“They go after the stones?”
“I don’t know what it is they are eating, but the Pied Piper would be hard pressed to keep up with them. And they do not fear the cat. And they get away from the robot mousecatchers and ignore the old style mousetraps. But the smell and sight of a Blue Leopard sends mice running until they can’t go any further. Now, what am I to do? A Blue Leopard is a rare and exotic animal, and I need someone who can bring it to the Museum and make certain it doesn’t eat anyone. Other than mice, of course.”
“Okay.” I said. “Just send the gold nugget by the morning, by pneumopost.”
I hung up the videophone and immediately heard a knock on the door. I opened it. Before our door stood a fair haired little boy in the orange costume of a Venusian terraformer, with the emblem of first Expedition to the Sirius system on his sleeve.
“Pardon me.” He said. “Are you Alice’s dad?”
“I am.”
“Hello. My name is Egorov. Is Alice at home.”
“No. She went off somewhere.”
“Too bad. Can you be trusted?”
“Me? Oh, of course!”
“Then I have to have a man to man conversation with you.”
“Not Astronaut to Astronaut?”
“Don’t laugh.” Egorov flushed red. “I plan to earn my wings some day.”
“I don’t doubt you will.” I said. “So how about the man to man conversation?”
“Alice and I are in the airbladder race tomorrow, only something has happened that might cause them to pull her off the team. To put it generally, she has to return something that was lost to the school. I’m giving this to you., but I don’t want you to say who it from. Is that clear?”
“Very clear, o mysterious and unknown stranger.” I said.
“Take it.”
He held out a small bag to me. The bag was very heavy.
“Gold, by any chance?” I asked.
“So you know?”
“I know.”
“It is.”
“I trust it was come by legitimately.”
“Of course it was! What do you think I am? I got it while camping in the mountains. Well, good bye.”
I hadn’t yet managed to reach my seat when the door bell rang again. I found two small girls on our doorstep.
“Hello.” They said in chorus. “We’re from the first grade. Take this for Alice.”
They handed me two individual purses and ran off. In one purse lay four gold coins, very old coins from someone’s collection. In another, three tea spoons. The tea spoons it turned out were not, in fact, gold; they were platinum. Yet another piece of gold arrived in a box in the evening mail from another unknown wellwisher. Then Leva Zvansky dropped by and tried to foist on me a small casket with diamonds. After he left an member of the 8th Grade class came by; he brought along three tiny gold nuggets.
“I collected them back when I was a kid.” He said.
Alice returned toward evening. She shouted happily from the door:
“Papa! There’s nothing to worry about. Everything worked out. I can go with you on the expedition.”
“Why such a change.” I asked.
“Because I found a replacement.” Alice was scarcely able to drag the Mother Load of gold ore out of her bag. It appeared to be about six or seven kilograms.
“I went to see Captain Poloskov. I told him the problem and he called around to everyone he knew. He also fed me supper, so I’m not hungry.”
Then Alice caught sight of the gold nuggets and other gold and platinum objects that had accumulated in our house over the course of the day, which I had spread out on the dinner table.
“Oh my!” She said. “The museum is making out like space pirates.”
“Listen to me, my fine young criminal.” I said to her. “I would, under no circumstances, be taking you along on this expedition were it not for your friends.”
“And why, because of my friends?”
“Because they would hardly have run all over Moscow searching for gold objects for a really bad person.”
“But I’m not such a bad person.” Alice said without the slightest hint of modesty.
I frowned, but at that moment there was a ka-chunk in the wall slot indicating the arrival of a package via the pneumatic tube postal system. I opened the wall slot and pulled out the package with gold in it from the Mineralogical Museum. Friedman had completed his part of the bargain.
“And this is from me.” I added it to the pile.
“So you see,” Alice said, “you’re my friend too.”
“It would appear so.” I answered. “But I suggest you not be presumptuous.”
The next morning I had to accompany Alice to school, as the weight of the gold objects that had accumulated in our apartment had reached seventeen kilograms.
Handing her the bag at the entrance to the school I said,
“I quite forgot about your punishment.”
“About what?”
“On Sunday you will be taking the Zoo’s Centaurian Blue Leopard on a trip to the Mineralogical Museum.”
“Take the Blue Leopard to the Museum? But he’s too… too stupid!”
“Yes. He’ll be there to scare the mice. And you’ll be there to see he doesn’t frighten anyone else.”
“Agreed.” Alice said. “And we are going on the expedition.”
Chapter Two
Forty-Three Stowaways
The last two weeks before our departure passed in a flash of excitement and often unnecessary commotion. I hardly saw Alice at all during that time.
Firstly, I was in charge of preparing, checking, and loading and finding places aboard the Pegasus for all the cages, snares, ultrasound lures, traps, nets, forcefield generators, and the thousand other things which were needed to catch animals.
Secondly, the medicines, stored foods, films, recording tapes, cameras, dictaphones, microscopes, herbarium papers, note books, rubber boots, calculators and computers, umbrellas for the varius suns, and from the rain, lemonade, rain coats, panama hats, dried ice cream concentrate, jetpacks, and the still million more other things that might prove necessary on the expedition.
Thirdly, in as much as we would, on our outbound run, be stopping in at many isolated scientific bases, stations, and diverse worlds we found ourselves carrying freight and gifts: oranges for some astronomers on Mars, canned herring for some explorers on Arcturus Minor, cherry juice, India ink, and modeling clay for the archaeologists in the 2-BTS system, brocade dressing gowns and electrocardiographs for the inhabitants of the planet Fyxx, a set of walnut trees won by an inhabitant of the planet Samora in the “Do You Know The Sol System” contest, fried quince (fortified with vitamins) for the Labucillians and still many more gifts and packages which were foisted on us in the last moments by the grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children and grand children of those people and extraterrestrials we would be seeing. Toward the last moment our Pegasus began to take on the appearance of Noah’s Ark, a flying flea market, a Harrod’s and Macy’s all rolled into one. Over the last two weeks I must have lost twelve pounds, and the Pegasus’s captain, the famous astronaut Poloskov, must have aged six years. Add to that the Pegasus was not really a large ship, and its crew was really very small.
On Earth and other planets command of the expedition would devolve to me, Professor Seleznev of the Moscow Zoo. That I am a professor hardly means that I am already old, grey haired, and important; it just happened that I had always been fascinated by animals and had not changed my childhood preference for rocks, stamps, radio astronomy, or other such interesting things. When I was ten I joined the Young Naturalists Club at the local zoo, and after high school went to University to major in biology, but even while I was in college I continued to spend my free time in the zoo and biological laboratories. When I graduated from the university I knew enough about animals to write my first book. That was back before we had faster than light ships that could carry us to the ends of the Galaxy, and there were very few astrozbiologists. That was twenty years ago, and astrozbiologists have become fairly common. But I happened to be one of the first. I made the rounds on many different planets in other star systems and quite without knowing what I was doing I found I had become a full Professor.