Citizen in Spase. Stories / Гражданин в Космосе. Рассказы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Accordingly, we set out in our spaceship. As soon as we reached this deserted area, he said to mother, ‘Rachel, he’s old enough to fend for himself.’ My mother said, ‘Dirk, he’s so young!’ But soft-hearted, laughing mother was no match for the inflexible will of the man I would never call father. He thrust me into my spacesuit, handed me a box of flares, put Flicker into his own little suit, and said, ‘A lad can do all right for himself in space these days.’ ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘there is no planet within two hundred light years.’ ‘You’ll make out,’ he grinned, and thrust me upon this spur of rock.”

The boy paused for breath, and his dog Flicker looked up at me with moist oval eyes. I gave the dog a bowl of milk and bread, and watched the lad eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Mavis carried the little chap into the bunk room and tenderly tucked him into bed.

I returned to the controls, started the ship again, and turned on the intercom.

“Wake up, you little idiot!” I heard Mavis say.

“Lemme sleep,” the boy answered.

“Wake up! What did Congressional Investigation mean by sending you here? Don’t they realize this is an FBI case?”

“He’s been reclassified as a 10-F Suspect,” the boy said. “That calls for full surveillance.”

“Yes, but I’m here,” Mavis cried.

“You didn’t do so well on your last case,” the boy said. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but Security comes first.”

“So they send you,” Mavis said, sobbing now. “A twelve-year-old child —”

“I’ll be thirteen in seven months.”

“A twelve-year-old child! And I’ve tried so hard! I’ve studied, read books, taken evening courses, listened to lectures —”

“It’s a tough break,” the boy said sympathetically. “Personally, I want to be a spaceship test pilot. At my age, this is the only way I can get in flying hours. Do you think he’ll let me fly the ship?”

I snapped off the intercom. I should have felt wonderful. Two full-time Spies were watching me. It meant I was really someone, someone to be watched.

But the truth was, my Spies were only a girl and a twelve-year-old boy. They must have been scraping bottom when they sent those two.

My government was still ignoring me, in its own fashion.

We managed well on the rest of the flight. Young Roy, as the lad was called, took over the piloting of the ship, and his dog sat alertly in the co-pilot’s seat. Mavis continued to cook and keep house. I spent my time patching seams. We were as happy a group of Spies and Suspect as you could find.

We found an uninhabited Earth-type planet.

Mavis liked it because it was small and rather cute, with the green fields and gloomy forests she had read about in her poetry books. Young Roy liked the clear lakes, and the mountains, which were just the right height for a boy to climb.

We landed, and began to settle.

Young Roy found an immediate interest in the animals I animated from the Freezer. He appointed himself guardian of cows and horses, protector of ducks and geese, defender of pigs and chickens.

This kept him so busy that his reports to the Senate became fewer and fewer, and finally stopped altogether.

You really couldn’t expect any more from a Spy of his age.

And after I had set up the domes and force-seeded a few acres, Mavis and I took long walks in the gloomy forest, and in the bright green and yellow fields that bordered it.

One day we packed a picnic lunch and ate on the edge of a little waterfall. Mavis’ unbound hair spread lightly over her shoulders, and there was a distant enchanted look in her blue eyes. All in all, she seemed extremely un-Spylike, and I had to remind myself over and over of our respective roles.

“Bill,” she said after a while.

“Yes?” I said.

“Nothing.” She tugged at a blade of grass.

I couldn’t figure that one out. But her hand strayed somewhere near mine. Our fingertips touched, and clung.

We were silent for a long time. Never had I been so happy.

“Bill?”

“Yes?”

“Bill dear, could you ever —”

What she was going to say, and what I might have answered, I will never know. At that moment our silence was shattered by the roar of jets. Down from the sky dropped a spaceship.

Ed Wallace, the pilot, was a white-haired old man in a slouch hat and a stained trench coat. He was a salesman for Clear-Flo, an outfit that cleansed water on a planetary basis. Since I had no need for his services, he thanked me, and left.

But he didn’t get very far. His engines turned over once, and stopped with a frightening finality.

I looked over his drive mechanism, and found that a sphinx valve had blown. It would take me a month to make him a new one with hand tools.

“This is terribly awkward,” he murmured. “I suppose I’ll have to stay here.”

“I suppose so,” I said.

He looked at his ship regretfully. “Can’t understand how it happened,” he said.

“Maybe you weakened the valve when you cut it with a hacksaw,” I said, and walked off. I had seen the telltale marks.