Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир. Страница 40

“It only means we have to go a few dozen meters to one side.” Alice said insistently. “And if you’re not going, I’ll go alone.”

“Not before you get a good night’s sleep.” I said sternly. “And then we’re all going back there. We’ve promised that we won’t depart from this planet until we find the Captain, or until we’re convinced that he isn’t here.”

Chapter Seventeen

We Look Into The Past

Living on that planet would have been anything but easy. When we awoke in the morning our ship’s clocks showed seven in the morning, and beyond the ports it was growing dark and the short night had begun again. While we breakfasted the night passed and morning began.

The bright rays of the sun broke into the crew’s lounge and Alice, who had glanced into one of the mirror flowers that stood in a vase on the table, said:

“Look. I’m not here any more.”

The mirror flowers, which yesterday had reflected Alice, now showed us the familiar field where we had found them, but now the field was empty, visited by no one. While we looked into the mirror the field, in all the flowers, grew dark; twilight had come. We looked into the darkened mirrors of the flowers and I said:

“These are odd flowers flower cameras.”

A light had appeared from within the mirror. We all forgot about breakfast. None of us could tear himself away from the remarkable image. Unhurriedly, minute after minute it turned out, the flowers photographed everything that took place on the field. Now they were showing us.

“Now that is interesting. Just how long to these flowers live?” Poloskov thought aloud.

“I suppose a few days.” I answered. “Like all flowers.”

And immediately we found ourselves looking into the reflection of a small animal similar to a rabbit; it had jumped out of the bushes and hurried toward the flowers. It wasn’t yet dawn in the flower so we did not immediately realize just what was odd about the animal’s movements.

“Hey, he’s jumping with his end backwards.” Alice exclaimed.

The little rabbit-like animal really was approaching the flower with his rear-end forward. And then, having come to a stop in front of the flower, turned around and returned to the bushes in the very same odd manner.

“The movie’s broken.” Alice started to laugh. “Bunglers! Change the film!”

“No.” Poloskov said. “There’s nothing wrong with it. These flowers are not simply mirrors, they are mirror recorders. They might be able to do that if the outer layer which reflects and records grows constantly, layer after layer. Very thin layers. Millions of layers. Just one per image, and each image adds another layer to the flower. And so on. And when the flower is cut iot can no longer manufacture layers to the mirror, and they begin to decay, oe after the other, and as they decay we see what the mirror saw. Only backwards. Like an old fashioned movie fil being run backwards. Clear enough.”

“Quite possible.” I agreed. “A very interesting flower. But it’s time for us to get ready now. Let Poloskov ready for his flight with the resources sattelite and I’ll go down in thee ATV to that field and find out of there are any remains left over from the Blue Gull in the area.”

“I’m going with you Papa.” Alice said. “We can take the Blabberyap bird too.”

“All right.”

I headed down to ready the ATV and Alice remained in the Crew’s Lounge. She found watching the backward images more interesting.

“We’re ready now!” I shouted, sitting behind the wheel. “Want to get going?”

“Right away!” Alice shouted in answer. “Just a second…” and immedeatly she called me: “Papa, come up here! Right away! Before they leave.”

I made it to the steps in three jumps and ran into the Crew’s Lounge. Alice was standing beside the mirror.

“Look.” She said when she heard me enter.

All of the mirror flowers were showing one and the same image. In the middle of the field stood two men, the fat man in the leather buisiness suit and Doctor Verkhovtseff. Beyond the bushes we could see the sharp prow of a high speed starship.

The fat man and Verkhovtseff were arguing about something. Then the two of them walked out of view, backwards.

“They’re somewhere around here.” Alice said. They don’t know that the flowers have betrayed them.”

“Most likely you are right.” I answered. “But why, why?”

“Why what?”

“It must be they don’t know where the Captain is themselves. Otherwise why would they go chasing after the Blabberyap bird?”

“Maybe they have the Captain a prisoner and are afraid we’ll find out. They captured the Captain, imprisoned him, but the bird got away. And that’s what they’re afraid of.”

“But why would anyone want to keep him a captive? You’re being overly imaginative, Alice.”

“And you’re not going to do anything? You’re just going to leave him…”

“No!” I replied.. Inaction is the most feeble pursuit.

“Poloskov, Zeleny, listen. Alice and I were watching the mirror flowers and just saw the fat man and Verkhovtseff in it. That means they were here no more than a day before us. They had a high speed space ship. What do you think? Over?”

“I think the Second Captain is somewhere on this planet.” Poloskov said.

“And I think it’s best that we get out of here now.” Zeleny said. “There are just three of us, and our ship cannot be defended against attack. We should immediately go to a settled planet and get in touch with Earth or Fyxx from there. They can send a special Space Patrol ship that can deal with the unexpected far better than we.”

Zeleny, of course, was entirely reasonable. But he always overestimated difficulties and dangers. So I said:

“So far no one has attacked us. Of course that shouldn’t prevent us from taking defensive measures.”

“Right.” Poloskov agreed with me. “I really do not want to depart right away. For starters, though, we can do everything in our power to help the Second Captain.”

“Right.” Alice said.

“Now that’s unbelievable.” Zeleny said. “You can think that I’m being cowardly if you want, but I’m just trying to be rational. All we have on board are a kid and a lot of defenseless animals. We could end up being in a lot of trouble and not helping the Captain at all. But if Captain Poloskov decides that we have to remain, I’ll fight to the last bullet.”

“It won’t come to that.” I said. “I hope. We came here to discover if one of the Three Captain’s suffered misfortune or not. We’re not getting ready to attack someone and we don’t want to fight.”

“And for a kid I’m not that defenseless.” Alice said. “Can we go to the meadow?”

“Hold on.” I said. “Let’s do some more looking in that mirror.

But the mirrors showed us nothing. Not being able to wait Alice and I got into the ATV and circled the area of the meadow in it. We found only the traces of the landing of a ship on the other side of the hills. The ground had been churned up by heavy engines, and a narrow path run through the bushes toward the field.

We returned toward suppertime and found Zeleny in the Crew’s Lounge. He was standing in front of the mirror flowers in a pensive mood and twisting the ends of his beard in one fingers of one hand. In the other hand he held a vibroblade.

“And what are you thinking, Zeleny?” I asked.

“I’m wondering….” The engineer answered.

Reflected in the mirror was a quiet, sun drenched day.

“I am wondering,” Zeleny continued, “just how long these flowers live.”

“Probably some days.” I said.

“But what if they live not a few days but a large number of years? What if, year after year, they record everything that happens around them? Look how thick the mirrors are at least six centimeters each! And very dense. Over the last two days while we’ve had them I haven’t noticed them getting any thinner. Alice, do you mind if I perform an operation on one of the flowers?”