Alice: The Girl From Earth

Chapter Twenty-Three Captive Underground

“That can’t be…” The Fat Man groaned and cut off.

“Where are the captives?” The Captain asked. From the way he asked it there was now no doubt the Fat Man would answer everything.

And the Fat Man immediately minced his way toward the tunnel. He was muttering.

“I quite forgot… That was all Ratty’s idea. I always told him…. I was always against it…”

“I’m sorry, Captain.” Alice said, hurrying after us. “I would have certainly remembered, but so many things were going on I forgot. But I would have remembered.”

“Don’t worry, kid.” The First Captain said and stroked the top of her head with his enormous hand. “You did great, and no one can blame you for anything. It’s these pirates that we’ll have a strong talking to.”

“Ah, here it is.” The fat man said. “Let me turn the light on now. Everything will be fine. How could I have forgotten. It’s all Ratty’s fault.

The light fluttered into existence and we looked down a small chamber that housed a pirate ship; the other end turned into a longer tunnel partitioned off not far from the entrance by a thick metal grating. The fat man ran to the grating and tried to push the key into the keyhole with unwilling fingers. The First Captain and seized the key from him and pushed the grating aside; the grating slid into a niche in the wall.

“I could have… I mean…” The fat man muttered, but no one was listening.

It wasn’t surprising the fat man didn’t want us to see that tunnel; both sides were lined with rooms stuffed with loot, precious gems, and other trophies.

“No,” I said, glancing into one of the rooms as we went, “We can’t just blow up this place; there must be enough wealth hidden here to build a hundred cities.”

“Stop a moment.” The First Captain said.

We all stopped, listening.

Far away, from somewhere below, we could make out an almost inaudible groan of pain.

We hurried in that direction. The door to one of the rooms was locked.

“The key!” The Captain ordered.

The fat man already had the key in his hand.

The room turned out to be a stairway landing; a narrow stairway led downward, the steps cut into the rock. At the end there was yet another grating. The Captain aimed the light of his flashcaster forward and we saw something sitting behind the grating on a pile of rags on the floor; chained to the wall. It was a Fyxxian, huge eyed and fragile.

The Fyxxian was dying. One glance was enough to tell me that. He was at the edge of extinction. Even more, they had subjected him to torture.

“I’ll kill him now!” The First Captain said; he was looking at the fat man.

“Seva…” The Second Captain whispered. “Don’t you recognize…”

“That can’t be!”

And the First Captain suddenly pulled on the steel grating with such force that the metal groaned and tore from its slots in the walls. He hurled the steel wreckage to one side hurried to the dying Fyxxian, picked him up, and carried him to the exit in his arms.

“Who is that?” Alice whispered a question.

I shook my head. I did not know.

The fat man had wormed his way beside us. He held his tears back for a second and answered:

“That is the Third Captain. They are thinking he died long ago.”

And immediately, as though remembering something very important, the fat man started to hurry down the corridor after the Captains, braying:

“It was allo his doing! It was all Ratty’s fault!”

The Third Captain was unconscious. The First placed him on the floor and turned to me:

“Professor, tell me.” He asked. His voice trembled. “Is there anything we can do?

“I don’t know. I doubt it.” I said. I bent low over the Fyxxian. They had been killing him with hunger and torture.

“They’ve been doing this to him for four years.” The Second Captain said. “And we were so certain that he was long dead! If it hadn’t been for Alice we would have left him here! He never told them anything, Professor; please, do whatever you can to save him!”

“You don’t have to ask me.” I said. “First thing, we’ll need nutrients. Alice dear, run to the Pegasus and bring the portable Auto-Doc.

Alice shot down the corridor like an arrow.

“I’m with her.” The First Captain said.

“Don’t!” Alice shot back over her shoulder. “I know where to look you don’t.”

“Listen to me, Third.” The Second Captain said. “Listen. Don’t give up. Just a little while longer, hold on! You can’t give up when we’re almost made it. Where here for you…”

Suddenly the Fyxxian opened his eye. It was very hard for him to do it because his body had already died; only his brain still fought with death.

“It’s all right now.” He whispered. “It’s all right. I didn’t say anything. Thank you for coming, my friends…” He closed his eye and his heart stopped.

I immediately began to apply artificial respiration to the Fyxxian, but it did not help. The situation was hopeless; I had no surgical instruments, no diagnostic machinery, not even a robot doctor. I was in the same position was a doctor from a hundred years ago.

“I’m going to have to take a really big risk.” I said to the Captains. “I’m afraid there’s no way out of this.”

“We believe you, Professor. The Captains answered me.

Then I took out my knife and made an incision into the Third Captain’s chest, placed my hand around the stopped heart and began to massage it. It seemed like hours passed; my hand became numb, and I did not see it when Alice ran up with the portable medical kit, instrumentation and drugs. The First Captain himself made the injection into his friend’s vein. I do not know which helped more, my efforts or the First Captain’s application of drugs, But the Third Captain’s heart shuddered once, again, and then it was beating.

“More adrenalin!” I ordered.

Alice handed the ampule to the Captains.

“He’s an immensely strong Fyxxian.” I said. “Anyone else in his place would have died.”

I pulled the robot pocket surgeon from the medicine chest and a minute later the small device had resealed all blood vessels and sewn up his chest. We very carefully carried the Fyxxian to the Blue Gull where he could be placed in the ship’s Auto-Doc and get real treatment. It was there that Doctor Verkhovtseff joined us, and, after half an hour, I was able to say that the Third Captain’s life was out of danger.

We left the Second Captain keeping watch by his bed and went down into the cavern to rest ourselves. The First Captain went with us.

The fat man sat on his haunches at the entrance under Zeleny’s gaze.

“Is he going to live?” Veselchak U asked with a timid smile, as though they were talking about his favorite brother.

“Yes,” Verkhovtseff answered curtly, “Despite your doing everything to see that he died.”

“No, not, you have us all wrong.” The fat man oozed. “That was all Ratty’s doing. You have no way of knowing what sort of corrupting role he has played in my life until now, how he has dragged me into desperate adventures by deception and lavish promises? What do I need with riches and power? I’m happy to live and let live; I have all my heart desires. But Ratty? He needed power. Like other people need soup and sandwiches Ratty fed on power. If he wasn’t able to exercise power over someone it didn’t matter who, anyone would do then the day was wasted. And he wanted power over whole planets, over the whole Galaxy. What was that to me. I just wanted to have a little fun. I’m really a very harmless sort of being; I’ve just had the misfortune of falling under Ratty’s baleful influence.”

We turned away from the fat man and he continued to talk, addressing Zeleny now, as if he really wanted to convince us that he was no more than a jolly, harmless lamb.

“Oh well,” Doctor Verkhovtseff said, laughing until his face consisted of thousands of fine lines, “at last the Three Captains meet again. Like in the good old days. For a while you were consigned to history pardon me, to the historical reliquaries, but now…”

“Yes.” The First Captain agreed with him. “Everything will be just like in the Good Old Days.”

And I, looking at him, realized he wasn’t all that old. Perhaps he could even go back into space again, all the more now that the Venus Project was coming to an end.

The First Captain guessed my thoughts. “I’m going to have to get used to it all again. While I was flying here I realized just how much I’ve forgotten.”

“But you’re planning to go back into space anyway, right?” Doctor Verkhovtseff was delighted.

“We will have to change the name of the planet and museum.” The Captain continued without answering the Doctor’s caisson directly. “Now it’s rather awkward. We’re alive, healthy, not really famous for anything in particular, and our stone copies stand in a museum as if we had died ages ago.”