“I think the Second Captain is somewhere on this planet.” Poloskov said.
“And I think it’s best that we get out of here now.” Zeleny said. “There are just three of us, and our ship cannot be defended against attack. We should immediately go to a settled planet and get in touch with Earth or Fyxx from there. They can send a special Space Patrol ship that can deal with the unexpected far better than we.”
Zeleny, of course, was entirely reasonable. But he always overestimated difficulties and dangers. So I said:
“So far no one has attacked us. Of course that shouldn’t prevent us from taking defensive measures.”
“Right.” Poloskov agreed with me. “I really do not want to depart right away. For starters, though, we can do everything in our power to help the Second Captain.”
“Right.” Alice said.
“Now that’s unbelievable.” Zeleny said. “You can think that I’m being cowardly if you want, but I’m just trying to be rational. All we have on board are a kid and a lot of defenseless animals. We could end up being in a lot of trouble and not helping the Captain at all. But if Captain Poloskov decides that we have to remain, I’ll fight to the last bullet.”
“It won’t come to that.” I said. “I hope. We came here to discover if one of the Three Captain’s suffered misfortune or not. We’re not getting ready to attack someone and we don’t want to fight.”
“And for a kid I’m not that defenseless.” Alice said. “Can we go to the meadow?”
“Hold on.” I said. “Let’s do some more looking in that mirror.
But the mirrors showed us nothing. Not being able to wait Alice and I got into the ATV and circled the area of the meadow in it. We found only the traces of the landing of a ship on the other side of the hills. The ground had been churned up by heavy engines, and a narrow path run through the bushes toward the field.
We returned toward suppertime and found Zeleny in the Crew’s Lounge. He was standing in front of the mirror flowers in a pensive mood and twisting the ends of his beard in one fingers of one hand. In the other hand he held a vibroblade.
“And what are you thinking, Zeleny?” I asked.
“I’m wondering….” The engineer answered.
Reflected in the mirror was a quiet, sun drenched day.
“I am wondering,” Zeleny continued, “just how long these flowers live.”
“Probably some days.” I said.
“But what if they live not a few days but a large number of years? What if, year after year, they record everything that happens around them? Look how thick the mirrors are at least six centimeters each! And very dense. Over the last two days while we’ve had them I haven’t noticed them getting any thinner. Alice, do you mind if I perform an operation on one of the flowers?”
“Go ahead.” Alice said. She realized what was going to happen immediately.
Zeleny placed one of the flowers on the table in the laboratory, held it in place with clamps, and began a delicate operation.
“I’ll take off a little over a centimeter.” He said.
“Wait up.” I interrupted the engineer. “Start with the thinnest layer you can. Perhaps nothing will come of it.”
Zeleny nodded to me and turned on the vibroblade. The empathicator, white from curiosity, came out of its corner and silently padded nearer on its stick like legs. The bushes rustled their branches in their cage, thinking we were going to give them fruit juice. The Sewing Spider stopped knitting its scarf.
A thin, transparent layer similar to cellophane tape separated from the mirror. Zeleny carefully pulled it away and placed it on the table.
For several seconds the mirror remained dark, but at the very moment that I had already concluded we would be seeing nothing else the mirror suddenly lit up again, this time reflecting a windy, overcast day.
“That’s right!” Alice said. “We’ll be going deeper and deeper into the past!”
“But how are we going to calculate the days.” I spoke aloud. “We don’t know how think the layer of a single day is.”
Zeleny was not listening to me. He placed the blade to the mirror’s edge immediately removed half a centimeter of the mirror’s thickness. The layer straightened out. The Empathicator, changing colors like a traffic lamp at a busy intersection from impatience, was unable to contian itself and pressed its long, thin nose beneath Zeleny’s hand.
“That does it!” Zeleny grew angry. “I cannot work if you keep getting in my way.
“It wasn’t on purpose.” Alice spoke up for the Empathicator. “He just finds it interesting.”
“He finds everything interesting.” Zeleny said. “But I would not vouch for him.”
“Continue.” I asked.
Zeleny carefully removed another layer.
“Like the glass in an window, only it’s started to decay.” He said. We all bent down over the slightly thinner darkened mirror.
Then it lightened slightly, and then there was the very same field, but, but only the grass had become stormy, the bushes were bare, the leaves remaining on the trees had turned yellow. Neither butterfly nor bee was to be seen, it was oppressive and gloomy. Occasional gusts of snow fell from the overcast sky, but failed to accumulate on the ground as the flakes slowly melted in the grass.
“Late fall.” Alice said.
“Late fall, all right.” Zeleny agreed. He raised a magnifying glass to the mirror and said: “It isn’t visible ordinarily, but it’s very interesting to see how the the snow flakes appear on the bushes and then fly off into the sky.”
Each of us took our turn watching the backwards snowfall. Even the Empathicator took a look and turned a satisfied hue from surprise.
“How long has it been since fall?” Zeleny asked me.
“It’s summer now.” I answered. “The planet takes a little over fourteen terrestrial months to orbit its star for one local year. That means, just about one Earth-year ago.”
“A-ha!” Zeleny said, and pulled a micrometer from his workbelt. “No,” he said, “we may precisely determine how much one year is to a mirror flower…
“….and just how much I need to take from it in order to see the field as it was four years ago.” Alice finished the sentence for him.
“For starters,” Zeleny said, “we’ll cut away a little less than four years from the mirror.”
“Are you certain you won’t overshoot?” I asked. “If you cut off too much then we’ll miss the moment when the Second Captain was here.”
“Going too far won’t be a problem.” Zeleny said, marking off a thick layer. “We do have a whole bouquet.”
While he was speaking I saw the Diamond Backed Turtle hurriedly crawling to the lab exit. The little critter had managed to get out of the safe again. I should have run after him, but then I thought it over and realized I would have to pass up the moment when Zeleny removed four years from the mirror flower.
“How are things going back there.” Poloskov, who was still playing wizard with the metal detection sattelite, spoke over the communicator.
“Everything’s in order.” I said.
“Then I’m going on survey myself. I don’t want to let that thing out of my sight. For some reason it’s working unreliably.”
“When you go in search of the Blue Gull,” I warned him, “don’t forget there could be more than one ship on this planet.”
“I won’t.”
“Leave the line open. If anything happens get in touch with his immediately.”
“I’ll remember.”
“Maybe we’ll have a surprise for your return.”
“Great. Just remember I like good surprises. Don’t surprise me otherwise.”
Poloskov departed. We could hear the humming of the surveyor’s drives as it lifted into the air.
“All ready, Professor!” Zeleny said. “Shall we take the risk?”
For the third time Zeleny removed a layer from the mirror. This time it was so thick that he could barely hold it in his hands. The flower’s feathery petals were torn away, and all that lay on the table was the almost round, convex, center of the flower, much like a plate.