Kir Bulychev - Alice - The Girl From Earth

“That’s our bushes singing!” Alice shouted. “Does that mean we have a sand storm heading our way?”

“What?” Zeleny dismissed the idea. “Where would we get a sand storm in space?”

“Let’s go take a look at the bushes, Papa.” Alice insisted. “We’d see what’s up.”

Alice ran off toward the hold, but I held back a few seconds to grab and load the camera.

“I’ll take a look too.” Zeleny said. “I’ve never seen singing bushes before.”

I suspected that in fact he wanted to take a look out the nearest window because he was afraid we were in fact due for a sand storm.

I had just finished loading the camera when I heard a shout. I recognized Alice’s voice.

I threw down the camera in the crew’s lounge and hurried down the ladder way toward the holds.

“Papa!” Alice shouted. “Just take a look at that!”

“Save yourselves!” Zeleny roared. “They’re walking!”

A few more steps and I had run up to the double lock doors to the cargo hold. In the open doors I collided with Alice and Zeleny. More precisely, I collided with Zeleny who was holding Alice. Zeleny looked frightened and his beard blew wild, like from a wind.

On the other side of the airlock door leading to the hold stood the bushes. The sight was utterly terrifying. The bushes had extracted themselves from the sand and were moving heavily and slowly on their short, deformed roots, advancing on us. They were walking in a half circle, shaking their branches, the buds had opened and reddish flowers now glared at us like hostile eyes from amid their leaves.

“To Arms!” Zeleny shouted at the top of his lungs and handed Alice to me.

“Close the door!” I said.

But it was too late. While we had been talking, trying to get past each other, the first of the bushes had passed through the hold lock and we were forced to step back into the corridor.

One after another the bushes followed after their leader.

Zeleny, pressing all the emergency buttons on the nearest com panel, ran off to the bridge for weapons, and I grabbed a mop that was standing against he wall and tried to protect Alice. She was looking at the advance of the bushes enchanted, like a rabbit at a boa constrictor.

“Get out of here! Run!” I shouted at Alice. “I won’t be able to hold them off for long!”

The bushes were resolute, with strong branches they clutched at the mop and tried to tear it out of my hands. I backed off.

“Hold on, pop!” Alice said, and ran off.

At least Alice is safe, I thought. My own situation continued to remain perilous. The bushes were trying to force me into a corner, and I couldn’t even move the mop.

“Why does Zeleny want the flamethrower?” I heard Captain Poloskov’s voice over the loudspeaker. “What’s going on.”

“The bushes are attacking.” I answered. “But don’t give Zeleny the flamethrower. I’m trying to contain them in their section. As soon as I can get them back through the lock I’ll let you know and we can seal the cargo section.”

“You’re not in any danger, are you?” Poloskov asked.

“Not at the moment.” I answered.

And at that very moment the nearest bush had yanked on the mop and pulled it out of my hands. The mop flew to the furthest end of the corridor, and the bushes, as though buoyed by my now by my now unarmed state, moved toward me in close order.

At that moment I heard rapid steps approaching from behind.

“Get away, Alice!” I shouted. “Get back this instant! They’re as strong as lions!”

But Alice crawled beneath my legs and threw herself at the bushes.

She had something large and shining in her hands. I tried to grab her as she passed but lost my balance and fell. The last thing I saw was Alice surrounded by the threatening branches of the moving bushes.

“Poloskov!” I shouted. “I need help now!’

And at that very instant the bushes singing stopped! It turned into low humming and a sigh.

I got to my feet and surveyed a picture of absolute tranquility.

Alice was standing in a thicket of bushes and was watering them from a garden can.

The bushes had their leaves turned into little cups, trying not to loose a single drop of moisture, and sighed blissfully.

When we moved the bushes back into the hold we found the broken mop and wiped the floor, and I asked Alice:

“But how did you guess it?”

“It wasn’t all that special, Pop. The bushes are plants, aren’t they? That means they have to be watered. Like carrots. And we did dig them out of the ground, we moved them into plastic pots filled with sand, and we forgot to water them. When Zeleny grabbed me to try and save me, it gave me a chance to think: at home they live right at the edge of a spring. The Third Captain only found them and the water because of their singing, and they only sing when there’s a sand storm coming, that is when the wind is moving and drying out the air and pulls water from the sand. That’s when they’re agitated because they don’t have enough water. “

“Why didn’t you say so immediately?”

“Would you have believed me. You were fighting them like they were tigers. You completely forgot they were just ordinary bushes who have to be watered.”

“Not at all ordinary!” The Engineer Zeleny cut in. “Ordinary bushes do not go hunting for water down the corridors of a space ship!”

Then it was my turn, as the biologist, to have the last word.

“That’s just how these bushes engage in the struggle for existence.” I said. “There’s little water in the desert, the springs dry up periodically, and to stay alive the bushes are forced to move to where the water is.”

Since then the bushes have lived peacefully in their pots of sand. Only one of them, the smallest and least settled in, often pulls its roots out of the pot and lies in wait for us in the corridors of the ship, rustling its branches, singing and asking for water. I asked Alice not to reward the young scamp the roots drip onto the floor but Alice took pity on him and kept bringing him glasses of water. That was really nothing we couldn’t live with, but once she watered him with fruit juice instead of water and now the little bush has become such a pest you can’t walk down the ship without him getting in your way; he traipses around the ship leaving wet root marks behind, stupidly jabbing at people’s legs with his leaves.

There wasn’t a penny’s worth of intelligence in him, but he loves fruit juice more than a million dollars.

“Where to first?” Poloskov asked.

He was examining the space map. The course to Palaputra, where we would find the market in animals, was laid out on it. At the same time a dotted line noted our course toward the Empty Planet described to us by Doctor Verkhovtseff.

“We can always go to Palaputra.” I answered, “But the Empty Planet isn’t noted in a single guide to space. Why not take the risk?”

“But even doctor Verkhovtseff himself said all the animals had vanished. Maybe they all died and we’ll just be wasting our time.”

“And our fuel is getting tight.” Zeleny interjected himself into the conversation. “Whatever else Palaputra has, we can replenish our fuel supplies there. Can we do that on the Empty Planet? We could find ourselves there, out of fuel, and waiting until someone else passes by.”

But we ignored Zeleny. He is simply a pessimist. We were both certain that we had more than enough fuel to last us. He just wanted to be doubly careful.

“So I say,” I said, “Let’s look in on the Empty planet. It’s a mystery, and there’s nothing more interesting on any world than figuring out a mystery.”