The Girl Nothing Happens To

OUR MAN IN THE PAST

The time machine test was to take place in the small auditorium at the House of Sciences. I had gone to pick up Alice at the kindergarten, and only then realized that if I saw her home I should be late for the test. So I made Alice promise faithfully to be on her best behaviour, and we went to the House of Sciences.

The lecturer from the Time Institute, very large and very bald, stood before the time machine explaining its design to the scientific-minded audience, who listened with all attention.

“The first experiment, as you all know, was a failure,” he said. “The kitten we sent materialized in the beginning of the twentieth century and exploded in the region of the River Tunguska, giving birth to the legend of the Tunguska meteorite. Since that time we have had no serious failures. True, in conformity with certain regularities — anyone interested may acquaint himself with them by reading the brochures of our institute — we can, up to the present, send people and objects only as far back as the seventies of the twentieth century. I should like to point out that several of our working colleagues have been there, in absolute secrecy of course, and returned safely. The procedure itself of transference through time is comparatively simple, though many years of work done by hundreds of people lie behind it. All one has to do is don this chromocine belt… I should like a volunteer to come up from the audience, and I shall demonstrate the method of preparing a traveller through time.

There was an awkward silence. Nobody could bring himself to be the first to mount the platform. At this point, as you might expect, Alice appeared on the stage. Alice! Who had promised five minutes earlier to be well-behaved.

“Alice,” I cried out. “Come back at once.”

“Don’t worry,” said the lecturer. “Nothing will happen to the child.”

“Nothing will happen to me, Daddy!” cried Alice merrily.

All the audience began to laugh, and crane their necks to search for the stern father.

I pretended it had nothing to do with me.

The lecturer fastened the belt on Alice and attached something resembling ear-phones to her temples.

“That’s all there is to it,” he said. “Now the person is ready to travel through time. He has only to enter the cabin, and he’ll find himself in the year 1975.”

What did he have to say that for! And a feeling of panic drowned my thoughts. Alice won’t pass that chance up!

But it was too late to warn him.

“Where are you going, child? Stop!” cried the lecturer.

But Alice was already in the cabin, and right before the eyes of the audience — vanished. They all gasped in unison.

Turning pale, the lecturer waved his arms in an attempt to quiet the uproar. Seeing me running up the aisle, he grabbed the mike in order to be heard.

“Nothing will happen to the child. In three minutes, she will again be with us. I give you my word, the machine is absolutely safe and has come through every test. Please don’t be alarmed!”

It was all very well for him to be so sure. But I stood on the stage and thought about the fate of the kitten which became the Tunguska meteorite. I neither believed nor disbelieved the learned Doctor. But judge for yourself — how would you feel if you knew that your child was on her way to a hundred years ago in time? … And if she ran away from the machine? And got lost?

“Is it impossible for me to follow her?” I asked.

“Quite impossible. In just a minute… Now don’t you worry. You see, our man there will meet her.”

“You have an associate there?”

“Not exactly, he’s not quite an associate. Simply we found a man who understood our problems perfectly, and a second cabin stands in his flat. He lives there, in the twentieth century, but because of his special profession…”

At that moment, Alice appeared in the cabin. She came out on the stage with the look of a person who has done a good job well. And under her arm, she carried a thick, old-fashioned book.

“There, you see…” began the lecturer.

The audience gave him a friendly round of applause.

“Now, little girl, tell us what you saw,” said the Doctor, not letting me even approach Alice.

“It’s very interesting back there,” she replied. “Bam! And I’m in another room. A man was sitting at a desk, writing something or other. Then he asked me: ‘Are you from the twenty-first century, child?’ I said I probably was, but I couldn’t count to our century because I can’t count very well yet. That I only go to kindergarten, and am in the middle or junior group. Then the man said that it was very nice to see me, and that I should have to go back. ‘Would you like to see what Moscow was like before your grandfather was even born?’ he asked. I said I would. And he showed me. A most amazing town … the buildings weren’t very tall. Then he said that he was a writer who wrote science-fiction books about the future. It seems he doesn’t invent everything, because people from our time visit him and tell him all about it. Only he mustn’t tell anyone, because it’s terribly secret. He gave me a book of his… And then I came back.”

The audience met Alice’s story with stormy applause.

Then a highly esteemed academician stood up and said: “My dear girl, you are holding a very unique book — a first edition of the science-fiction novel Spots on Mars. Would you mind presenting it to me? After all, you can’t read yet.”

“No, sir,” said Alice. “You see, I’ll soon learn to, and then I’ll read it myself.”