Alice: The Girl From Earth

Chapter Nineteen “Where is that Darned Girl?”

Raising a space ship from the ground and moving it all of several kilometers over the surface of a planet is not at all simple. It is, in fact, far more difficult than just taking off from a planet. Not every captain would agree to such an attempt.

But Poloskov had decided to shift the Pegasus to the field of flowers. We were all far safer in the ship, and I was not going to allow anyone to go off on there own.

While Poloskov made his calculations on how best to raise the Pegasus the rest of us went around the ship to make certain everything was battened down and ship shape, the animals in their cages and the crockery in its cabinets. In general, after half an hour the Pegasus was ready for flight.

We had gathered on the bridge. Poloskov sat in the control hair, I in the navigator’s position. Alice sat close by.

“Engines ready?” Poloskov asked into his microphone.

“Ready for take off.” Zeleny answered from the engine room.

But before Poloskov could say “Take…” a curtain of white fire cut through the blue sky. Another space ship was landing right next to us. Trees were blown down and scattered by the backwash; the ground shuddered.

“Wait a minute.” Poloskov told Zeleny; he was staring into the view screen.

“What have we got now?” Zeleny asked.

“Neighbors have landed.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know yet. They’re behind the trees and can’t be seen. But get ready to take off immediately. It might be them.”

“Verkhovtseff and the fat man?

“Yes.”

We pushed ourselves into our acceleration couches, not tearing our eyes from the forest. It seemed to me I could even hear the opening of the other ship’s lock, the ladder falling to the planet… Then they were coming down the ladder, running through the bushes, whoever they were… Were they friend’s or enemies?

The bushes parted and a man ran out into the field in front of the Pegasus. He was in a space suit, but had left the helmet behind. There was a pistol in his belt. The man raised a hand, ordering us to stop. We all recognized him instantly.

“Doctor Verkhovtseff!” Alice said. “And he forgot his hat.”

“Verkhovtseff!” Poloskov repeated, and said into the microphone: “Zeleny, take off!”

At Poloskov’s words our ship began to move, first with a tremor, then it rose into the air gaining speed.

“Excellent, Zeleny.” Poloskov said.

“Who was it? Zeleny asked.

“Verkhovtseff.” Poloskov answered.

The Pegasus hung for a second over the meadow where we had first landed and Doctor Verkhovtseff stepped back into the shelter of the bushes. He waved his arms and was very angry.

“What?” Alice shouted, although Verkhovtseff could never have heard her. “Are you hands too short?”

“Alice,” I said reproachfully. “Is that any way to talk to your elders?”

Poloskov started to laugh.

“But he forgot his hat.” Alice said, as though she had not heard a single one of my words. “He lost his hat. He was in a hurry.”

The ship’s course bent into an arc as it headed for the field, and soon our enemy turned into an ant on the field, and I noted that he was hurrying back to his own ship.

“No, we’re going to have some time to look around.” Poloskov said. “It will take him at least half an hour to return to his ship, make fast the locks, and restart the engines. So we have half an hour to find the Second Captain. That’s going to take some doing.”

“Just as well they tried to capture us.” Alice said. “At the very least we know they’re not at the field.”

The circular meadow where we had found the mirror flowers was now beneath us. Poloskov carefully landed the Pegasus precisely in its center. While we descended I noted constant bright flashes in the sun, as though the field were sparkling with hoar frost. It was only when we landed that I realized that was not frost, but the remains of the shattered mirror plants. We were right our enemies had destroyed all the flowers.

The Pegasus lowered itself onto the grass and extended its landing struts, and Alice could not restrain herself and tore off her safety belt; she wanted to rush out onto the field. At that moment the Pegasus shuddered, shook, and Alice slid along the floor to the wall. Zeleny shouted from below:

“Why are we flying…”

Then there was a blow, and another, the engine’s awoke automatically as our ship fell into some sort of abyss. I wanted to pull off my own crash web to go help Alice but a single, final blow rendered me unconscious, and when I came to my senses our ship was standing, if at an angle, in darkness.

There were no sounds.

“Alice.” I asked, pulling off the crash web and getting tangled in it. “How are you?”

“I’m okay.” Alice answered quietly. “Just bruised a little.

Zeleny’s voice reached us from the other end of the ship.

“Hey! Where’d you land us, Poloskov? There’s no way we’re ever going to get out of this now!”

“Everything all right down there?” Poloskov asked Zeleny.

“I’m moving.” Zeleny said. “But where are we? Did we fall off a mountain?”

“Worse.” Poloskov answered, and turned on the bridge’s emergency lighting. The instruments came back on and burned like star clusters and galaxies in the darkness of space. “We’ve fallen underground.”

It was then that I realized it was all my fault. I should have warned Poloskov, told him what we had seen in the mirror flower.

“How could I have been so stupid?” I said sincerely. “When we looked at the mirror flower’s image from four years ago in place of the meadow was a concrete plate.”

“That’s right.” Alice said.

She found me in the twilight, crawling up the inclined floor, and took my hand.

“That’s right. There was a big slab.” Alice said. “And we forgot to tell Poloskov about it.”

“What slab?” Poloskov asked.

I told him about what we had seen from four years back, the field devoid of grass and flowers, just a large concrete plate that might even have been circular from what we had seen of the edge.

“I’d never have landed here if I had know that earlier.” Poloskov said.

He was very angry; any captain who’s ship crashes into an underground pit would be very angry.

“Oh well, crying won’t help.” Poloskov, who was able to keep control of himself, said. “Zeleny, can you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Get the flash casters from the storage locker and check to see how serious the damage in the drive room is.”

“I’m already on it.” Zeleny said.

Poloskov was all over the control console, pressing buttons and checking the readouts from the internal sensor net that told him the status of every system and machine aboard the Pegasus. In the end he appeared satisfied.

“Listen,” He said, “I’d say there’s no really serious damage to the ship, but one of the landing struts was damaged in the fall. So we have to go outside and determine how bad the everything is and what we can do to fix it. I’m going alone; the rest of you will stay aboard the ship.”

“Nothing of the sort.” I said. “You’re too necessary to the operation of the ship. If something were to happen to you the Pegasus would never take off again. I’ll go.”

“I’ll go.” Zeleny said from the engine room. He had been listening to our conversation.

“And me too.” Alice said.

In the end we were unable to convince each other of nothing and headed for the airlocks together.

“Odd!” Poloskov said as he opened the lock. “If we’d fallen into a pit or sink hole then there should be light coming down from above. It’s totally dark here.”

“Could it be that we’re really very deep, too deep for the light?” Alice asked.

“No. If we’d fallen very deep the ship’s automatic systems would have landed us without bending one of the struts. Since they did not have time to react the pit isn’t very deep at all.

Poloskov pulled the airlock door wide. On the other side it was pitch.

“Take a look.” Poloskov said. “Zeleny, give me the flash caster.”

“Oh,” Zeleny cried out, “I can’t. Something has grabbed me by the leg!”

Before I had a chance to go to help him Zeleny turned on the flash caster and began to shine it from side to side, trying to find what had attacked him.

But that turned out to be nothing more than the Empathicator. The animals was frightened in the darkness; it had gotten out of its cage and caught up to us by the airlock. In the flash caster’s light the Empathicator was a terrified yellow color. It moaned and clutched Zeleny’s leg for protection.

Poloskov took the flash light from Zeleny and cast the strong ray of light forward. Ahead of us was just darkness; the pit into which we had fallen was so great. Poloskov aimed the flash light upwards and illuminated an even surface, the ceiling.

“Like in a tea cup.” Poloskov said. “We fell inside and the roof closed over us.” He ran the light around again. “There’s nothing here.” He said. “There hasn’t been for quite a while.”

Poloskov let down the ladder and stepped down. He stamped his heels on the floor and turned back to us, saying:

“It’s stone. We can walk on it.”

We followed after him. While Poloskov made a circuit of the ship, looking for any damage the landing gear may have sustained, I aimed my flash light upward for several times. I soon found what I had been looking for, a thin line that ran along the ceiling, in a circle, marking the edge of the stone pit. Yes, Poloskov had been right; the roof had opened the moment we st down on it, letting the ship fall inside.

With the light of the flash caster in front of me I circled the ship in the other direction. It was dark as well here. I turned the flash caster on to its highest intensity and the light seemed to reflect off something in the darkness.

“I’m heading a little in this direction.” I said loudly so Poloskov could hear me. “There’s something over here.”

“Wait, Papa, I’ll go with you.” Alice said.

“Just don’t wander off too far.” Poloskov added.

Alice ran toward me. She was carrying a large flash light.

We went about twenty more steps, flashing the light ahead of us, and then realized that there was another space ship in the pit. When we got close enough Alice read its name aloud:

“‘The Blue Gull.’“

“Poloskov!” I called; the walls cast back my voice, strengthened it and turned it to thunder as though I were in a bottle. “Poloskov! Zeleny! We’ve found the Second Captain!”

I heard dull steps Poloskov and Zeleny running towards us. The bright white points of their flash lights jerking up and down as they ran.

“Where?”

The starship “Blue Gull” rose over our heads. It was dulled with dust that had covered it for many years. It looked dead, abandoned and bereft of human beings. A large lock had been placed on the airlock.

“So, now we known what happened to him.” I said.

“He fell into this pit.” Poloskov said. “Evidently the Second Captain could not get out.”

“We won’t be able to either.” Zeleny said gloomily. “We’ll have to end out days in this pit I told you we should have gone for help. I warned…”

“Don’t panic.” Poloskov said firmly. “We’re going to get out of this. And for starters I propose we board the Blue Gull. Now that we’ve found it we might as well go all the way.”

“The airlock’s closed and there’s no ladder.” I said.

And suddenly over our heads the ceiling burst into bright light, so bright we were all forced to close our eyes, and when I opened by eyes I was noted that an enormous net was dropping over us. A second later we were tangled in it like birds.

And when we tried to free ourselves, floundering and getting in each other’s ways, a loud voice bellowed down from a speaker:

“Don’t move an inch! You’re our prisoners!”

Shielding my eyes from the bright light with my palm I looked to the side from where the voice had come. The fat man named Veselchak U was walking towards us on the even shining floor of the enormous cave; with him came Doctor Verkhovtseff, again dressed in his hat. Both men held pistol pointed at us in their hands.

From the other side approached two more men in black leather uniforms.

“Throw down your weapons.” The fat man ordered. “Well, who am I talking to?”

“Do what he says.” I whispered to Poloskov. Only Poloskov had a pistol with him.

Poloskov pulled the pistol from his holster and threw it on the floor. The pistol clattered loudly.

The net rose.

For several seconds, until our enemies arrived, I was able to look around. The trap into which our Pegasus had fallen was an enormous if low cage. Two ships occupied it, standing some distance apart, the Pegasus and the Blue Gull. We were flies trapped in the blinding floodlights on the floor of the enormous room between them.

I looked around for my friends. Poloskov was looking at our approaching enemies and his mouth closed into a fine line. Zeleny clenched his fists and stood so as to guard Alice’s back. Alice held close to me; on the other side the Empathicator, yellow from terror, huddled at my feet.

“So the birds have flown right into our trap.” Veselchak U said. “Most good.”

He was in a rather jovial mood, but Doctor Verkhovtseff, who had managed to change out of his space suit and even put his had back on his head, appeared distanced, his face immmoible like a mask, his eyes empty and lifeless.

Alice moved about two steps from me.

“Where are you going?” I asked

“I’m here.” Alice whispered.

Two men in black uniforms aimed their guns at us while Verkkhovtseff obeyed the fat man and came directly to us and grabbed the Captain’s pistol. Then he quickly searched us, running cold hands down our sides and pulling out our pockets.

“All in order.” He said quietly. “They have no more weapons.”

“And where could they get weapons?” Fat Man burst out laughing. “They’re butterfly collectors. And they didn’t even guess they were about to fall into our little trap. Just like this one did.” Veselchak U pointed a finger as thick as three fat sausages at the Blue Gull. “And you fell into our trap on your own! We didn’t even have to send out a false message!” He burst into loud laughter. Then he ordered: “Tie them up!”

Evidently the handcuffs had been prepared earlier. One of the men in black opened a shoulder back and pulled out a pack of shiny new handcuffs.

While he untied the pairs of handcuffs the fat man walked directly in front of me, poked me with a fat finger, and said:

“Well, you still don’t want to surrender the Blabberyap Bird, do you, Professor?”

“No.” I replied.

“Look at him!” The fat man turned toward Verkhovtseff. “He’s worried about the Blabberyap bird as if it were an old friend. Where is the bird now?”

“I don’t know.” I said, although I certainly knew the Blabberyap bird had remained on board the ship.

Evidently the Blabberyap was needed by Fat Man after all. He told Verkhovtseff:

“Go take a look at the Pegasus.”

Then he turned back to me and added:

“You will be punished for telling me an untruth, Professor. And very painfully. My aids can do it. But not now, no, not now. Put the handcuffs on them. Don’t trust a word he says.”

A man in a black uniform walked over to me and placed handcuffs on my wrists. They clicked into place. My hands were now bound.

“The next one.” Veselchak U ordered.

His assistant went over to Poloskov. His movements were so precise and he moved so exactly and methodically that I began to suspect he might be a robot.

“The next one.” The Fat Man said.

The handcuffs rattled on Zeleny’s wrists.

The assistant leaned over the Empathicator and stopped in indecision. The Empathicator had ten legs, and all were so think there was nowhere to put the handcuffs.

“Idiot!” The fat man said. “Put them on the girl!” He looked around. “Where is that darned girl?”

Alice was nowhere to be seen.