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!”