“Alice!” I shouted.
But she was too far off and did not hear my cries.
I was unarmed; I didn’t have anything at all in my hands.
What can I do?
Without any real thoughts or plans in my head I ran down the steps.
Alice had caught sight of the descending bird and, from terror, let go of the chain. The frightened Blabberyap bird darted for the trees.
I ran toward Alice and saw the Crockadee reach out with its white claws, catch hold of the fluffy yellow figure, and, gaining speed, beat its wings back into the sky.
I kept running, watching them grow smaller and smaller, the ascending bird beat its wings in giant sail sweeps…
Ten minutes later Poloskov landed beside the Pegasus. By then Zeleny ad I were ready to go on the chase. We were unloading the smaller landing boat.
“Where are you off to?”
“A Crockadee took Alice!” Zeleny shouted. I said nothing. The fear and pain had taken away my gift of speech.
“Jump up here!” Poloskov ordered. He brought his cutter down low enough for me.
I jumped up, caught the lower edge of the opened lock, and climbed aboard.
Poloskov immediately shot the boat into the sky.
“Which way did it go?” He shouted over the hum of the motors.
“That way, toward the mountains.” I answered. “That’s where the nest will be.”
It only took a few minutes for us to reach the mountains, but finding the right nest wold not be so easy. Thousands of single, sharply pointed peaks rose over the plateau, and we spent more than an hour cruising overhead, finding nothing. And with every minute that passed there were fewer and fewer chances we would find Alice alive
It was the Crockadee bird itself that helped us. We caught sight of it cruising over the mountains.
“After her.” I said.
“Hold on.” Poloskov answered. “We’ll frighten her and she’ll never show us where her nest is.”
Poloskov cut back on the cutters speed and we hung over the mountains. The bird was flying toward the highest peaks, where he had yet to check. Once there the bird descended in circles and landed. Poloskov immediately headed for that mountain, gaining height as we went.
Once we had reached the mountains five or six birds rose into the sky. They viewed our cutter as an unknown flying enemy. The birds threw themselves at us heroically, and Poloskov was forced to remember his best fighter pilot skills in order to avoid colliding with the enraged birds.
“There’s the nest, look!” Poloskov said.
I pressed my face to the port.
I could make out the dark circle of the nest on the steep slope of the mountain. The nest was comprised of stones and trees and stuck to a flat niche in the mountainside above an enormous chasm.
As soon as we got lower we could make out any number of nests with birds sitting in them, birds with wings spread wide as if covering the fledglings or eggs from potential predators.
“Look.” I said.
There was something bright yellow in one of the nests. The cutter, as if it were alive, darted for the nest, so fast it left the bird we were following behind.
“No, that’s not Alice.” Poloskov said. “That’s a chick.”
Three fledglings covered in bright yellow down sat in the nest. Having caught sight of us, they waved their hooked beaks back and forth. Then an adult bird darted past us, landed on the nest, and spread its wings.
“Take us higher.” I said to Poloskov.
Then we saw yet another bird. It was heading toward one of the mountains, carrying a large fish in its talons.
“After her!” I said.
The bird did not notice us. She was headed toward the most distant nest.
And in that nest, between to enormous chicks, sat Alice. From afar she looked like a chick herself, the fault of her fluffy yellow overalls.
On seeing their mother the nestlings opened their maws, but the big bird had lifted the fish to Alice and was attempting to insert its catch into Alice’s mouth. Alice pushed it away, but the mother bird was insistent.
Poloskov broke out in laughter.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the strange sight for a second.
“Alice was in no danger.” Poloskov smiled. “She was mistaken for a chick that fell from then nest and was due for a course of forced feeding.
Poloskov was right. What had saved Alice was her fluffy overalls.
We hung over the nest. Poloskov let down the steps and Alice climbed up into the cutter, while I frightened off the bird with sonic grenades and blaster bolts.
“Do you want to collect the nestlings?” Poloskov asked, still laughing.
“The next time, perhaps.” I answered. “How do you feel, Alice?”
“Not bad.” She answered.
She was covered in fish scales, but otherwise completely hale and hearty.
“I was just starting to get frightened.” She said. “And then, when she brought me to the nest, it was even comfortable. The chicks and I got along, but then the big bird naturally tried to get me to eat. You know, like your grandmother when she tries to put another spoonful of porrige down your throat.”
Poloskov was positively cheerful, asking Alice if she had managed to learn to fly, or if she didn’t want to return to her new family.
“But why did you leave the ship?” I asked sternly, after their levity had died away.
“I went in search of the Second Captain.”
“Why?”
“I overheard Poloskov say the surveyor satellite was working badly, and two weeks is really far too long to wait. And then I thought the Blabberyap might very well remember how to get to where he’d last heard the Second Captain’s voice. I asked him to show me the way, and he flew off.”
“And why didn’t you ask permission?”
“Would you have given it to me?”
“No, of course not. And there’s no Second Captain here. Forget about him.”
“No?” Alice asked. “He is here. It’s just too bad that the Blabberyap bird got away. We could have found him in two minutes with the bird.
“And what makes you think that?”
“What I found in the nest, of course.” Alice answered, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a piece of a porcelain saucer with “ue Gull” stamped in gold. “Blue Gull, right?” She asked me. “Or don’t you believe me?”
“Show it here.” Poloskov asked. — Nu i vezet zhe tebe.
“You don’t say.” Alice shot back. “To get this piece I had to take a flight in the Crockadee’s claws. Have you ever done that?”
“No.” Poloskov laughed.
“But the bird gave me the fragment itself. Evidently it keeps it in its nest as a toy for the chicks. So it gave it to me to play with.”
I began to think Alice might indeed be right. It did appear that the Blue Gull had, in fact, been on this planet. But how could we find it?
“Whatever happened to the probe?” I asked Poloskov. “I thought you had tested it earlier.”
“It’s very odd, but someone broke one of the connections to the metal detector.”
“Broke?”
“It was snapped. And it did not snap itself. The connection is located right in the center of the probe unit.”
“What are we going to do?” I wondered aloud.
We landed in front of the Pegasus and got out onto the grass and under the trees, looking up in the sky warily for any sign of the Crockadee.
“We’ll use the Blabberyap bird.” Alice said.
Then I noticed, hanging right in front of my nose, a thin chain that reached almost to the ground.
The blabberyap bird flew down from the trees and circled over our heads, as though inviting us to follow it in search of the Captain.
Chapter Siixteen
The Mirror Flowers
Alice held tightly onto the chain that held the Blabberyap bird. The bird did not resist or cry out; it was as if the animal understood what was wanted of it. It flew slowly over the bushes, and if we held behind it rose a little on the wind and tread the air, waiting for us to catch up. Our going on the ground was difficult; we were the first to tread the grasses and weeds of this world. We had to crawl across fallen trees, work our ways thorough long curtains of lianas and thorn, and cross swift flowing steams.