Boris Strugatsky - Noon - 22nd Century

“Read to yourself!” Athos advised.

“Well, I don’t think he’s bothering you,” the Captain said in an iron voice.

“You think he isn’t, and I think he is,” said Athos-Sidorov.

Their glances met. Pol watched the development of the incident with enjoyment. He was sick to the nth degree of the Introduction to.

“Have it your way,” said the Captain. “But I’m not figuring on doing everyone’s work myself. And you’re not doing anything, Athos. You’re as much use as a fifth wheel.”

The navigator smiled scornfully and did not deem it necessary to answer. At that moment the screen went out, and Lin turned around with a creak of his chair.

“Guys!” he said. “Zow! Guys! Let’s go there.”

“Let’s go!” Pol shouted, and jumped up.

“Where is there?” the Captain asked ominously.

“To Paricutin! To Mount Pelée! To—”

“Hold it!” yelled the Captain. “You’re a bunch of lousy traitors! I’m sick and tired of messing around with you! I’m going by myself. You can take off for wherever you feel like. Is that clear?”

“Phooey!” said Athos elegantly.

“Phooey yourself, you understand? You approved the plan, you shouted ‘zow-zow,’ but what are you doing now? Well, I’m just plain sick and tired of messing around with you. I’ll make a deal with Natasha or with that idiot Walter, you hear? You can go fly a kite. I’ve had it with you, and that’s final!”

The Captain turned his back and wrathfully resumed copying the blueprint. A heavy silence ensued. Polly quietly lay back down and resumed studying the Introduction to furiously. Athos compressed his lips, and the ponderous Lin got up and started pacing the room with his hands in his pockets. “Genka,” he said indecisively. “Captain, you-cut-this out. What do you want to—”

“You take off for your Mount Pelée,” the Captain muttered. “For your Paricutin. We’ll manage.”

“Captain… what are you saying? You can’t tell Walter, Genka!”

“Just watch me. I’ll tell him all right. He may be an idiot, but he’s no traitor.”

Lin increased his pace to a run without taking his hands out of his pockets. “What would you go and do that for, Captain? Look, Polly is already grinding.”

“‘Polly, Polly’! Polly is full of hot air. And I’ve just plain had it with Athos. Think of it—navigator of the Galaktion ! The blow-hard!”

Lin turned to Athos. “You’re right. Athos, something… it’s not right, you know. We’re all trying.”

Athos studied the forested horizon. “What are you all jabbering for?” he inquired politely. “If I said I’d go, I’ll go. I don’t think I’ve ever lied to anyone yet. And I’ve never let anyone down, either.”

“Cut it out,” Lin said fiercely. “The Captain’s right. You’re just loafing, being a pig.”

Athos turned and narrowed his eyes. “So tell me, o Great Worker,” he said, “why is a Diehard inferior to an AGK-7 under conditions of nitrogen surplus?”

“Huh?” Lin said distractedly, and looked at the Captain. The Captain barely raised his head.

“What are the nine steps in operating an Eisenbaum?” asked Athos. “Who invented oxytane? You don’t know, you grind! Or in what year? You don’t know that either?”

That was Athos—a great man despite his numerous failings. A reverent silence settled over the room, except for Pol Gnedykh’s angry leafing of the pages of the Introduction .

“Who cares who invented what?” Lin muttered uncertainly, and stared helplessly at the Captain.

The Captain got up, went over to Athos, and poked him in the stomach with his fist. “Good man, Athos,” he declared. “I was a fool to think you were loafing.”

“Loafing!” Athos said, and poked the Captain in the side. He had accepted the apology.

“Zow! Guys!” proclaimed the Captain. “Set your course by Athos. Feeders on cycle, spacers! Stand by for Legen accelerations. Watch the reflector. Dust flow to the left! Zow!”

“Zow-zow-zow!” roared the crew of the Galaktion .

The Captain turned to Lin. “Engineer Lin,” he said, “do you have any questions on geography?”

“Nope,” the engineer reported in turn,

“What else do we have today?”

“Algebra and work,” said Athos.

“Ri-ight! So let’s start with a fight. The first pair’ll be Athos versus Lin. Polly, go sit down. Your legs are tired.”

Athos started getting ready for the fight. “Don’t forget to hide the materials,” he said, “They’re scattered all over—Teacher’ll see them.”

“Okay. We’re leaving tomorrow anyhow.”

Pol sat down on the bed and laid aside his book. “It doesn’t say here who invented oxytane.”

“Albert Jenkins,” the Captain said without having to think. “In seventy-two.”

Teacher Tenin arrived at Room 18, as always, at 4:00 p.m. There was no one in the room, but water was flowing copiously in the shower, and he could hear snorting, slapping, and exultant cries of “zow-zow-zow!” The crew of the Galaktion was washing up after their exertions in the workshops.

The teacher paced the room. Much here was familiar and usual. Lin, as always, had scattered his clothes over the whole room. One of his slippers lay on Athos’s desk, undoubtedly representing a yacht. The mast was made out of a pencil; the sail, of a sock. This, of course, was Pol’s work. In this regard Lin would mutter angrily, “You think that’s pretty smart, huh, Polly?” The transparency system for the walls and ceiling was out of order—Athos had done that. The controls were by the head of his bed, and as he went to sleep, he would play with them. He would lie there pressing keys, and at one moment the room would become quite dark, and in the next the night sky and moon over the park would appear. Usually the controls were broken, if no one had stopped Athos in time. Athos today was doomed to fix the transparency system.

Lin’s desk was chaos. Lin’s desk was always chaos, and there was nothing to be done about it. This was simply one of those cases where the teacher’s contrivances and the entire powerful apparatus of child psychology were helpless.

As a rule, everything new in the room was linked with the Captain. Today there were diagrams on his desk that had not been there before. It was something new, and consequently something that required some thinking. Teacher Tenin very much liked new things. He sat down at the Captain’s desk and began to look over the diagrams.

From the shower room came:

“Add a little more cold, Polly!”

“Don’t! It’s cold already! I’m freezing!”

“Hold onto him, Lin. It’ll toughen him up.”

“Athos, hand me the scraper.”

“Where’s the soap, guys?”

Someone fell onto the floor with a crash. A yelp: “What idiot threw the soap under my feet?”

Laughter, cries of “Zow!”

“Very clever! Boy, will I get you!”

“Back! Pull in your manipulators, you!”

The teacher looked the diagrams over and replaced them. The plot thickens, he thought. Now an oxygen concentrator. The boys are really taken up with Venus. He got up and looked under Pol’s pillow. There lay the Introduction to . It had been thoroughly leafed through. The teacher flipped thoughtfully through the pages and put the book back. Even Pol, he thought. Curious.

Then he saw that the boxing gloves that had been lying on Lin’s desk day in and day out, regularly and unvaryingly for the last two years, were missing. Over the Captain’s bed, the photograph of Gorbovsky in a vacuum suit was gone, and Pol’s desktop was empty.

Teacher Tenin understood everything. He realized that they wanted to run away, and he knew where they wanted to run to. He even knew when they wanted to go. The photograph was missing, and therefore it was in the Captain’s knapsack. Therefore the knapsack was already packed. Therefore they were leaving tomorrow morning, early. The Captain always liked to do a thorough job, and not put off until tomorrow what he could do today. (On the other hand, Pol’s knapsack couldn’t be ready yet—Pol preferred to do everything the day after tomorrow.) So they were going tomorrow, out through the window so as not to disturb the housefather. They had a great dislike of disturbing housefathers. And who did not?