Chapter 3-2
2037 Words
“It’s is bad?” Anton asked sympathetically.
Vadim sang out in a chesty voice:
The wind of distant journeys howls,
An eerie whistle through the air has hissed,
Into subspace he has brought his bowels,
The most structuralist-est linguist.
All the same, he immediately unfolded his couch and sat down.
“That’s why I never became a starpilot,” he said slightly hoarsely, and stretched out on his side.
“You say that every time,” Anton said. Vadim didn’t respond. “Let me go liberate Saul,” Anton said.
“Did you hear our conversation?” Vadim asked, his eyes closed.
“Yes.”
“An interesting person, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” Anton said. “If you ask me, he’s a man in trouble.”
Vadim unexpectedly broke out in an ominous whisper. “Blind one, oh, you blind fool! No, don’t go away. I too feel rotten. Don’t you know who he really is?”
“What do you mean?”
Vadim, finally, sat up. “He doesn’t know anything about linguistics,” he said. “I hope you noticed.”
“And what do you know about history?”
“Go ahead and tell me that he’s a bookworm. We both know a worm like that – he’s called Bennie Durov. Talk about him with the Tagorians.”
Anton forced a smile. “All right,” he said. “Restrain yourself. I can take you in strong doses, but to a stranger you can sometimes be overwhelming. A little less wild optimism and a little more tact.”
“Yes, sir, skipper,” Vadim said seriously. “Right, skipper.”
Anton walked away. As he walked around the table he smiled again: with Vadim you were never bored. In cabin three he first unfolded the sofa and only then rolled back the inner hermetic door, bracing himself to catch a collapsing body. Instead, a deep blue smoke came billowing out of the chamber. Anton recoiled.
“Over so soon?” Saul’s voice boomed from behind the smoke.
Anton peered in. Saul was sitting on his briefcase, which was standing upright, and smoking a long black pipe. His expression was absent-minded and placid.
“You’re not nauseous?” Anton asked, stepping back and sitting down on the sofa.
“Not at all. Can I leave now?”
“Please,” Anton said.
Saul stood up, picked up his briefcase, and left the chamber, stooped over.
“We’re almost there,” Anton said. “We just have to select a planet and decide where to land.”
Saul sat down beside him.
“Are we far from Earth?” he asked.
“One hundred and fifty parsecs. Almost the limit for the Ship”
Ship”Vadim yelled out of his cabin: “Saul! Ask for a terraform planet. You wouldn’t like it in a space suit, and an oxygen mask is just as bad.”
“I really don’t care what planet,” Saul said quietly. “But of course one where you can breathe would be better.” He suddenly grinned. “It’s very important to be able to breathe.” Anton stared at him. “But the most important thing is that there’s no one there.”
“Well now, Saul,” Anton said, “we’ll find you your planet. That’s easy. On board we have a portable six-man dome, a glider, food supplies for the initial phase, and a good radio station. We’ll help y it up and then leave right away. O.K.?”
Saul sat down, his head slumped.
“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “That would be best. Most likely.”
“So then, we agree.” Anton pushed the door open. “I’ll go to the control center and you – If you want, you can come along.”
In the control center Anton turned on the ship catalogue and checked the data on EN 7031. The data were not particularly interesting. Four planets and two asteroid belts circled the yellow dwarf. The second planet seemed most appropriate: it was terraform and located at a distance of one and one-half astronomical units from its sun. Anton gave its coordinates to the cyber navigator.
Anion could hear voices from the lounge.
“How did you hold up under the passage, Saul?”
“What passage? I didn’t notice any.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“What?”
That you wouldn’t notice. Do you want to take a shower?”
“No. Will it be long now?”
“Most likely not. Do you feel it?” The Ship was quavering and the floor floating out from under their feet. “That’s him setting his course. Shall we go to the control center?”
Ship “We won’t be in the way?”
“Of course not. We’re not tourists. In an exploratory or passenger starship they wouldn’t permit it. Why are you carrying your briefcase?”
”It’s dear to me.”
“Then make sure you don’t set it down near the disposal unit.” Anton was carefully inspecting the image of the planet on the viewscreen. It was light blue, like the Earth, covered with a white veil of clouds, but the outline of the continents was unfamiliar. One large continent stretched out along the equator, another, smaller, seemed attracted to the pole.
“There’s your planet, Saul,” Anton said, and took a sheet of paper that was falling out of the antenna-analyzer unit. “A beautiful planet. Normal pressure. The day is twenty-eight hours, gravity, one and one-tenth. No poisonous gases. A lot of oxygen. A little short on the carbon dioxide, but nothing to worry about.”
He glanced at Saul. Saul was looking at his planet with a very strange expression. His bushy eyebrows were raised in arcs, and it seemed to Anton that he was about to break out crying. Anton was touched.
“Comrades!” Vadim said suddenly. “Let us name this planet Saula.”
“Let it be named Saula!” Anton said. He bent the microphone of the ship’s log in front of him, and dictated: “Julian day twenty-five forty-two nine hundred sixty-seven. The second planet of the EN 7031 system is named Saula, after a member of the crew, the historian Saul Repnin.”
Saul was unusually moved. He muttered, “Thank you, thank you, friends,” and shook Vadim’s hand. It was very touching.
Meanwhile the planet had been growing larger. When the continent sprawling along the equator filled the screen, Anton asked, “So where should we set down, Saul?”
Saul pointed to the middle of the continent. It appeared to Anton that he squinted as he did so.
“Comrades,” Vadim drawled, “why not make it closer to the shores?”
It was clear that he felt like swimming. Swimming in the ocean of Saula, in waves that had never yet bathed a single Earthman, that, perhaps, had never yet bathed a single intelligent being.
“Well... near the shore, if you want,” Saul said without assurance. He looked at Anton. “For my purposes” – he cleared his throat – “the choice of a location is not essential.”
“Marvelous,” Vadim said. He sat down agilely in the chair alongside Anton. “Enough!” he announced. “The captain has been seized by paralysis and has been taken away to his cabin in serious condition. The broad-shouldered and well-proportioned second pilot has taken command.” He put his fingers on the biocontrol contacts, and the Ship immediately hurled down into the abyss. The continent on the screen began to spin giddily. Vadim proclaimed:
Ship From terror everyone gyrates,
Like a quavering asp begins to twist,
He now commands their fates,
The most structuralist-est linguist.
“Vadim, at least tell me where you’re aiming,” Anton requested.
“There”, Vadim answered cryptically, “where the blue waves caress the sands.”
The Ship tilted to the right.
“Gently, gently,” Anton said. “Less emotion. You won’t hit the continent.”
“Perhaps I shall.”
“Brakes! Can’t you see the drift?”
“I see all and know all.”
“Oh, he’ll crash us,” Anton said.
“Most likely I shall,” Vadim said.
The screen turned muddy. The Ship had entered the atmosphere. A rainbow flared up through the clouds of dense air, then vanished. Black and white spots blinked fleetingly.
Ship “Deep breath,” Anton advised.
“I know...”
“Ach – you’re toppling and going crooked.”
Vadim said rapidly, “If you take over control, you’re no friend of mine.”
“Vadim, really, don’t miss,” Saul said tentatively.
The carousel on the screen came to a stop. A white field approached rapidly. Then the screen went dark. The Ship shuddered.
Ship “That’s it,” Vadim said. He stretched his arms, cracking his fingers.
“That’s it?” Saul asked. “It’s broken?”
“We’ve landed,” Anton said. “Welcome to Saula.”
“Nonetheless, you’re a dashing pilot,” Saul said to Vadim.
“Quite dashing,” Anton agreed. “Do you know how much you missed by, Vadim? Two hundred kilometers. But you did manage to turn off the screen.”
“Force of habit,” Vadim said casually.
Anton stood up. “By the way, what’s a quavering asp?”
Vadim stood up, too. “That, Anton, is a murky question. It’s an archaic figure of speech. When an asp is approached, it trembles all over, even though it’s one of the most dangerous snakes.”
Saul suddenly broke out in a fit of laughter. He laughed resonantly, wiping the tears off his cheeks with his sleeve. Anton and Vadim didn’t understand why, but in a minute they were laughing, too.
“A curious phenomenon, isn’t it?” Vadim said, half choking from laughter.
“Really, Saul, what are you laughing at?” Anton asked.
“Oh,” Saul said, “I’m happy that I’ve finally reached my planet.”
Vadim stopped laughing. “After all, I’m not a historical linguist,” he said, with forced dignity. “My speciality is structural linguistics.”
“Enough,” Anton said. “Let’s go outside.”
They all left the control center. Vadim, walking at Saul’s side, said, “It’s not my idea. It’s the most widely accepted interpretation.”
“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” Saul answered quickly. “Your interpretation is so far from the truth that I couldn’t help it. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“And what is your view?” Vadim asked. Saul, with evident annoyance, said, “The quavering asp is not the snake, but the quavering aspen, the tree.”
“But how could a tree be afraid? And where does the term asp for aspen come from? It’s preposterous!”
Anton unsealed the hatch membrane. A blast of freezing air surged into the Ship. Saul pushed Vadim aside and shouted, “Wait! Let me go first, please!”
Ship. Anton, who already had one leg over the side, stopped. Saul, holding his scorcher high, squeezed his way forward.
“You want to be the first to set foot on your planet?” Anton asked with a smile.
“Yes,” Saul mumbled. “Better let me go first.”
He crawled through the narrow hatch, and then stopped, blocking the way. Anton, crawling behind him, rammed him with his head.
“Forward, Saul,” he said. Saul seemed petrified. Vadim impatiently rapped on Anton’s bent back.
“Let us past, Saul,” Anton requested.
Saul finally moved aside, and Anton stepped outside. All around there was snow. And more snow was falling, in huge flakes. The Ship was standing in the midst of monotonous round hills, barely noticeable against the white plain. At Anton’s feet, short, pale green grass protruded from the snow, along with many tiny blue and red flowers. And ten paces from the hatch, lightly sprinkled with the powdery snow, a man was lying.
Ship
- Writer
