“Frankly, I don’t like adventures like this at all. We’re here to collect animals for the Zoo, not fight battles with Doctor Verkhovtseff.”
Three minutes later the Pegasus’s landing boat hung over our heads; it was Poloskov on a rescue mission. The boat slowly flew over us all the way back to the ship, which we arrived at without further incident.
Chapter Eleven
On Course For the Medusa System
As soon as we had settled the animals in their cages and fed them I went up to the bridge and sent a message to the research base on Arcturus Minor. It read:
“Please determine location of Doctor Verkhovtseff. Have reason to believe he is not what he appears to be.”
That evening the answer arrived from Arcturus Minor:
“Doctor Verkhovtseff not on Three Captains’ World. No other information currently available.”
“We’d already found out by ourselves he wasn’t on the Three Captains’ World on our own,” Poloskov said when he read the message. “He’s here.”
We had constructed a large cage for the Blabberyap bird and hung it in the crew’s lounge. The Blabberyap spent the whole day muttering in unknown languages and never came close to uttering anything by one of the Captains, but Poloskov believed Alice and me anyway and said:
“I think this is the very same Blabberyap which belonged to the First Captain and which he gave to the Second when they split up.”
“Could it be that Verkhovtseff was chasing after all the Blabberyaps because he wanted to get his hands specially on this one?” Alice asked.
“But what did he want this Blabberyap bird for?” I asked.
“What else! We know the Second Captain vanished without a trace; no one knows where he is. We know that he had the Blabberyap bird…”
“Of course!” The engineer Zeleny cut in. “That’s it. Our kid’s right on target. There’s no Captain, but the Blabberyap bird is here, and that means the Blabberyap knows where the Captain is. And Verkhovtseff wants to find that out himself.”
“But why make such a mystery of it?” I asked him. “We’d be willing to help him, with pleasure.”
The sound of knocking interrupted us. Someone had come a-visiting.
I went down to the airlock and opened it. The fat man in the black leather suit was standing on the gangway.
“I beg your pardon for this intrusion,” he oozed. “I would like to make amends for my behavior in the market place. I was so desperate to obtain a living Blabberyap bird that I fear I could not contain myself.”
“Quite all right,” I answered. “We weren’t offended. But there is no way we could possibly part with the Blabberyap bird.”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t want you to part with it,” the fat man said cheerfully. “But I simply must do something to better the terrible impression I must have made. Please, you cannot refuse to do me the honor of accepting this as a parting gift.”
He held out a very rare animal indeed, a diamond backed turtle from Menata. The turtle’s shell was composed of real diamonds and flashed so brightly it hurt your eyes to look at it.
“Please, accept it,” the Fat Man said. “I still do have three.”
Naturally I was less than eager to take a gift from such a strange individual one really has to show some caution but there wasn’t a single diamond-backed turtle in any of Earth’s zoos! We had been searching for one for five years, and now we had found someone who just gave us one!
“Please do not refuse,” the Fat Man said. “Fare thee well. Perhaps we will meet again. Bear in mind, I am known on a hundred planets. My name is Veselchak U.”
And he stamped his feet on the steps, went down the gangway and jumped up on the moving walkway that led in the direction of Palaputra.
It had already grown dark; both suns had set almost simultaneously, although from different spots on the horizon, and two sunsets fell over the space port, one prettier than the other, and I found myself thinking how pointless it was to think the worst of people. That fat man, for example, was a true amateur biologist, yet he had not hesitated to give us this rare animal as a gift.
So I returned to the crew’s lounge in a very fine mood and showed my friends the gift. The turtle moved from one of my hands to the other, and everyone admired the superb play of light on the diamonds that composed the shell.
“So where do we go from here?” Poloskov asked after dinner.
“For the Sklisses.” Alice said. “On the planet Sheshineru.”
“Why not?” I agreed. “We were planning to go there anyway.”
It was at that moment that the Blabberyap bird, which hitherto had been sitting peacefully in its cage and looking down on us drinking tea, began to speak again.
“You’re planning to leave,” he asked in the First Captain’s voice.
“Yes, I’m flying to meet him,” the Blabberyap bird answered himself in the Second Captain’s voice.
“All right then. Second, if there’s trouble, don’t hesitate to call on me.’
“If I can.”
“Take the Blabberyap bird. You can tell him everything. I know how to get him to repeat it. Give the bird all the details.”
“Until we meet again, then.”
“Until we meet again.”
The Blabberyap bird grew silent.
“Well, you heard it, Poloskov?” Alice asked.
“Of course I heard it; don’t shout,” Poloskov answered and started to think.
The Blabberyap bird nodded its golden crown, as though considering whether it should continue or not. Abruptly it spoke very slowly in the Second Captain’s voice:
“Set course for the Medusa system.”
We waited in the expectation that the bird might speak again, but the Blabberyap bird closed its eyes and tucked its head beneath its wing.
“So, the Second Captain got into trouble and sent the Blabberyap bird for help,” Alice said. “Now how can we get it to tell us more?”
“Hold on,” I spoke up. “Just what is it you’ve decided? Remember, the Blabberyap bird did not fly to Venus where the First Captain is working, but returned to its home planet. That means that no one sent it anywhere. The Second Captain might have just died, and the bird went home.”
“It really could have been anything,” Poloskov said, and got up from behind the table.
He left the crew’s lounge and returned in five minutes, carrying with him the Galactic Map. He placed it on the table, pushing aside some tea cups, and pressed the control. The holographic image sprang into existence above the table. He pointed to the edge of the map.
“Here.” he said, “this is the Medusa system. Completely unexplored. The star has planets. I propose we fly there. If the Captain is alive, we may be able to help him. If he has died, at the very least we will find out what happened! And where.”
“But he could very well have perished in space.” I objected.
“And just what could have happened to the great Captain in space?”
“His ship could have exploded, for example.”
“And would not the Blabberyap bird have exploded with it?”
“Well, anything at all could have happened!”
I fell silent. In the final analysis, the expedition had its own questions, and it was totally unknown if the planets of the Medusa system had any sort of life forms at all. The flight to the star and our return would take up most of the time allotted to the expedition. And we really did not know anything other than what we had heard the bird say. What if the Captain had spent some time there, and then gone off to another part of the Galaxy and perished there? I mentioned this to my colleagues, but the longer I spoke the less convinced I was of the rightness of my arguments, and the more I knew that I had failed to convince either Poloskov or Alice. “Fine,” I said finally. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Just let’s make a stop at Sheshineru first. We really have to find out what a Skliss is.”
“Agreed.” Poloskov moved his finger through the map. “This is our route, then; along the way we should be able to stop on various planets and search for rare animals for the Zoo.”