by Kir Bulychev
The fat man bit his lips and shut up.
I led two of the pirates, who dragged the unmoving body of Krys, onto the ship. Poloskov came with me because he did not trust the pirates. We locked Krys into our strongest cage and returned. When we got back they were talking about something else.
“Now how do we get out of here?” The First Captain asked the fat man.
“If you promise me my life, I will help you leave.” The fat man said. “Otherwise, why should I help you? No one besides me knows how to open the cover to the cavern. And its made of such strong stone that you couldn’t open it even with gravity bombs.”
“If you don’t want to talk, don’t..” The First Captain laughed. “We can wait until hour friend Krys awakens and I have no doubt he will be delighted to help us.”
The two Captains stood side by side, one of them sunburned and healthy and dressed in a new space suit, the other worn, exhausted, and thin, but they still looked like they could have been brothers, and I was starting to like them. In the flesh they were far better than as stone monuments on the Three Captain’s World. The First Captain had his arm around his friend’s shoulder, and the two of them stood over the fat man as though he were a large toad.
“No.” The fat man said. “No way I’ll help you. You can die here!”
“We’re certainly not going to die.” The Second Captain said. “Now, I and my friends…” He waved his arm to include all of us, not just the First Captain and Doctor Verkhovtseff, but me and Poloskov and Zeleny and Alice from the Pegasus, because we had also come to help him alothough we had never met him before, “have no fear from any pirates any longer. If we have to we can depart in the First Captain’s ship and return later to retrieve our ships.”
Veselchak U had started to bend. He had come to under5stand taht they did not have to deal with him, and was about to begin to talk, when Zeleny ruined it all.
“No.” Zeleny said. “First of all I am not going to just abandon my ship. If I have to I’ll just stay here and wait. And anyway someone has to feed the animals. Just tell us how to open the blasted lock!”.
That was just not the way to talk to the fat man, the way Zeleny did. You can’t ask anything from pirates; they’ll just become insolent and demand more and more.
When the fat man heard Zeleny’s words he grew emboldened. “No,” he said, “give me written assurances that I will remain alive, then I will let everyone out of here.
The Captain’s just looked at Zeleny, but no one said anything.
“Too bad.” The Frist Captain said. “Then we wait. We’ll give you ten minutes, Veselchak U; think it over. We’re the ones with the time.
“He’s right.” The Second Captain spoke up. “But in the meantime you can tell us how you found us, First. I take it the Blabberyap bird never reached you”
“While you talk I’ll make some sandwiches.” Zeleny said in a guilty voice. “I take it we’re all starving.”
“Fine.” One of the Captains said.
“I’d help you, Zeleny.” Alice said. “But I really am too interested to hear what the First Captain has to say to tear myself away from here.”
“Stay if you want, Alice.” The First Captain said. “Without you we could never have saved our friends.”
“I couldn’t have done anything without you.” Alice said and turned red from pride.
“Alice,” I said severely, “go wash you hands and straighten yourself out. “You’re as dirty as a swamp mole from the planet Vukanata.”
“You don’t have to blame me for it.” Alice did not quite argue with me. “A mole does what a mole has to do.”
She hurried off to the ship, shouting as she went:
“Just don’t start the story without me!”
The First Captain turned to Veselchak U and asked him ravnodushno:
“Have you thought it over yet?”
The pirate laughed fawningly. His eyes had sunk back into the folds of skin on his head.
“Let’s make a deal, Captain.” He said. “We’re both business people.”
The Captain ignored him.
Alice returned in two minutes. I noted that here hands were only washed so so, but she had replaced the filthy yellow jumpsuit with another one, a blue one.
Alice was followed by a very timid and hesitant emoticator. On pryamo razryvalsya na chasti, tak emu hotelos’ povsyudu uspet’. He was not so much an animal as a living rainbow. After him waddled the always busy Sewing Spider. At the moment he was completing three mittens, although each of them was right handed.
“Everyone here?” The First Captain laughed, looking over the odd parade. “Well, then I have to begin right at the very begining, although my role in this tale is rather meager. I’ve spent the last four years on Venus; it turns out that it is almost impossible to turn a large planet into a space ship and move it to a different orbit; please, I said almost, because we’re certainly going to do it.”
“That’s right.” Alice said. “It’s very sad that I don’t have such a strong character.”
“Character is obtained through education.” The Captain smiled. “Look at the Sewing Spider, at his enviable persistence! Now, if he could just learn to tell the difference between right and left he would be priceless.”
“Now that’s a great example for me!” Alice brushed aside the Sewing Spider. “He’s really stupid!”
“Well, the fact is, so far no one has mentioned simple persistence. For the four years that I was there Venus hadn’t been moved a centimeter off its old orbit, and we had been working for it, planning, setting he plans in motion, arguing back and forth all the time endlessly I had been hoping I’d get back to see the start of Venus’s orbital shift. There really wasn’t long to go.”
“And then the climate of Venus is going to change?”
“In a big way. So much that after a few decades people will be able to live there, just as they do on Earth.”
“Then we should call it Earth-2.” Alice said.
“Whatever for. It will remain Venus. Why do you think there’s anything wrong with that name?”
Alice did not answer, but I would say she did not like Venus’s old name very much at all. She had once told me we shouldn’t go around giving bestowing planets with the names of defunct gods that had done nothing to earn the honor.
“I was so busy with my work that I did not even notice the four years passing.” The First Captain continued with his story. I have to admit that I was not very worried about my friends, because I knew just how far the fates had taken them from me. The Third Captain would be years more in returning from Andromeda, and you, Second, had told me not to bother you for four years.”
“But didn’t you get bored sitting on just once planet,” Alice aasked, “and not flying to other star systems?”
“It’s a complicated question, Alice.” The First Captain answered seriously. “Yes, I do want to stand on the bridge of a starship as captain and land on unknown planets again. But I knew that my experience would be very useful in the Sol System. And I really must tell you that I love unsolved questions and unfinished projects.”
“And your wife,” Alice continued her questioning, giving the Captain no rest. “in the mean time she’s been flying all over the Galaxy looking for a living nebula. You must have envied her furiously.”
“I certainly did.” The Captain admitted. “And I’ll envy her even more when she finds it.”
“That you will not have to worry about.” I got involved in the conversation. “There are no such things as living interstellar gaseous nebulae. No more than there are living, sentient planets.”
“Now in that you are quite mistaken, Professor.” The Second Captain said. “I once had the chance to see a living planet. I almost didn’t get away. It feeds on whatever it drags down from space. Lucky for me the Blue Gull had such powerful engines.”
“Very curious.” I said. “We’ll speak about that later, but in the meantime I am uninformed about that particula
r wonder.”
“Papa, don’t argue.” Alice said. “The Captain isn’t going to speak an untruth.”
“No.” The Captain burst into laughter. “We always tell the truth. Even to enemies.” His eyes bore into Veselchak U, who immediately turned and pretended to be examining the walls of the cave.
“Now then,” The First Captain finished his tale, “I unexpectedly received a message that Doctor Verkhovtseff, our old friend, was arriving. He came and told me he was worried about the fate of the Second Captain. When he told me everything put in for leave and left Venus the same day. I’ll let the Doctor continue.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks!!” Doctor Verkhovtseff suddenly growned, stopped foreward, and began to blink. “I didnd’t do anything in particular at all, really nothing… In general, you people on the Pegasus were just the last straw that broke the camel’s back, the final drop that filled the cup of my suspicions.”
“Now that’s a ‘thank you.’“ Zeleny said; he had been handing out cheese sandwiches. “You were the one who was behaving peculiar.”
“But at the time I really didn’t no anything, or rather, I didn’t know anything about you.”
Verkhovtseff was shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back, and looking at the emoticator, who had become quite blue from curiosity.
“From the start I never believed the story that the brave and resourceful Second Captain had just vanished without a trace. I knew his Blue Gull as well and understood there was hardly any power or force in the Galaxy capable of destroying the Second Captain.”
“Thank you for the compliment.” The Second Captain said.
“Thank’s aren’t necessary. The compliment was nothing more than a simple and precise scientific calculation.”
“He’s just like my math teacher.” Alice whispered to me.
“While preparing the Three Captain’s Museum I had a chance to study their biographies, as well as numerous opportunities to confer with the First Captain who never hesitated to provide me with photos and notes and to correct details. But when I shared my doubts about the Second Captain’s fate with him, his answer was very evasive. Som evasive that I suspected the Captain knew far more about the Blue Gull than he wanted to tell.”
“I didn’t know anything in particular.” The First Captain interrupted. “All there was was our agreement unless the Blabberyap arrived I was to wait for four years before investigating, but after Verkhovtseff’s letter I became very worried, but I didn’t know the details.
“And I did not know about the Captain’s agreement,” Verkhovtseff continued, “nor did I know the Second Captain was preparing to fly off to meet the Third. What set me on my gaurd was something else; all of the documents I had seen said that the Captain’s had completely eliminated the threat of space pirates from the Galaxy. But, judging from the information I was getting, that was not the case. The information I had indicated that the pirates still existed, and that they were still attacking ships. Also, among the pirates seen and identified was this particular fat man.”
“I had nothing to do with that.” Veselchak U said indignantly. “That was all Krys’s doing. He had a number of masks; he had a mask of me too. When he robbed the other ships it was with my face.”
“Pardon us if we do not believe you.” Doctor Verkhovtseff said. “Because we do not believe you. But on one occasion, when I was absent from the Three Captain’s world, someone stopped by the museum. The museum was given a very through search, but nothing of importance was taken other than some photographs of the Blue Gull. ‘A-ha!’ I thought to myself then, someone needs this information. Then I suddenly found out that one of the miscreants aboard the pirate ship that robbed the passenger liner from Fyxx looked so much like me that if I had not happened to be a guest of that planet’s president at the very time the piracy occurred who knows what would have happened to me. And then the Pegasus arrived on the planet, with people who told me they were hunting for animals but who started to ask me questions about the Three Captains. I was somewhat surprised. And perhaps I wold have forgotten about this that the heroic accomplishments of the Captains should have interested them was not at all remarkable, when suddenly they tell me that I, it seems, had visited the researchers on Arcturus Minor and asked them for the plans to the Blue Gull.”
“But that is what happened.” I said. “It was just the false Doctor.”
“Now such a shameful fact calls forth no doubts,” Verkhovotseff said, “but at the time I was completely taken aback. When the Pegasus departed I immediately sent to visit the researchers, and they confirmed: ‘Yes, it was you Doctor Verkhovtseff; you came here a month ago searching for plans to the Blue Gull. At that point i understood that the Second Captain was in grave danger. And, most likely, at the hands of pirates I immediately set off for Venus.”
“He arrived extremely agitated.” The First Captain said. “At first I had trouble understanding him. One Verkhovtseff, then a second… But when he explained I understood we should have to hurry. But where to? We suspected that the Pegasus was a pirate ship aand decided to follow after you. We went to Palaputra; there Krabakas of Barakass told us how you had bought a Blabberyap bird, as well as how someone had tried to kill all the Blabberyap birds on the planet. We also found the Audity who had sold you the bird, and I realized it was the same bird that had been with the Second Captain. Along the way we were almost thrown into jail because of the false Doctor’s sale of atmosphere destroying worms; we just barely convinced the Local police of the real doctor’s innocence. Ratty can expect the appropriate punishment for the attempt to kill all the Blabberyap birds and destroy the planet’s air. The Audities have never had to think of any such appropriate punishment before, but I am certain they will come up with something.”
“Oh! The cry came from the fat man.
“…asked all traffic bouys in the Galaxy and they advised us that the Pegasus was on course for the Medusa system. And on the robot planet we learned that you had spent time there and cured the robots by replacing their oil. And then we came here, almost too late.”
“And when did you realize that we weren’t pirates?” Alice asked.
“Back at Palaputra. And after that we encountered a ship filled with archaeologists. Gromozeka was aboard and he raised such a fuss defending the Professor that we had to believe him. Then we began to worry that you were in danger and wouldn’t be able to deal with the pirates.”
“We couldn’t.” Poloskov sighed. “Next time we’ll be wiser.”
“There will be no next time.” The First Captain said.
He walked over to the fat man who was sitting on the stone floor and said:
“Your time has run out, Veselchak U. You either open the cavern entrance, or our conversation comes to aan end. Let me count to ten: One, two, three…”
“I’ll tell you everything!” The fat man said quickly. “I’ve wanted to tell you everything from the first, no do sodroganiya boyalsya Krysa. I’m afraid of him even now. He’ll take revenge on me. His revenge is unavoidable. It’s best if you kill him. Please, kill him!”
“But he really is your friend.” Verkhovtseff said. “How could you possibly want the death of a friend with whom you have committed so many crimes for so many years?”
“He’s no friend of mine!” Then fat man screamed. “He’s my worst enemy! I’m an honest pirate, not a bandit or a traitor!”
“Stop wasting time.” The Second Captain said. “Open the cavern.”
Then fat man got to his feet. He was a sorry looking sight. His legs could hardly support him, he bent down, and his belly quivered like jello. He pressed to the wall and, going up on tiptoes, pressed a knob invisible to everyone else. A part of the wall moved aside and they could see a small control panel.
“Right away.” The fat man muttered. “Just a moment…it’s already done.”
He pressed a button with fat trembling fingers, and at last the stone plate rose a few inches from its spot and moved to one side.
“To your ships!” The First Captain said. “We’ll lift the Pegasus first, and after it’s flown to one side will raise the Blue Gull. I’d like to ask the crew of the Pegasus to take their places.”
It had started to rain. Enormous drops fell through the circle of light and loudly struck the stone floor.
The fat man pressed yet another button and a narrow stairway rose from the floor and extended to the edge of the white circle where it locked itself into place with metal claws.
“Quite satisfactory.” The Second Captain said. “Verkhovtseff, please accompany the professor in leading the prisoners up to the surface. The rest of us will wait here a while.”
Poloskov and Zeleny took their places aboard the Pegasus, retracted the stairs and closed the airlocks. Everyone else moved to one side and watched the Pegasus gently rise into the air, cut off the sky for several seconds, and then exit the cavern.
“Well then,” The First Captain said, “Are you certain that everyone is here? We’ve forgotten nobody?”
“That’s all.” I said.
Verkhovtseff led the two pirates up the stairs and I went over to the fat man.
“No more pirates?” The Captain asked Veselchak U. “There’s no one else on your ship?”
“I swear by all that is holy that no one else remains here! You can leave in good conscience.” Veselchak U said. “Completely clear. We can blow up this cavern and the damnable Ratty’s ship and nothing will remain of this pirate’s lair. I take it that is your intention?”
“It certainly is.” The Second Captain laughed. “Just one more look around my prison. To think I spent four years confined here…”
“Wait!” Alice suddenly shouted. “He’s still lying!”
“Who?” The First Captain asked.
“The Fat Man. He’s lying. When I was running after the blabberyap bird, I heard a groan.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Captive Underground
“That can’t be…” The Fat Man groaned and cut off.