by Kir Bulychev
16
Alice didn’t now for how long she had been sleeping; t could have been ten minutes, it could have been three hours. But suddenly she heard a voice:
“Alice!”
She immediately opened her eyes and looked around.
The room was empty. She could still hear footsteps moving back and forth on the other side of the door. They were guarding her carefully.
“Alice, can you hear me?”
“Is that you, Purr?”
“It’s me. Come to the corner that’s as far from the door as you can get and help me.”
Alice got quietly to her feet and went to where Purr told her.
And she saw what was there in the corner, flush in the floor, a grate. On the other side of the metal grate looking up at her was the furry face of the little archaeologist.
“Don’t be sad.” The archeologist whispered, blinking his one purple eye. “We’ll get you out of here.”
“But how did you get here>“
“No time to t now, but, in general, while they were all shouting and chasing after you I opened the bag and jumped out; they almost trampled me. No one was paying any attention to a kitten so I was able to follow after and see where they put you. It helped that I’d sewn the tail back on.”
“And then…”
“And then I scouted out the building. I found grate leading to the steam tunnels beneath the building, and so I found you. I’ve unlocked this grate here from below, but I don’t have the physical strength to lifted it. Hurry up and pull.”.
Alice pulled at the grate. The grate hardly lifted.
“Pull!” Purr’s words were a prayer. “They’ve almost come for you.”
On the other side of the door they could hear voices. Someone was about to enter the room.
With all her strength Alice tugged at the grate and she pulled it up, and landed with a loud clang on the stone floor.
“Jump!” Purr commanded. “Don’t be afraid; it’s not high.”
At that very moment the door to the little room began to open; Alice, closing her eyes tightly, jumped into the black pit as Purr scarcely scampered to one side.
“Follow me!” He said.
Alice ran for what seemed to be forever along the dark corridors of the spaceport’s below ground maze of pipes and tunnels. Alice covered her hands and knees with bruises and scrapes, she tore the sleeves of her dress, but there was no way she could stop or slow down Purr kept darting forward and waiting for her to catch up.
“You can rest at home. Listen! There’s a hue and cry for us.”
They were able to run out the back door of the space port a minute before the whole building was flooded with soldiers. What saved them was the number of people in the space port had become so great that the soldiers and policemen sent to capture the state criminal found it impossible to move quickly it at all.
17
The long, adventurous day on the planet Coleida was at last coming to a close. The sun had descended to the level of the high trees of the park that surrounded the space port.
“Oh, I’m so tired!” Alice said when she had made it to the first of the trees and wrapped her arms about its bole to support herself. “I could just collapse.”
The furry little archaeologist had peered out from behind the door to see if they were still being chased.
“Don’t give up now, Alice.” He said. “Get a grip on yourself. Your work is only half over.”
“Why half. We did it! We saved the whole planet.”
“I don’t know that.” Purr said. “I don’t know, my child.”
He was speaking like a very old, wise, grandfather.
“You spread the vaccine, you did. But only if we make it back will we learn if it produced the result that we want.”
“You’re telling me that when we get back everything may be the same as before?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then it’s better if we don’t go back. It’s better if we stay here.”
“You’re tired, Alice.” Purr said. “And exhausted.”
The hollow beating of drums from the playing of a distant orchestra reached the forest. The thick, warm air resounded with the drumbeat. Garlands of enormous multicolored balloons flew over the roofs of the space port buildings.
“I just can’t imagine that they’re all going to get sick…” Alice said.
“Perhaps they will not get sick; but if you had never delivered the vaccine you not for certainty that they would all have been destroyed. And that would have been much worse.
Alice nodded. The little archaeologist was right.
“Can you catch your breath.” he asked. “We have to hurry. By sundown we have to get a lot further from the city.”
“But where are we going now?” Alice asked; she wanted to go no where at all. She just wanted to lay down on the grass and fall asleep. But she would have to wait and sleep at home. “The railway station?”
“On the contrary.” Purr answered. “They would recognize us instantly. After the astronauts you must be the most recognizable face in the city. Several million Coleidans saw you on TV. We’ll go on foot.”
They set off through the forest. Purr ran ahead. Choosing his direction by the sun he walked in a direction that would take them toward the railroad tracks that led to the smaller city where the archaeologists had set up camp.
Alisa had scraped her foot but Purr would not permit her to stop and deal with it. “An interesting turn of events.” Alice thought. “While we were on our way here I was in charge, but suddenly he’s remembered that he’s the older and he’s leading me.” But Alice had no desire to argue with the little archaeologist. And she had no desire to try and convince him that no matter what happened Petrov and Richard would find and rescue them. All Purr would say would be that they would never be found.
Suddenly the forest came to an end. The band of trees had been very narrow. On the other side of the forest started a vast, empty field, and beyond that were more buildings. There was no way they could leave the shelter of the trees; a small yellow helicopter was circling over the empty ground, and from the buildings a chain of policemen was slowly heading for the trees. For Alice.
“A police cordon.” Purr said. “They suspect we’re hiding in the forest.”
“What are we to do.” Alice asked. “Hide ourselves in the woods?”
“They would find us. Head this way.”
As he had scouted ahead Purr had noticed some structures in the trees. He led Alice there.
In a large well trodden and muddy field surrounded by a low barrier stood a number of attractions: swings, Ferris wheels, and other amusement machinery similar to those that once stood in the parks of Earth, yet at the same time very different.
The fugitives crawled beneath a creaking carousel of fantastic winged and tentacled creatures and law flat on the ground. The floor boards hung so low they almost touched them, and in the cracks and crevices between the boards Alice could see a thin bad of very bright sky.
They had made it just in time. No more than three minutes later the policemen reached the amusement park. Alice could hear them calling to one another. Then one of them stepped onto the carousel and the floor boards bent underneath his boots.
Alice wanted to sneeze it was dusty and stuff beneath the carousel. The policeman stopped and stood directly over her, blocking off the light from the sky with his boots, and asked another one loudly.
“You checked underneath yet?”
“No.” The answer came from some distance away. “Take a look.”
“I don’t have a flash light.”
“You don’t need one. There’s no room for anyone underneath there anyway.”
The policeman stepped off the carousel onto the ground. Alice quickly crawled to the furthest wall and hugged the ground.
The wooden hatch was thrown open and the policeman’s black silhouette appeared in it. He seemed to look in her direction forever, then asked:
&nbs
p; “Anyone in here?”
“You coming?” The second policeman shouted from further away.”
“Yep.” The policeman answered, and slammed the hatch shut. “No one here. She probably made her getaway in an airplane.”
“Probably.” The second voice agreed with him. “No one is certainly going to try an attack like that on their own.”
“We will remain here until darkness.” Purr said when the policemen’s tramping had vanished. “Otherwise they would catch us immediat4ely.”
They were able to get out from under the carousel only in the late evening. Just about an hour after the policemen had left the amusement park was suddenly filled with people. The carousel’s owner wiped the fantastic animals down with a rag and wax, swept it clean, and then over Alice’s head the boards began to move around and around, and for the next three hours cheerful, exhaustingly repetitious carousel music played over Alice’s head, and it appeared that someone would suddenly fall through the creaking boards and crush the fugitives.
Finally, when Alice could stand laying on her side no longer and frustrated that no matter how terribly she wanted to sleep such was impossible beneath the creaking of the carousel and the thunder of the music, the evening’s cheer came to an end. The carousel’s motor was started with less frequency and the voices around them became the fewer, and by midnight there was only silence.
They crawled out from beneath the carousel and Purr rubbed Alice’s legs with his strong hands. Her legs had fallen asleep and felt numb, and it was impossible to walk. But then it became far worse; the blood circulation was returned to her legs, they woke up, and it felt like thousands of needles were sticking in them.
“Well, can you walk.” Purr asked.
“I can walk.” Alice answered.
No, when so much had been endured, she understood that any price would be worth paying to get home.
They set off.
They crossed the darkened forest again, came out into the wasteland and walked around a pit and large mountains of trash, and entered a new district of the city. Until the last houses were left well behind they walked slowly Purr ran forward, checking to see if there was anyone, and only then did Alice follow after.
It was already two in the morning when they came out onto the line of the railroad. The rails glistened in the light of the planet’s moon.
They walked out onto the path that ran along the line of the tracks, and headed right in the direction of the capitol. Alice tried to imagine how the astronaut Tolo’s mother must be cursing her, telling her son how Alice had wormed her way into her trust. She even thought she could hear the old woman’s voice: “I even fed her an apple! If I had known I would never have fed her anything! And that cat of her now that was something suspicious….”
It was almost dawn before they were able to clamber onto the open car of a freight train that had slowed to a near standstill by a siding.
And with the first light of the sun, tattered and torn, worn out, scarcely alive but terribly happy, they descended to the ground in the outskirts of the provincial town. They had only one more step to make, and the time machine would snatch them back and return them to the archaeologists’ camp.
And Alice suddenly understood that it would be very difficult for her to make this final step.
“I’m afraid.” She told the little archaeologist.
“I am too.” He said. “I understand.”
“What if we go back and everything’s the same as it was before. If we failed.”
“I know.” Purr said. “Don’t even mention it.”
He had lost his tail again somewhere on the road, too far back for them to go and find it. The two of them were silent for a while.
Then Alice bent down and picked up the little archaeologist, holding him against her chest in her hands like a pet cat.
Something clicked. A vague mist enveloped her and she seemed to be carried away, falling, falling…
And then she was standing in the Time Machine’s cabin.
18
Behind the transparent wall Gromozeka was waving his tentacles. Beside him was Petrov. Richard was bent over the controls.
Alice stood in the time machine’s cabin, unable even to stir.
The door did not open.
Gromozeka raised one of his tentacles, pointing, showing that she had forgotten to press one of the buttons.
“Of course,” said Alice. “The button.”
She pressed the green button. The door slid to the side. Alice let go of the little archaeologist and Purr fell onto the floor.
“We have them.” Gromozeka said. “Blast off.”
“We have blast off.” A voice shot back from one of the speakers.
The engines started to howl, the time machine’s control room shuddered, and Alice felt her weight increase as moment and then return to normal as the gravitational stabilizers started kicked in.
“What’s going on?” Purr asked finally.
Gromozeka stretched out his long tentacles and enfolded Alice, and she suddenly saw that smoking tears were crawling down his broad green face.
“My daughter,” He said. “Dear one! Thank you!”
“For what?” Alice managed to say.
“Everything’s al-al right.” Petrov said. “Everything’s all right. But it was a.. a… It was a crime!”
“The victors do not get taken before the courts.” Richard said. “And you know that very well, Mihail Petrovich.”
“I am guilty.” Gromozeka said, still not letting Alice free of his tentacles. “I am willing to take whatever punishment the courts demand.”
“What happened?” Purr grew insistent.
“Everything happened.”
“Then why are we moving?”
“We are flying.” Gromozeka said. “Departing.”
“Why?” Alice was surprised. She was so comfortable in Gromozeka’s embrace she could no longer feel her own feet.
“Because as soon as you and Purr transposed into the past I ordered the whole camp struck.” Gromozeka said.
“To chase after us?”
“Nothing of the kind. I knew that you were going to try to go into the past that night, and you know my attitude toward that. I did not interfere.”
“So you weren’t sleeping.”
“I had to make certain you didn’t forget your sweater.”
“And I really tried not to make any noise!” Alice was disappointed.
“I did everything I could. I explained to you the actions of the vaccine spray, I made you take shots anything and everything under every sun we know, I asked Purr to go into the past with you. There was no way I could send you alone.
“So you knew I was going to go too.” Alice turned to her companion and stroked him like a cat.
“I knew.” The little archaeologist said. “And other than me, there was no one who could have accompanied you. I was the only one small enough. I had the tail made up earlier. I trust I proved worthy?”
“You did. You know, Gromozeka, he was able to get me free after they captured me.”
“He did? That is excellent. You can tell us all what happened later. But we were very worried. We kept thinking that you might have gotten caught and we would have to send a rescue party into the past.”
“So why are we on a ship?” Alice asked.
“Because as soon as you were in the past I ordered the entire camp and the time building taken down. None of us knew what would happen here over the course of a hundred years. What if a new city appeared where the domes were? Or artificial lake?”
“Talk about doing things in a rush!” Richard said. “We took down the whole camp in six hours, de-established the station and loaded the time chamber into the last ship. And then we had to wait.”
“Was it worth it?” Alice asked. “Can I have a look?”
Gromozeka lifted Alice up to one of the ports.
The ship had already reached a great height, and Coleida filled half the sky. The whole f
ace of the planet was swept with points of light like strings of glowing pearls; the lights of its cities, homes, industries.
“Everything happened in the second half of the day.” Gromozeka said. “We were standing by the ports looking out. We all know at what time the space ship would return. We were standing and counting the minutes. We could hardly believe it, really, that you had made it to the space ship…”
“And suddenly the field we were in was green.” Richard interrupted. “Just like that.”
“And the old ruined city turned into sky scrapers.” Petrov said.
“And the air was filled with birds.” Gromozeka said. “And we knew that Alice had killed the Space Plague.”
“But didn’t the locals notice you?” Purr asked.
“We’d buried the ship underground and covered it with camouflage netting. And we were lucky. The field was never built on. Now that we’ve taken off, of course they’ve noticed.”
And at that moment a voice came over the loudspeaker:
“This is your captain speaking. We’ve just made contact with one of the orbital traffic control satellites serving the planet Coleida. They are asking us what ship this is, where are we flying, and why we did not warn traffic control of our departure?”
“Tell then that we are setting course for trier watch satellite.” Gromozeka said. “Let them wait. We’ll tell them everything.”
19
When Gromozeka was walking down the corridor of Coleida’s guard satellite with the re- dressed and washed Alice, Alice asked the Chief Archaeologist:
“When you explain everything to them, could you find out if they ever built a monument to me?”
“What?” Gromozeka was surprised.
“Is there or is there not a statue to us along with one to Purr?” Alice repeated. “We are the ones who saved them, after all.”
Gromozeka laughed, but he did not answer.
The dispatcher on duty met his guest in the central control chamber. He turned out to be a small man, only a little taller than Alice, and he looked a lot like engineer Tolo. On catching sight of Gromozeka he gasped and stepped back several paces, but he quickly came to grips with his fear and tried to laugh.