Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир (читать книги полностью .TXT) 📗

“I beg your pardon for this intrusion,” he oozed. “I would like to make amends for my behavior in the market place. I was so desperate to obtain a living Blabberyap bird that I fear I could not contain myself.”

“Quite all right,” I answered. “We weren’t offended. But there is no way we could possibly part with the Blabberyap bird.”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t want you to part with it,” the fat man said cheerfully. “But I simply must do something to better the terrible impression I must have made. Please, you cannot refuse to do me the honor of accepting this as a parting gift.”

He held out a very rare animal indeed, a diamond backed turtle from Menata. The turtle’s shell was composed of real diamonds and flashed so brightly it hurt your eyes to look at it.

“Please, accept it,” the Fat Man said. “I still do have three.”

Naturally I was less than eager to take a gift from such a strange individual one really has to show some caution but there wasn’t a single diamond-backed turtle in any of Earth’s zoos! We had been searching for one for five years, and now we had found someone who just gave us one!

“Please do not refuse,” the Fat Man said. “Fare thee well. Perhaps we will meet again. Bear in mind, I am known on a hundred planets. My name is Veselchak U.”

And he stamped his feet on the steps, went down the gangway and jumped up on the moving walkway that led in the direction of Palaputra.

It had already grown dark; both suns had set almost simultaneously, although from different spots on the horizon, and two sunsets fell over the space port, one prettier than the other, and I found myself thinking how pointless it was to think the worst of people. That fat man, for example, was a true amateur biologist, yet he had not hesitated to give us this rare animal as a gift.

So I returned to the crew’s lounge in a very fine mood and showed my friends the gift. The turtle moved from one of my hands to the other, and everyone admired the superb play of light on the diamonds that composed the shell.

“So where do we go from here?” Poloskov asked after dinner.

“For the Sklisses.” Alice said. “On the planet Sheshineru.”

“Why not?” I agreed. “We were planning to go there anyway.”

It was at that moment that the Blabberyap bird, which hitherto had been sitting peacefully in its cage and looking down on us drinking tea, began to speak again.

“You’re planning to leave,” he asked in the First Captain’s voice.

“Yes, I’m flying to meet him,” the Blabberyap bird answered himself in the Second Captain’s voice.

“All right then. Second, if there’s trouble, don’t hesitate to call on me.’

“If I can.”

“Take the Blabberyap bird. You can tell him everything. I know how to get him to repeat it. Give the bird all the details.”

“Until we meet again, then.”

“Until we meet again.”

The Blabberyap bird grew silent.

“Well, you heard it, Poloskov?” Alice asked.

“Of course I heard it; don’t shout,” Poloskov answered and started to think.

The Blabberyap bird nodded its golden crown, as though considering whether it should continue or not. Abruptly it spoke very slowly in the Second Captain’s voice:

“Set course for the Medusa system.”

We waited in the expectation that the bird might speak again, but the Blabberyap bird closed its eyes and tucked its head beneath its wing.

“So, the Second Captain got into trouble and sent the Blabberyap bird for help,” Alice said. “Now how can we get it to tell us more?”

“Hold on,” I spoke up. “Just what is it you’ve decided? Remember, the Blabberyap bird did not fly to Venus where the First Captain is working, but returned to its home planet. That means that no one sent it anywhere. The Second Captain might have just died, and the bird went home.”

“It really could have been anything,” Poloskov said, and got up from behind the table.

He left the crew’s lounge and returned in five minutes, carrying with him the Galactic Map. He placed it on the table, pushing aside some tea cups, and pressed the control. The holographic image sprang into existence above the table. He pointed to the edge of the map.

“Here.” he said, “this is the Medusa system. Completely unexplored. The star has planets. I propose we fly there. If the Captain is alive, we may be able to help him. If he has died, at the very least we will find out what happened! And where.”

“But he could very well have perished in space.” I objected.

“And just what could have happened to the great Captain in space?”

“His ship could have exploded, for example.”

“And would not the Blabberyap bird have exploded with it?”

“Well, anything at all could have happened!”

I fell silent. In the final analysis, the expedition had its own questions, and it was totally unknown if the planets of the Medusa system had any sort of life forms at all. The flight to the star and our return would take up most of the time allotted to the expedition. And we really did not know anything other than what we had heard the bird say. What if the Captain had spent some time there, and then gone off to another part of the Galaxy and perished there? I mentioned this to my colleagues, but the longer I spoke the less convinced I was of the rightness of my arguments, and the more I knew that I had failed to convince either Poloskov or Alice. “Fine,” I said finally. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Just let’s make a stop at Sheshineru first. We really have to find out what a Skliss is.”

“Agreed.” Poloskov moved his finger through the map. “This is our route, then; along the way we should be able to stop on various planets and search for rare animals for the Zoo.”

“And now it’s time to sleep.” I said. “We’ll depart tomorrow morning. Are all the animals fed and watered?”

“A-Okay Boss Expedition Leader Sir,” Alice, who was responsible for the feeding of the animals, answered.

“And where is the diamond-backed turtle?” I asked.”

“It was here just a moment ago.” Poloskov said. “Where is it now?”

We wasted an entire hour crawling all over the ship and only found the diamond-backed turtle with the aid of the Empathicator, who had hunted it down right in the air lock.

“It’s obvious it wants to run away.” Zeleny said. “Just like I warned. We’ll have to keep a constant eye on this turtle.”

The Empathicator became a bright yellow.

I dug out the table listing the Empathicator’s colors and feelings they indicated which the two-headed snake gave me, and said:

“A yellow color indicates distrust.”

“Don’t believe the turtle?” Zeleny asked the Empathicator. “Neither do I.”

The Empathicator became so yellow it outshone even the light of the lamp.

“Oh well,” I said then. “I’ll confine him in his cage.”

The Empathicator remained just as yellow, but black bands ran up and down its spine. The table advised us that black bands on a yellow background indicated disagreement.

“Oh, all right.” I said. “If you distrust it that much we’ll lock it in the safe for the night.”

When I spoke the Empathicator turned a delighted dark green.