by Kir Bulychev
On seeing me Gromozeka unfurled the mass of the tentacles he had curled up for convenience sake, his charming green smile split his half meter wide maw in two, he reached out his razor sharp claws for me, and, at full throttle, he rushed to my side.
Some tourist who had never before in his life seen an inhabitant of the planet Chumaroz, screamed and fell down in a faint. But Gromozeka paid him no heed; he strongly enfolded me in his tentacles and clutched me to the hard boney plate on his breast.
“Sweetheart!” He roared like a lion. “How many years have separated us, now many winters have we been forced to endure each other’s absence! I was about to get a ticket for a flight to Moscow to see you, and now, here, before my eyes I can hardly believe it! How have the Fates been so kind!”
“I’m going off on an expedition.” I said. “Hunting animals around the Galaxy.”
“That is stupendous!” Gromozeka was delighted. “I cannot tell you how overjoyed I am that you have finally been able to overcome the plots and intrigues of your enemies and go off into the field.”
“But I don’t have any enemies.”
“You cannot deceive me.” Gromozeka said, shaking sharp, clicking claws in front of my nose reproachfully.
I did not bother to speak back because I knew how suspicious my friend was.
“Sit, sit.” Gromozeka ordered. “Robot, a bottle of your best Georgian wine for my dearest friend and three liters of Ex-Lax for me.”
“Order taken.” The robot waiter answered and trundled off to the kitchen for our order.
“And how has life been?” Gromozeka continued his interrogation. “How is your wife? And your daughter: has she already started to walk?”
“All the way to school.” I said. “She just finished second grade.”
“Wondrous.” Gromozeka roared. “How quickly time runs with us in its grasp…”
With this some sad thought overcame my friend, and, being a very impressionable being, Gromozeka sighed, and caustic smoking tears flowed from each of his seven eyes.
“And how are things with you?” I grew alarmed.
“You can’’t imagine how quickly time flies,” Gromozeka said between the tears. “The children grow, and the two of us grow old.”
Gromozeka, overcome with aa feeling of tenderness, expelled streams of caustic yellow smoke from each of his four nostrils; the cloud of noxious gas began to fill the restaurant, but he got himself in hand and spoke up:
“Pardon me, most noble restaurant patrons; I shall try to avoid causing you any further discomfort.”
The mist spread between the tables; people coughed and a few even had to leave the hall.
“Let’s go.” I said, wheezing, “or you might do something else.”
“You’re right.” Gromozeka agreed resignedly.
We exited the restaurant and went into the hall, where Gromozeka occupied an entire divan, and I found room for myself beside him in a chair. The robot brought us the wine and Ex- Lax, a wine glass for me and a liter bottle for my friend.
“Where are you working now?” I asked Gromozeka.
“We’ll be digging a dead city on Coleida.” He answered. “I stopped by here to pick up an infrared detector.”
“An interesting city on Coleida?” I asked.
“Perhaps, interesting, or not.” Gromozeka answered carefully. He was horribly superstitious. To avoid the Evil Eye he circled his rightmost eye with his tail four times and said in a whisper: “Baskuri-bariparata.”
“When do you begin?” I asked.
“Our team departs from Mercury in two weeks time. That’s where our temporary base is.”
“A strange, inhospitable place.” I said. “Half the planet is a scorching airless desert while the other half is a frozen airless desert.”
“Nothing extraordinary.” Gromozeka said, and reached again for the Ex-Lax. “We were there last year hunting the remains of the ship of the Midnight Wraiths. That’s work. But I’ve told you all about myself! I want to hear your plans.”
“I only know them approximately.” I answered. “For starters we’ll be making a circuit of research bases in the neighborhood of the Sol system, then we’re off. We’ve a lot of time three months, and the ship is pretty big.”
“Not headed for Eurydice?” Gromozeka asked.
“No. There is a Dragonette Minor in the Moscow Zoo already, and the Dragonette Major, unfortunately, can’t be caught.”
“And even if you could catch it,” Gromozeka said, “Your ship would never be able to carry it.”
I agreed the Pegasus could never carry a Dragonette Major, but that was because it had to eat four tons of meat and bananas a day.
The two of us were silent for a while. It can be very pleasant to sit with an old friend with no need to hurry anywhere. An elderly woman tourist in a purple wig, decorated with holographic flowers, came up to us and timidly extended a notebook.
“Would it be possible,” she asked, “if I could obtain your autograph as a memento of our chance encounter.”
“And why not?” Gromozeka said, reaching for the notebook with a clawed tentacle.
The old woman drew back in fear; her small hand trembled.
Gromozeka turned the notebook to a blank bage and wrote in a florid script:
“To the fair young damsel hominoid of Earth from her admirer from the misty planet Chumaroz. Selene Restaurant, 3 March.”
“Thank you.” The old woman whispered and departed in tiny steps.
“And did I write it well? Gromozeka asked me. “It was touching?
“It was touching.” I agreed. “But not entirely correct.”
“How so?”
“That was not a very young human girl, but a woman of late middle age. And, in general, we use hominoid to include most of the apes and our pre-sapient ancestors that we dig up from paleontological sites.”
“Oh, what shame!” Gromozeka was distraught. “But she had flowers in her hat. If I run after her now I might be able to re-write the autograph.”
“It’s not worth it.” I stopped him. “You’d just frighted her out of her wits.”
“Yes, heavy is the burden of glory.” Gromozeka said. “But it is pleasant to discover that the most important archaeologist on Chumaroz is known even on the distant Earth’s Moon.”
I did not bother to disabuse my friend; I suspected the old woman had not once in her life imagined, yet alone encountered, an astroarchaeologist. She had simply never seen anyone like Gromozeka before.
“Listen,” Gromozeka said, “I have an idea. I can help you.”
“How?”
“Have you heard about a planet named The Three Captain’s World?”
“I read about it somewhere, but I don’t remember where or when.”
“That is superb.”
Gromozeka leaned closer, placing one of his heavy, rather warm tentacles on my shoulder, straightened the shining plates that formed the globular, almost balloon-like belly, and began:
“In Sector 19-4 there is a smallish, uninhabited planet. It used to be it did not even have a name, just a numerical code. Now space men call it the Three Captain’s World. And do you know why? There, on a flat, stony plateau they have erected three statues, placed there to honor three space captains. These were great explorers and noble people. One of them was born on Earth, the second on Mars, and the third Captain was born on Fyxx. Hand in hand these Captains strode the constellations, landing on planets everyone else thought were impossible to land on; they saved entire worlds threatened by danger. They were the first to defeat the jungles of Eurydice, and one of them wounded a Dragonette Major. They sought out and destroyed a nest of space pirates, although the space pirates outnumbered them by twenty to one. The descended into the methane atmosphere of Golgotha and recovered the Philosopher’s Stone lost there by Kursak’s convoy. With it they destroyed a poisonous volcano that threatened to exterminate the population of an entire planet. You could spend weeks recounting their achievements…<
br />
“Now I remember.” I interrupted Gromozeka. “Of course I’ve heard of the Three Captains.”
“To-to,” Gromozeka grumbled and drank from his can of Ex-Lax. “How quickly we forget our heros. Shameful.” Gromozeka reproachfully nodded his soft head and continued. “Some years ago the paths of the Captain’s diverged. The First Captain was lured onto the Venus Project.”
“That I know about.” I said. “That means he’s one of those who are changing the planet’s orbit.”
“Yes. The first captain always loved grandiose projects. And when he learned that the decision had been taken to shift Venus’s orbit further from your sun and change the period of its rotation so that people can settle there, he immediately offered his services to the project. And this is glorious, in as much as the scientists had decided to turn Venus into a very large space ship and there is no one else in the Galaxy better suited than the First Captain in dealing with the celestial mechanics of a world-ship.”
“And the remaining Captains.”
“The second, it is said, died somewhere, whereabouts unknown and when unknown too.
“The Third captain set off for the Andromeda Galaxy and will not return for many, many years.
“What I wanted to say to you, is that the Captains encountered many strange, rare, even miraculous beasts and birds. Their notebooks and diaries would surely provide invaluable information.”
“And where are they?”
“Their notebooks and records are maintained on the Three Captains’ World. Right beside the monument which was erected by subscriptions from the grateful inhabitants of some seven hundred planets there is a laboratory and memorial center. The full time resident archivist is a doctor Verkhovtseff. He knows more about the Three Captains than anyone in the Galaxy. If you drop in there, you will not regret it.”
“Thank’s Gromozeka.” I said. “Perhaps you’ve had enough Ex-Lax? Didn’t you once complain to me that it had a bad effect on your heart?”
“What can I do?” My friend threw up his tentacles in horror. “I have three hearts, anyway. Ex-Lax has a precarious affect on one of them, but there is no way I can remember which one.”
We spent another hour remembering old friends and adventures the two of us had both, however precariously, survived. Suddenly the door to the corridor opened and a crowd of humans and off-worlders appeared. They were carrying the members of the Earth soccer squad on their hands and other appendages. A band was playing; there were shouts of triumph.
Alice jumped out of the crowd. “Know what?” She shouted when she saw me. “Those mercenaries from Mars didn’t help the Fyxxians one bit. It was three to one! Now there will be a match on a neutral field!”
“And what about the Third B.” I asked maliciously.
“They never made it.” Alice said. “I’d have seen them for sure. I guess the Third B was caught and sent back. In potato sacks! Serves them right!”
“You’re a dangerous person, Alice.” I said.
“She is not!” The outraged Gromozeka cut in. “You have no right to insult a helpless child so! I will not give her to you to be insulted again!”
Gromozeka embraced Alice with his tentacles and lifted her to the ceiling.
“No,” he repeated again agitatedly. “Your daughter is my daughter, ad I will not allow it.”
“But I am not your daughter.” Alice said from above. Fortunately, she was not the least bit frightened.
But the same could not be said for the engineer Zeleny. At that very moment he came into the corridor and what did he see but Alice beating at the tentacles of an enormous monster. Zeleny did not even notice me. He threw himself at Gromozeka, his rusty beard like the banner on a charging Medieval knight’s lance, and tore into my friend’s round belly like a madman.
Gromozeka snatched up Zeleny with his free tentacles and draped him over one of the ceiling lights. Then he carefully lowered Alice and asked me:
“Did I become too demonstrative?”
“A little.” Alice answered for me. “Put Zeleny down on the floor.”
“He shall not throw himself on archaeologists.” Gromozeka said. “I do not want to take him down. Ave, we shall see each other in the evening. I have remembered that I must spend the rest of the working day in the base warehouse.”
And, craftily winking at Alice, Gromozeka pushed off on all his tentacles in the direction of the airlocks, leaving behind him a more than faint whiff of Ex-Lax in the corridor.
We got Zeleny down from the chandeliers with the help of the soccer team, and I was somewhat angry at my friend; as talented a scientist and true a friend as Gromozeka may be, he was raised very badly and his sense of humor sometimes takes strange forms.
“Where are we headed for?” Alice asked when we were walking toward the ship.
“Our first task,” I said, “Is to get our cargo to Mars and the researchers at Arcturus Minor. And from there we’ll go directly to sector 19-4, to Three Captains Base.”
“All hail the Three Captains!” Alice said, although she had never heard about them before in her life.
Chapter Four
The Vanishing Tadprowlers
The investigators on Arcturus Minor met the Pegasus with a brass band, figuratively if not literally. As soon as we had eased our way down onto the metal plates of the landing field they smartly marched out into the constant rain to greet us, followed by the all-terrain vehicle. The pre-fab landing field was still staggering under our ship’s weight; rusty water bubbling with the products of plant decomposition still splashed in the cracks between the plating. They were all in space suits with top hats on top of the closed helmets, the trumpets and bassoons were flat plastic cut-outs, and two of the researchers carried a large plate with the Key to the Planet.
And when we came down to the wet metal strips of the space port they decorated our helmets of our space suits with leis and awarded Alice with the keys to the research station.
Our arrival was an excuse to have a feast in the close confines of the base dining hall. We were treated to fruit salad concentrate, dehydrated duck and artificial ham sandwiches. The engineer Zeleny, who also worked as the Pegasus’s chef, responded in kind and managed to place on the table real apples, real sliced pears with real currants and, best of all, real rye bread.
Alice was the principal guest. All the researches were adults; they had been forced to leave their children at home on Mars, the Earth, and Ganymede, and they depressed without real children. Alice answered all their questions, honestly trying to be far more stupid than she was in reality, and when she returned to the ship she confided in me:
“They were hoping I’d be a pretty little doll; the kind who wouldn’t cause them any trouble.”
The next day we transferred all the cargo and packages we had brought to the research base, but, unfortunately, it turned out that the research team couldn’t invite us to go hunting local animals: the season of storms had begun, all rivers were overflowing their banks and travel around the planet was nearly impossible.
“Would you like us to get you a tadprowler?”
“Why not?” I agreed.
I had occasion to hear about various of the local reptiles, but so far I had not encountered a tadprowlers.
About two hours later the researchers brought us a large aquarium, on the bottom of which dozed meter long tadprowlers, who resembled giant salamanders. Then the researches dragged a large container of water plants up the gangway.
“This feed will just get them going.” They said. “Look, the tadprowlers are very voracious and will grow quickly.”
“Shouldn’t we make the aquarium a bit larger?” I asked.
“An Olympic sized pool might even be better.” The base chief answered.
His people even now were dragging yet another container of food for the tadprowlers up the gangway.
“Just how quickly do they grow?” I asked.
“Pretty quickly. I can’t really put it more precisely.” The base c
hief answered. “We don’t hold any of them in captivity.”
He smiled mysteriously and started to speak with someone else.
I asked the head of the research team:
“And you’ve never had a chance to spend any time on the Three Captains’ World?”
“No.” He answered. “But once Doctor Verkhovtseff came to visit us; that was about a month or so ago. I really have to say that he struck me as being an enormous crank.”
“How so?”
“Why would he need the design schematics of the starship “Blue Gull?”
“I am sorry, but why is that strange?”
“It’s the Second Captain’s ship, the one that vanished without a trace four years ago.”
“But why would Verkhovtseff need information on that ship?”
“Why indeed? I asked him about it. It turns out he is up to his ears in writing a book about the exploits of the Three Captains, a documentary novel, and he can’t continue his work without knowing how that ship was constructed.”
“Are you saying the ship’s special?”
The base commander almost laughed condescendingly.
“I see you haven’t a clue…” He said. “The ships of the Three Captains were all made specially to order, and then each of them was more or less re-built by the captains themselves by their own hands. And these were astonishing ships! Equipped for all conceivable circumstances. One of them, the Everest, the First Captain’s ship, stands today in the Paris Astronautics Museum.”
“Then why doesn’t Verkhovtseff just call the Paris Astronautics Museum?” I was retorted.
“Because each of the three ships was different!” The research chief answered. “Each of the Captains was unique, and so was each of their ships.”
“So I guess we’re off to Verkhovtseff.” I said. “I gather you can give us the coordinates of his base?”
