“Wait a minute.” Poloskov told Zeleny; he was staring into the view screen.
“What have we got now?” Zeleny asked.
“Neighbors have landed.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know yet. They’re behind the trees and can’t be seen. But get ready to take off immediately. It might be them.”
“Verkhovtseff and the fat man?
“Yes.”
We pushed ourselves into our acceleration couches, not tearing our eyes from the forest. It seemed to me I could even hear the opening of the other ship’s lock, the ladder falling to the planet… Then they were coming down the ladder, running through the bushes, whoever they were… Were they friend’s or enemies?
The bushes parted and a man ran out into the field in front of the Pegasus. He was in a space suit, but had left the helmet behind. There was a pistol in his belt. The man raised a hand, ordering us to stop. We all recognized him instantly.
“Doctor Verkhovtseff!” Alice said. “And he forgot his hat.”
“Verkhovtseff!” Poloskov repeated, and said into the microphone: “Zeleny, take off!”
At Poloskov’s words our ship began to move, first with a tremor, then it rose into the air gaining speed.
“Excellent, Zeleny.” Poloskov said.
“Who was it? Zeleny asked.
“Verkhovtseff.” Poloskov answered.
The Pegasus hung for a second over the meadow where we had first landed and Doctor Verkhovtseff stepped back into the shelter of the bushes. He waved his arms and was very angry.
“What?” Alice shouted, although Verkhovtseff could never have heard her. “Are you hands too short?”
“Alice,” I said reproachfully. “Is that any way to talk to your elders?”
Poloskov started to laugh.
“But he forgot his hat.” Alice said, as though she had not heard a single one of my words. “He lost his hat. He was in a hurry.”
The ship’s course bent into an arc as it headed for the field, and soon our enemy turned into an ant on the field, and I noted that he was hurrying back to his own ship.
“No, we’re going to have some time to look around.” Poloskov said. “It will take him at least half an hour to return to his ship, make fast the locks, and restart the engines. So we have half an hour to find the Second Captain. That’s going to take some doing.”
“Just as well they tried to capture us.” Alice said. “At the very least we know they’re not at the field.”
The circular meadow where we had found the mirror flowers was now beneath us. Poloskov carefully landed the Pegasus precisely in its center. While we descended I noted constant bright flashes in the sun, as though the field were sparkling with hoar frost. It was only when we landed that I realized that was not frost, but the remains of the shattered mirror plants. We were right our enemies had destroyed all the flowers.
The Pegasus lowered itself onto the grass and extended its landing struts, and Alice could not restrain herself and tore off her safety belt; she wanted to rush out onto the field. At that moment the Pegasus shuddered, shook, and Alice slid along the floor to the wall. Zeleny shouted from below:
“Why are we flying…”
Then there was a blow, and another, the engine’s awoke automatically as our ship fell into some sort of abyss. I wanted to pull off my own crash web to go help Alice but a single, final blow rendered me unconscious, and when I came to my senses our ship was standing, if at an angle, in darkness.
There were no sounds.
“Alice.” I asked, pulling off the crash web and getting tangled in it. “How are you?”
“I’m okay.” Alice answered quietly. “Just bruised a little.
Zeleny’s voice reached us from the other end of the ship.
“Hey! Where’d you land us, Poloskov? There’s no way we’re ever going to get out of this now!”
“Everything all right down there?” Poloskov asked Zeleny.
“I’m moving.” Zeleny said. “But where are we? Did we fall off a mountain?”
“Worse.” Poloskov answered, and turned on the bridge’s emergency lighting. The instruments came back on and burned like star clusters and galaxies in the darkness of space. “We’ve fallen underground.”
It was then that I realized it was all my fault. I should have warned Poloskov, told him what we had seen in the mirror flower.
“How could I have been so stupid?” I said sincerely. “When we looked at the mirror flower’s image from four years ago in place of the meadow was a concrete plate.”
“That’s right.” Alice said.
She found me in the twilight, crawling up the inclined floor, and took my hand.
“That’s right. There was a big slab.” Alice said. “And we forgot to tell Poloskov about it.”
“What slab?” Poloskov asked.
I told him about what we had seen from four years back, the field devoid of grass and flowers, just a large concrete plate that might even have been circular from what we had seen of the edge.
“I’d never have landed here if I had know that earlier.” Poloskov said.
He was very angry; any captain who’s ship crashes into an underground pit would be very angry.
“Oh well, crying won’t help.” Poloskov, who was able to keep control of himself, said. “Zeleny, can you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Get the flash casters from the storage locker and check to see how serious the damage in the drive room is.”
“I’m already on it.” Zeleny said.
Poloskov was all over the control console, pressing buttons and checking the readouts from the internal sensor net that told him the status of every system and machine aboard the Pegasus. In the end he appeared satisfied.
“Listen,” He said, “I’d say there’s no really serious damage to the ship, but one of the landing struts was damaged in the fall. So we have to go outside and determine how bad the everything is and what we can do to fix it. I’m going alone; the rest of you will stay aboard the ship.”
“Nothing of the sort.” I said. “You’re too necessary to the operation of the ship. If something were to happen to you the Pegasus would never take off again. I’ll go.”
“I’ll go.” Zeleny said from the engine room. He had been listening to our conversation.
“And me too.” Alice said.
In the end we were unable to convince each other of nothing and headed for the airlocks together.
“Odd!” Poloskov said as he opened the lock. “If we’d fallen into a pit or sink hole then there should be light coming down from above. It’s totally dark here.”
“Could it be that we’re really very deep, too deep for the light?” Alice asked.
“No. If we’d fallen very deep the ship’s automatic systems would have landed us without bending one of the struts. Since they did not have time to react the pit isn’t very deep at all.
Poloskov pulled the airlock door wide. On the other side it was pitch.
“Take a look.” Poloskov said. “Zeleny, give me the flash caster.”
“Oh,” Zeleny cried out, “I can’t. Something has grabbed me by the leg!”
Before I had a chance to go to help him Zeleny turned on the flash caster and began to shine it from side to side, trying to find what had attacked him.
But that turned out to be nothing more than the Empathicator. The animals was frightened in the darkness; it had gotten out of its cage and caught up to us by the airlock. In the flash caster’s light the Empathicator was a terrified yellow color. It moaned and clutched Zeleny’s leg for protection.
Poloskov took the flash light from Zeleny and cast the strong ray of light forward. Ahead of us was just darkness; the pit into which we had fallen was so great. Poloskov aimed the flash light upwards and illuminated an even surface, the ceiling.
“Like in a tea cup.” Poloskov said. “We fell inside and the roof closed over us.” He ran the light around again. “There’s nothing here.” He said. “There hasn’t been for quite a while.”