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

“Poloskov, are you listening to this?”

“Of course I am.” Poloskov said calmly. “I’d say that Alice is completely correct. You could tell the Cardinal’s guards apart from the Musketeers right away.”

While we were speaking the four Musketeers had walked right up to our ship. I pressed my nose to the port to see what they would do next. The Musketeers stopped, and one of them I would guess it was Aramis, the handsome man with the thin moustache, waved his hand in an elegant bow to ask Milady to go forward.

“All very interesting.” Alice said, standing on tiptoe to get a better look down. “Are they going to execute her or not? What do you think, Papa.”

“I’m not yet thinking anything at all.” I answered. “Poloskov, can the steps be lowered?”

And suddenly the Musketeers walked further, right into the wall of the ship and vanished.

“They’re walking right through the wall.” I heard Poloskov’s excited voice.

Astonishing Captain Poloskov is difficult. He’s seen things ten times larger, ten times more amazing, ten times more mysterious than the ordinary man. Neither the Dragonelle Minor, Iely Jellybladders from Iely, nor space pirates frighten him. But Musketeers of the King, taking a stroll through the very walls of the Pegasus, are something he’s never seen before.

“Maybe they’re time travelers too, like the Sheshinerians?” I asked.

Alice ran over to the other side of the Crew’s Lounge and looked out the portal opposite.

“There they are.” Alice said. “Just like I thought. They walked right through the ship and didn’t even notice it.”

I ran to the other side of the Crew’s Lounge myself. And in fact the Musketeers had alked right through the ship as through it were not there, their swords glistening under the light of the two moons. They passed some rocks and vanished down a gorge.

“Let’s go up to the bridge.” I said to Alice. “We can get a better look from there.”

“All right.” Alice said and picked up the book she had been reading all night from the divan. The book’s title read The Three Musketeers.

That started me thinking.

“Hand me that book.” I told Alice.

On our way up to the bride I flipped through the copy. I flipped it open immediately to a picture which illustrated one of the King’s Musketeers D’Artagnan in a cape with his sword.

When we ran up to the bridge Poloskov, who had been standing beside the main port, raised his hand and called us forward.

Beyond the port, in the middle of the plain, stood a thin birch tree, its leaves rustling in the wind as if alive. Around the birch tree the ground was covered with grass, and you could see the hood of a large mushroom growing in the tree’s roots.

“This is somehow familiar.” Poloskov said thoughtfully. “I’ve seen it somewhere.”

“I know where.” Alice said. “It’s Zeleny’s favorite post card. It’s hanging over his bed in his cabin. He always looks at it when he reads poetry aloud. ‘….one last landing, on the globe that gave us birth….’“

“Mirages.” Poloskov said.

“Yes.” I agreed. “Of course they’re mirages, illusions, and the Blabberyap bird did not err when it warned us in the Second Captain’s voice about them. But who’s making them and why. To whom do we owe this rare amusement?”

The birch tree vanished in the darkness and we saw a strange procession moving in the direction of the Pegasus from the far side of the hill. It contained human beings, Fyxxians, beings from worlds and stars unknown to us, animals and robots. A crowd of mirages surrounded the ship as if they did not notice us. They walked straight through us, vanished into mist, split in two, and walked straight through each other.

“Pop,” Alice said, “Let’s go get a close up look at them.”

“I can see it all from here.” I objected. “We don’t know their capabilities. What if they’re not as harmless and insubstantial as they appear.”

We watched the wraith parade for a long time, and when the plain had finally emptied again, Alice began to plead again.

“Look Daddy, let’s go down before it’s too late. Hey, take a look at that. There’s just one mirage left, D’Artagnan.”

And in fact only a single Musketeer was left on the emptied plain; he began to walk back and forth not far from the ship.

“Go on.” Poloskov said. “Just don’t get too far from the ship. I’ll be watching to make certain nothing happens.”

As always, Poloskov guessed my desire. Of course I wanted to get a close look at our phantoms desperately. I was just worried that something might happen to Alice, but leaving the ship without her would have required a long and finally fruitless argument. She thought of the mirages as her own after all, she was the first to think of the Three Musketeers.

We went down the steps onto the plain. The land as completely empty. Even d’Artagnan had vanished.

“Let’s wait.” Alice said. “They’re bound to come again.”

I walked over to the spot where, not so long ago, there had been a birch tree. The only ground cover was small round stones, neither grass nor trace of leaf.

“Look at who’s coming, Pop.” Alice said. “Wouldn’t you know it!”

I raised my head and shuddered. Coming toward us I saw myself, holding Alice by the hand. For some reason we both were without space suits and helmets, wearing running shoes and, it seems, completely lacking any need to breath.

Alice ran forward to meet herself.

“Stop!” I shouted at her. “Where are you going?”

But Alice had already reached her double and run right through her, tripped on a stone and fell onto her knees. The mirage immediately vanished. While I hurried to Alice’s aid a new mirage appeared. He moved very quickly toward Alice, as though he wanted to grab her. But this mirage depicted Doctor Verkhovtseff. His hat was pulled down to his eyes and his sharp, narrow shoulders raised almost as high as his ears.

I stood between the mirage and Alice, shielding her, because I was not entirely certain that Verkhovtseff was just an illusion.

But the doctor did not notice Alice. He was walking in a straight line, laughing, as though he had seen someone. I looked ahead of him. Coming to meet Verkhovtseff was the fat man in the black leather suit. They shook hands and, their heads close together for conspiracy, began to argue about something.

Alice got to her feet and took my hand.

“There’s no way you can keep secrets on this planet.” She said. “So now we know that the fat man and Verkhovtseff are friends and they had some reason to try and get the Blabberyap bird from us.”

The mirages conversed soundlessly, and from the other side approached yet one more mirage. It depicted the Three Captains. But not made out of stone, like we had seen on the Three Captain’s Planet, but the real Captains in the blue uniforms of the Space Fleet. The Captain’s stopped, clasped each other’s hands as if saying good-bye. And immediately they wavered and vanished. In their place stood just one of the Captains, the Second. Tall, thin, with a curved nose. The Captain stood pensively, as though thinking of something. On his shoulder sat the Blabberyap bird. The Captain took a very long look around the valley and quickly headed for yet another mirage which had grown on the horizon. The mirage was a starship, blue, except where its hull had been inlaid with precious stones in the form of an enormous, dark blue gull.

And then the mirages dissipated. Verkhovtseff and the fat man vanished as well.

“I’ve never seen such a beautiful ship before.”

Poloskov’s voice came through my ear phones:

“Listen, Professor; you say you’ve never seen such a beautiful ship before? That must have been the Second Captain’s Blue Gull.”

“Of course.” Alice said. “Could it have been hidden somewhere around here? We have to find it!”

From the horizon where the Blue Gull had stood came a flash of light; we watched the ship rise from the ground and leave the planet.