“Okay.” I said. “Just send the gold nugget by the morning, by pneumopost.”
I hung up the videophone and immediately heard a knock on the door. I opened it. Before our door stood a fair haired little boy in the orange costume of a Venusian terraformer, with the emblem of first Expedition to the Sirius system on his sleeve.
“Pardon me.” He said. “Are you Alice’s dad?”
“I am.”
“Hello. My name is Egorov. Is Alice at home.”
“No. She went off somewhere.”
“Too bad. Can you be trusted?”
“Me? Oh, of course!”
“Then I have to have a man to man conversation with you.”
“Not Astronaut to Astronaut?”
“Don’t laugh.” Egorov flushed red. “I plan to earn my wings some day.”
“I don’t doubt you will.” I said. “So how about the man to man conversation?”
“Alice and I are in the airbladder race tomorrow, only something has happened that might cause them to pull her off the team. To put it generally, she has to return something that was lost to the school. I’m giving this to you., but I don’t want you to say who it from. Is that clear?”
“Very clear, o mysterious and unknown stranger.” I said.
“Take it.”
He held out a small bag to me. The bag was very heavy.
“Gold, by any chance?” I asked.
“So you know?”
“I know.”
“It is.”
“I trust it was come by legitimately.”
“Of course it was! What do you think I am? I got it while camping in the mountains. Well, good bye.”
I hadn’t yet managed to reach my seat when the door bell rang again. I found two small girls on our doorstep.
“Hello.” They said in chorus. “We’re from the first grade. Take this for Alice.”
They handed me two individual purses and ran off. In one purse lay four gold coins, very old coins from someone’s collection. In another, three tea spoons. The tea spoons it turned out were not, in fact, gold; they were platinum. Yet another piece of gold arrived in a box in the evening mail from another unknown wellwisher. Then Leva Zvansky dropped by and tried to foist on me a small casket with diamonds. After he left an member of the 8th Grade class came by; he brought along three tiny gold nuggets.
“I collected them back when I was a kid.” He said.
Alice returned toward evening. She shouted happily from the door:
“Papa! There’s nothing to worry about. Everything worked out. I can go with you on the expedition.”
“Why such a change.” I asked.
“Because I found a replacement.” Alice was scarcely able to drag the Mother Load of gold ore out of her bag. It appeared to be about six or seven kilograms.
“I went to see Captain Poloskov. I told him the problem and he called around to everyone he knew. He also fed me supper, so I’m not hungry.”
Then Alice caught sight of the gold nuggets and other gold and platinum objects that had accumulated in our house over the course of the day, which I had spread out on the dinner table.
“Oh my!” She said. “The museum is making out like space pirates.”
“Listen to me, my fine young criminal.” I said to her. “I would, under no circumstances, be taking you along on this expedition were it not for your friends.”
“And why, because of my friends?”
“Because they would hardly have run all over Moscow searching for gold objects for a really bad person.”
“But I’m not such a bad person.” Alice said without the slightest hint of modesty.
I frowned, but at that moment there was a ka-chunk in the wall slot indicating the arrival of a package via the pneumatic tube postal system. I opened the wall slot and pulled out the package with gold in it from the Mineralogical Museum. Friedman had completed his part of the bargain.
“And this is from me.” I added it to the pile.
“So you see,” Alice said, “you’re my friend too.”
“It would appear so.” I answered. “But I suggest you not be presumptuous.”
The next morning I had to accompany Alice to school, as the weight of the gold objects that had accumulated in our apartment had reached seventeen kilograms.
Handing her the bag at the entrance to the school I said,
“I quite forgot about your punishment.”
“About what?”
“On Sunday you will be taking the Zoo’s Centaurian Blue Leopard on a trip to the Mineralogical Museum.”
“Take the Blue Leopard to the Museum? But he’s too… too stupid!”
“Yes. He’ll be there to scare the mice. And you’ll be there to see he doesn’t frighten anyone else.”
“Agreed.” Alice said. “And we are going on the expedition.”
Chapter Two
Forty-Three Stowaways
The last two weeks before our departure passed in a flash of excitement and often unnecessary commotion. I hardly saw Alice at all during that time.
Firstly, I was in charge of preparing, checking, and loading and finding places aboard the Pegasus for all the cages, snares, ultrasound lures, traps, nets, forcefield generators, and the thousand other things which were needed to catch animals.
Secondly, the medicines, stored foods, films, recording tapes, cameras, dictaphones, microscopes, herbarium papers, note books, rubber boots, calculators and computers, umbrellas for the varius suns, and from the rain, lemonade, rain coats, panama hats, dried ice cream concentrate, jetpacks, and the still million more other things that might prove necessary on the expedition.
Thirdly, in as much as we would, on our outbound run, be stopping in at many isolated scientific bases, stations, and diverse worlds we found ourselves carrying freight and gifts: oranges for some astronomers on Mars, canned herring for some explorers on Arcturus Minor, cherry juice, India ink, and modeling clay for the archaeologists in the 2-BTS system, brocade dressing gowns and electrocardiographs for the inhabitants of the planet Fyxx, a set of walnut trees won by an inhabitant of the planet Samora in the “Do You Know The Sol System” contest, fried quince (fortified with vitamins) for the Labucillians and still many more gifts and packages which were foisted on us in the last moments by the grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children and grand children of those people and extraterrestrials we would be seeing. Toward the last moment our Pegasus began to take on the appearance of Noah’s Ark, a flying flea market, a Harrod’s and Macy’s all rolled into one. Over the last two weeks I must have lost twelve pounds, and the Pegasus’s captain, the famous astronaut Poloskov, must have aged six years. Add to that the Pegasus was not really a large ship, and its crew was really very small.
On Earth and other planets command of the expedition would devolve to me, Professor Seleznev of the Moscow Zoo. That I am a professor hardly means that I am already old, grey haired, and important; it just happened that I had always been fascinated by animals and had not changed my childhood preference for rocks, stamps, radio astronomy, or other such interesting things. When I was ten I joined the Young Naturalists Club at the local zoo, and after high school went to University to major in biology, but even while I was in college I continued to spend my free time in the zoo and biological laboratories. When I graduated from the university I knew enough about animals to write my first book. That was back before we had faster than light ships that could carry us to the ends of the Galaxy, and there were very few astrozbiologists. That was twenty years ago, and astrozbiologists have become fairly common. But I happened to be one of the first. I made the rounds on many different planets in other star systems and quite without knowing what I was doing I found I had become a full Professor.
When the Pegasus leaves Terra firma the ship’s master and commander over us all will be Gennady Poloskov, the famous astronaut and ship’s captain. The two of us had encountered each other earlier on distant planets and scientific bases. He had been a guest in my house many times and was especially fond of Alice. Poloskov is not at all like the Movie Star Starship Captain; when he takes off his uniform he looks more like a kindergarten teacher or librarian. Poloskov is of medium height, with ash blond hair, taciturn, and very precise in all his movements. But when he takes his place in the command chair on the bridge, he changes: his voice deepens, his face radiates firmness and decisiveness. Poloskov has never lost his composure and he is very well respected in Star Fleet.
We had difficulty in getting him to captain the Pegasus; Jack O’Connell had been after him to captain his new passenger liner on the Earth-Fyxx run. If it had not been for Alice I’d never have talked him into it.
The third member of the Pegasus’s crew is Zeleny, the engineer. He is a tall man with a bushy red beard. He’s a fine engineer and has flown with Poloskov on previous expeditions; his chief joy in life is to immerse himself in the engines or fix something else in the engineering section. In general Zeleny is first rate, but sometimes he becomes distracted and then some or other very important machine or instrument would be disassembled precisely at that moment when we needed it most And Zeleny was a confirmed pessimist, always certain that whatever we were doing would not end well. Whatever it was. For example, he had read in some old book how someone had cut himself while shaving with a razor and died of blood poisoning. Now, although you will not find such a razor anywhere on the planet Earth, although all men now smear their faces with a depilatory paste rather than shave, he had decided to let his beard grow out. Whenever we land on an unknown planet he immediately advises us to leave, because the animals here are few, or something not needed by the Zoo at all, and if they are needed there’s no way we could get them back to Earth, and so forth. But we’re all used to Zeleny and we pay no attention to his grumbling, nor does he become angry with us. The fourth member of our crew, if you do not count the cook robot which was always broken anyway and the automated land rover, was Alice. She is,as you know, my daughter; she had just finished the second grade and something or other was always happening to her, but so far all her various adventures had ended successfully. Alice was a useful member of the expedition she was able to look after the animals and was almost never afraid of them.
The night before we took off I had trouble getting to sleep; it seemed like I kept hearing the doors to the house opening and slamming shut. When I got up Alice was already dressed, as though she had never even been to bed. We both hurried to the flyer. We were carrying almost nothing with us, if ignore my black leather briefcase, and Alice’s shoulder bag, where the swim fins and harpoon for underwater hunting had been tied. The morning was cold, chilly, and bright. The meteorologists had promised to give us rain after supper, but, as always, they had been off in their timing and the rain had come just before dawn. The streets were empty; we had already said good-byes to our relatives and friends and had promised to write from every planet.
The flyer cruised slowly over the streets and drifted west to the space port; I gave piloting over to Alice and pulled out my reader, scrolling down the enormous list, re-examining and cross- checking for the thousandth time because Captain Poloskov had sworn to me that if we could not kick of three tons of payload, at the very least, we would never make it off the planet.
I was paying no attention to our approach to the space port; Alice was clearly concentrating on something, but what it was not was flying, which she had completely forgotten about. She was so distracted she landed the flyer at the base of another ship, a freighter loading piglets for Venus.
At the sight of a car dropping out of the sky the piglets scattered in every direction, the robots herding them rushed to catch the fugitives, and the human in charge of the loading cursed me out for trusting a landing to a small child.
“She’s not so small.” I answered the freight handler. “She just finished second grade.”
“Even worse.” The freight handler said, clutching a just caught squealing piglet to his chest. “There’s no way we’ll catch them all before sundown!”
I glared at Alice, took the control rod from her, and moved the car to the white disk of the Pegasus. The Pegasus, back in the days when it was fresh from the shipyards, had been a high speed mail carrier. Then, when ships that were faster and more capacious appeared, the Pegasus was relegated to expeditions. It had enormous holds and had already served both geologists and archaeologists, and now the Zoo had acquired its services. Poloskov was waiting for us; we had barely managed to say our hellos when he asked:
“Have you thought about which three tons we clear out?”
“I’ve don some thinking, yes.” I said.
“Tell me about it.”
At that moment a little old lady in a blue shawl came up to us and asked:
“Would it be possible for you to take a small package for my son in the Aldebaran system?”
“Why not?” Poloskov threw up his hands. “We can’t take any more of this!”
“It’s really a very small package.” The old woman said. “Two hundred grams, no more. “You can just imagine what it will be like if he can’t get his birthday present…”
We couldn’t imagine.
“And what is in the package?” Poloskov asked politely, surrendering to the mass of grey hairs.
“Nothing unusual. Cookies. Kolya so loves cookies! And a stereotape showing his son, my grandson, learning to walk.”
“Bring it on.” Poloskov said gloomily.
I looked around for Alice. She had gotten off somewheres. The sun was already high over the space port and the Pegasus’s long shadows reached the space port buildings.
“We’ll re-load part of the cargo for the moon to the regular freight ship.” I told Poloskov. “And take off will be easier from the moon.”
“I was thinking that too.” Poloskov said. “But in any case we have to unload four tons to have a reserve.”
“And where can I put this wee package?” The old woman asked.
“Then robot at the lock can take it.” Poloskov said, and the two of us started to go over what we would have to unload.
Out of the corner of one eye I got a glimpse of Alice moving about and that carried my eye toward the old woman and her wee package. The old woman was standing in the shadow of the ship, and quietly arguing with the robot loader. Behind the old woman floated a seriously overloaded baggage handler.
“Poloskov,” I said, and nodded in the old woman’s direction.
“Oh lord!” came from our famous captain’s lips. “There’s no way I’m going to live through this.”
He made a tiger’s leap for the old woman.
“What’s this?” He thundered.
“The package.” The old woman said timidly.
“Cookies?”
“Cookies.” The old woman was already recovering from fright.
“And why, pray tell, so large.”
“Please, Captain.” The old woman said boldly. “Would you expect my son to get cookies from me and go off and eat them all in hiding, alone, not even bothering to share with his one hundred and thirty fellow researchers. Would you want that?”
“I I want nothing else.” The exhausted Poloskov said. “I am staying home and flying nowhere! Is that clear? I’m not going anywhere!”
The battle with the old woman lasted half an hour and ended in Poloskov’s victory. During that time I remained aboard and oversaw the robots in removing the oranges and the walnut tree prize.
I encountered Alice in a far passage of the cargo hold and was very surprised at our meeting.
“And what are you doing here?” I asked.
Alice hid a half eaten bagel behind her back and answered:
“Just familiarizing myself with the ship.”
“Go to the control room.” I said. “Scat!”
Finally, toward twelve, we had finished the re-loading. Everything was ready. Poloskov and I went over the figures again; when the anti-gravs kicked in, there would be a reserve of two hundred kilograms, our weight would be more than completely neutralized and we would fall toward space. Poloskov used the loud speaker system to get in touch with Zeleny. The engineer was sitting in the control seat, running his hands through his rusty beard.
Poloskov bent over the screen and asked:
“Can we take off?”