Alice: The Girl From Earth

Chapter Twenty In Captivity center

“Where is that unmentionable little girl?” Veselchak U pouted, an the smile vanished from his face, and it was odd to see how his short, fat hands moved and fussed separately from the rest of his body.

“What little girl?” One of the black uniforms asked.

“There was a little girl here!” The fat man answered. “They called her…. Oh what did they call her?” He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a note pad and sounded the letters aloud: “A-L–Ice. Where is Al-ice?” The second time he spoke he was looking at me.

“What Al Ice?” I asked as calmly as possible. At the same time I would have liked to have struck myself in the head in bewilderment how had she managed to get away? We were standing right in the open; there was no where she could have hidden herself.

“There was a small female child.” The Fat Man insisted. “I saw her. Didn’t you see her?” He asked Verkhovtseff, who just stood there, shrugged, and looked like he was sleeping with open eyes.

The man in black who had gone into the Pegasus after the Blabberyap Bird returned; he carried the bird, grasping it around the legs; the bird’s head swung back and forth and nearly reached the floor.

“Ah, you found it.” The Fat Man was delighted. “Rip off its head.”

“What?” The other man asked.

“The head, I say, the head; rip it off. We don’t need it any longer.”

“You’ll do no such thing!” I was horrified. “You can’t kill the Blabberyap bird. It may be the very last Blabberyap bird in existence.”

In desperation the Empathicator turned blue and rushed toward the Blabberyap bird on its thin legs, hoping, evidently, to set the bird free. But Veselchak U had noticed and burst out laughing.

“And as for you!” The Fat Man said, turned somewhat gracefully for such a fat man, and tripped the Empathicator with one leg.

The Empathicator collapsed and turned black from shame.

“Well,” The Fat Man said, “Why are you wasting time. I’ve already told you we no longer need the bird. Rip it’s head off.”

I don’t know if the Blabberyap understood the Fat Man or not, but, held firmly in the hand of the black clad pirate, the bird began to recite in an unknown voice:

“The Blabberyap bird is protected by the laws of the planet Blooke as an extremely rare and interesting creature. The hunting of the Blabberyap bird is forbidden, and violators of this law will suffer fines and social disgrace.”

“Your goose is cooked anyway!” Veselchak U roared. “And our hands are full enough without him!”

Suddenly something completely inexplicable transpired. The man in the black uniform lifted the Blabberyap bird high in order to grasp its neck, but as soon as he reached out his hand he suddenly lost his balance and fell with a crash to the floor, shouting from surprise, and released the Blabberyap bird. The Blabberyap clutched the air with its wings and flapped its way to the ceiling.

“Shoot!” The fat man shouted, grabbing for his pistol. Shots rang out. One or two blaster bolts almost hit the Blabberyap bird, but it twisted and turned in the air and vanished into the distance, to the cavern’s darkened end.

The men in black started to run after the Blabberyap bird, but Veselchak U stopped them.

“There’s no where it can run to now. Let it go, idiots! You, why did you fall?

“I didn’t fall.” The man in the back uniform said. “I was pushed.”

“Silence!” The fat man shouted to everyone; his jello cheeks shuddered. “Stop your excuses or I’ll push you down myself and then you won’t get up ever again! Don’t bother to chase after him. The bird’s lost in the tunnels now, and we don’t have too much time. we have other business.”

The fat man turned to the silent, dead starship that was the Blue Gull, and asked aloud, as though the ship could hear him:

“You hear me?”

The ship didn’t answer.

“Okay, so don’t say anything.” The fat man said. “It doesn’t matter. I know you can hear us. You’ve been sitting there and observing, thinking, what did I drag the Pegasus in here for? I dragged it in her to force your surrender now.”

Veselchak U walked closer to the Blue Gull and continued.

“You’ve held us off for four years. For four years you’ve hoped your friends would save you. For four years you haven’t believed that no one knows where you are. You’ve lived on the hope your rotten bird would make it to Venus. I kept thinking that you were going to die in your own cage. But today everything’s changed. Today you’re doing to open your ship’s airlock and surrender what belongs to me by right. Are you listening, Captain?”

Nothing answered the fat man back. His voice traveled around the cavern and was reflected from the distant walls. The echo died down, and the fat man let out a sigh.

“Where is that girl?” He muttered. “The girl would be really useful…”

Doctor Verkhovtseff stood a little bit off and looked at the ground. Two other men in black uniforms stood off to one side and held their pistols ready to fire at any moment.

“I know you can hear me, Captain.” Veselchak U began again. “You burrowed into your hole, planning to sit us out. Well look out your ports. Here we have three people from Earth: an idiot professor who gads about the Galaxy collecting animals, as though he couldn’t think of anything better to do; another strong and silent type Captain, and an idiot engineer with a red beard.”

Although I heard everything that was going on around me, in reality my thoughts were still filled with worries of Alice? Where could she have vanished to? Where was she hiding?

“You’ve put sand into the machinery for too many years now.” The fat man continued, looking at the Blue Gull. “But this day is mine! This day you will surrender the formula to me. Are you listening?

“He’s not saying anything.” The fat man said in another voice, almost a whisper. “He’s thinking. Now we hurry him up. Too bad the girl managed to get away. It would have been a lot easier with the girl…”

He pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his sweaty forehead with it.

“Listen, Captain.” He said. “You have three minutes to open your airlock and give me the formula, or I’ll give the order to kill our captives. But not right away. No, not right away. The first thing I’ll do is cut off the idiot professor’s ears. My peeve is greatest with him. He refused to give me the Blabberyap bird. He…”

“Wait up, fatso.” The voice of the Second Captain came over the ship’s exterior loud speaker. The voice was familiar; I had heard it a few times when the Blabberyap Bird had perfectly duplicated unknown voices.

“Then you are alive still.” Veselchak U said.

“There’s no place for you in this Galaxy.” The Second Captain continued. “They will find you, they will capture you, where ever you may hide. Your best chance is to take my advice and surrender…”

“Shut up!” The fat man shouted “You have nothing to offer me! Thanks to you and your friends I’ve lost nearly everything, but this last thing I won’t surrender. The galaxion will be mine!”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, pirate.” The Second Captain said. “Of course you wouldn’t know what shame is…”

We did not understand very much of what they were talking about. What was clear, was that the Second Captain had something and the Pirate was very interested in obtaining it. But he could not obtain it, he could not seize it. I had never heard the word ‘galaxion’ before, but it was clear that the Blue Gull’s Captain did not want to surrender it.

“Don’t waste my time.” The fat man said. “Your quaint ideas and notions are of no interest. Shame is only for the weak. We, the strong, have no need for it. Now, are you going to surrender the formula for galaxion?’

“I have to speak with these people first.” The Second Captain said.

“No.” The fat man answered. “You won’t be speaking with them. You’re trying to gain time, trying to deceive me. Open the lock now and give me the galaxion formula and I promise to set you and these people free. Someday. But if you do not do what I want you can listen to their screams for days and days. That’s what having shame and a conscience will get you.”

“That won’t happen, fat man.” The Second Captain said. “Since I landed on this planet four years ago you’ve tried to think of every possible means of getting the formula for absolute fuel from me, and nothing has come of it. Nothing will come of it today. Do you know what I will do?”

“What?”

“I’ll blow up the Blue Gull. I’ll die, but you will never get the galaxion formula. If you ever got your hands on it you’d create so much misery for the Galaxy’s inhabitants it would take a decade to set everything right.”

“Yes, it will!” Veselchak U said. “But don’t think that you can save the idiot professor and his people by blowing up the Blue Gull; no, that is a mistake. I give you the solemn word of the Black Cloud gang that they will suffer oh, how they will suffer. Why other use are captives to me. As soon as I set them free they’d tell the Galactic Patrol all about my little world here, and in a month every police ship in the Galaxy would be hunting for me. No, I want them thinking I’m dead now and for a good long while to come.”

“Then there’s no reason for me not to tell these people everything. I’ve never met them before, but if they’re your captives that serves as a good enough character reference. We’ll hear what they say once I’ve told them my tale.”

“No!” The fat man shouted.

“Shut up.” The Captain said calmly. “Are you going anywhere soon? Desperate to carry out our threat?”

“Let him talk.” Doctor Verkhovtseff said suddenly. “He knows they had the Blabberyap on their ship. Let him talk; it won’t save them.”

The fat man clasped his hands. “All right.”

“Then listen, professor, gentlemen. There were three of us, three star captains. Many years ago we learned that actual space pirates had appeared in the Galaxy. These pirates wanted money, precious jewels, but mostly they wanted power. They wanted to become Lords of the Galaxy. We learned about them when they attacked the planet Triada and stole a ship from there. We finally caught up with the pirates when they conquered another world and forced its natives into slavery. That was where they began to build warships in secret so they could attack the trade routes. I could take a long time describing how we tracked them down, how we infiltrated the enslaved planet, and how we led an uprising against the conquerors…”

“You took us by surprise.” The fat man roared.

Doctor Verkhovtseff waved his hand: “Let him talk. He doesn’t have much time left for it.”

“And so,” The Captain waited until the pirates grew silent, “two of the pirates were able to get away. For some years they hid out here at the outskirts of the Galaxy, far from the main trade routes. Everyone forgot there had ever been pirates.”

“But we didn’t.” The fat man said. “We didn’t forget anything.”

“Yes.” The Second Captain agreed. “They have forgotten nothing, and learned nothing, and have not abandoned their plans. Most of all, they want revenge on us, the three captains who stopped them the first time.

“And we have our revenge!” Veselchak U said.

“Slow down. Nothing has been resolved yet. And in the final analyses you are going to loose. There’s no way you can overcome the entire Galaxy.”

“But we will.” The fat man said.

The Second Captain ignored him. He continued.

“A number of years passed. The three of us split up. The First Captain flew off to the Venus terraforming project. The Third Captain decided to make the jump to the Andromeda Galaxy, because no one had ever visited our neighboring galaxy before. I busied myself with scientific observations. Then suddenly I received a transmission from the Third Captain. He advised me that he was returning from his expedition. The transmission was very unexpected, because no one expected him to return so soon. My friend asked me to meet him at the edge of the Galaxy, because he had very important news for us. I abandoned my work and hurried to meet him.”

“But he didn’t know that we had intercepted the transmission.” The fat man boasted, clasping and unclasping hands, “and we knew everything.”

“Yes.” The Second Captain said. “They had intercepted the Third Captain’s transmission, because the planet on which they were hiding out on was the same world to which I and my friend were now hurrying. My friend was seriously ill. The long flight, longer than any taken by any inhabitant of our Galaxy, had sapped his strength, and he was afraid he would be unable to reach Earth or his home planet Fyxx. And he was carrying very important information. The inhabitants of the Andromeda Galaxy had given him the formula for galaxion, the ultimate fuel source, the means of tapping into the energy of space itself. A ship with galaxion powered engines will fly a hundred times faster than anything now in space. Planets will become as close as neighboring cities on Earth or Mars. The Andromedans had rebuilt his engines to use the fuel source, and the Third Captain was flying toward this planet without suspecting that it was a pirate lair, and he landed here. His sickness had progressed so far he could no longer pilot his ship. The pirates marked where his ship landed and followed after, but they made no attempt to take him. They decided to wait for my arrival and learn just what the important news the Third Captain was bringing. While he was unconscious they got aboard his ship and placed listening devices, while the ship itself they moved to the false field above here.

“You must admit we did an excellent job of preparing for your arrival.” Veselchak U said.

“When I landed my ship beside the Third Captain’s I found my friend in very serious condition. The Captain told me of his voyage and about the formula for galaxion. I realized that the most important thing now was to get Third to Earth, where he could be cured. But I also knew he would not survive the trip through space, and I decided to remain here with him until he grew a little stronger. I hurried back to my own ship for medicines, but while I was searching through the medical supplies the pirates tipped the lock above us and both our ships dropped into this cavern.

“It all went according to plan!” The fat man said.

“Naturally,” the Second Captain continued, “they feared attacking me above ground. When I came to I saw the Blue Gull was in a cave. They flicked on the light, and the creature now standing next to you came into it. I recognized him and realized the pirates had out-tricked me. They promised to free me in exchange for the galaxion formula. They boasted how the fuel source would make their ships fly so fast no one else would be able to catch them, they would have nothing to fear from the Space Patrol, and every cargo ship in the Galaxy would be theirs for the taking. I realized that there was no way I could possibly give them the formula and could never allow myself to fall into their hands alive. I smashed the lock and refused them entry to the Blue Gull.”

“What happened to the Third Captain?” Poloskov asked.

“They tried to cut into our ships to take us captive. They succeeded with the Third Captain’s ship, and he fell into tier hands. Most likely they murdered him.”

“Not true!” The fat man said. “Not true at all. He died all on his own, from his sickness. You yourself know how seriously ill he was. When we cut through into the ship he was already dead.”

“But they were unable to cut into the Blue Gull.” The Captain said. “My ship’s hull is composed of a diamond based composite material. On board I had a blabberyap bird, a gift from the Firs Captain. The two of us had an agreement; if anything were to happen I should let the Blabberyap bird go with instructions to fly to Venus and seek out the First Captain. The First Captain knows how to get the bird to tell him where I am and what happened to me.”

“But we couldn’t.” I said. “We got the Blabberyap to say a few things, but, unfortunately, not very much.”

“But how did you acquire him?” The Second Captain asked.

“He was wounded,” I said. “from when the pirates were chasing him.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” The fat man agreed.

“But the blabberyap bird was able to get away. He made it to the planet Eyeron and the robots their fixed his wing…”

“And for that we contaminated all the machine oil on the planet; the robots are all paralyzed, frozen unable to move.” The fat man said laughing so hard all his jello chins shook.

“We fixed the robots.” I said. “They’re doing quite well now.”

“What?”

“I said we were on that planet, and we cured the robots.”

“Damnation!” The fat man shouted.

“But the Blabberyap was unable to reach the Sol system with a metal wing, unfortunately,” I said, “It only just made it to its native planet.”

“W searched for it there.” The fat man admitted. “My friend and I.” He indicated Doctor Verkhovtseff.

“Traitor!” Zeleny said gloomily. “Wait ‘til I get my hands on you!”

“Silence!” Veselchak U threatened him with a finger. “My friend and I killed all the Blabberyap birds on the planet Blooke. We bought them, traded for them, stole them. At first we tried to destroy all the free oxygen on the planet…”

“With the worms? I asked.

“Of course with the worms. Alas, we were unsuccessful. And completely by accident the Blabberyap bird fell into these idiots’ hands.” The fat man said. “And they managed to get here. We did warn them. They have no one but themselves to blame for the consequences. But now you will have to suffer…”

“Don’t worry.” The Second Captain said “They won’t be able to do anything to you. They’re far too cowardly. All the pirates in the Galaxy were unable to defeat the Three Captains, and they’re not going to win over us one by one either.”

“No, we have!” The fat man shouted. “The Third Captain is dead already, and you’ve been sitting here our prisoner for four years, and as soon as we get the galaxion formula we’ll go after your First Captain as well.”

“You’ve really been confined to your ship for four years?” Poloskov asked.

“Yes.” The Second Captain answered. “I admit to being rather pig headed. I could have destroyed the formula, naturally, but that would have deprived the inhabitants of the galaxy of it and it is very important they get it; all planets will be a hundred times closer to each other in travel time. I knew that sooner or later help would arrive.”

“And this is what you got.” The fat man said. “Have you talked yourself out, Captain. Now you are going to have to part with the formula.”.

“I have another agreement with the First Captain,” the Second Captain said. “If he did not hear from me for more than four years he was to notify the Space Patrol and send them off in search of me. Now, if these people found me so soon, then the First Captain will have little trouble, something you well know.”

“Perhaps, and you’re done talking.” Doctor Verkhoovtseff said hollowly. “Begin; he’s just wasting time.”

Then one of the pirates came over to me and grabbed me roughly by my bound hands. I lost my balance and fell. He dragged me to the side. I tried to resist, but a second pirate joined the first and they had be by both arms and legs

The fat man pulled a long knife from his belt.

“You know, Captain,” he said, turning to the ship, “I do know how to joke; that’s what my name means in my own language. But many, many of my jokes produce tears.” He raised his knife.

Poloskov and Zeleny tried to get free and come to my aid, but Doctor Verkhovtseff, who had been watching us all very carefully, shot the two off with anesthetic gas from a dispenser that hung from his neck on a cord. My friends collapsed on the floor.

“Well?” Veselchak U said.

I could feel the cold, sharp knife edge touching my throat.

“Take off the lock.” The Second Captain said.

“Well, that’s settled..”

The Fat Man motioned to the other pirates who went up the metal steps to the Blue Gull’s airlock and removed the enormous lock. The pirates had placed it there long ago, as soon as the Blue Gull had fallen into the pit. If the Second Captain managed to keep them out of his ship, they certainly did not want him leaving the ship without their permission.

The pirate hurried down the gangway and stopped at some distance from the ship, aiming his pistol at the airlock. Verkhovtseff also raised his weapon. They wanted to take no risks. The four of them feared the single Captain, who had held them off for the last four years.

“Show yourself.” Verkhovtseff said. “No tricks or we’ll fire.”

The airlock suddenly swung wide; I could hardly get a glimpse of the Captain. He jumped down like blue lighting. Two shots were fired simultaneously, but the Captain was no longer there. He had jumped to one side, and the flashes from the pistols struck the stones by his head. Another second and the Captain was shielded by the Blue Gull’s wide landing struts.

The pirates scattered and hunkered down against the stone floor.

“Calmly,” Verkhovtseff’s voice carried to me. “He’s not going anywhere. Surround him.”

In answer shots came from the direction of the Blue Gull.

I could see that the Captain had no way out of his predicament. The pirates were slowly, crawling over the stones, moving to surround him.

“Don’t shoot!” The Fat Man shouted.

His voice came from close by; then I saw that he had the knife pressed beneath my throat again.

“Shoot and the Professor is done for.”

At that moment a voice came from the direction of our ship:

“Don’t move! You’re surrounded.”

The Fat Man’s hand with the knife froze. I pushed the knife away with my fist and it flew a few meters to one side.

“Are you listening?” Another voice came from the darkness at the end where the Blabberyap bird had headed. “Throw down your weapons.”

The pirates slowly got to their feet; their pistols clattered on the stones.

I raised my head and saw Doctor Verkhovtseff, in a space suit without a helmet on, come out from behind one of the landing struts.

In astonishment I turned back to the other side.

The second Doctor Verkhovtseff, in his hat, raised his hands and fell to us knees.

From the other side of the pirates came the First Captain. Just like he was in the monument on the Three Captain’s Planet, only alive, sunburned, and in the blue uniform of a captain of the Deep Space Fleet.

From out of nowhere flew the blabberyap bird and, fluttering its wings, it alighted on the Captain’s shoulder. Then, from out of the darkness, came Alice.

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