Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир. Страница 29

Chapter Twelve

An unfortunate Discovery

By the time the Pegasus arrived at the planet Sheshineru the gifts and cargo that had filled its holds had for the most part found their way to their diverse destinations. You could finally walk down the corridors and not bump into packages, bags and containers.

We had crossed about a third of the Galaxy already and found ourselves in regions where scheduled freighters and liners from Earth never ventured.

The planet Sheshineru lays far from any of the great commerce routes. It’s natural world is notably poor; it’s only been three hundred years now since it was empty and uninhabited, but then colonists came from Rozodor, established oceans and an atmosphere, planted forests and lawns.

We would not even have bothered wasting time with a landing but Doctor Verkhovtseff had told us, back on the Three Captains World, that he had heard about an animal on the planet called a Skliss.

The Pegasus landed on the planet in the dead of night, in a field not far from the flickering lights of a medium sized city. We landed silently so as not to awaken the citizens and not to frighten them; very few ships ever reach Sheshineru and only a few of its citizens have ever seen aliens.

The engines were turned off, the engineer Zeleny stroked his beard and lay down to get some sleep; Captain Poloskov remained on the bridge to make some corrections in navigation charts that were long out of date. Alice began to write a letter to her grandmother, planning to transmit it from Sheshineru, and I went down to the first hold to choose an empty cage for the Skliss and feed the animals we already had aboard.

The ship was quiet and dark; I hardly made a sound as I walked on the soft carpet and thought about how we had to restock our water supplies on Sheshineru and obtain silk for the Sewing Spider. One of the wander bushes approached me from behind one corner and I told it:

“Go to sleep right away! Or I will not water you tomorrow.”

The wander bush waved and rustled its leaves in horror and drew back into its own section.

Suddenly I heard the sound of someone chewing food. Someone something had crept into the store room where we were keeping the remaining gifts. I stopped and listened carefully. I couldn’t tell which of the animals had gotten out of its cage, and not all of them were the sort I would want to approach with empty hands.

I very carefully looked into the store room’s open door. The room was empty. But the chewing became all the louder. I went inside. The chewing came from the closed door of the refrigerator where we were keeping the pineapples.

My eyes widened when I saw that the key to the refrigerator was hanging in its spot on the outside and no one could have gotten into the refrigerator and then closed it behind them without the key.

Slowly I extended my hand to the latch, turned it and pulled the door open.

On one of the shelves, shivering from the cold, sat a little green man, his long thin teeth gnawing one of the pineapples.

In terror the little person raised his eyes and clutched the pineapple to his chest.

“You will not be able to.” He said.

“Go on, finish the pineapple.” I answered. “But how in blazes did you ever get in here?”

“They won’t even let you eat in peace.” The little man said and vanished together with the pineapple.

I rubbed my eyes. The refrigerator was empty. Three pineapples were gone from the shelves. Something then touched my feet and I jumped back in shock.

It turned out that it was just one of the wander bushes wandering about the hold.

“Go to bed!” I shouted at it, although I usually never shout at animals or moving plants.

The bush picked up its branches and turned on its heels.

I looked inside the refrigerator again. A little green man stood inside with his back to me, raising on his tiptoes, trying to drag a large pineapple from the shelf.

“Stop that!” I shouted.

The little man turned to look at me and I realized that this wasn’t at all the same little thief who had been eating the pineapple three seconds ago.

“Oh, don’t get in a bother.” The little man said. “I do have permission.”

And he immediately vanished, carrying away the pineapple.

Previously in my life I had been spared from such wonders. My head even started to whirl. I looked into the refrigerator with what must have been the stupidest of all look’s on my face; as though someone could hide himself in its depths!

At the very same moment something touched me; a third green person was standing on the shelf.

“Don’t get upset.” He said. “My error.” Immediately he reached for a pineapple.

“Hey, what the Devil’s going on here?” I growled. “Where are you from?

“I live here.” The little person said, took the pineapple, and vanished into thin air.

That was more than I could stand. I pressed the button on my com and called Poloskov.

“Gennady,” I asked, “are you sleeping?”

“No.” Our Captain answered. “Working. And what’s happened to your voice?”

“My voice? Nothing.”

“It’s four octaves higher than it normally is. Has anything happened?”

“Tell me, Gennady, is the ship’s airlock sealed?”

“Of course it is. No one can get in.”

“And Zeleny is sleeping?”

“He is. So is Alice. I just checked them. Alice was writing a letter and fell asleep halfway done. What’s going on?”

“Do you know of any cases.. instances… occurrences…of little green men appearing to people?”

“Little?” Poloskov asked industriously. “The type that sit on your shoulder? With tails perhaps? I do seem to recall reading about that somewhere, in a very old book.”

“No” I answered, “somewhat larger, without tails, and with a taste for pineapple. And one’s right here now! Here! The fourth!”

And in fact yet another little robber had appeared in the refrigerator, winked at me, and vanished.

“ I’m coming.” Poloskov said to assure me. “Don’t do anything precipitate. Get a hand on yourself…”

By the time Poloskov began is run from the bridge to the hold less than half of our stock of pineapples remained on the shelves, and right away two green, little persons appeared and were giving each other a hand up to get to the refrigerator’s top shelf.

“Don’t let it frighten you.” Poloskov said. “That has to be a hallucination.”

“What do you mean calling me a hallucination!” One little green man was outraged. “You can touch me.”

“Sometimes.” The second interrupted him.

“Give our regards to Alice.” The first said.

And the pair of them vanished, just in time to make room for another.

“Alice is really sleeping?” I asked Poloskov.

“Definitely.”

“Then however did they learn of her?”

“I can’t begin to guess. This must be some sort of madhouse.

The refrigerator was finally empty. No one else had appeared fora while.

“Then let’s close the door.” Poloskov said. “It will be quieter.

I slammed the door of the refrigerator shut.

“Where could they have learned about Alice?” I repeated. “We only landed here an hour ago and no one has been outside.

Poloskov and I remained awake, trying to think of an explanation for the strange phenomena, but we thought of nothing. Several times we checked the bolts on the airlock doors and walked around the ship. It remained empty, quiet, and peaceful.

In any event I spent the night in Alice’s cabin, an uncomfortable situation because the deck cover was hard and I had to share the space with Alice’s plastic swim fins.

Fortunately, I got up before Alice and when my daughter opened her eyes I was already sitting in the side chair and thumbing through “Guidebook To The Inhabited Planets” as though nothing had happened.

“What are you doing in here?” Alice asked.