us forward.
Beyond the port, in the middle of the plain, stood a thin birch tree, its leaves rustling in the wind as if alive. Around the birch tree the ground was covered with grass, and you could see the hood of a large mushroom growing in the tree’s roots.
“This is somehow familiar.” Poloskov said thoughtfully. “I’ve seen it somewhere.”
“I know where.” Alice said. “It’s Zeleny’s favorite post card. It’s hanging over his bed in his cabin. He always looks at it when he reads poetry aloud. ‘….one last landing, on the globe that gave us birth….’“
“Mirages.” Poloskov said.
“Yes.” I agreed. “Of course they’re mirages, illusions, and the Blabberyap bird did not err when it warned us in the Second Captain’s voice about them. But who’s making them and why. To whom do we owe this rare amusement?”
The birch tree vanished in the darkness and we saw a strange procession moving in the direction of the Pegasus from the far side of the hill. It contained human beings, Fyxxians, beings from worlds and stars unknown to us, animals and robots. A crowd of mirages surrounded the ship as if they did not notice us. They walked straight through us, vanished into mist, split in two, and walked straight through each other.
“Pop,” Alice said, “Let’s go get a close up look at them.”
“I can see it all from here.” I objected. “We don’t know their capabilities. What if they’re not as harmless and insubstantial as they appear.”
We watched the wraith parade for a long time, and when the plain had finally emptied again, Alice began to plead again.
“Look Daddy, let’s go down before it’s too late. Hey, take a look at that. There’s just one mirage left, D’Artagnan.”
And in fact only a single Musketeer was left on the emptied plain; he began to walk back and forth not far from the ship.
“Go on.” Poloskov said. “Just don’t get too far from the ship. I’ll be watching to make certain nothing happens.”
As always, Poloskov guessed my desire. Of course I wanted to get a close look at our phantoms desperately. I was just worried that something might happen to Alice, but leaving the ship without her would have required a long and finally fruitless argument. She thought of the mirages as her own after all, she was the first to think of the Three Musketeers.
We went down the steps onto the plain. The land as completely empty. Even d’Artagnan had vanished.
“Let’s wait.” Alice said. “They’re bound to come again.”
I walked over to the spot where, not so long ago, there had been a birch tree. The only ground cover was small round stones, neither grass nor trace of leaf.
“Look at who’s coming, Pop.” Alice said. “Wouldn’t you know it!”
I raised my head and shuddered. Coming toward us I saw myself, holding Alice by the hand. For some reason we both were without space suits and helmets, wearing running shoes and, it seems, completely lacking any need to breath.
Alice ran forward to meet herself.
“Stop!” I shouted at her. “Where are you going?”
But Alice had already reached her double and run right through her, tripped on a stone and fell onto her knees. The mirage i
mmediately vanished. While I hurried to Alice’s aid a new mirage appeared. He moved very quickly toward Alice, as though he wanted to grab her. But this mirage depicted Doctor Verkhovtseff. His hat was pulled down to his eyes and his sharp, narrow shoulders raised almost as high as his ears.
I stood between the mirage and Alice, shielding her, because I was not entirely certain that Verkhovtseff was just an illusion.
But the doctor did not notice Alice. He was walking in a straight line, laughing, as though he had seen someone. I looked ahead of him. Coming to meet Verkhovtseff was the fat man in the black leather suit. They shook hands and, their heads close together for conspiracy, began to argue about something.
Alice got to her feet and took my hand.
“There’s no way you can keep secrets on this planet.” She said. “So now we know that the fat man and Verkhovtseff are friends and they had some reason to try and get the Blabberyap bird from us.”
The mirages conversed soundlessly, and from the other side approached yet one more mirage. It depicted the Three Captains. But not made out of stone, like we had seen on the Three Captain’s Planet, but the real Captains in the blue uniforms of the Space Fleet. The Captain’s stopped, clasped each other’s hands as if saying good-bye. And immediately they wavered and vanished. In their place stood just one of the Captains, the Second. Tall, thin, with a curved nose. The Captain stood pensively, as though thinking of something. On his shoulder sat the Blabberyap bird. The Captain took a very long look around the valley and quickly headed for yet another mirage which had grown on the horizon. The mirage was a starship, blue, except where its hull had been inlaid with precious stones in the form of an enormous, dark blue gull.
And then the mirages dissipated. Verkhovtseff and the fat man vanished as well.
“I’ve never seen such a beautiful ship before.”
Poloskov’s voice came through my ear phones:
“Listen, Professor; you say you’ve never seen such a beautiful ship before? That must have been the Second Captain’s Blue Gull.”
“Of course.” Alice said. “Could it have been hidden somewhere around here? We have to find it!”
From the horizon where the Blue Gull had stood came a flash of light; we watched the ship rise from the ground and leave the planet.
“So your mirage flew away.” Zeleny said. “I would have thought so.”
“Yes, right after that the Blue Gull departed.” Poloskov agreed with him.
I bent down over the spot where Alice had fallen while running toward our doubles. I bent down because I had seen something very curious: two roundish stones were slowly rocking, as though someone had touched them. But no one had. Even the wind had died away. I reached out to touch one of the stones but it moved away from my hand, and suddenly a mirage began to grow from the stone. At first it was misty, almost transparent, but then it became Milady de Winter. Milady de Winter ran for the hills holding her skirts in her hands.
“Don’t go!” I said aloud. “Just like I thought. There are no miracles here!”
I jumped forward as thought I wanted to grab Milady de Winter; at the moment when I reached the spot where she stood, the mirage vanished. Under my hands lay a round stone.
“What have you got?” Alice asked. “Why did you chase after Milady?”
“I caught her.” I said.
Zeleny snorted a laugh.
“Nothing at all like that happened. Your Milady de Winter just up and vanished without a trace.”
“Actually, she’s in my hand.” I said. “So let’s return to the ship and I’ll explain it all.”
Back in the Crew’s Lounge I placed a roundish stone on the table, as well as another five like it that I had picked up on the way back to the ship. The little stones lay peacefully in a row. Quite ordinary stones, each about the size of a small potato, looking in fact like small, hard potatoes.
“Let me present this planet’s inhabitants.” I said.
“They’re living beings?” Zeleny was astonished. “I would never have guessed that.”
“With a very interesting ability. They can generate optical illusions copies of people, objects, not only what they have themselves seen for example the Three Captains or Doctor Verkhovtseff, but what they pick up from the minds and imaginations of visitors. Thus, for example, Alice was reading The Three Musketeers, she saw the book’s illustration and imagined how the Musketeers must have looked, and we in turn saw them. They were, Alice, exactly as you imagined them?”
“Exactly.” Alice said.
“As to whatever these stones might need mirages for, why they evolved the ability, I haven’t a clue.”
“Maybe they are just bored?” Alice asked. “All they do is lay around on the empty ground and get bored. So any visitor, any guest for them is just a marvelous diversion.”
“Anything else might be.” I agreed. “So, do we search here or fly to the third planet?”
“I suspect the third planet will be more interesting.” Poloskov said. “I looked at the long range photos and there was air, water, and vegetation.”
Then one of the stones turned itself into the Second Captain. The Captain looked at us with vast sadness in his eyes, but the Blabberyap bird said in his voice:
“‘Search for me on the third planet. Search on the third planet.’“
“There, you see!” Alice said.
We immediately took off for the third planet in the Medusa system.
Chapter Fifteen
The Crockadee’s Nest
Four suns rose and set quickly in the fast spinning planet’s sky, and nights were scarce and short; without some complicated calculations no one could determine at which moment it might suddenly become dark, the short twilight flash past and a short night settle over that part of the planet. Half an hour would pass, sometimes less, and another close star rose above the thorny bushes and temporarily rose into the sky.
The planet was overgrown with forests and underbrush. At the poles the forests were low and huddled close to the ground; in the tropics they rose to unbelievable heights.
The world turned out to be heaven for a biologist. What didn’t this planet have! The oceans overflowed with fish, jelly fish, crustaceans, sea snakes, the forests were filled with every imaginable kind of animal and butterflies with wings a meter long; different kinds of birds flew over our heads, to the jagged crags of the mountains and the endless hills.
“We can stay here a while.” I said when we climbed to the top of a hill overgrown with bushes. “One planet like this could fill fifty zoos.”
“Great.” Poloskov said. “First thing we can do is carry out some repairs to the ship.”
“That’s fine.” Alice said. “But for starters we have to find the Second Captain. I’m certain he’s around here somewhere.”
“Just don’t go off in search of him on your own.” I warned Alice. “There are some very dangerous animals around here.”
“But I’m the Queen of the Natural World.” Alice said.
“The animals here might not know about that.” I said. “It might not be something covered in their educational system.”
“Then how are we going to find the Second Captain?” Alice asked.
“First thing we’ll do is orbit a scanning satellite over the planet.” Poloskov said. “And have it hunt for metal concentrations.”
“Why?”
“As soon as it locates the traces of metals used in space ships it will let us know.”
“How long will that take?”
“To do a thorough job, about two weeks.”
“That long!”
“And in the mean time you can help me.” I said. “I dub thee Feeder of Animals.”
“And Waterer of Bushes.” Alice added. “Except they’ve run all over the place and I can’t find them.”
At that moment the youngest of the wanderbushes pushed his way into the crew’s lounge and timidly stopped in the doorway. He shook his branches and began to sing, trying to make
us understand that he wanted fruit juice.
“Here he is now.” Zeleny the engineer aid. “It’s all your fault for spoiling him. Soon he’ll be old enough to bite. Give him his fruit juice, God love ‘im.”
The next day we rose early, at the break of dawn. Poloskov unpacked and programmed the metal detector while I loaded nets and the survey camera into the all terrain vehicle.
We were so occupied with our own work that we missed the moment the Crockadee bird put in its appearance. All I saw was that some sort of shadow had fallen on me and I heard the beating of wings that sounded more like beaten sails.
“Down!” Poloskov shouted.
I fell onto the grass.
The claws snapped shut right over my head and the Crockadee, having missed me, beat its wings to gain altitude in order to make another run.
It was only then that I managed to get a look at it.
It was an enormous monster about the same size as a small passenger flyer. It had very narrow, long wings, a short tail and powerful, clenched claws, like the claw of a steam shovel. The bird made a narrow circle, and, like a dive bomber, headed back down out of the sky towards me.
I tried to crawl away but realized I would never make it.
I closed my eyes shut and clung tightly to the ATV’s wheel. At that moment a shot rang out.
As it happened the engineer Zeleny was able to run to the airlock, grab a pistol and shoot at the bird when it was all of three meters from me.
The bird beat its wings and rose higher and higher into the air. One of its feathers fell and landed beside me. The feather was about a meter long and so hard that its end was driven into the dry ground to stand upright like a knight’s sword.
I pulled the feather out of the ground and showed it to Alice.
“Listen,” I told her, “the owner of this feather is extremely angry and would really like to have one of us over for dinner. You know what I mean?”
“I understand. But it can’t carry away the ATV, can it?”
“No, it can’t/”
So I’ll go with you in the ATV.”
“No, Alice.” I told her. “I’m going out on a reconnaissance now and I’ll be back around supper time. All of us, other than you, are very busy. No one else even to prepare supper and feed the animals. And don’t forget that the Sewing Spider is going to run out of silk.”