Alice: The Girl From Earth

15

The room where Alice found herself was small and completely empty. There was not even a chair. On the other side of the door Alice heard voices. It was not even a proper room, just one of the space port’s many storage lockers that had been hurriedly emptied to hold the state criminal who had made an attempt on the lives of the returning astronauts.

Alice sat on the floor. She was very happy, but very tired and worried about what had become of Purr, the archaeologist.

She understood the panic that had overcome the entire planet of Coleida. Quite likely no one understood anything: everyone was asking his neighbor: ‘Where the astronauts injured?’ And thousands of different and quite terrible rumors were making their way over the planet.

Five minutes passed. And then another five minutes.

“Of course,” Alice thought. “They’re all busy with the astronauts. No one has any time for me.”

Then another thought filled her head. It was all very well and good that she had been able to save Coleida. But what happened now? Wasn’t she ever going to get out of here. And wouldn’t she ever see the noisy and good Gromozeka again and return home, to Earth.

She wanted to cry. And she did cry. Perhaps not so much from sadness for the situation she now found herself in as much as from physical and mental exhaustion. And, when she had cried a little, her mood became somewhat better. Because she understood that she would not remain in this precarious position forever. If they had to, they could bring three more time machines from Earth. And then Petrov, and Richard, and perhaps even Gromozeka himself would come looking for her. And they would explain everything to the Coleidans, and, perhaps, the Coleidans would even pit up a monument to Alice.

So Alice dozed off, leaning against the whitewashed walls.

In fact no one had even bothered to interrogate her yet; a panic had consumed the space port. But when they carted Alice away and the cloud of smelly mist cleared it turned out that the astronauts were completely unharmed. The astronauts had arrived safely, the vast crowd had a deep desire to celebrate, and that is what the people of Coleida proceeded to do. For the moment the people of Coleida had completely forgotten Alice existed.