Kir Bulychev - Alice - The Girl From Earth

“Take us higher.” I said to Poloskov.

Then we saw yet another bird. It was heading toward one of the mountains, carrying a large fish in its talons.

“After her!” I said.

The bird did not notice us. She was headed toward the most distant nest.

And in that nest, between to enormous chicks, sat Alice. From afar she looked like a chick herself, the fault of her fluffy yellow overalls.

On seeing their mother the nestlings opened their maws, but the big bird had lifted the fish to Alice and was attempting to insert its catch into Alice’s mouth. Alice pushed it away, but the mother bird was insistent.

Poloskov broke out in laughter.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the strange sight for a second.

“Alice was in no danger.” Poloskov smiled. “She was mistaken for a chick that fell from then nest and was due for a course of forced feeding.

Poloskov was right. What had saved Alice was her fluffy overalls.

We hung over the nest. Poloskov let down the steps and Alice climbed up into the cutter, while I frightened off the bird with sonic grenades and blaster bolts.

“Do you want to collect the nestlings?” Poloskov asked, still laughing.

“The next time, perhaps.” I answered. “How do you feel, Alice?”

“Not bad.” She answered.

She was covered in fish scales, but otherwise completely hale and hearty.

“I was just starting to get frightened.” She said. “And then, when she brought me to the nest, it was even comfortable. The chicks and I got along, but then the big bird naturally tried to get me to eat. You know, like your grandmother when she tries to put another spoonful of porrige down your throat.”

Poloskov was positively cheerful, asking Alice if she had managed to learn to fly, or if she didn’t want to return to her new family.

“But why did you leave the ship?” I asked sternly, after their levity had died away.

“I went in search of the Second Captain.”

“Why?”

“I overheard Poloskov say the surveyor satellite was working badly, and two weeks is really far too long to wait. And then I thought the Blabberyap might very well remember how to get to where he’d last heard the Second Captain’s voice. I asked him to show me the way, and he flew off.”

“And why didn’t you ask permission?”

“Would you have given it to me?”

“No, of course not. And there’s no Second Captain here. Forget about him.”

“No?” Alice asked. “He is here. It’s just too bad that the Blabberyap bird got away. We could have found him in two minutes with the bird.

“And what makes you think that?”

“What I found in the nest, of course.” Alice answered, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a piece of a porcelain saucer with “ue Gull” stamped in gold. “Blue Gull, right?” She asked me. “Or don’t you believe me?”

“Show it here.” Poloskov asked. — Nu i vezet zhe tebe.

“You don’t say.” Alice shot back. “To get this piece I had to take a flight in the Crockadee’s claws. Have you ever done that?”

“No.” Poloskov laughed.

“But the bird gave me the fragment itself. Evidently it keeps it in its nest as a toy for the chicks. So it gave it to me to play with.”

I began to think Alice might indeed be right. It did appear that the Blue Gull had, in fact, been on this planet. But how could we find it?

“Whatever happened to the probe?” I asked Poloskov. “I thought you had tested it earlier.”

“It’s very odd, but someone broke one of the connections to the metal detector.”

“Broke?”

“It was snapped. And it did not snap itself. The connection is located right in the center of the probe unit.”

“What are we going to do?” I wondered aloud.

We landed in front of the Pegasus and got out onto the grass and under the trees, looking up in the sky warily for any sign of the Crockadee.

“We’ll use the Blabberyap bird.” Alice said.

Then I noticed, hanging right in front of my nose, a thin chain that reached almost to the ground.

The blabberyap bird flew down from the trees and circled over our heads, as though inviting us to follow it in search of the Captain.

Alice held tightly onto the chain that held the Blabberyap bird. The bird did not resist or cry out; it was as if the animal understood what was wanted of it. It flew slowly over the bushes, and if we held behind it rose a little on the wind and tread the air, waiting for us to catch up. Our going on the ground was difficult; we were the first to tread the grasses and weeds of this world. We had to crawl across fallen trees, work our ways thorough long curtains of lianas and thorn, and cross swift flowing steams.

Yellow lizards on tall, long legs jumped out from beneath the roots and exploded running to warn the forest’s inhabitants of our approach.

When we came out onto a field overgrown with enormous numbers of predatory white flowers. The flowers chittered loudly, snacking on the butterflies and bees, and turned toward us, plucking at our feet with their leaves, but they were unable to bite their way through our boots and because of that they just grew vexed and wailed in protest. On the other side of the copse of trees still another meadow opened amid the trees. The flowers here were reddish in color. They papered to be very curious; as soon as we came through the trees all flowers turned in our direction was though they were looking at us and catching our scent. A vaguish whispering filled the field.

“It’s like they’re all gossiping with each other at once.” Alice said. “And they’ll be talking about how we were dressed and how we went through here until night fall.”

The whispering and muttering of the curious flowers seemed to go on forever.

It was a planet of flowers. On that day we encountered even more flowers that argued violently among themselves, flowers that huddled underground to hide themselves from us as soon as we appeared, that jumpped from plce to place, bolting into the air on long roots, and enormous numbers of perfectly ordinary flowers: blue, red, green, white, yellow, some of them on trees or bushes, others on the cliffs, in the water or slowly flowing through the air.

For about two hours we chased after the Blabberyap bird. In the end we were exhausted.

“Wait!” I shouted to the Blabberyap. “We have to rest.”

We hid beneath an enormous tree to avoid being seen from above by a circling Crockadee and found places to rest in the shade. The Blabberyap bird perched on a branch overhead and, as always, drifted off to sleep. It was a lazy bird and, when it was not speaking or not working, was not long for the waking world.

Poloskov sat down, leaned back against the trunk of the tree, and asked doubtfully:

“And what if the Blabberyap bird just decided tog go for a stroll?”

“Don’t say such a thing!” Alice said angrily. “If you think that way it will just be easier to go back.”

Unexpectedly the star slid behind the horizon and a short night commenced. Immediately the stars came out.

“Look,” Alice said, “one of the stars is moving.”

“More likely it’s an asteroid.” I said.

“Or it could be a ship.” Alice said.

“Now why would a ship end up coming here at all?”

The star vanished behind the trees. Five minutes or so later another dawn began, but this time three stars at once rose above the horizon and very quickly it became both very bright and very hot. All around bees were buzzing and grasshoppers made clicking sounds.

“It’s time to get up.” Poloskov said, rising to his feet. “The Blabberyap Bird is calling us on, ever on!”