Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир. Страница 44

“Why are we flying…”

Then there was a blow, and another, the engine’s awoke automatically as our ship fell into some sort of abyss. I wanted to pull off my own crash web to go help Alice but a single, final blow rendered me unconscious, and when I came to my senses our ship was standing, if at an angle, in darkness.

There were no sounds.

“Alice.” I asked, pulling off the crash web and getting tangled in it. “How are you?”

“I’m okay.” Alice answered quietly. “Just bruised a little.

Zeleny’s voice reached us from the other end of the ship.

“Hey! Where’d you land us, Poloskov? There’s no way we’re ever going to get out of this now!”

“Everything all right down there?” Poloskov asked Zeleny.

“I’m moving.” Zeleny said. “But where are we? Did we fall off a mountain?”

“Worse.” Poloskov answered, and turned on the bridge’s emergency lighting. The instruments came back on and burned like star clusters and galaxies in the darkness of space. “We’ve fallen underground.”

It was then that I realized it was all my fault. I should have warned Poloskov, told him what we had seen in the mirror flower.

“How could I have been so stupid?” I said sincerely. “When we looked at the mirror flower’s image from four years ago in place of the meadow was a concrete plate.”

“That’s right.” Alice said.

She found me in the twilight, crawling up the inclined floor, and took my hand.

“That’s right. There was a big slab.” Alice said. “And we forgot to tell Poloskov about it.”

“What slab?” Poloskov asked.

I told him about what we had seen from four years back, the field devoid of grass and flowers, just a large concrete plate that might even have been circular from what we had seen of the edge.

“I’d never have landed here if I had know that earlier.” Poloskov said.

He was very angry; any captain who’s ship crashes into an underground pit would be very angry.

“Oh well, crying won’t help.” Poloskov, who was able to keep control of himself, said. “Zeleny, can you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Get the flash casters from the storage locker and check to see how serious the damage in the drive room is.”

“I’m already on it.” Zeleny said.

Poloskov was all over the control console, pressing buttons and checking the readouts from the internal sensor net that told him the status of every system and machine aboard the Pegasus. In the end he appeared satisfied.

“Listen,” He said, “I’d say there’s no really serious damage to the ship, but one of the landing struts was damaged in the fall. So we have to go outside and determine how bad the everything is and what we can do to fix it. I’m going alone; the rest of you will stay aboard the ship.”

“Nothing of the sort.” I said. “You’re too necessary to the operation of the ship. If something were to happen to you the Pegasus would never take off again. I’ll go.”

“I’ll go.” Zeleny said from the engine room. He had been listening to our conversation.

“And me too.” Alice said.

In the end we were unable to convince each other of nothing and headed for the airlocks together.

“Odd!” Poloskov said as he opened the lock. “If we’d fallen into a pit or sink hole then there should be light coming down from above. It’s totally dark here.”

“Could it be that we’re really very deep, too deep for the light?” Alice asked.

“No. If we’d fallen very deep the ship’s automatic systems would have landed us without bending one of the struts. Since they did not have time to react the pit isn’t very deep at all.

Poloskov pulled the airlock door wide. On the other side it was pitch.

“Take a look.” Poloskov said. “Zeleny, give me the flash caster.”

“Oh,” Zeleny cried out, “I can’t. Something has grabbed me by the leg!”

Before I had a chance to go to help him Zeleny turned on the flash caster and began to shine it from side to side, trying to find what had attacked him.

But that turned out to be nothing more than the Empathicator. The animals was frightened in the darkness; it had gotten out of its cage and caught up to us by the airlock. In the flash caster’s light the Empathicator was a terrified yellow color. It moaned and clutched Zeleny’s leg for protection.

Poloskov took the flash light from Zeleny and cast the strong ray of light forward. Ahead of us was just darkness; the pit into which we had fallen was so great. Poloskov aimed the flash light upwards and illuminated an even surface, the ceiling.

“Like in a tea cup.” Poloskov said. “We fell inside and the roof closed over us.” He ran the light around again. “There’s nothing here.” He said. “There hasn’t been for quite a while.”

Poloskov let down the ladder and stepped down. He stamped his heels on the floor and turned back to us, saying:

“It’s stone. We can walk on it.”

We followed after him. While Poloskov made a circuit of the ship, looking for any damage the landing gear may have sustained, I aimed my flash light upward for several times. I soon found what I had been looking for, a thin line that ran along the ceiling, in a circle, marking the edge of the stone pit. Yes, Poloskov had been right; the roof had opened the moment we st down on it, letting the ship fall inside.

With the light of the flash caster in front of me I circled the ship in the other direction. It was dark as well here. I turned the flash caster on to its highest intensity and the light seemed to reflect off something in the darkness.

“I’m heading a little in this direction.” I said loudly so Poloskov could hear me. “There’s something over here.”

“Wait, Papa, I’ll go with you.” Alice said.

“Just don’t wander off too far.” Poloskov added.

Alice ran toward me. She was carrying a large flash light.

We went about twenty more steps, flashing the light ahead of us, and then realized that there was another space ship in the pit. When we got close enough Alice read its name aloud:

“‘The Blue Gull.’“

“Poloskov!” I called; the walls cast back my voice, strengthened it and turned it to thunder as though I were in a bottle. “Poloskov! Zeleny! We’ve found the Second Captain!”

I heard dull steps Poloskov and Zeleny running towards us. The bright white points of their flash lights jerking up and down as they ran.

“Where?”

The starship “Blue Gull” rose over our heads. It was dulled with dust that had covered it for many years. It looked dead, abandoned and bereft of human beings. A large lock had been placed on the airlock.

“So, now we known what happened to him.” I said.

“He fell into this pit.” Poloskov said. “Evidently the Second Captain could not get out.”

“We won’t be able to either.” Zeleny said gloomily. “We’ll have to end out days in this pit I told you we should have gone for help. I warned…”

“Don’t panic.” Poloskov said firmly. “We’re going to get out of this. And for starters I propose we board the Blue Gull. Now that we’ve found it we might as well go all the way.”

“The airlock’s closed and there’s no ladder.” I said.

And suddenly over our heads the ceiling burst into bright light, so bright we were all forced to close our eyes, and when I opened by eyes I was noted that an enormous net was dropping over us. A second later we were tangled in it like birds.

And when we tried to free ourselves, floundering and getting in each other’s ways, a loud voice bellowed down from a speaker:

“Don’t move an inch! You’re our prisoners!”

Shielding my eyes from the bright light with my palm I looked to the side from where the voice had come. The fat man named Veselchak U was walking towards us on the even shining floor of the enormous cave; with him came Doctor Verkhovtseff, again dressed in his hat. Both men held pistol pointed at us in their hands.

From the other side approached two more men in black leather uniforms.