Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир. Страница 48

The Fat Man motioned to the other pirates who went up the metal steps to the Blue Gull’s airlock and removed the enormous lock. The pirates had placed it there long ago, as soon as the Blue Gull had fallen into the pit. If the Second Captain managed to keep them out of his ship, they certainly did not want him leaving the ship without their permission.

The pirate hurried down the gangway and stopped at some distance from the ship, aiming his pistol at the airlock. Verkhovtseff also raised his weapon. They wanted to take no risks. The four of them feared the single Captain, who had held them off for the last four years.

“Show yourself.” Verkhovtseff said. “No tricks or we’ll fire.”

The airlock suddenly swung wide; I could hardly get a glimpse of the Captain. He jumped down like blue lighting. Two shots were fired simultaneously, but the Captain was no longer there. He had jumped to one side, and the flashes from the pistols struck the stones by his head. Another second and the Captain was shielded by the Blue Gull’s wide landing struts.

The pirates scattered and hunkered down against the stone floor.

“Calmly,” Verkhovtseff’s voice carried to me. “He’s not going anywhere. Surround him.”

In answer shots came from the direction of the Blue Gull.

I could see that the Captain had no way out of his predicament. The pirates were slowly, crawling over the stones, moving to surround him.

“Don’t shoot!” The Fat Man shouted.

His voice came from close by; then I saw that he had the knife pressed beneath my throat again.

“Shoot and the Professor is done for.”

At that moment a voice came from the direction of our ship:

“Don’t move! You’re surrounded.”

The Fat Man’s hand with the knife froze. I pushed the knife away with my fist and it flew a few meters to one side.

“Are you listening?” Another voice came from the darkness at the end where the Blabberyap bird had headed. “Throw down your weapons.”

The pirates slowly got to their feet; their pistols clattered on the stones.

I raised my head and saw Doctor Verkhovtseff, in a space suit without a helmet on, come out from behind one of the landing struts.

In astonishment I turned back to the other side.

The second Doctor Verkhovtseff, in his hat, raised his hands and fell to us knees.

From the other side of the pirates came the First Captain. Just like he was in the monument on the Three Captain’s Planet, only alive, sunburned, and in the blue uniform of a captain of the Deep Space Fleet.

From out of nowhere flew the blabberyap bird and, fluttering its wings, it alighted on the Captain’s shoulder. Then, from out of the darkness, came Alice.

.

Chapter Twenty-One

At that time…

Alice had vanished at the very moment when we found ourselves to be captives, and what happened was that no one in the cave paid the slightest attention to her disappearance, not even me.

How she was able to accomplish this I only managed to learn later, however I am going to describe everything in order, what happened to Alice while we were captives, and how it was that the First Captain and Doctor Verkhovtseff (that second Doctor Verkhovtseff) found the entrance to the cave and were able to save us.

What had happened was this. Alice had been given as a gift an invisible hat while in the bazar in Palaputra. She was given it by the Dwarf who sold non-existent fish, the one who said they just could not be seen.

At first Alice decided that this was a joke the hat was so light that it weighed almost nothing at all. But when Alice returned to the ship she found herself alone in her room and began to examine the stamps that she had bought, and she found something in her bag. It was almost completely weightless and invisible. It was then that Alice remembered about the invisible hat and decided test it and so she put it on her head. And Alice became invisible.

At first Alice wanted to run to me or Poloskov and boast about the hat, but then she remembered that, in the view of science, invisibility is a fairy story, and she decided that if she told us that an invisibility hat really existed, we wouldn’t even want to look at it and would not believe her.

She put the invisible hat to one side until the return to Earth, because such a hat would really prove most useful in school. If you were late for a lesson then you could always enter the class and seat yourself at the right spot anyway because no on would see you. You could even take a peek into the best student in class’s notebook (Although Alice would certainly never have done any such thing.)

Alice always carried the invisibility hat with her in her shoulder bag, and when the lights had come on in the cavern and the Fat Man and his cronies appeared Alice quietly slipped the invisible cap on her head and vanished. But she did not leave the cavern. She expected that they would confine us somewhere and she would be able to steal the key and set us free.

She moved to one side and listened to everything the Fat Man said. She would have made no move except that the pirate had come back with the Blabberyap bird dangling from his legs and the Fat Man gave the order to kill the Blabberyap bird, because the pirates no longer needed it, and then Alice knew she would have to act.

Alice crept over to the pirate on tiptoes and tripped him. The pirate fell, the Blabberyap bird got free, the shooting started, and the Blabberyap bird flew off.

What should she do now? Alice then thought: “The Blabberyap bird will fly away. It did fly out of here before. The Second Captain released it from his ship and the Blabberyap found its way out of the cavern. That means, the Blabberyap already knows how to get outside.” So Alice hurried after the Blabberyap. She was thinking that as soon as she saw where the exit was she would immediately come back to us, free us from this prison and lead us to freedom.

At first she was running in the dark. The light from the main hall penetrated into the long corridor only weakly. The Blabberyap bird flew ahead, and Alice could see him no longer she was following him by hearing, by the flapping of his wings. As soon as they had gotten well away from the pirates Alice called out to the bird in a low voice:

“Blabberyap, wait up!”

The Blabberyap bird heard her voice. At that very moment they came to the next hall in the underground maze; it was lit up, smaller than the first and filled with a small black space ship. But Alice forgot she was invisible and did not remove the cap. The Blabberyap bird made a circle over Alice, shaking its uncertain crown, and flew further, into a low tunnel which was hidden behind some protruding rocks. Alice forced her way into the tunnel as well. It rose sharply toward the surface, and far, far away she could make out a white circle daylight.

Alice was getting ready to clamber up the tunnel when she suddenly heard a weak groan.

The groan came from another tunnel, a tunnel as black as a moonless night. Alice approached the tunnel carefully. The groan was clearly audible, but Alisa had no flash light on her person, that had been left behind in the big cavern, and she had to go in blind. So she counted her steps. On the thirteenth step her hand knocked against a a metal grating.

Again she heard the groan.

“Is there anyone in here?” Alice asked in a whisper.

Evidently, the source of the groaning did not hear her.

“Wait.” Alice said. “I have to get my friends free first, then we’ll come back for you. You and any of Doctor Verkhovtseff’s prisoners.”

There was no answer.

Alice turned back. There was no time to waste with the unknown when there was no way of knowing what the fat man might do.

Returning to the first tunnel, Alice looked inside once again. The bright point the exit from this underground cavern had vanished. Alice did not realize that the short night had come and was frightened that she had mistaken some sort of tunnel for the exit. Or perhaps she was lost. Perhaps the Blabberyap bird had flown out another tunnel. And Alice, although she was very worried about me, and Poloskov and Zeleny, decided to expend another minute and make certain whether this was an exit for not. If this was a dead end, then she would lead us here and keep the pirates from capturing us again.