Kir Bulychev - Alice - The Girl From Earth

“No.” The second Customs Agent said as he flapped his ears. “Let me be so bold as to express, your nobility….”

But the chief Customs Agent had no time to listen to expressions. He grabbed his aids by their ears and dragged them out of the crew’s lounge, slammed the door shut, and said with some satisfaction:

“Now I can tell you in peace.”

But the door suddenly slide slightly aside and the ear of a recalcitrant Customs Agent edged inside:

“May I be so bold as to…”

“No, this is impossible!” The Chief Customs Agent pressed his thick back to the door and started to finish the story:

“It turns out that these grubs reproduced with unbelievable rapidity. So quickly in fact, that in ten minutes they had doubled in mass, and in an hour were six hundred times as many as when they began.”

“But what did they eat?” Alice couldn’t understand it.

“Air.” The Custom’s Agent answered. “As unbelievable as it sounds, they consumed air.”

“Oxygen!” The second Custom’s Agent shouted from behind his back.

“Nitrogen!” The third responded.

The Chief Custom’s Agent covered his face with his ears from shame at the behavior of his own subordinates. It was another five minutes before he had calmed himself down enough that he could finish the story.

“In general, I would say, but three hours after it began the entire market in Palaputra was filled with grubs to the depth of one meter; the collectors and hawkers had fled to wherever.”

“And what happened to the trader?” Alice asked.

“In the commotion the trader vanished.”

“He ran away.” came from the other side of the door.

“The mountains of grubs were spread out everywhere. Toward evening they reached the center of the city. All the Fire Engines, which poured water and foam, and fire from flame throwers, onto the grubs, could do nothing to contain their advance. We tried to burn the grubs, we tried to poison them, we used DDT and other insecticides, we trampled them under foot, but all was in vain. The air on the planet began to get thinner and thinner. They had to pass out oxygen masks. The planet Blooke sent out emergency signals to all the ends of the Galaxy. However, it was the bird fancier Krabakas of Barakasa who saved the planet. He set gluttonwings on the worms, little birds but so voracious is their appetite that not a single self-respecting collector would keep one. They destroy everything! In the final analysis we were rescued from the grubs, but the gluttonwings on their own also consumed all ants, beetles, bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, spiders, bumble bees and dung beetles. Now we have to rebuild the whole ecology!”

“But why did that merchant sell such dangerous bugs?” Alice asked.

“And why not? He wanted to make money. After all, his supply was endless.”

“No.” Alice said. “It can’t be that. He couldn’t be such a fool. All the collectors would soon guess what was going on.”

“Of course he wasn’t a fool!” Another Custom’s Agent shouted from the other side oft he door. “He wanted to destroy our planet.”

“But why?”

“We don’t know ourselves,” The Chief Custom’s Agent admitted. He left the door and admitted his assistants. “We don’t know why, but since that time we have examined all in-coming ships, especially those from the Sol System.”

“But why especially from the Sol System?”

“That’s a secret.” Said the first Custom’s Agent.

“It’s no secret at all.” The Second Custom’s Agent interjected. “It’s just because the trader was from the Sol System. He was a human being.”

“That’s very odd.” I said. “Do you have a description of him? What did he look like.”

“No. All your people look alike to us anyway.”

“Despite that, shouldn’t he have any distinguishing characteristics.”

“Yes, he did.” One of the junior Custom’s Agents said.

“Silence.” His chief ordered.

“I won’t.” The aid said. “The creature walked around in head attire with a horizontal field and a transverse trench in the peak.”

“I don’t understand.” I said. “What do you mean by a transverse trench.”

“Oh divinely earspired, show him the photo. Perhaps they can help us.” The aid said.

“No. The photo is too secret”

“And you don’t want it said of you that you gave away state secrets”

“Definitely.”

Then his most Earnestness pulled a photograph from his pocket. The photo was creased, it was amateurish, stained, but without a doubt anyone could tell it depicted Doctor Verkhovtseff with a can in one had and a medium sized carpetbag in the other.

“That can’t be!” I was so surprised I spoke aloud.

“What do you mean Do you know this human?”

“Yes. He lives on the Three Captain’s World.”

“Alas, for such a lovely planet to have such a nefarious inhabitant. When did you see him?”

“Three days go.”

“Our encounter with him took place last month. Now we shall have to subject your ship to a thorough investigation. Do you have any bugs aboard”

“No, we don’t have any bugs aboard,”

“They’re holding out.” The second Custom’s Agent whispered to is chief. “They don’t want to talk.”

“Then we cannot permit them to go out into the city.” The Chief Custom’s Agent said. “Where is your telephone. I shall have to assume that all of you are sick with a galactic plague. Then you can leave voluntarily. Otherwise, we must begin the disinfection, which is certainly far less comfortable than just leaving.”

“Let me assure you we are not contemplating anything criminal.” I tried to calm the Custom’s Agent down. “We’ve only seen that individual one time. And perhaps that was not even him. There are certainly a lot of people who look like him. And what reason would a scholar, the director of a museum, have for trading in grubs.”

“I don’t know.” The chief Audity said sadly. “We’ve had so many woes! We’ve already started to distrust our guests.”

“And what else happened?”

“You shouldn’t ask. Someone exterminated nearly all the Blabberyaps.”

“Blabberyaps?”

“Yes, Blabberyaps. They’re our favorite birds.” /P>

Alice and I set off for the bazar on foot, but told the ATV to stop by there in two hours.

The morning was fine, the sky was bright and clear and orange tinted, the clouds were few and green, the sand beneath our feet was soft and blue.

We strode down the city’s main street. On both sides of the avenue rose hotels. No two hotels were at all alike in terms of architectural details or materials; each had been constructed specially for the inhabitants of this or that stellar system.

The hotel Krak, which resembled a children’s balloon although it was more than a hundred meters in diameter, floated in the air above an antigrav field. The hotel catered to stellar wanderers used to zero gravity or who lived in space permanently and had no planet of their own, the comet dwellers and the meteorite miners.

Then we passed the Heaven Point Hotel; it also resembled a sphere, but heavy, massive, inserted halfway into the planet. The sign read ‘Methane Breathers Only.’ From an improperly secured door came the hiss of gas.

The next hotel in line was the ‘Skillet,’ its walls showed signs of burning and were untouchable, despite the nearly hundred layers of insolation. The Skillet’s customers were the inhabitants of stars, for whom bathing in molten lava was comparable to us swimming in a lake on a summer’s day.

All the hotels, those hanging in the air and those plunged into the ground, had their entrances on the roofs and, generally, were without windows or doors to the surface. And then we saw a smaller building fronted by columns, with utterly ordinary windows, and a throughly typical door. The sign over it read “Mother Volga Inn.’