Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир. Страница 11

“Any time.” Zeleny said. “But I really don’t like the weather.”

“Traffic control.” Poloskov said into the microphone. “Pegasus requests permission for lift off.”

“A moment please.” The dispatcher answered. “Do you have any places for passengers?”

“Not a single one.” Poloskov answered firmly. “We are not taking any passengers.”

“That’s not what I meant. Do you have room aboard to carry five people to the Moon?”

“Why? What about the regular flights?”

“All over booked.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know? Today’s the Galactic Sector soccer championships; Earth versus Fyxx in Luna City.”

“Whatever reason would they put it on the moon?” Poloskov had absolutely no interest in soccer and in general had spent the last there days prior to our departure quite divorced from such mundane realities.

“Where have you been?” The dispatcher said. “How are Fyxxians supposed to play under terrestrial gravity? The moon’s gravity is uncomfortable enough!”

“In other words, Earth emerges victorious?” Poloskov asked.

“I doubt it.” The dispatcher answered. “They switched three defensive ends with Mars, including Simon Braun.”

“I should have your cares and travails.” Poloskov said. “When can we leave?”

“We’re going to win anyway.” Alice entered the conversation. She had come onto the bridge without my noticing.

“Right, kid!” The dispatcher beamed. “Now, can you take any of the fans? For me to send them all I’d need seven ships. I can’t imagine how the applications are already piling up….”

“No.” Poloskov cut him off.

“Well, that’s up to you. Ready your engines.”

Poloskov turned to the engine controls.

“Zeleny,” he said, “turn on the in-system drives, but just enough to make certain we’re not overloaded.

“How could we be overloaded.” I felt shocked. “We’ve just recalculated everything.”

The ship almost began to shiver with the expectation of coming speed.

“Five Four Three Two One Liftoff!” The captain said.

The starship groaned and remained on the ground.

“What happened?” Poloskov said.

“Pegasus, what’s going on?” The dispatcher, who had been overseeing our liftoff, asked.

“Nothing happened, that’s what.” Zeleny said. “I keep telling you that nothing good is going to come of this.”

Alice was sitting like she was fastened to her seat, not looking in my direction.

“We’ll try it again.” Poloskov said.

“You don’t have to prove anything.” Zeleny answered. “There is a considerable overload, far too much mass for our engines to shift. I have the readings here…”

Poloskov attempted to lift the Pegasus a second time, but the ship remained on the ground as though nailed in place. Then Poloskov said:

“We must have some sort of major error in our calculations.”

“No. The computer checked them, and I added them up on the side.” I answered. “We have a reserve of two hundred kilograms.”

“But then what’s the cause?

“We’ll have to throw a lot of the freight overboard. We can’t loose any more time. Which cargo hold do we begin with?”

“With the first.” I said. “It’s filled with packages bound for the moon.”

“Not the first, please!” Alice suddenly said.

“All right.” I answered her automatically. “Then we start with three and get rid of the cages and trapping equipment.”

“But the third…” Alice started to say.

“Now what’s going on?” Poloskov asked angrily.

The traffic control dispatcher’s face was on our screen again.

“Pegasus,” he said. “We have a request for you?”

“What sort of request?”

“You’d better speak to the Information Desk.”

The screen changed to show the starport waiting room. A crowd had gathered around the Information Desk; among them I recognized a number of familiar faces. Where had I seen them before?

The woman standing closest to the Information Desk pick up looked at me.

“Now this is absolutely shameful! This is a horrible prank to play!”

“What prank?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“I told Alyosha: ‘You can’t go to the moon; you have five Cs in your final quarter.”

“And I told Leva he couldn’t go to this game.” Another woman pushed her way into the pick up. “He could see it perfectly well on television!”

“A-ha.” I said to myself slowly. I did know these people who were about to stage a riot in the starport’s waiting room. They were the parents of the other children in Alice’s class.

“So it’s all clear.” Poloskov said. “Just how many stowaways do we have on board?”

“I didn’t think we’d be overloaded.” Alice said. “There was no way the kids could miss the match of the century! What’s the point of me going to the match if they’re not there?”

“And how many stowaways do we have?” Poloskov repeated in a voice of steel.

“Our class and the two parallel ones.” Alice whispered. “While dad was sleeping I flew them to the spaceport and hid them aboard.”

“You are not flying anywhere!” I said. “There is no way we can take irresponsible people on this expedition.”

“Papa, I won’t do it again.” Alice begged. “Please, understand! I have a strongly developed sense of responsibility!”

“We could have crashed because of your sense of responsibility.” Poloskov said.

Usually he was the one who would pardon any of Alice’s transgressions, but now he was very angry.

“Get those stowaways off the ship.” He added. “If we can do it in half an hour, you will remain aboard. If not, we take off without you.”

The last stowaway was hunted down and expelled from the cargo holds in twenty-three minutes. Six minutes later they were all standing outside the ship, terribly proud and terribly sad, with a crowd of mothers, fathers, and grandparents rushing toward them from the space port’s buildings.

In sum there had been forty-three stowaways aboard the Pegasus; to this day I do not understand how Alice was able to find places for them all aboard so well hidden that we had noticed not a one of them.

“Bye, Alice! Have fun!” Alesha Naumov shouted from below when we were at last closing the locks. “Root for Earth for us! And come back soon!”

“Earth will win!” Alice shouted back.

When the Earth was already dropping away from us and we had set course for the Moon, Alice said:

“It didn’t turn out all that well, papa.”

“Not all that well at all,” I agreed. “I am quite ashamed of you.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.” Alice said. “The whole Third B class took off on a freight barge for the moon in potato sacks. They’ll be at the stadium, but our Second grade class won’t. I have not lived up to the trust of my fellow students.”

“And what did they do with the potatoes they displaced?” Poloskov asked, surprised.

“I don’t know.” Alice said. She thought and added: “It will just be me and the Third B class at the game. Yuck!”