Владислав Крапивин: I am going to meet my brother

Naal was so absorbed in his examination of the badge that he forgot about the paper, and he would not have remembered it if the wind had not blown it on to his lap. He smoothed the crumpled paper out and saw that it was a page of a very very old magazine. Water had not soaked through into the box and the paper was not spoiled.

Naal began to read it deciphering the old type with difficulty, and his face suddenly became very serious. But he went on reading, and at the bottom of the page found words as startling as the loud and sudden twang of strings.

When the schoolboys came to the shore two hours later, Naal was still sitting in the same place, his elbows resting on a sun-warmed rock watching the white crests rising along the coast.

"We've been looking for you," said an older boy. "We didn't know you'd gone to the beach. Why are you alone here?"

Naal did not hear him. The wind had grown stronger and the waves were getting louder. Do you know the noise of the waves? First there is a swelling sound as the wave comes rolling in. Then it breaks and crashes on the rocks, and the water spreads out and, hissing, sweeps up the shore. And it is followed by another.

Nothing in particular distinguished Naal from the other schoolboys in the South Valley. Like all the others, he was fond of swinging high and dangerously close to the gnarled and twisted trees, and of playing with his ball in the sunny copse. He was not very fond of studying the history of the discovery of the great planets. He could run faster than many of the boys, but was not a very good swimmer. He would join with pleasure in any game, but, he never came first. Only once had he done something that not everyone could have done.

A springy branch of a bush growing near the shore had torn the badge from his shirt, and the golden spray with its blue stars had fallen into the sea. Through the transparent water he could see it sinking to the bottom. Without a moment's thought, Naal had dived from the six-foot embankment, by good fortune missing the sharp rocks below.

He soon came out on the beach, holding the badge in one hand, and without saying a word started squeezing his shirt out with the other.

No one knew where he had got this badge and why he treasured it so much, but no one questioned him. Everyone can have his own secrets, and since the loss of his parents Naal seemed to have grown much older and did not always answer the questions of his classmates.

Outwardly nothing very much had changed in his life since he learned of his misfortune. Even before, he had lived most of the time at school. Both his father and mother were authorities on ocean deeps and were often away on expeditions. But now he knew that the bathyscaphe "Reindeer" would never return and never again would someone appear at the end of the walk to whom he could rush at top speed, forgetting everything else in the world.

Months had passed. There had been quiet mornings with school lessons, and days full of sun and noisy games, and sparkling rain. Perhaps he would have forgotten his grief. But one day the waves washed the small blue box ashore by the Old Steps. Wherefrom, he had no idea. Only it was not a relic of the lost bathyscaphe.

At night, when the windows reflected the orange gleam of Ratal Lighthouse, Naal would get the crumpled page out from 'the blue box. He needed no light: he knew every line by heart. It was from a very old magazine, published about three hundred years ago and it told of the setting out of the photon frigate "Magellan".

The textbook on the history of astroflight spoke of this ship briefly and dryly: the "Magellan" had set out for one of the yellow stars with the aim of finding a planet like Earth. Apparently, the crew had used information about this planet, obtained from the wrecked frigate "Globe", which had not been correct. The "Magellan" should have returned after a hundred and twelve years, but there had been no news of it. The young astronauts, stirred by legend and lacking experience, had obviously perished without achieving their aim.

The textbook didn't even give their names. Naal had learned them in the page he had found. The captain's name was Alexander Sneg.

Naal had heard from his father that' one of their ancestors was an astronaut. And when, on the beach that day, he had read the name "Sneg", he had felt both pride and resentment-resentment at the textbook for its dry and probably incorrect words about the cosmonauts. There may have been many reasons why the frigate was lost. And was the crew to blame?

"What if they didn't find anything when they reached that yellow star and continued their flight? What if… what if they're still flying?" thought Naal, arguing with the book. But at this thought he suddenly screwed up his eyes, as though frightened by his own thought. He conjured up the long shady walks in the school park and at the end of it a tall man in the silvery jacket of an astronaut, a man to whom he could run, forgetting everything else in the world.

And what if he returned? He might still return. Time passes many times slower in a spacecraft than on Earth. What if the frigate returned? Then Naal would meet, not an ancestor, not a stranger from another century, but a brother. Because at the bottom of the page from the magazine the had read what someone had said to the crew of the "Magellan": "Don't forget the old names. You'll return in many years' time, but the grandsons of your friends will meet you like friends. The grandsons of your brothers will become your brothers…"

Naal realized that all this was pure fantasy. Yet he vividly pictured to himself how it would happen. It would be morning. He saw this morning clearly-the bright sun, already high overhead, and the sky so blue it was reflected on the white buildings, the white clothes, and the silvery sides of the frigate. Auxiliary rockets had just landed the spacecraft gently on the field of the cosmoport, and this huge astrofrigate-a glittering tower with a black crest one hundred and fifty metres high-stood still, resting on the black cylinders of the photon reflectors. The luminous letters in old-fashioned script of the name "Magellan" stood out distinctly on the crest. Naal could see the tiny figures of the astronauts descending slowly by the spiral gangway. Now they would set foot on land and walk towards the people meeting them. Naal would be the first to welcome them, he would get in front of all the others. He would ask at once which of them was Alexander Sneg. And then… No, he wouldn't say much. To begin with he would just say his name. For he, too, was a Sneg.

Naal was not used to concealing his joys and his sorrows. But he spoke about this to nobody. For, without willing it, he had begun to dream of a miracle-and who would believe in miracles? But sometimes at night, watching the gleaming cosmodrome beacons, Naal would get out the crumpled page. Everyone, after all, has the right to his dream, even if it's unrealisable.

There are no miracles; but by a strange coincidence, that very year the Fifth Pilot Station received a signal that stirred the whole of our planet: "Earth… Send me return signal. I am coming in. I am 'Magellan'."

The moon had not yet risen, but the upper part of the Power Ring had shown itself above the hills as a steep irregular curve. Its diffused yellowish light shimmered through the window and lay in a broad band on the carpet.

Naal switched on his wrist radio, but there was nothing new. The boy could wait no longer, however. He hesitated a moment, then jumped out of bed, and was dressed in a flash. Throwing his jacket over his shoulders, he went over to the window. It was half-open; it was never really shut because a crimson Martian convolvulus, clinging to the ledge with tiny thorns, had found its way into the room. The slender stalk would have been cut in two if the window had been shut tight.