“He’s hungry!” declared Pol, coming to life. He sat up on the bed in order to elaborate upon this theme, but here the Captain slowly turned his large-browed head and glared at him.
“What are you looking at me for?” asked Pol. “I’m reading, I’m reading. ‘The output of the AGK-7 is sixteen cubic meters of ozonized oxygen per hour. The stra-ti-fi-ca-tion method permits—’”
“Read to yourself!” Athos advised.
“Well, I don’t think he’s bothering you,” the Captain said in an iron voice.
“You think he isn’t, and I think he is,” said Athos-Sidorov.
Their glances met. Pol watched the development of the incident with enjoyment. He was sick to the nth degree of the Introduction to.
“Have it your way,” said the Captain. “But I’m not figuring on doing everyone’s work myself. And you’re not doing anything, Athos. You’re as much use as a fifth wheel.”
The navigator smiled scornfully and did not deem it necessary to answer. At that moment the screen went out, and Lin turned around with a creak of his chair.
“Guys!” he said. “Zow! Guys! Let’s go there.”
“Let’s go!” Pol shouted, and jumped up.
“Where is there?” the Captain asked ominously.
“To Paricutin! To Mount Pelée! To—”
“Hold it!” yelled the Captain. “You’re a bunch of lousy traitors! I’m sick and tired of messing around with you! I’m going by myself. You can take off for wherever you feel like. Is that clear?”
“Phooey!” said Athos elegantly.
“Phooey yourself, you understand? You approved the plan, you shouted ‘zow-zow,’ but what are you doing now? Well, I’m just plain sick and tired of messing around with you. I’ll make a deal with Natasha or with that idiot Walter, you hear? You can go fly a kite. I’ve had it with you, and that’s final!”
The Captain turned his back and wrathfully resumed copying the blueprint. A heavy silence ensued. Polly quietly lay back down and resumed studying the Introduction to furiously. Athos compressed his lips, and the ponderous Lin got up and started pacing the room with his hands in his pockets. “Genka,” he said indecisively. “Captain, you-cut-this out. What do you want to—”
“You take off for your Mount Pelée,” the Captain muttered. “For your Paricutin. We’ll manage.”
“Captain… what are you saying? You can’t tell Walter, Genka!”
“Just watch me. I’ll tell him all right. He may be an idiot, but he’s no traitor.”
Lin increased his pace to a run without taking his hands out of his pockets. “What would you go and do that for, Captain? Look, Polly is already grinding.”
“‘Polly, Polly’! Polly is full of hot air. And I’ve just plain had it with Athos. Think of it—navigator of the Galaktion! The blow-hard!”
Lin turned to Athos. “You’re right. Athos, something… it’s not right, you know. We’re all trying.”
Athos studied the forested horizon. “What are you all jabbering for?” he inquired politely. “If I said I’d go, I’ll go. I don’t think I’ve ever lied to anyone yet. And I’ve never let anyone down, either.”
“Cut it out,” Lin said fiercely. “The Captain’s right. You’re just loafing, being a pig.”
Athos turned and narrowed his eyes. “So tell me, o Great Worker,” he said, “why is a Diehard inferior to an AGK-7 under conditions of nitrogen surplus?”
“Huh?” Lin said distractedly, and looked at the Captain. The Captain barely raised his head.
“What are the nine steps in operating an Eisenbaum?” asked Athos. “Who invented oxytane? You don’t know, you grind! Or in what year? You don’t know that either?”
That was Athos—a great man despite his numerous failings. A reverent silence settled over the room, except for Pol Gnedykh’s angry leafing of the pages of the Introduction.
“Who cares who invented what?” Lin muttered uncertainly, and stared helplessly at the Captain.
The Captain got up, went over to Athos, and poked him in the stomach with his fist. “Good man, Athos,” he declared. “I was a fool to think you were loafing.”
“Loafing!” Athos said, and poked the Captain in the side. He had accepted the apology.
“Zow! Guys!” proclaimed the Captain. “Set your course by Athos. Feeders on cycle, spacers! Stand by for Legen accelerations. Watch the reflector. Dust flow to the left! Zow!”
“Zow-zow-zow!” roared the crew of the Galaktion.
The Captain turned to Lin. “Engineer Lin,” he said, “do you have any questions on geography?”
“Nope,” the engineer reported in turn,
“What else do we have today?”
“Algebra and work,” said Athos.
“Ri-ight! So let’s start with a fight. The first pair’ll be Athos versus Lin. Polly, go sit down. Your legs are tired.”
Athos started getting ready for the fight. “Don’t forget to hide the materials,” he said, “They’re scattered all over—Teacher’ll see them.”
“Okay. We’re leaving tomorrow anyhow.”
Pol sat down on the bed and laid aside his book. “It doesn’t say here who invented oxytane.”
“Albert Jenkins,” the Captain said without having to think. “In seventy-two.”
Teacher Tenin arrived at Room 18, as always, at 4:00 p.m. There was no one in the room, but water was flowing copiously in the shower, and he could hear snorting, slapping, and exultant cries of “zow-zow-zow!” The crew of the Galaktion was washing up after their exertions in the workshops.
The teacher paced the room. Much here was familiar and usual. Lin, as always, had scattered his clothes over the whole room. One of his slippers lay on Athos’s desk, undoubtedly representing a yacht. The mast was made out of a pencil; the sail, of a sock. This, of course, was Pol’s work. In this regard Lin would mutter angrily, “You think that’s pretty smart, huh, Polly?” The transparency system for the walls and ceiling was out of order—Athos had done that. The controls were by the head of his bed, and as he went to sleep, he would play with them. He would lie there pressing keys, and at one moment the room would become quite dark, and in the next the night sky and moon over the park would appear. Usually the controls were broken, if no one had stopped Athos in time. Athos today was doomed to fix the transparency system.
Lin’s desk was chaos. Lin’s desk was always chaos, and there was nothing to be done about it. This was simply one of those cases where the teacher’s contrivances and the entire powerful apparatus of child psychology were helpless.
As a rule, everything new in the room was linked with the Captain. Today there were diagrams on his desk that had not been there before. It was something new, and consequently something that required some thinking. Teacher Tenin very much liked new things. He sat down at the Captain’s desk and began to look over the diagrams.
From the shower room came:
“Add a little more cold, Polly!”
“Don’t! It’s cold already! I’m freezing!”
“Hold onto him, Lin. It’ll toughen him up.”
“Athos, hand me the scraper.”
“Where’s the soap, guys?”
Someone fell onto the floor with a crash. A yelp: “What idiot threw the soap under my feet?”
Laughter, cries of “Zow!”
“Very clever! Boy, will I get you!”
“Back! Pull in your manipulators, you!”
The teacher looked the diagrams over and replaced them. The plot thickens, he thought. Now an oxygen concentrator. The boys are really taken up with Venus. He got up and looked under Pol’s pillow. There lay the Introduction to. It had been thoroughly leafed through. The teacher flipped thoughtfully through the pages and put the book back. Even Pol, he thought. Curious.
Then he saw that the boxing gloves that had been lying on Lin’s desk day in and day out, regularly and unvaryingly for the last two years, were missing. Over the Captain’s bed, the photograph of Gorbovsky in a vacuum s
uit was gone, and Pol’s desktop was empty.
Teacher Tenin understood everything. He realized that they wanted to run away, and he knew where they wanted to run to. He even knew when they wanted to go. The photograph was missing, and therefore it was in the Captain’s knapsack. Therefore the knapsack was already packed. Therefore they were leaving tomorrow morning, early. The Captain always liked to do a thorough job, and not put off until tomorrow what he could do today. (On the other hand, Pol’s knapsack couldn’t be ready yet—Pol preferred to do everything the day after tomorrow.) So they were going tomorrow, out through the window so as not to disturb the housefather. They had a great dislike of disturbing housefathers. And who did not?
The teacher glanced under a bed. The Captain’s knapsack was made up with enviable neatness. Pol’s lay under his bed. Pol’s favorite shirt—red stripes and no collar—stuck out from the knapsack. In the cabinet reposed a ladder skillfully woven from sheets, undoubtedly Athos’s creation.
So… that meant there was some thinking to be done. Teacher Tenin grew gloomy and cheerful simultaneously.
Pol, wearing only shorts, came tearing out of the shower room, saw the teacher, and turned a cartwheel.
“Not bad, Pol!” the teacher exclaimed. “Only keep your legs straight.”
“Zow!” Pol yelped, and cartwheeled the other way. “Teacher, spacemen! Teacher’s here!”
They always forgot to say hello.
The crew of the Galaktion darted into the room and got stuck in the doorway. Teacher Tenin looked at them and thought… nothing. He loved them very much. He always loved them. All of them. All those he brought up and launched into the wide world. There were many of them, and these were the best of all. Because they were now. They were standing at attention and looking at him just the way he liked. Almost.
“K-T-T-U-S-T-X-D,” signaled the teacher. This meant, “Calling crew of Galaktion. Have good visual contact. Is there dust on course?”
“T-T-Q-U-Z-C,” the crew answered discordantly. They also had good visual contact, and there was almost no dust on the course.
“Suit up!” the teacher commanded, and stared at his chronometer.
Without saying anything more, the crew rushed to suit up.
“Where’s my other sock?” Lin yelled, and then he saw the yacht. “You think that’s clever, Polly?” he muttered.
The suiting-up lasted thirty-nine and some tenths seconds,
Lin finishing last. “You pig, Polly,” he grumbled. “Wise guy!”
Then everyone sat down at random, and the teacher said, “Literature, geography, algebra, and work. Right?”
“And a little phys ed too,” added Athos.
“Undoubtedly,” said the teacher. “That’s clear from your swollen nose. And speaking of phys ed, Pol is still bending his legs. Alexandr, you show him how.”
“Okay,” Lin said with satisfaction. “But he’s a little slow, Teacher.”
Pol answered quickly, “Better a somewhat sluggish knee / Than a head full of stupidity.”
“C plus.” The teacher shook his head. “Not too elegant, but the idea is clear. In thirty years maybe you’ll learn to be witty, Pol, but when it happens don’t abuse your power.”
“I’ll try not to,” Pol said modestly.
C plus wasn’t so bad, but Lin sat there red and sulky. By evening he would have thought up a rejoinder.
“Let’s talk about literature,” Teacher Tenin proposed. “Captain Komov, how is your composition feeling today?”
“I wrote about Gorbovsky,” the Captain said, and fished in his desk.
“A fine topic!” said the teacher. “I hope you’ve been equal to it.”
“He’s not equal to anything,” Athos declared. “He thinks that the important thing about Gorbovsky is the know-how.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think that the main thing about Gorbovsky is the daring, the courage.”
“I would suppose you’re wrong, Navigator,” said the teacher. “There are very many daring people. And among spacemen you won’t find any cowards. The cowards simply die out. But the Assaultmen, especially ones like Gorbovsky, are unique. I ask you to believe me because I know, and you don’t, not yet. But you’ll find out, Navigator. And what did you write?”
“I wrote about Doctor Mboga,” said Athos.
“Where did you find out about him?”
“I gave him a book about flying leeches,” Pol explained.
“Wonderful, boys! Have you all read the book?”
“Yes,” said Lin.
“Who didn’t like it?”
“We all liked it,” Pol said with pride. “I dug it out of the library.”
He of course had forgotten that the teacher had recommended that book to him. He always forgot such details—he very much liked to “discover” books. And he liked everyone to know about this. He liked publicity.
“Good for you, Pol!” said the teacher. “And you, of course, wrote about Doctor Mboga too?”
“I wrote a poem!”
“Oho, Pol! And aren’t you afraid?”
“What is there to be afraid of?” Pol said blithely. “I read it to Athos. The only things he complained about were trivia. And just a little bit.”
The teacher looked doubtfully at Athos. “Hmm. As far as I know Navigator Sidorov, he is rarely distracted by trivia. Well see, we’ll see. And you, Alexandr?”
Lin silently thrust a thick composition book at the teacher. A monstrous smudge spread over the cover. “Zvantsev,” he explained. “The oceanographer.”
“Who is that?” Pol asked jealously.
Lin looked at him with shocked contempt and remained silent. Pol was mortified. It was unbearable. It was awful. He had never so much as heard of Zvantsev the oceanographer.
“Well, great,” the teacher said, and gathered up the composition books. “I’ll read them and think about them. We’ll talk about them tomorrow.”
He immediately regretted saying that. The Captain was so visibly discomfited by the word “tomorrow.” To lie, to dissemble, ran very much against the grain of the boy. There was no need to torture them—he would have to be more careful in his choice of words. After all, they were not planning anything bad. They were not even in any danger—they would get no farther than Anyudin. But they would have to come back, and that would really hurt. The whole school would laugh at them. Kids were sometimes malicious, especially in cases like this, where their comrades imagined that they could do something that others couldn’t. He thought of the great scoffers in Rooms 20 and 72, and about the jolly smallfry who would jump with a whoop upon the captive crew of the Galaktion and tear them limb from limb.
“Speaking of algebra,” he said. (The crew smiled. They very much liked that “speaking of.” It seemed to them so enthrallingly illogical.) “In my day one very quaint instructor gave the lectures on the history of mathematics. He would stand by the board”—the teacher started to demonstrate—”and begin, ‘Even the ancient Greeks knew that (a+b)2 equals a2 plus 2ab plus—’” The teacher looked at his imaginary notes. “‘Plus… uhhh… b2.’”
The crew broke out into laughter. The seasoned spacemen looked at Teacher. They were in raptures. They thought this man was great and simple, like the world.
“But now look at what curious things sometimes happen with (a+b)2,” the teacher said, and sat down. Everyone crowded around him.
There began that without which the crew could no longer live and the teacher would not want to—the adventures of numbers in space and time. A mistake in a coefficient threw a ship off course and plunged it into a black abyss from which there would be no return for the man who had put a plus instead of a minus before the radical; a cumbersome, horrible-looking polynomial broke up into astonishingly simple factors, and Lin yelped in distress, “Where were my eyes? How simple!”; there resounded the strange, solemn-funny stanzas of Cardano, who had described in verse his method of solving cubic equations; the incredibly mysterious s
tory of Fermat’s Last Theorem rose up from the depths of history…
Then the teacher said, “Fine, boys. Now you can see: if you can reduce all of your problems in life to polynomials, they’ll be solved. At least approximately.”
“I wish I could reduce them to polynomials,” burst out Pol, who had suddenly remembered that tomorrow he wouldn’t be here, that he had to leave Teacher, perhaps forever.
“I read you, Comrade Computerman,” the teacher said affectionately. “The most difficult part is putting the question properly. Six centuries of mathematical development will do the rest for you. And sometimes you can get along even without the mathematics.” He was silent for a moment. “Well, boys, shall we have a four-one fight?”
“Zow!” the crew exploded, and dashed out of the room, because for the game four-one you needed room, and soft ground underfoot. Four-one was an exacting game, demanding great intelligence and an excellent knowledge of the ancient holds of the sambo system of combat. The crew worked up a sweat, and Teacher threw off his jacket and collected himself a few scratches. Then they all sat under a pine on the sand and rested.
“On Pandora a scratch like that would call for an emergency alarm,” the teacher informed them, looking at his palm. “They’d put me in isolation in the med section, and would drown me in virophages.”
“But what if a crayspider bit off your hand?” Pol asked with sweet horror.
The teacher looked at him. “A crayspider doesn’t bite like that,” he said. “It couldn’t get a hand into its mouth. Anyway, now Professor Karpenko is working on an interesting little thing which makes virophages look like kid games. Have you heard about bioblockading?”
“Tell us!” The crew were all ears.
Teacher started to tell them about bioblockading. The crew listened with such fascination that Tenin felt sorry that the world was so enormous, and that he couldn’t tell them right now about everything known and unknown. They listened without stirring, hanging on his every word. And everything was very fine, but he knew that the ladder made from sheets was waiting in the cabinet, and he knew that the Captain—at least the Captain!—knew this too. How to stop them? Tenin thought. How? There were many ways, but none of them were any good, because he had not only to stop them, but to make them understand why they must stop themselves. There was also one good way. One, at least. But for that he would need a night, and a few books on the regeneration of atmospheres, and the complete plan of the Venus project, and two tablets of sporamine in order to last it out. The boys couldn’t leave that night. And not that evening either—the Captain was intelligent and saw a good deal. He saw that Teacher was onto something, and maybe onto everything. So I’ll do without night, thought the teacher. But give me just four or five hours. I’ve got to hold them back, keep them busy, for that long. How?