Владислав Крапивин - I am going to meet my brother

Sneg was going to reply, but suddenly sat down wearily, and said, "All right. I'm not arguing." "You'll help with the calculations?" "With the work, yes, but not with the calculations. What sort of mathematician am I?"

V

They worked a long time, using robots and pneumatic spanners. Then they put four landing rockets, surrounded by a network of magnetic regulators, into orbit. The rockets had no autopilots, so Kar and Larsen got into the cabins themselves and then baled out in life-suits. They did that twice. The four rockets, with stellar fuel RE-202-esane formed the points of a trihedral pyramid, within which hung the Snow Planet.

No one recalled the argument. Alexander worked with a will, and even made some calculations concerning one of the artificial suns. Each had his own sun, except Kar, who had taken on the general calculations and control.

When work was finished on the last day the crew of the "Magellan" gathered in a gorge, where the control station had been set up.

"Well… ye Gods creating spring," said Kar, rather too seriously.

"Go ahead," said Thael, and sighed audibly.

"Go?"

"Go on."

The signal was given. Three screens were lit by a blinding flash. Then mountains and masses of ice, illumined by two or three suns, appeared on them. But the opaque surface of the fourth screen remained white and impassive.

"Mine," said Sneg.

The fourth sun had not fired.

No one knew what had happened. Possibly, the system of magnetic regulators had gone wrong. The slightest jarring or impact with a meteorite no bigger than a grain of sand might be all that was needed for the sun to blaze up in a few moments. But what were the chances that a meteorite would strike the rocket?

"What's it matter? There'll be an ice-cap, like there used to be in the Antarctic. What the devil, it'll be fine-the Sneg snow plateau!" exclaimed the ingenuous Larsen.

"Oh yes, it'll be marvellous," said Alexander dryly.

An embarrassed silence followed. No one imagined of course that Sneg had deliberately miscalculated. He knew that himself. But why did it have to be his that should fail?

"I'll go up in a rocket and neutralize the system of regulators with a jet stream," said Sneg quietly and firmly when they had returned to the "Magellan".

"Let's go to bed," he added. "I'll prove it's possible."

^'What, to go to bed?"

"To smash the controlling system of regulators and get away in time from the flash."

Larsen obediently sat down at the keyboard of the electronic brain. Alexander dictated.

"It's possible in principle, you see," he declared, when he had finished his calculations.

"In principle," grumbled Larsen. "Don't be a fool-you'll be burned up."

"Let's go to bed, Sasha," said George. "It's not all that bad." But everyone knew it was bad- very bad.

They had used up two-thirds of their esane. They could only get back to Earth in two hundred and fifty years. And they would return empty-handed. By that time the cold would have the Snow Planet once again in its icy grasp, and when would men come here again and light atomic suns? Yet everything had been almost ready. Without that mistake, the crew of the "Magellan" would have brought news to Earth of a planet suitable for normal life. Men needed such planets-outposts of mankind in the boundless universe, jumping-off grounds for new, even more distant, leaps.

They were awakened in the night by a loud call signal. Alexander's voice, amplified by the receiver, said "I'm in the rocket. Don't be angry, lads, it's got to be tried."

"Sasha," said George. "We all beg you-don't do it. Damn the planet. Think of Earth."

"Nothing will happen."

"You're arguing again."

"No."

"Sneg! I order you to return!" cried Kar.

"Don't be angry, Kar… But I'm the captain, after all."

"But you yourself wanted the planet to remain ice-bound," said Larsen timidly.

There was a sound like Alexander laughing.

"That's Kar's fault. He described the ocean, and waterfalls, and islands so well. And I'm an artist. I wanted to paint it all."

Kar swore softly.

"Switch on the videophone," said Thael.

Sneg did so. Everyone saw his face on the screen. He was whistling as he bent over the controls and seemed to be quite calm.

"Be careful," said George.

Sneg nodded, still whistling.

"Just before returning to Earth! Why are you doing it?" cried Kar in despair. "What if it blazes up right away?"

"You know what. But it's got to be finished."

The whine of the engine interrupted the conversation. The image on the screen jerked and then they saw Alexander's face, strained and distorted. Then acceleration stopped and the speed began to fall. At high speed, Alexander would not be able to turn the rocket and strike the regulators with a jet stream. They were all silent and saw nothing but his tense face. And then the moment came when a blinding white flash lit up the screen…

"How did you manage to escape?" I asked Alexander.

He looked gloomily at me.

"That's the point. My name is George Rogov. Sneg perished. Can you understand what we all felt when the pilot sent us the message about the boy? A little chap on Earth was eagerly awaiting for his brother. Perhaps it's difficult for you to understand. But we who had not seen Earth or people for so many years knew this feeling of longing and expectation very well. It's particularly hard when you know you won't meet a single familiar face. Three hundred years. You can't even trace the old names. And here was a brother! We understood the boy and his yearning for someone near and dear. It was very difficult to tell the truth. Impossible, in fact."

Thael showed himself the most resourceful of us all. The reply he sent to the station helped us to gain time.

"But that's no solution," said Larsen. "What'll we say to him afterwards?"

"What's the boy called?" I asked.

Kar told me. Then he looked at me with an odd expression in his eyes, but said nothing at the time.

The engine of the landing rocket gave out just above Earth, and we baled out in our life-suits.

It was still dark. The first blue of dawn was just beginning to show. I can't remember everything. There was a smell of damp leaves and earth. Thael stood pressing his dark face against a birch-tree, its stem showing white in the half-light. Larsen lay on the ground, exclaiming "Look! Grass!"

I was watching the sky. Suddenly, the bright yellow dawn began to blaze up, and the zenith became a pure deep blue, and it seemed to me that the sky was singing. I never knew that it could sing like millions of finely tuned strings. A light cloud above my head slowly took on a rosy glow. And then a sudden horror seized me. I thought that this was all another agonizing dream about the Earth, the dream that each one of us had suffered from when we were on the Snow Planet. This fear was like an electric shock. I lay down on the grass and closed my eyes. I clutched the root of a bush. It was rough and wet.

A moment later I loosened by fingers and opened my eyes. Once more the blue sky was ringing above the forest. And mingled with this sound I could hear Larsen saying again "Look! Leaves!"

Then the sun rose.

Have you ever seen the sun rise out of the grass? You have to be lying down to see it. The grass looks like a fantastic forest above which a bright star rises. The dewdrops sparkle like coloured sparks.

Naal watched the sun through the grass. He remembered everything; he could even see the smashed "bee" out of the corner of his eye, but he felt no emotion, nor belated fear. Everything that had happened last night was like a confused dream, and the lad felt his dreams had been impractical.

When the sun was sufficiently high for its lower rim to touch the heads of the tallest flowers growing on the edge of the meadow, Naal got up. His head whirled a bit, and his injured shoulder hurt. But he had been lucky. The shock-absorbers had thrown him out on soft grass, and had fallen asleep without even trying to get up-he was so exhausted.