Владислав Крапивин: I am going to meet my brother

"You pretend to know eternal truths, but you've forgotten one: in every legend there is a grain of truth. We believe there are planets…"

Rotais bent his head.

"I shall permit myself to terminate this useless conversation. I see no foundation for your claim for an independent expedition of discovery… And in any case I am very upset and it is difficult for me to speak. An hour ago Valentine Amber crashed in a hydroflier. He is at home now and I am in a hurry to see him."

But he was not in such a great hurry, apparently, because when Alexander arrived at the old astronaut's house, he found only the doctors there. They told him that Amber had refused an operation.

"I shan't be able to fly any more, and my life… Well, it's been long enough, as it is," he had declared.

Silently Sneg entered the room where Amber was lying. The astronaut said to the embarrassed doctor, "Please go."

The room was in semi-darkness. The windows were not curtained, but were covered with masses of apple-blossom. Alexander approached the bed. Amber was covered to the chin with a white coverlet. Over it lay his matted white beard. A bloody gash ran right across his wrinkled forehead.

"No one can understand me except you," began Alexander. "Other people may accuse me of callousness, obsession, egoism. But you and I can speak the truth to one another. You will never fly again." "Well."

"They won't let our crew go exploring," said Alexander quietly. "Give us your right to a second flight, and we will go."

"To Leda? To my planet?" Amber moved neither his hands nor his head, but his eyes lit up with joy. "Is it settled?"

At that moment perhaps he saw the blue world of Leda, a planet whose mysteries have still not been entirely solved-with its ruins of turquoise cities, and white mountains rising above the purple masses of dense forests shrouded in clouds of poisonous blue-grey mist. But the marvellous vision vanished. Before him he saw once more the stern, tense face of Alexander.

"No, of course not. Not to my planet," muttered Amber in a hollow voice.

"Everyone has his own star," said Sneg. He sat down by the bed and told his story briefly: about the latest despatch from the "Globe", the mystery of Yellow Rose, the plan for independent exploration that the five young astronauts had conceived, and his last conversation with Rotais.

"Leda needs archaeologists. But we are explorers. We want to discover a planet where the air is like that on Earth. Men need such planets."

Amber closed his eyes.

"Good… the right is yours."

"He won't believe me," objected Alexander, recalling Rotais' pale impassive face.

"Take my badge. In the blue shell on the table."

In this shell, which had been found on Leda, lay a gold badge with blue stars and the inscription "Search".

Alexander glanced at the badge, and then at the injured astronaut. For the first time his resolution failed him. He clenched his teeth and let his outstretched hand fall.

"Take it," repeated Amber. "You're right."

"Break the window," he said, when Alexander had picked up the badge.

"No, don't open it-break the glass. It's old and very fragile… Good," he said, when he heard the crack of the shattered pane.

Alexander broke off a large branch outside the window and a ray of sun penetrated the room.

"A happy start!" said Valentine Amber, endeavouring by sheer willpower to suppress the growing pain in his chest. "May every one of you return to Earth!"

"That doesn't often happen."

"That's why I wish it."

Outside Sneg met Rotais and showed him the badge in his palm of his hand. Rotais shrugged his shoulder slightly and nodded his head, at once expressing veiled indignation at the young astronaut's behaviour and, forced assent. No one in the whole solar system could reject the right to a second flight: a cosmonaut who had discovered a new planet and had returned to Earth could set out again in any expedition he liked, at any time, and on any spaceship that was ready to take off. He could also cede his right to another captain. For one second Alexander had a flash of Amber's face, the face of the celebrated captain of the "Search", his wrinkled forehead with its bloody gash, and his deep-blue eyes that seemed to reflect the fantastic world of Leda. "To Leda? To my planet? Have you made up your mind?" The old astronaut had understood Alexander however. But Rotais?

Alexander turned and said in a cold voice to Rotais' back: "Inform East Cosmoport. We have chosen the 'Magellan'."

He did more than anybody for this flight. Yet it was more difficult for him than for any of the rest to set off. Each of them had relatives on Earth, but Sneg, alone, had a girl-friend besides.

To outsiders this silent friendship seemed odd. They were not often seen together, and they rarely talked about each other. Only their friends knew about their love.

A week before the start Alexander met her in a new sunny garden-what is now the Golden Park of Konsata. The wind was tearing off the leaves, and the sun was dancing on the white sand of path. The girl was silent.

"You knew I was an astronaut," said Sneg.

He could be calm when necessary.

Before taking off he gave her the gold badge.

Once, happening to put his head into the mess-room of the "Magellan", George saw Sneg take a small stereophoto and put it in front of him, staring at it and saying nothing.

"I'd put that picture away for ever," said George.

Alexander glanced up at him with a mixed expression of mockery and astonishment.

"You think everything will be forgotten?"

He covered his eyes with his hand and with a few bold strokes of his pencil dashed off a sketch of the girl with remarkable fidelity on a piece of cardboard.

"There."

Over seven years had passed, reckoning by "Magellan" time, since the start of the flight.

And now Alexander Sneg, the most eager to go on this expedition, was fighting for the icy planet, as if destruction, and not rebirth, were awaiting it.

"A grey desert! Stunted shrubs! If there's no ice, what will be left? A dead land, dead rocks."

"Men will do everything!" returned Thael. "Men will do everything that has to be done."

"And there's something else," continued Sneg. "We have no right to deprive people of the world we have discovered here, because it is beautiful. Don't you understand that?"

He threw his sketches on the table. They all fell silent, when they saw once more what they had seen before, but had begun to forget oppressed by the domain of ice. The colours were extraordinarily true to life: the black-and-orange sun-sets; the blue ravines with their luminous mists; the morning kindled golden sparks on the broken ice; the yellow sky with its great masses of grey cloud.

The pictures rustled slowly. At last Kar said. "Very well. But it's not right-cold and death for beauty's sake. What use is dead ice?"

"It's not dead," said Alexander, shaking his head. "It has its own life. Wind, streams, bushes. Everything here is awakening gradually. But there must be no hurry. Otherwise it will be a desert."

"There'll be no desert. There'll be an ocean, boundless and blue, as on Earth. There'll be enough melted ice for that. Waterfalls will roar. Just imagine, Alexander-thousands of silvery waterfalls cascading down the rocks in iridescent mist. Nature will still be severe, it will still have its own beauty, but there will be life as well. Surely that is the kind of planet we were looking for." -

"There'll be an ocean and islands covered with forests," said Thael softly.

"Where will the forests come from? Will the black shrubs grow into trees?" "Men will plant forests." "On the rocks?"

"You're wrong, Sasha," quietly said George, who had hitherto been silent. "Remember Antarctica."