Alice: The Girl From Earth

by Kir Bulychev

  When the Pegasus leaves Terra firma the ship’s master and commander over us all will be Gennady Poloskov, the famous astronaut and ship’s captain. The two of us had encountered each other earlier on distant planets and scientific bases. He had been a guest in my house many times and was especially fond of Alice. Poloskov is not at all like the Movie Star Starship Captain; when he takes off his uniform he looks more like a kindergarten teacher or librarian. Poloskov is of medium height, with ash blond hair, taciturn, and very precise in all his movements. But when he takes his place in the command chair on the bridge, he changes: his voice deepens, his face radiates firmness and decisiveness. Poloskov has never lost his composure and he is very well respected in Star Fleet.

  We had difficulty in getting him to captain the Pegasus; Jack O’Connell had been after him to captain his new passenger liner on the Earth-Fyxx run. If it had not been for Alice I’d never have talked him into it.

  The third member of the Pegasus’s crew is Zeleny, the engineer. He is a tall man with a bushy red beard. He’s a fine engineer and has flown with Poloskov on previous expeditions; his chief joy in life is to immerse himself in the engines or fix something else in the engineering section. In general Zeleny is first rate, but sometimes he becomes distracted and then some or other very important machine or instrument would be disassembled precisely at that moment when we needed it most And Zeleny was a confirmed pessimist, always certain that whatever we were doing would not end well. Whatever it was. For example, he had read in some old book how someone had cut himself while shaving with a razor and died of blood poisoning. Now, although you will not find such a razor anywhere on the planet Earth, although all men now smear their faces with a depilatory paste rather than shave, he had decided to let his beard grow out. Whenever we land on an unknown planet he immediately advises us to leave, because the animals here are few, or something not needed by the Zoo at all, and if they are needed there’s no way we could get them back to Earth, and so forth. But we’re all used to Zeleny and we pay no attention to his grumbling, nor does he become angry with us. The fourth member of our crew, if you do not count the cook robot which was always broken anyway and the automated land rover, was Alice. She is,as you know, my daughter; she had just finished the second grade and something or other was always happening to her, but so far all her various adventures had ended successfully. Alice was a useful member of the expedition she was able to look after the animals and was almost never afraid of them.

  The night before we took off I had trouble getting to sleep; it seemed like I kept hearing the doors to the house opening and slamming shut. When I got up Alice was already dressed, as though she had never even been to bed. We both hurried to the flyer. We were carrying almost nothing with us, if ignore my black leather briefcase, and Alice’s shoulder bag, where the swim fins and harpoon for underwater hunting had been tied. The morning was cold, chilly, and bright. The meteorologists had promised to give us rain after supper, but, as always, they had been off in their timing and the rain had come just before dawn. The streets were empty; we had already said good-byes to our relatives and friends and had promised to write from every planet.

  The flyer cruised slowly over the streets and drifted west to the space port; I gave piloting over to Alice and pulled out my reader, scrolling down the enormous list, re-examining and cross- checking for the thousandth time because Captain Poloskov had sworn to me that if we could not kick of three tons of payload, at the very least, we would never make it off the planet.

  I was paying no attention to our approach to the space port; Alice was clearly concentrating on something, but what it was not was flying, which she had completely forgotten about. She was so distracted she landed the flyer at the base of another ship, a freighter loading piglets for Venus.

  At the sight of a car dropping out of the sky the piglets scattered in every direction, the robots herding them rushed to catch the fugitives, and the human in charge of the loading cursed me out for trusting a landing to a small child.

  “She’s not so small.” I answered the freight handler. “She just finished second grade.”

  “Even worse.” The freight handler said, clutching a just caught squealing piglet to his chest. “There’s no way we’ll catch them all before sundown!”

  I glared at Alice, took the control rod from her, and moved the car to the white disk of the Pegasus. The Pegasus, back in the days when it was fresh from the shipyards, had been a high speed mail carrier. Then, when ships that were faster and more capacious appeared, the Pegasus was relegated to expeditions. It had enormous holds and had already served both geologists and archaeologists, and now the Zoo had acquired its services. Poloskov was waiting for us; we had barely managed to say our hellos when he asked:

  “Have you thought about which three tons we clear out?”

  “I’ve don some thinking, yes.” I said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  At that moment a little old lady in a blue shawl came up to us and asked:

  “Would it be possible for you to take a small package for my son in the Aldebaran system?”

  “Why not?” Poloskov threw up his hands. “We can’t take any more of this!”

  “It’s really a very small package.” The old woman said. “Two hundred grams, no more. “You can just imagine what it will be like if he can’t get his birthday present…”

  We couldn’t imagine.

  “And what is in the package?” Poloskov asked politely, surrendering to the mass of grey hairs.

  “Nothing unusual. Cookies. Kolya so loves cookies! And a stereotape showing his son, my grandson, learning to walk.”

  “Bring it on.” Poloskov said gloomily.

  I looked around for Alice. She had gotten off somewheres. The sun was already high over the space port and the Pegasus’s long shadows reached the space port buildings.

  “We’ll re-load part of the cargo for the moon to the regular freight ship.” I told Poloskov. “And take off will be easier from the moon.”

  “I was thinking that too.” Poloskov said. “But in any case we have to unload four tons to have a reserve.”

  “And where can I put this wee package?” The old woman asked.

  “Then robot at the lock can take it.” Poloskov said, and the two of us started to go over what we would have to unload.

  Out of the corner of one eye I got a glimpse of Alice moving about and that carried my eye toward the old woman and her wee package. The old woman was standing in the shadow of the ship, and quietly arguing with the robot loader. Behind the old woman floated a seriously overloaded baggage handler.

  “Poloskov,” I said, and nodded in the old woman’s direction.

  “Oh lord!” came from our famous captain’s lips. “There’s no way I’m going to live through this.”

  He made a tiger’s leap for the old woman.

  “What’s this?” He thundered.

  “The package.” The old woman said timidly.

  “Cookies?”

  “Cookies.” The old woman was already recovering from fright.

  “And why, pray tell, so large.”

  “Please, Captain.” The old woman said boldly. “Would you expect my son to get cookies from me and go off and eat them all in hiding, alone, not even bothering to share with his one hundred and thirty fellow researchers. Would you want that?”

  “I I want nothing else.” The exhausted Poloskov said. “I am staying home and flying nowhere! Is that clear? I’m not going anywhere!”

  The battle with the old woman lasted half an hour and ended in Poloskov’s victory. During that time I remained aboard and oversaw the robots in removing the oranges and the walnut tree prize.

  I encountered Alice in a far passage of the cargo hold and was very surprised at our meeting.

  “And what are you doing here?” I asked.

  Alice hid a half eaten bagel behind her back and answered:

  “Just familiarizing myself with the ship.”

&n
bsp; “Go to the control room.” I said. “Scat!”

  Finally, toward twelve, we had finished the re-loading. Everything was ready. Poloskov and I went over the figures again; when the anti-gravs kicked in, there would be a reserve of two hundred kilograms, our weight would be more than completely neutralized and we would fall toward space. Poloskov used the loud speaker system to get in touch with Zeleny. The engineer was sitting in the control seat, running his hands through his rusty beard.

  Poloskov bent over the screen and asked:

  “Can we take off?”

  “Any time.” Zeleny said. “But I really don’t like the weather.”

  “Traffic control.” Poloskov said into the microphone. “Pegasus requests permission for lift off.”

  “A moment please.” The dispatcher answered. “Do you have any places for passengers?”

  “Not a single one.” Poloskov answered firmly. “We are not taking any passengers.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Do you have room aboard to carry five people to the Moon?”

  “Why? What about the regular flights?”

  “All over booked.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t know? Today’s the Galactic Sector soccer championships; Earth versus Fyxx in Luna City.”

  “Whatever reason would they put it on the moon?” Poloskov had absolutely no interest in soccer and in general had spent the last there days prior to our departure quite divorced from such mundane realities.

  “Where have you been?” The dispatcher said. “How are Fyxxians supposed to play under terrestrial gravity? The moon’s gravity is uncomfortable enough!”

  “In other words, Earth emerges victorious?” Poloskov asked.

  “I doubt it.” The dispatcher answered. “They switched three defensive ends with Mars, including Simon Braun.”

  “I should have your cares and travails.” Poloskov said. “When can we leave?”

  “We’re going to win anyway.” Alice entered the conversation. She had come onto the bridge without my noticing.

  “Right, kid!” The dispatcher beamed. “Now, can you take any of the fans? For me to send them all I’d need seven ships. I can’t imagine how the applications are already piling up….”

  “No.” Poloskov cut him off.

  “Well, that’s up to you. Ready your engines.”

  Poloskov turned to the engine controls.

  “Zeleny,” he said, “turn on the in-system drives, but just enough to make certain we’re not overloaded.

  “How could we be overloaded.” I felt shocked. “We’ve just recalculated everything.”

  The ship almost began to shiver with the expectation of coming speed.

  “Five Four Three Two One Liftoff!” The captain said.

  The starship groaned and remained on the ground.

  “What happened?” Poloskov said.

  “Pegasus, what’s going on?” The dispatcher, who had been overseeing our liftoff, asked.

  “Nothing happened, that’s what.” Zeleny said. “I keep telling you that nothing good is going to come of this.”

  Alice was sitting like she was fastened to her seat, not looking in my direction.

  “We’ll try it again.” Poloskov said.

  “You don’t have to prove anything.” Zeleny answered. “There is a considerable overload, far too much mass for our engines to shift. I have the readings here…”

  Poloskov attempted to lift the Pegasus a second time, but the ship remained on the ground as though nailed in place. Then Poloskov said:

  “We must have some sort of major error in our calculations.”

  “No. The computer checked them, and I added them up on the side.” I answered. “We have a reserve of two hundred kilograms.”

  “But then what’s the cause?

  “We’ll have to throw a lot of the freight overboard. We can’t loose any more time. Which cargo hold do we begin with?”

  “With the first.” I said. “It’s filled with packages bound for the moon.”

  “Not the first, please!” Alice suddenly said.

  “All right.” I answered her automatically. “Then we start with three and get rid of the cages and trapping equipment.”

  “But the third…” Alice started to say.

  “Now what’s going on?” Poloskov asked angrily.

  The traffic control dispatcher’s face was on our screen again.

  “Pegasus,” he said. “We have a request for you?”

  “What sort of request?”

  “You’d better speak to the Information Desk.”

  The screen changed to show the starport waiting room. A crowd had gathered around the Information Desk; among them I recognized a number of familiar faces. Where had I seen them before?

  The woman standing closest to the Information Desk pick up looked at me.

  “Now this is absolutely shameful! This is a horrible prank to play!”

  “What prank?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I told Alyosha: ‘You can’t go to the moon; you have five Cs in your final quarter.”

  “And I told Leva he couldn’t go to this game.” Another woman pushed her way into the pick up. “He could see it perfectly well on television!”

  “A-ha.” I said to myself slowly. I did know these people who were about to stage a riot in the starport’s waiting room. They were the parents of the other children in Alice’s class.

  “So it’s all clear.” Poloskov said. “Just how many stowaways do we have on board?”

  “I didn’t think we’d be overloaded.” Alice said. “There was no way the kids could miss the match of the century! What’s the point of me going to the match if they’re not there?”

  “And how many stowaways do we have?” Poloskov repeated in a voice of steel.

  “Our class and the two parallel ones.” Alice whispered. “While dad was sleeping I flew them to the spaceport and hid them aboard.”

  “You are not flying anywhere!” I said. “There is no way we can take irresponsible people on this expedition.”

  “Papa, I won’t do it again.” Alice begged. “Please, understand! I have a strongly developed sense of responsibility!”

  “We could have crashed because of your sense of responsibility.” Poloskov said.

  Usually he was the one who would pardon any of Alice’s transgressions, but now he was very angry.

  “Get those stowaways off the ship.” He added. “If we can do it in half an hour, you will remain aboard. If not, we take off without you.”

  The last stowaway was hunted down and expelled from the cargo holds in twenty-three minutes. Six minutes later they were all standing outside the ship, terribly proud and terribly sad, with a crowd of mothers, fathers, and grandparents rushing toward them from the space port’s buildings.

  In sum there had been forty-three stowaways aboard the Pegasus; to this day I do not understand how Alice was able to find places for them all aboard so well hidden that we had noticed not a one of them.

  “Bye, Alice! Have fun!” Alesha Naumov shouted from below when we were at last closing the locks. “Root for Earth for us! And come back soon!”

  “Earth will win!” Alice shouted back.

  When the Earth was already dropping away from us and we had set course for the Moon, Alice said:

  “It didn’t turn out all that well, papa.”

  “Not all that well at all,” I agreed. “I am quite ashamed of you.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.” Alice said. “The whole Third B class took off on a freight barge for the moon in potato sacks. They’ll be at the stadium, but our Second grade class won’t. I have not lived up to the trust of my fellow students.”

  “And what did they do with the potatoes they displaced?” Poloskov asked, surprised.

  “I don’t know.” Alice said. She thought and added: “It will just be me and the Third B class at the game. Yuck!”

  Chapter Three

  “Have You Heard
About The Three Captains?”

  When the Pegasus set down at the Luna City Space Port I asked my fellow travelers:

  “What plans do you have? We’re taking off tomorrow at six AM on the button.”

  Captain Poloskov said he was planning on remaining aboard ato ready the ship for its flight.

  Engineer Zeleny asked permission to go to the soccer match.

  Alice also said she was going to the soccer game, but without all that much pleasure in her voice.

  “Why so glum?”

  “You mean you’ve forgotten? The whole Third B class will be at the stadium, and I’’ll be the only one from the Second. It’s all your fault.”

  “Mine?”

  “You were the one who kicked my kids off the ship?”.

  “We couldn’t have gotten off the ground with them aboard! Not to mention what their parents would have said to me. What if something had happened?”

  “Where.” Alice was angry. “In the Sol system? At the end of the twenty-first century?”

  When Alice and Zeleny left I decided to go for one last cup of real coffee from a real restaurant for the last time until we returned to Earth, and I headed for the Selene.

  The enormous domed hall of the restaurant was nearly full; I stopped not far from the entrance and began searching for a free place, when a familiar voice thundered at me:

  “Who is it that I see before me!”

  It was one of my oldest friends, Gromozeka; he had occupied a distant table. I hadn’t seen him for almost five years, but I had certainly never forgotten about him. Once we had been very close, in as much as our acquaintance began when I managed to save him in the jungles of Eurydice. Gromozeka had managed to get separated from an archaeological survey crew, was unable to find his way in the forest and nearly ended up in the jaws of a Minor Dragonette, a fairly nasty critter all of sixteen meters long.