The Girl Nothing Happens To

TUTEKSI

As I’d promised Alice , I took her to Mars with me when I flew there to attend a conference.

We landed safe and sound. True, I don’t tolerate weightlessness too well, so I kept my seat during the trip, but my daughter flitted about the spaceship all the time. Once we had to pull her off the ceiling in the control deck because she wanted to push the red button, namely, the button for emergency braking. But the pilots weren’t very angry with her.

On Mars, we went sightseeing in town, travelled with tourists into the desert and visited the Great Caves . But after that I had no time for Alice and installed her in a boarding-school for a week. Many of our specialists work on Mars, and the Martians helped us build a huge cupola over a miniature Kinder-town. There are real earth trees growing there — it is a fine place. Sometimes the children go on excursions. Then they wear small space-suits and come out into the big city streets walking in double rows.

The school-mistress, Tatyana Petrovna was her name, said I wasn’t to worry. Alice told me the same, too. And we parted for a week.

The third day, Alice disappeared.

It was a perfectly extraordinary occurrence. To begin with, in all the history of the boarding-school, not one inmate had ever disappeared, or even been lost, for more than ten minutes. On Mars, it is simply impossible to get lost in town. And all the more so for an Earth-child, dressed in a space-suit. The very first Martian who met the child would bring him or her back. And the robots? And the Security Service? Why, it’s impossible to get lost on Mars.

But Alice got lost.

She hadn’t been seen for about two hours, when they called me away from the conference and took me to the boarding-school on a Martian Cross-Country Hopper. When I appeared under the cupola, I probably looked rather upset, because everybody gathered there fell silent in sympathy. And who wasn’t there, though! All the teachers and workers at the boarding-school, ten Martians in space-suits (they had to wear them under the cupola because of the heavier Earth air pressure), interstellar pilots, Chief Nazaryan of the Life-Saving Service, archaeologists…

Apparently, for over an hour the city television centre had been broadcasting the news, every three minutes, that a little girl from Earth had disappeared. All videophones on Mars gave out alarm signals. Lessons were stopped in Martian schools while the pupils, in groups, combed all the city and its environs.

Alice’s disappearance had been discovered only when her group had returned from a walk. Two hours had passed since then. And the air in her space-suit tank was sufficient to last only three hours.

Knowing my daughter, I asked if they had looked for her in all secluded nooks in the school or near it. Perhaps she had found a Martian praying mantis, and was absorbed in watching it…

I was told there were no cellars in town, and all secluded spots had been searched by the pupils and by the Martian university students who knew such places like the palms of their hands.

I was angry at Alice . Why, of course, any second she would come round the corner wearing the most innocent expression in the world. And, really, her behaviour had caused more trouble in the city than a sand storm. All the Martians and all the Earthmen living in town had had to drop all their affairs, all the life-saving personnel had been called in to help. At the same time I was beginning to be seriously alarmed. This adventure of hers might end badly.

News from the search parties kept pouring in: “Pupils of the Second Martian Grammar School inspected the stadium. No Alice “, “The Martian Sweets Factory reports that no child has been found on its territory…”

“Maybe she has actually managed to get into the desert?” I thought. “She would be found by now if she were in the city. But the desert… The Martian deserts have not yet been fully explored, and you could get lost there and not be found for ten years or more. But the nearest desert vicinities have already been searched on cross-country hoppers…”

“They’ve found her!” suddenly cried a Martian in a blue tunic, as he stared into a pocket television set.

“Where? How? Where?” came excited cries from everybody under the domed cupola in Kinder-town.

“In the desert, one hundred and fifty miles away.”

“One hundred and fifty!”

“Of course,” I thought to myself. “They don’t know my Alice . Just what one might expect of her.”

“The girl’s feeling fine, and will soon he here.”

“But how did she get out there?”

“On a post jet plane.”

“But of course,” said Tatyana Petrovna, beginning to cry. She had suffered more than any of us.

Everybody hurried to comfort her.

“We were walking past the post-office, and they were loading the robot post-jets. But I didn’t pay any attention, because you see them a hundred times a day.”

And ten minutes later, when the Martian pilot brought Alice in, everything was cleared up.

“I crawled in to get a letter,” said Alice .

“What letter?”

“But Daddy, you said Mum would write us a letter. So I looked in the jet to see if I could find it.”

“You crawled inside?”

“But of course. The doors were open, and many letters were there.”

“And then?”

“I no sooner crawled in, when the doors closed and the jet took off. I started looking for the button, to stop it. There were many buttons. When I pushed the last one, the jet landed and the door opened. I went out and all around there was only sand, and no Tatyana Petrovna, and no children.”

“She pushed the button for an emergency landing!” said the Martian in the blue tunic, all admiration.

“I cried a bit, and then decided to come home.”

“And how did you guess which way to go?”

“I climbed up a small hill to take a look from there. And there was a door in the hill. I could see nothing from the hilltop. So then I went into the room and sat down.”

“What door?” wondered the Martian. “There’s only desert in that area.”

“No, there was a door and a room. And in the room there was a big stone. Like an Egyptian pyramid. Only a small one. Remember, Daddy, you read me a book about an Egyptian pyramid?”

Alice’s unexpected explanation greatly excited the Martian and Chief Nazaryan of the Life-Saving Service.

“The Tuteksi!” they cried.

“Where was the girl found? Give us the position!”

And half those present disappeared like smoke. Then Tatyana Petrovna, who had personally brought Alice something to eat, told me that thousands of years ago on Mars there had once lived a mysterious civilization called the Tuteksi. Only small stone pyramids remained as relics. Up to now, neither the Martians nor Earth archaeologists had been able to find a single building of the Tuteksi — there were only small pyramids scattered through the desert and covered with sand. And now Alice had actually stumbled on a Tuteksi building.

“There, you see. Again you’re in luck,” I said. “But all the same, I’m taking you home at once. You can get lost there all you want. Without a space-suit.”

“I also prefer getting lost at home,” said Alice.

… Two months later I read an article in the Russian journal Round the World. It was called “What the Tuteksi Were Like”, and stated that a valuable monument of the Tuteksi culture had at last been found in the Martian desert. Now scientists were engaged in deciphering the writings on the pyramid. But the most interesting of all was the discovery of a drawing of a Tuteks, in a wonderful state of preservation. And there was a photograph of the pyramid with the portrait of a Tuteks.

Somehow, this portrait seemed familiar, and a strange foreboding came over me.

“Alice,” I said in my severest voice. “Tell me the truth, now. Did you draw anything on the pyramid when you were lost in the desert?”

Before answering, Alice came up and looked attentively at the picture in the journal.

“That’s right, it’s a drawing of you. Only I didn’t draw it, I scratched it with a stone. I was so awfully bored…”