Alice: The Girl From Earth

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 aloud.

“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.”

While he was speaking I saw the Diamond Backed Turtle hurriedly crawling to the lab exit. The little critter had managed to get out of the safe again. I should have run after him, but then I thought it over and realized I would have to pass up the moment when Zeleny removed four years from the mirror flower.

“How are things going back there.” Poloskov, who was still playing wizard with the metal detection sattelite, spoke over the communicator.

“Everything’s in order.” I said.

“Then I’m going on survey myself. I don’t want to let that thing out of my sight. For some reason it’s working unreliably.”

“When you go in search of the Blue Gull,” I warned him, “don’t forget there could be more than one ship on this planet.”

“I won’t.”

“Leave the line open. If anything happens get in touch with his immediately.”

“I’ll remember.”

“Maybe we’ll have a surprise for your return.”

“Great. Just remember I like good surprises. Don’t surprise me otherwise.”

Poloskov departed. We could hear the humming of the surveyor’s drives as it lifted into the air.

“All ready, Professor!” Zeleny said. “Shall we take the risk?”

For the third time Zeleny removed a layer from the mirror. This time it was so thick that he could barely hold it in his hands. The flower’s feathery petals were torn away, and all that lay on the table was the almost round, convex, center of the flower, much like a plate.

It was a long time before the mirror lit up again. It was a very long time since any light had fallen on that surface at all.

And when, finally, we saw an image, we realized the meadow did not look quite the same as it did now. The circle in the middle, now overgrown with grass, was empty, grey, like the concrete circle of a giant hatch. You could even make out the curving depression in the ground differentiating the circle from the surrounding earth.

“See!” Alice as overjoyed. “That is the right field!”

“Be very careful now.” I said. “You don’t want to cut of anything important.”

“I understand.” Zeleny said. “I’m not a child.”

But he was unable to make his precise incision. Dappled and very bright, almost transparent from impatience and intense curiosity, the empathicator managed, at the least opportune moment possible, to strike Zeleny’s elbow. The vibroblade slide through the thickest part and cut deep into the mirror. The mirror flower split in two and fell on the floor.

Out of total shame and embarrassment the empathicator shrank to half its size and started to grow dark. It wanted them to kill it. It rushed around the laboratory, striking the infuriated Zeleny, who tried to catch it, with its stick legs; finally, it threw itself on the floor and turned totally black.

“Don’t worry.” Alice tried to calm down the misfortunate empathicator. “That could have happened to anyone. We know that you didn’t do anything.”

She turned to Zeleny, who was still cursing the empathicator out at the top of his lungs, and said:

“Zeleny, please don’t! The empathicator is so sensitive he could die from embarrassment. And anyway, we have a whole bouquet more.” Alice pointed out. “You said so yourself.”

“All right.” Zeleny agreed. He was a retiring person and, in general, even tempered. Too bad. We’ve wasted so much time. But in a minute we’ll discover the secret of the Second Captain for certain.”

The empathicator, on hearing this, shrank down even further.

Zeleny led the way as we returned to the crew’s lounge. The empathicator danced in following us, still showing almost entirely black, and the vile looking bushes stretched out their branches to trip him so he fell.

We never even made it to the crew’s lounge. Zeleny stopped in the doorway and just said,

“Oh!”

I looked across Zeleny’s shoulder; both vases were overturned on the floor and the flowers were broken, smashed, destroyed by some ill-wishing force. Not a single complete mirror flower remained. Their leaves were scattered about the compartment.

And unknown to all the blabberyap bird had vanished again.