Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир. Страница 50

The real Doctor Verkhovtseff walked up to the pirate in the hat and looked him over. The pirate had no where to go; Zeleny was behind him.

Suddenly Doctor Verkhovtseff reached out to his double and with a jerk pulled off the man’s head, face and chest.

Immediately we saw the image of the Doctor fall from the pirate, and beneath it made out a totally different being, a non-human. Verkhovtseff had evidently found the control to the holographic projector which gave his pirate doppleganger his features and disabled it.

The hat tumbled to one side. The Doctor’s clothing lay at our feet, and out of the pile of rags which a moment before had been Doctor Verkhovtseff arose an enormous insect, a meter and a half in height, with hairy legs, a round, chitinous body, and large and sharp claws. The insect spread its short wings in an attempt to fly away, but Zeleny was able to grab it from behind. The insect turned its head to him, and opened its claws in threat.

“Careful!” The Second Captain shouted. “He’s poisonous!”

Zeleny pulled his hand back and the Second Captain raised his pistol, aiming it at the pirate.

And then the pirate, seeing there was no where to run, suddenly lifted a long, thick tail with a needle end and struck himself in the chest. He immediately fell, his thin arms spread out.

“He stung himself!” Alice exclaimed. “Just like a scorpion.”

“Scorpions never sting themselves.” I answered. “That’s just a fairy tale. Only rational beings know what death is.”

“It’s all a fake!” The fat man said suddenly. “I want to help you, really I do; I know him better than anyone else. He’s the chief pirate. He’s made us obey him; he’s the one who thought up all our crimes. His name is Ratty; he’s from the dead planet Crocrys. Some time ago the Crocrysi killed each other off in a war and the last of them hid themselves in caves. But he didn’t kill himself. He loves himself too much to do that. He’s just unconscious. He’s thinking that you’ll leave his body here and he will wake up and get away. He’s done that before. Kill him.”

“Why would we want to kill him?” The First Captain said. “He has a date with a court.”

He went over to Krys, who still lay in a pile of clothing, bent down and picked up the light body and handed it to the captive pirates in black uniforms.

“Carry him back to the Pegasus.” The Captain said. “And lock him in a cage. Do you have any empty cages, Professor?”

“Alas, yes. More than one. We’ve gathered far fewer animals than we were counting on. I’ll go to the ship with the pirates and make certain the cage is solid enough.”

“And then we can carry him to a planet where they’ve been searching for him for years, and we’ll let them judge him.”

“That’s right!” The fat man said. “That’s what you want to do with him. He was the one who came up with the idea of impersonating Verkhovtseff. He flew to the base on Arcturus Minor as a fake Verkhovtseff; he was hoping to find the plans to the Blue Gull there so he could open it. As the fake Verkhovtseff he was the one who sold the worms in Palaputra and destroyed all the Blabberyap birds so that the one we were hunting would not be able to reach the First Captain with his request for help. It was he who forced me to give the Professor the diamond backed turtle, and as the fake Verkhovtseff he contaminated the robot’s lubricating oil. He had no mercy! Take him away! Let the courts deal with his betrayer and trickster!”.

“Quiet down, Veselchak U.” The Second Captain said “You can’t hope to avoid punishment for your owncrimes by blaming it all on your partner. The courts will try you too. I’ve chased you across the whole Galaxy. You’ve committed far too many crimes to exculpate yourself by a new betrayal.”

The fat man bit his lips and shut up.

I led two of the pirates, who dragged the unmoving body of Krys, onto the ship. Poloskov came with me because he did not trust the pirates. We locked Krys into our strongest cage and returned. When we got back they were talking about something else.

“Now how do we get out of here?” The First Captain asked the fat man.

“If you promise me my life, I will help you leave.” The fat man said. “Otherwise, why should I help you? No one besides me knows how to open the cover to the cavern. And its made of such strong stone that you couldn’t open it even with gravity bombs.”

“If you don’t want to talk, don’t..” The First Captain laughed. “We can wait until hour friend Krys awakens and I have no doubt he will be delighted to help us.”

The two Captains stood side by side, one of them sunburned and healthy and dressed in a new space suit, the other worn, exhausted, and thin, but they still looked like they could have been brothers, and I was starting to like them. In the flesh they were far better than as stone monuments on the Three Captain’s World. The First Captain had his arm around his friend’s shoulder, and the two of them stood over the fat man as though he were a large toad.

“No.” The fat man said. “No way I’ll help you. You can die here!”

“We’re certainly not going to die.” The Second Captain said. “Now, I and my friends…” He waved his arm to include all of us, not just the First Captain and Doctor Verkhovtseff, but me and Poloskov and Zeleny and Alice from the Pegasus, because we had also come to help him alothough we had never met him before, “have no fear from any pirates any longer. If we have to we can depart in the First Captain’s ship and return later to retrieve our ships.”

Veselchak U had started to bend. He had come to under5stand taht they did not have to deal with him, and was about to begin to talk, when Zeleny ruined it all.

“No.” Zeleny said. “First of all I am not going to just abandon my ship. If I have to I’ll just stay here and wait. And anyway someone has to feed the animals. Just tell us how to open the blasted lock!”.

That was just not the way to talk to the fat man, the way Zeleny did. You can’t ask anything from pirates; they’ll just become insolent and demand more and more.

When the fat man heard Zeleny’s words he grew emboldened. “No,” he said, “give me written assurances that I will remain alive, then I will let everyone out of here.

The Captain’s just looked at Zeleny, but no one said anything.

“Too bad.” The Frist Captain said. “Then we wait. We’ll give you ten minutes, Veselchak U; think it over. We’re the ones with the time.

“He’s right.” The Second Captain spoke up. “But in the meantime you can tell us how you found us, First. I take it the Blabberyap bird never reached you”

“While you talk I’ll make some sandwiches.” Zeleny said in a guilty voice. “I take it we’re all starving.”

“Fine.” One of the Captains said.

“I’d help you, Zeleny.” Alice said. “But I really am too interested to hear what the First Captain has to say to tear myself away from here.”

“Stay if you want, Alice.” The First Captain said. “Without you we could never have saved our friends.”

“I couldn’t have done anything without you.” Alice said and turned red from pride.

“Alice,” I said severely, “go wash you hands and straighten yourself out. “You’re as dirty as a swamp mole from the planet Vukanata.”

“You don’t have to blame me for it.” Alice did not quite argue with me. “A mole does what a mole has to do.”

She hurried off to the ship, shouting as she went:

“Just don’t start the story without me!”

The First Captain turned to Veselchak U and asked him ravnodushno:

“Have you thought it over yet?”

The pirate laughed fawningly. His eyes had sunk back into the folds of skin on his head.

“Let’s make a deal, Captain.” He said. “We’re both business people.”

The Captain ignored him.

Alice returned in two minutes. I noted that here hands were only washed so so, but she had replaced the filthy yellow jumpsuit with another one, a blue one.