by Kir Bulychev
“Let go of the leash.” I told Alice.
She obeyed me. The Blabberyap bird flew higher and higher, turning into a dot among the clouds, and just as quickly dropped faster than a stone heading for the ground.
“He’s found it.” Poloskov said.
But then we saw that a Crockadee was chasing afer our bird. The huge predator was gaining.
“Shoot!” I shouted to Poloskov.
Our Captain clutched his pistol and fired without aiming. The Crockadee, which had nearly caught up with the Blabberyap, gave a loud squawk, it seemed to loose its trim for a moment, but the bird caught itself and continued its flight over the forest as though nothing had happened.
We rushed to where we had seen the Blabberyap come down. A large green meadow opened up beyond the tangle of bushes. It was surrounded by rounded hills overgrown with trees that could almost be described as paunchy. The Blabberyap bird was no where to be seen.
We stopped at the edge of the field. It was covered with ankle high, silky grass, and along its edges, as though they had been specially planted there, grew some very unusual flowers. Low and very wide, Petals of a metallic color surrounded a center the size of a large plate. The center was mirror bright, an almost convex lens that reflected the whole meadow. The flowers sat on short, fat stems without any leaves.
“Don’t get close to them.” I told Alice. “What if they’re poisonous?”
“No,” Alice said. “I don’t think they are. Look.”
We watched as a small animal similar to a rabbit jumped out of the bushes. The animal hopped up to the flower and looked up into the mirror. Then, just as quietly, as though we had not been there, it hopped back into the bushes.
“Some sort of error.” Poloskov said. “Not a trace of the ship anywhere. The blabberyap was just wrong.”
“Or we were wrong to go running after him as though we were small children.” I said.
“I am thinking just how far it is back to the ship. Maybe we should get Zeleny to come pick us up in the cutter or ATV, but I really don’t want to leave the ship unguarded.”
Alice had gone on to the middle of the field, looking around. She approached one of the flowers. The flower moved to follow her, as though it wanted Alice to look at it.
“Let’s take them back.” Alice said.
“All right.” I answered.
Poloskov pulled the portable metal detector from his pocket and made a circle of the meadow. The metal detector found absolutely nothing.
“There’s no ship here and there probably never was.” Poloskov said finally. “Let’s go back.”
We cut off a bouquet of the mirror flowers. The bouquet was heavy, as though the flowers had been cut from stone. We took turns carrying them, and I more than once wanted to throw away part of them, but Alice would have none of it.
We hardly made it to the ship alive. Fortunately, while we had been away, nothing had happened there.
“Well, how’d it go?” Zeleny asked. “A failure, I take it?”
“A complete and utter failure.” Poloskov answered, taking off his boots and stretching out on the divan in the Crew’s Lounge.
While we spoke Alice dragged in two large pans and filled them with water to keep the Mirror Flowers from drying out.
“Yes.” I said. “The ship was not there. Aside from that we lost the Blabberyap bird. Most likely he’ll end up as hors d’oeves in the diet of the Crockadee.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Poloskov said, laying on the divan. “Tomorrow morning I’ll start in on the metal detector, fix it, and we won’t leave this planet until we’ve found the Captain.”
Something hit me painfully in the leg. It bent down and saw it was the Diamond Backed Turtle.
“How’d it get out here?” I asked Zeleny. “I did lock it in the safe.”
“It made such a racket banging against the sides of the safe I took pity on it.” Zeleny said. “And what re those strange flowers you’ve brought?”
“Mirror flowers.” I answered.
Zeleny walked up to the bouquet and asked again,
“Mirrors?”
“That’s right.”
“Well I’m looking into one now, and it’s not reflecting me at all.” He said.
I turned and realized that Zeleny was competely correct; the mirrored centers of the flowers were reflecting not Zeleny, but Alice. And behind her head I could see the little figures of me and Poloskov. And we were not standing here in the crew’s lounge, but on the circular meadow.
“Now this is very interesting.” I said. “It means these flowers, while they are alive, record everything they reflect, as though they were photographing it.”
“Tuk, tuk, tuk!” The sound shot through the Crew’s Lounge. Poloskov jumped up from the divan and ran to the port.
On the other side of the port sat the Blabberyap bird, pecking at the plast with its beak in order to attract our attention.
“Just think, a bird smart enough to come home to roost.” I said. “I’ll let you in now.”
The blabberyap’s beak opened wide. He said someting, but we could hear nothning through the walls of the ship.
When I ran over to the airlock and opened it, the Blabberyap bird was already waiting for me. He flew into the ship and headed directly for the Crew’s Lounge. I followed after down the corridor. The bird flew uncertainly, then landed on the floor and walked on foot, limping. Poloskov opened the door to the Crew’s Lounge and, on seeing the bird, said:
“Come to gloat over the fine mess you’ve gotten us all into?”
The Blabberyap answered, if not to the point:
“‘I can’t hold out much longer! Is help coming soon?’“
“It’s the voice of the Second Captain.” Alice said. “He’s seen the Second Captain.”
“Alice,” I said, “for all we know the Second Captain may very well have said these words four years ago. You know what a good memory the Blabberyap bird has?”
“No,” Alice said, “he’s seen the Second Captain. We have to go back to the field.”
“No, not right now.” Poloskov answered. “Even my feet are killing me. And you, Alice, you’re ten times more exhausted. And anyway, the Captain wasn’t in the spot where we were. If there had been even a single nut or bolt, even a single screw within a few dozen meters surrounding us the metal detectors would have found it.”
“It only means we have to go a few dozen meters to one side.” Alice said insistently. “And if you’re not going, I’ll go alone.”
“Not before you get a good night’s sleep.” I said sternly. “And then we’re all going back there. We’ve promised that we won’t depart from this planet until we find the Captain, or until we’re convinced that he isn’t here.”
Chapter Seventeen
We Look Into The Past
Living on that planet would have been anything but easy. When we awoke in the morning our ship’s clocks showed seven in the morning, and beyond the ports it was growing dark and the short night had begun again. While we breakfasted the night passed and morning began.
The bright rays of the sun broke into the crew’s lounge and Alice, who had glanced into one of the mirror flowers that stood in a vase on the table, said:
“Look. I’m not here any more.”
The mirror flowers, which yesterday had reflected Alice, now showed us the familiar field where we had found them, but now the field was empty, visited by no one. While we looked into the mirror the field, in all the flowers, grew dark; twilight had come. We looked into the darkened mirrors of the flowers and I said:
“These are odd flowers flower cameras.”
A light had appeared from within the mirror. We all forgot about breakfast. None of us could tear himself away from the remarkable image. Unhurriedly, minute after minute it turned out, the flowers photographed everything that took place on the field. Now they were showing us.
“Now that is interesting. Just how long to these flowers live?” Poloskov thought a
loud.
“I suppose a few days.” I answered. “Like all flowers.”
And immediately we found ourselves looking into the reflection of a small animal similar to a rabbit; it had jumped out of the bushes and hurried toward the flowers. It wasn’t yet dawn in the flower so we did not immediately realize just what was odd about the animal’s movements.
“Hey, he’s jumping with his end backwards.” Alice exclaimed.
The little rabbit-like animal really was approaching the flower with his rear-end forward. And then, having come to a stop in front of the flower, turned around and returned to the bushes in the very same odd manner.
“The movie’s broken.” Alice started to laugh. “Bunglers! Change the film!”
“No.” Poloskov said. “There’s nothing wrong with it. These flowers are not simply mirrors, they are mirror recorders. They might be able to do that if the outer layer which reflects and records grows constantly, layer after layer. Very thin layers. Millions of layers. Just one per image, and each image adds another layer to the flower. And so on. And when the flower is cut iot can no longer manufacture layers to the mirror, and they begin to decay, oe after the other, and as they decay we see what the mirror saw. Only backwards. Like an old fashioned movie fil being run backwards. Clear enough.”
“Quite possible.” I agreed. “A very interesting flower. But it’s time for us to get ready now. Let Poloskov ready for his flight with the resources sattelite and I’ll go down in thee ATV to that field and find out of there are any remains left over from the Blue Gull in the area.”
“I’m going with you Papa.” Alice said. “We can take the Blabberyap bird too.”
“All right.”
I headed down to ready the ATV and Alice remained in the Crew’s Lounge. She found watching the backward images more interesting.
“We’re ready now!” I shouted, sitting behind the wheel. “Want to get going?”
“Right away!” Alice shouted in answer. “Just a second…” and immedeatly she called me: “Papa, come up here! Right away! Before they leave.”
I made it to the steps in three jumps and ran into the Crew’s Lounge. Alice was standing beside the mirror.
“Look.” She said when she heard me enter.
All of the mirror flowers were showing one and the same image. In the middle of the field stood two men, the fat man in the leather buisiness suit and Doctor Verkhovtseff. Beyond the bushes we could see the sharp prow of a high speed starship.
The fat man and Verkhovtseff were arguing about something. Then the two of them walked out of view, backwards.
“They’re somewhere around here.” Alice said. They don’t know that the flowers have betrayed them.”
“Most likely you are right.” I answered. “But why, why?”
“Why what?”
“It must be they don’t know where the Captain is themselves. Otherwise why would they go chasing after the Blabberyap bird?”
“Maybe they have the Captain a prisoner and are afraid we’ll find out. They captured the Captain, imprisoned him, but the bird got away. And that’s what they’re afraid of.”
“But why would anyone want to keep him a captive? You’re being overly imaginative, Alice.”
“And you’re not going to do anything? You’re just going to leave him…”
“No!” I replied.. Inaction is the most feeble pursuit.
“Poloskov, Zeleny, listen. Alice and I were watching the mirror flowers and just saw the fat man and Verkhovtseff in it. That means they were here no more than a day before us. They had a high speed space ship. What do you think? Over?”
“I think the Second Captain is somewhere on this planet.” Poloskov said.
“And I think it’s best that we get out of here now.” Zeleny said. “There are just three of us, and our ship cannot be defended against attack. We should immediately go to a settled planet and get in touch with Earth or Fyxx from there. They can send a special Space Patrol ship that can deal with the unexpected far better than we.”
Zeleny, of course, was entirely reasonable. But he always overestimated difficulties and dangers. So I said:
“So far no one has attacked us. Of course that shouldn’t prevent us from taking defensive measures.”
“Right.” Poloskov agreed with me. “I really do not want to depart right away. For starters, though, we can do everything in our power to help the Second Captain.”
“Right.” Alice said.
“Now that’s unbelievable.” Zeleny said. “You can think that I’m being cowardly if you want, but I’m just trying to be rational. All we have on board are a kid and a lot of defenseless animals. We could end up being in a lot of trouble and not helping the Captain at all. But if Captain Poloskov decides that we have to remain, I’ll fight to the last bullet.”
“It won’t come to that.” I said. “I hope. We came here to discover if one of the Three Captain’s suffered misfortune or not. We’re not getting ready to attack someone and we don’t want to fight.”
“And for a kid I’m not that defenseless.” Alice said. “Can we go to the meadow?”
“Hold on.” I said. “Let’s do some more looking in that mirror.
But the mirrors showed us nothing. Not being able to wait Alice and I got into the ATV and circled the area of the meadow in it. We found only the traces of the landing of a ship on the other side of the hills. The ground had been churned up by heavy engines, and a narrow path run through the bushes toward the field.
We returned toward suppertime and found Zeleny in the Crew’s Lounge. He was standing in front of the mirror flowers in a pensive mood and twisting the ends of his beard in one fingers of one hand. In the other hand he held a vibroblade.
“And what are you thinking, Zeleny?” I asked.
“I’m wondering….” The engineer answered.
Reflected in the mirror was a quiet, sun drenched day.
“I am wondering,” Zeleny continued, “just how long these flowers live.”
“Probably some days.” I said.
“But what if they live not a few days but a large number of years? What if, year after year, they record everything that happens around them? Look how thick the mirrors are at least six centimeters each! And very dense. Over the last two days while we’ve had them I haven’t noticed them getting any thinner. Alice, do you mind if I perform an operation on one of the flowers?”
“Go ahead.” Alice said. She realized what was going to happen immediately.
Zeleny placed one of the flowers on the table in the laboratory, held it in place with clamps, and began a delicate operation.
“I’ll take off a little over a centimeter.” He said.
“Wait up.” I interrupted the engineer. “Start with the thinnest layer you can. Perhaps nothing will come of it.”
Zeleny nodded to me and turned on the vibroblade. The empathicator, white from curiosity, came out of its corner and silently padded nearer on its stick like legs. The bushes rustled their branches in their cage, thinking we were going to give them fruit juice. The Sewing Spider stopped knitting its scarf.
A thin, transparent layer similar to cellophane tape separated from the mirror. Zeleny carefully pulled it away and placed it on the table.
For several seconds the mirror remained dark, but at the very moment that I had already concluded we would be seeing nothing else the mirror suddenly lit up again, this time reflecting a windy, overcast day.
“That’s right!” Alice said. “We’ll be going deeper and deeper into the past!”
“But how are we going to calculate the days.” I spoke aloud. “We don’t know how think the layer of a single day is.”
Zeleny was not listening to me. He placed the blade to the mirror’s edge immediately removed half a centimeter of the mirror’s thickness. The layer straightened out. The Empathicator, changing colors like a traffic lamp at a busy intersection from impatience, was unable to contian itself and pressed its long, thin nose beneath Zeleny’
s hand.
“That does it!” Zeleny grew angry. “I cannot work if you keep getting in my way.
“It wasn’t on purpose.” Alice spoke up for the Empathicator. “He just finds it interesting.”
“He finds everything interesting.” Zeleny said. “But I would not vouch for him.”
“Continue.” I asked.
Zeleny carefully removed another layer.
“Like the glass in an window, only it’s started to decay.” He said. We all bent down over the slightly thinner darkened mirror.
Then it lightened slightly, and then there was the very same field, but, but only the grass had become stormy, the bushes were bare, the leaves remaining on the trees had turned yellow. Neither butterfly nor bee was to be seen, it was oppressive and gloomy. Occasional gusts of snow fell from the overcast sky, but failed to accumulate on the ground as the flakes slowly melted in the grass.
“Late fall.” Alice said.
“Late fall, all right.” Zeleny agreed. He raised a magnifying glass to the mirror and said: “It isn’t visible ordinarily, but it’s very interesting to see how the the snow flakes appear on the bushes and then fly off into the sky.”
Each of us took our turn watching the backwards snowfall. Even the Empathicator took a look and turned a satisfied hue from surprise.
“How long has it been since fall?” Zeleny asked me.
“It’s summer now.” I answered. “The planet takes a little over fourteen terrestrial months to orbit its star for one local year. That means, just about one Earth-year ago.”
“A-ha!” Zeleny said, and pulled a micrometer from his workbelt. “No,” he said, “we may precisely determine how much one year is to a mirror flower…
“….and just how much I need to take from it in order to see the field as it was four years ago.” Alice finished the sentence for him.
“For starters,” Zeleny said, “we’ll cut away a little less than four years from the mirror.”
“Are you certain you won’t overshoot?” I asked. “If you cut off too much then we’ll miss the moment when the Second Captain was here.”
“Going too far won’t be a problem.” Zeleny said, marking off a thick layer. “We do have a whole bouquet.”