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

Veselchak U walked closer to the Blue Gull and continued.

“You’ve held us off for four years. For four years you’ve hoped your friends would save you. For four years you haven’t believed that no one knows where you are. You’ve lived on the hope your rotten bird would make it to Venus. I kept thinking that you were going to die in your own cage. But today everything’s changed. Today you’re doing to open your ship’s airlock and surrender what belongs to me by right. Are you listening, Captain?”

Nothing answered the fat man back. His voice traveled around the cavern and was reflected from the distant walls. The echo died down, and the fat man let out a sigh.

“Where is that girl?” He muttered. “The girl would be really useful…”

Doctor Verkhovtseff stood a little bit off and looked at the ground. Two other men in black uniforms stood off to one side and held their pistols ready to fire at any moment.

“I know you can hear me, Captain.” Veselchak U began again. “You burrowed into your hole, planning to sit us out. Well look out your ports. Here we have three people from Earth: an idiot professor who gads about the Galaxy collecting animals, as though he couldn’t think of anything better to do; another strong and silent type Captain, and an idiot engineer with a red beard.”

Although I heard everything that was going on around me, in reality my thoughts were still filled with worries of Alice? Where could she have vanished to? Where was she hiding?

“You’ve put sand into the machinery for too many years now.” The fat man continued, looking at the Blue Gull. “But this day is mine! This day you will surrender the formula to me. Are you listening?

“He’s not saying anything.” The fat man said in another voice, almost a whisper. “He’s thinking. Now we hurry him up. Too bad the girl managed to get away. It would have been a lot easier with the girl…”

He pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his sweaty forehead with it.

“Listen, Captain.” He said. “You have three minutes to open your airlock and give me the formula, or I’ll give the order to kill our captives. But not right away. No, not right away. The first thing I’ll do is cut off the idiot professor’s ears. My peeve is greatest with him. He refused to give me the Blabberyap bird. He…”

“Wait up, fatso.” The voice of the Second Captain came over the ship’s exterior loud speaker. The voice was familiar; I had heard it a few times when the Blabberyap Bird had perfectly duplicated unknown voices.

“Then you are alive still.” Veselchak U said.

“There’s no place for you in this Galaxy.” The Second Captain continued. “They will find you, they will capture you, where ever you may hide. Your best chance is to take my advice and surrender…”

“Shut up!” The fat man shouted “You have nothing to offer me! Thanks to you and your friends I’ve lost nearly everything, but this last thing I won’t surrender. The galaxion will be mine!”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, pirate.” The Second Captain said. “Of course you wouldn’t know what shame is…”

We did not understand very much of what they were talking about. What was clear, was that the Second Captain had something and the Pirate was very interested in obtaining it. But he could not obtain it, he could not seize it. I had never heard the word ‘galaxion’ before, but it was clear that the Blue Gull’s Captain did not want to surrender it.

“Don’t waste my time.” The fat man said. “Your quaint ideas and notions are of no interest. Shame is only for the weak. We, the strong, have no need for it. Now, are you going to surrender the formula for galaxion?’

“I have to speak with these people first.” The Second Captain said.

“No.” The fat man answered. “You won’t be speaking with them. You’re trying to gain time, trying to deceive me. Open the lock now and give me the galaxion formula and I promise to set you and these people free. Someday. But if you do not do what I want you can listen to their screams for days and days. That’s what having shame and a conscience will get you.”

“That won’t happen, fat man.” The Second Captain said. “Since I landed on this planet four years ago you’ve tried to think of every possible means of getting the formula for absolute fuel from me, and nothing has come of it. Nothing will come of it today. Do you know what I will do?”

“What?”

“I’ll blow up the Blue Gull. I’ll die, but you will never get the galaxion formula. If you ever got your hands on it you’d create so much misery for the Galaxy’s inhabitants it would take a decade to set everything right.”

“Yes, it will!” Veselchak U said. “But don’t think that you can save the idiot professor and his people by blowing up the Blue Gull; no, that is a mistake. I give you the solemn word of the Black Cloud gang that they will suffer oh, how they will suffer. Why other use are captives to me. As soon as I set them free they’d tell the Galactic Patrol all about my little world here, and in a month every police ship in the Galaxy would be hunting for me. No, I want them thinking I’m dead now and for a good long while to come.”

“Then there’s no reason for me not to tell these people everything. I’ve never met them before, but if they’re your captives that serves as a good enough character reference. We’ll hear what they say once I’ve told them my tale.”

“No!” The fat man shouted.

“Shut up.” The Captain said calmly. “Are you going anywhere soon? Desperate to carry out our threat?”

“Let him talk.” Doctor Verkhovtseff said suddenly. “He knows they had the Blabberyap on their ship. Let him talk; it won’t save them.”

The fat man clasped his hands. “All right.”

“Then listen, professor, gentlemen. There were three of us, three star captains. Many years ago we learned that actual space pirates had appeared in the Galaxy. These pirates wanted money, precious jewels, but mostly they wanted power. They wanted to become Lords of the Galaxy. We learned about them when they attacked the planet Triada and stole a ship from there. We finally caught up with the pirates when they conquered another world and forced its natives into slavery. That was where they began to build warships in secret so they could attack the trade routes. I could take a long time describing how we tracked them down, how we infiltrated the enslaved planet, and how we led an uprising against the conquerors…”

“You took us by surprise.” The fat man roared.

Doctor Verkhovtseff waved his hand: “Let him talk. He doesn’t have much time left for it.”

“And so,” The Captain waited until the pirates grew silent, “two of the pirates were able to get away. For some years they hid out here at the outskirts of the Galaxy, far from the main trade routes. Everyone forgot there had ever been pirates.”

“But we didn’t.” The fat man said. “We didn’t forget anything.”

“Yes.” The Second Captain agreed. “They have forgotten nothing, and learned nothing, and have not abandoned their plans. Most of all, they want revenge on us, the three captains who stopped them the first time.

“And we have our revenge!” Veselchak U said.

“Slow down. Nothing has been resolved yet. And in the final analyses you are going to loose. There’s no way you can overcome the entire Galaxy.”

“But we will.” The fat man said.

The Second Captain ignored him. He continued.

“A number of years passed. The three of us split up. The First Captain flew off to the Venus terraforming project. The Third Captain decided to make the jump to the Andromeda Galaxy, because no one had ever visited our neighboring galaxy before. I busied myself with scientific observations. Then suddenly I received a transmission from the Third Captain. He advised me that he was returning from his expedition. The transmission was very unexpected, because no one expected him to return so soon. My friend asked me to meet him at the edge of the Galaxy, because he had very important news for us. I abandoned my work and hurried to meet him.”