Alice: The Girl From Earth

16

Alice didn’t now for how long she had been sleeping; t could have been ten minutes, it could have been three hours. But suddenly she heard a voice:

“Alice!”

She immediately opened her eyes and looked around.

The room was empty. She could still hear footsteps moving back and forth on the other side of the door. They were guarding her carefully.

“Alice, can you hear me?”

“Is that you, Purr?”

“It’s me. Come to the corner that’s as far from the door as you can get and help me.”

Alice got quietly to her feet and went to where Purr told her.

And she saw what was there in the corner, flush in the floor, a grate. On the other side of the metal grate looking up at her was the furry face of the little archaeologist.

“Don’t be sad.” The archeologist whispered, blinking his one purple eye. “We’ll get you out of here.”

“But how did you get here>“

“No time to t now, but, in general, while they were all shouting and chasing after you I opened the bag and jumped out; they almost trampled me. No one was paying any attention to a kitten so I was able to follow after and see where they put you. It helped that I’d sewn the tail back on.”

“And then…”

“And then I scouted out the building. I found grate leading to the steam tunnels beneath the building, and so I found you. I’ve unlocked this grate here from below, but I don’t have the physical strength to lifted it. Hurry up and pull.”.

Alice pulled at the grate. The grate hardly lifted.

“Pull!” Purr’s words were a prayer. “They’ve almost come for you.”

On the other side of the door they could hear voices. Someone was about to enter the room.

With all her strength Alice tugged at the grate and she pulled it up, and landed with a loud clang on the stone floor.

“Jump!” Purr commanded. “Don’t be afraid; it’s not high.”

At that very moment the door to the little room began to open; Alice, closing her eyes tightly, jumped into the black pit as Purr scarcely scampered to one side.

“Follow me!” He said.

Alice ran for what seemed to be forever along the dark corridors of the spaceport’s below ground maze of pipes and tunnels. Alice covered her hands and knees with bruises and scrapes, she tore the sleeves of her dress, but there was no way she could stop or slow down Purr kept darting forward and waiting for her to catch up.

“You can rest at home. Listen! There’s a hue and cry for us.”

They were able to run out the back door of the space port a minute before the whole building was flooded with soldiers. What saved them was the number of people in the space port had become so great that the soldiers and policemen sent to capture the state criminal found it impossible to move quickly it at all.