Alice: The Girl From Earth

Chapter Seven The Mystery of the Empty Planet

“Where to first?” Poloskov asked.

He was examining the space map. The course to Palaputra, where we would find the market in animals, was laid out on it. At the same time a dotted line noted our course toward the Empty Planet described to us by Doctor Verkhovtseff.

“We can always go to Palaputra.” I answered, “But the Empty Planet isn’t noted in a single guide to space. Why not take the risk?”

“But even doctor Verkhovtseff himself said all the animals had vanished. Maybe they all died and we’ll just be wasting our time.”

“And our fuel is getting tight.” Zeleny interjected himself into the conversation. “Whatever else Palaputra has, we can replenish our fuel supplies there. Can we do that on the Empty Planet? We could find ourselves there, out of fuel, and waiting until someone else passes by.”

But we ignored Zeleny. He is simply a pessimist. We were both certain that we had more than enough fuel to last us. He just wanted to be doubly careful.

“So I say,” I said, “Let’s look in on the Empty planet. It’s a mystery, and there’s nothing more interesting on any world than figuring out a mystery.”

So we set course for the Empty Planet.

Unfortunately, after two days’ flight it appeared that Doctor Verkhovtseff’s coordinates had been less than precise. We should have been able to see the star around which this planet orbited after our last jump, but before us was emptiness.

What could we do? We decided to continue on course for yet one more day, and if nothing had changed then, to abandon the search for the planet.

We reached that decision toward evening, before supper, and after supper Zeleny headed for the com center to inform Earth that our flight was proceeding normally and that everything was in order. I followed after Zeleny.

When Zeleny turned on the receiver and listened to Space I liked being there, listening when uninhabited emptiness came alive. We could hear distant ships and bases communicating, ships acknowledging each other and automatic buoys transmitting information from uninhabited planets and asteroids about local conditions, space ‘weather’ reports about meteorite swarms and pulsar stars.

While Zeleny prepared the transmission I flipped the receiver switch.

Suddenly I heard a female voice come in weakly.

“Located in sector 16-2, have noted previously unknown meteorite stream in the Blooke system. In three days time the stream will intersect the Blooke to Fyxx passenger lane. Please advise all ships.”

“We’re right in that sector.” I told Zeleny.

“I heard.” Zeleny answered; he had already jotted the transmission down and begun to enter the information from the unknown ship into the log.

“And since that ship is in our sector, let’s ask it about the Empty Planet.” I said to Zeleny. “It could be we’ve gone off course.”

Zeleny said the ship had to be too far from us to pick us up, that our transmitter would undoubtedly fail, that the woman who was warning of meteors would know less than nothing about the planet, because the planet did not exist, as he grumbled and at the same time twisted the control knobs of the transmitter and, when the unknown ship took our call, he said:

“Starship Pegasus speaking. We are currently in your sector and are headed for the Empty Planet but we can’t even spot the star.”

“Give me your co-ordinates.” The woman’s voice answered. “I’ll recheck it for you.”

We called the bridge and Poloskov gave us the coordinates. We passed them along per instructions.

“It’s all clear.” The woman’s voice answered. “There is a cloud of cosmic dust between you and the star, so of course you can’t see it. Your next jump should take you through the cloud.”

“Enormous thanks.” I said to the unknown ship. “We were given the coordinates of the planet on the Three Captains’ World, but our source was not an astronaut but a museum administrator, and we were afraid he erred.”

“Doctor Verkhovtseff?” Then woman’s voice asked.

“Yes. You know him then?”

“I know him very well.” The woman answered. “He’s a marvelous old man. Simply wonderful. If only we had met earlier; I have a letter to pass on to him but there’s no way I can stop in there. Not for a while. Any chance you will be heading back that way?”

“None.” I answered. “From here we go on to Blooke, to Palaputra. We’re biologists looking for rare animals.”

“So am I.” The woman answered. “We may very well have met, but there’s no time for that now. I have to be off in a hurry. I’m hunting a living cloud.”

“One last question.” I said. “Have you ever been on the Empty Planet yourself?”

“I certainly have.” The woman answered. “The seas were overflowing with fish, but there wasn’t a single animal on dry land. Good luck.”

Then all that came out of the speakers was the meaningless hum of static.

“She’s accelerating at full speed.” Zeleny said. “She’s heading off somewhere. What’s this about a living cloud?”

“There are no such things as living clouds.” I said. “I met this woman at some conference or other and told her that she was utterly mistaken. You heard her opinion of Doctor Verkhovtseff? A ‘marvelous old man.’“

“Well, I still don’t trust him.” Zeleny grumbled. “If he was so marvelous and wonderful why did he lie to us? Why is he writing a novel and then not writing it? Why does he swear that he hasn’t been to Arcturus Minor for six months? And why didn’t he want to show us the Three Captains’ notebooks?”

Zeleny went back to the receiver.

The woman was right. The next day after the jump we spotted a small star on our sensors around which orbited but a single planet. Judging from everything we had been told, that had to be the Empty Planet.

We set down toward sunset on the shores of a large lake, at the edge of an endless plain overgrown to fearturelessness by a yellowing grass. A light rain, long and boring, kept us on the ship in front of the ports through which we saw neither beasts nor birds. What if this place was in fact devoid of animal forms?

Alice and Zeleny headed to the lake for water. They were a while in returning, but I did not become alarmed as I could clearly see them occupied with something along the shore through the ship’s ports.

Then Zeleny returned’ he headed not for the bridge, but for his own cabin.

“What have you looking for?” I asked him through his com unit.

“Fishing tackle.” Zeleny answered. “There’s so many fish in that lake they turn the water black! We started to scoop water into the bucket and it was full of fish. Don’t you want fresh fish soup, Professor?”

“No.” I answered. “And I must advise you against eating what you find here too. There are poisonous fish even on earth, and adding anything found on another planet to your diet without a lot of tests is just plain thoughtless.”

“Ah weel….” Zeleny said. “Then I’ll just have to add to your collection the hard way.”

Zeleny ran back to the shore, and I grabbed Alice’s rain coat to keep her from catching acold, grabbed a net, and headed for the lake.

Zeleny disdained the net for catching fish, declaring that it was not sporting, and he was a sportsman. But Alice and I filled the whole bucket. We carried our fish back to the ship. A sodden Zeleny followed after us, his catch in a fish tank.

“Don’t forget to close the ship for the night.” I said; we left the containers with our hauls in the main airlock.

“Of course I won’t!” Zeleny’s excited voice came back; he was so entranced with the local fishing he would have stayed at the lake all night, except it had become dark.

In the morning the first thing I did was look out the ports. The sun was shining brightly and multitudes of birds circled overhead

“That’s the ‘Empty Planet.’“ I said aloud and went to awaken my friends. “Come look at the Empty Planet.” I repeated. “Yesterday we caught fish, today the birds are circling overhead in monstrous flocks.”

I awakened Alice and Poloskov, but Zeleny had already gotten up ahead of me. He had lain out his assorted lures and other types of fishing tackle.

“I have to get ready for the big one.” He told me. “I can feel in my bones there are pikes as long as I am tall.”

“Just be careful.” I answered. “Watch out that no pike catches you.”

Then I went down to the airlock to take a closer look at the birds. I noticed one distressing detail; it turns out that, intoxicated with the joy of reel and tackle, our Engineer forgot to close the Pegasus’s outer airlock door for the night. No animals had managed to get inside, but we had lost every last one of our fish. Evidently the birds had noticed the open airlock and had dropped by for and early morning snack, claiming all our catch from the night before.

“This is a very serious violation of space discipline.” Poloskov said over breakfast when he heard of Zeleny’s blunder. “But I am guilty of it to

o, as is the Professor. We both were required to check the airlocks for the night.”

“But nothing really happened.” Alice said. “ Zeleny and I can fill a dozen buckets with fish. You can’t imagine how many fish there are in that lake!”

“That is not the point.” Poloskov sighed. “If such an incident happens again we might as well turn around and go back home, because it means we are all far too thoughtless to be running around in space.”

“I’m sorry, Captain.” Zeleny said. He understood, of course, that he had made a mess of things, but thoughts of fishing had so overcome him that a moment later he was off for the lake.

I prepared the nets for catching birds and pulled out the air powered rifles with the anaesthetic darts. Then I steeled myself for hunting birds. Zeleny sat on the shore of the lake, and I watched him out of the corners of my eyes. I was surprised that he appeared so downcast. “Now why would he be upset?” I wondered.

Then the weather unexpectedly grew worse. A strong wind came up; it drove the birds from the sky and raised whitecaps on the lake. In a few minutes there wasn’t a single bird left in the sky. They had gone and taken refuge elsewhere.

Zeleny got to his feet and headed back to the ship.

I decided to return the nets to the ship out the bad weather and the return of the birds.

“How did it go?” I asked Zeleny. “Care to show me your catch?”

“There is no catch.” Zeleny answered. “Not a bite.”

“How come? Didn’t you yourself say the lake was literally overflowing with fish?”

“Yesterday it was. But now, evidently, all the fish have gone to the bottom.”

“And my birds have dispersed.” I said. “So it looks like both of us are out of luck. We can wait a while until the weather clears. Care to drop by the lake in the evening? Maybe that’s the only time they bite.”

“I don’t know. I don’t believe in this planet.” Zeleny said mournfully. “They certainly didn’t call it the Empty Planet without reason. There were fish, but they’re not here now. There were birds, but the birds have flown.”

“Look!” Alice called; she had been standing close by and listening to our conversation. “It’s a rabbit. See!”

Some sort of small animal was jumping through the grass. Another animal, a little larger, was chasing the first. We weren’t able to get a very good look at them, and then both vanished; only the grass rustled in the wind.

“There you are!” I said. “This is not an ‘empty planet.’ There are animals here.”

“And the animals will vanish too in their turn.” Zeleny said. “Remember what Verkhovtseff said? Of course I don’t believe anything Verkhovtseff says but…”

“Zeleny,” I said, “Let’s a check to see where your fish have gone. I’ll send a bioscout into the lake. I’ll program it to search for fish; as soon as it catches sight of one it will signal us.”

“Whatever you want.” Zeleny said. “Only there are no fish in that lake now. I’m a fisherman from way back; I know when a lake is empty.”

I carted a bioscout from the Pegasus and released it into the lake. The bioscout had a waterproof casing and its own engine and power supplies. I put on the earphones and waited for a signal. The instruments showed that the bioscout had reached the very bottom of then lake, then went further from shore toward the middle. But no signal came. After half an hour I was forced to end the search. The bioscout would not err, and there was not a single fish in the lake.

If I had not dragged fish from the water yesterday with my own hands I would never have believed that such a thing could happen, I had to admit. Verkhovtseff was right; this planet was strange.

“I’d say the same.” Zeleny added, folded up his fishing rod, and went into the ship.

“There’s an enormous herd of antelope like critters on the horizon.” The loudspeaker said.

That was Poloskov from up top in the command section

But even without him scouting I already knew that the plains were flooded with animals. Things like field mice ran through the grass, a suslik was crawling all over a bush not far from where I stood, and some sort of creature very similar to a little bear was walking along the shore of the lake.

“Nothing all that terrible.” I said. “Let’s ready the ATV and catch some critters.”

But as soon as we had gotten the All Terrain Vehicle from the Pegasus it began to pour. The rain pounded down from the heavens far fiercer than it had the day before; it struck without warning and pounded the ATV’s roof like a mad drummer. Alice and I crawled inside and, ignoring the drumbeat of the rain, headed off for the plains where Poloskov had spotted the herd of antelope.

There were no antelope to be seen. Nor did we find any other animals. And when I exited the ATV and went down on my hands and knees to find the mice that had been running in the grass not all that long before, it turned out that there were no mice either. This time I released a bioscout over the plain. The bioscout came back after flying to the horizon; there was no doubt here was not a single animal on this planet.

“What are we going to do now? I asked Poloskov in desperation when we had loaded the ATV back onto the Pegasus and were seated in the crew’s lounge. “This really is an empty planet, and I really don’t want to leave here until we discover its secret.”

“There is no way we can remain here forever.” Poloskov said. “And we’re not the first who’ve come face to face with this mystery. Perhaps the secret of the empty planet is going to remain unresolved for a while longer.

“It’s too bad Zeleny forgot to close the lock.” Alice said suddenly “If we just had one of those fish left.”

“It’s too bad he was so excited.” I cut off Alice. “Something really is surprising here; we landed yesterday, it was raining and the lake was full of fish. In the morning the sky was filled with birds, but as soon as the wind picked up the birds vanished and the animals came out…” “Papa,” Alice said suddenly. “But I just guessed the secret to this planet.”

“O course!” The gloomy Zeleny said. “No one has determined it, but a Sherlock Holmes named Alice has!”

“Be a little bit more careful, there.” Poloskov said. “I’ve already lost one wish to Alice when we were searching for the tadprowlers.”

“Correct!” Alice agreed. “My way of thinking is not entirely scientific.”

“Well daughter, tell us then.” I said.

“With your permission I’d rather demonstrate than tell.”

“Whatever you prefer.”

“Then I’d like you to sit here for a few minutes; I’ll be right back.”

“You’re going outside? But it’s raining.”

“There is nothing to fear. I won’t even get wet. If you are afraid that something might happen to me look out the ports.. I’ll just be to the lake and back.”

I went over to the port and watched Alice, her head covered with her plash, run toward the lake and dip a bucket into the water. Once. Twice. A third time. Then she ran back to the ship.

Alice came into the crew lounge running and placed the bucket on the table.

“Take a look.” She said.

A small fish was slowly swimming around in the bucket.

“Oh-ho!” Zeleny said. “I completely forgot that here samyj klev in the evening. Where is the fishing rod?”

“Wait a moment.” Alice plunged her hand into the bucket, pulled out the fish, and threw it onto the table.

“What are you doing?”

“If I’m right….” Alice began, and immediately our eyes beheld a remarkable transfiguration. The fish turned itself over once or twice with powerful smacks from its tail, then the fins began to turn into wings, the scales into feathers, and a minute later a small bird sat preening and smoothing his feathers on the table.

As our mouths dropped from astonishment at having witnessed a fish become a bird, the bird shook its wings and flew up. It struck the ceiling of the crew’s lounge.

“Catch it!” I shouted. “It will break its wings!”

“Stop, papa! That’s not everything yet.” Alice said.

The bird struck the ceiling a few times and fell back onto the table. And, coming erect, began to change once more. But this time the feathers vanished, wings grew into the body, and in front of us sat something like a rodent. The rodent-oid darted past the tea cups and hid in the corner where the table came out of the wall.

“Is everything clear now?” Alice asked.

My daughter was preening. It is not every day that one is able to solve a mystery that had eluded so many other biologists.

“But how did you guess it?” I asked.

“You suggested the idea to me. You mentioned how when it was raining there were only fish, when the sun was out there were birds, and when the winds blew there were animals everywhere.”

“You’re right.” I said. “It is a remarkable adaptation, but perfectly suited to this planet. The living creatures take on the forms most suitable to the circumstances. They need fear neither wind, nor rain, nor sun. When, when winter comes, they must think of something…”

“That can be checked.” Alice said. “Just put the fish in the freezer.”

We did not put the fish in the freezer, but we did construct a cage containing an aquarium where the animal could spend the hours when it wanted to be a fish, yet tall enough that it could fly out of the water into the air and broad enough that it could run from corner to corner for feeding.