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he realized that this was the best way to do it. Athos pulled his shirt over
his head unhurriedly.
Hold it! yelled Pol. It ll leave bruises! And we have something else to
do!
Let me do it, requested the mighty Lin. I ll be quick.
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No! Pol quickly started undressing. Walter! Do you know what the worst
thing in the world is? I ll remind you to be a coward, a liar, or a bully.
You re not a coward, thank God, but you ve forgotten the rest of it. And I
want you to remember for a long time. I m coming in, Walter. Repeat the magic
words.
He gathered up Walter s clothes, which were lying in the bushes, and jumped
into the water.
Walter watched him helplessly, and Athos started bound
THE CONSPIRATORS " 6j exultantly along the shore. Polly! he shouted. Polly,
you re a genius! Walter, how come you re not saying anything? Say it, say it,
gorilla: a liar, a coward, or a bully.
The Captain gloomily kept track of Polly, who was dog-paddling, making a
tremendous noise, and leaving a foamy trail behind him. Yes, Polly was as
clever as ever. The opposite shore was overgrown with stinging nettles, and
Walter could search there naked for his pants and such. In the dark, for the
sun was setting. That s just what he needs. But who s going to punish us?
We re no angels ourselves we re liars. That s not much better than being a
bully.
Polly came back. Gasping and spitting, he climbed onto the bank and
immediately said, There you are, Walter. Go and get dressed, gorilla. I don t
swim as well as you, and I don t dive as well, but I wouldn t like to trade
places with you now!
Walter did not look at him. He silently pulled the mask over his face and got
into the warm, steaming water. Before him was the bank with the stinging
nettles.
Remember! Pol shouted after him. A coward, a liar, or a bully. A bully,
Walter! There s nothing worse than that. The nettles U help out your bad
memory.
Right, said Athos. Get dressed, Lieber Polly. You ll catch cold.
They could hear Walter on the opposite shore, hissing with pain through his
teeth as he pushed through the thickets.
When they got back home to Room 18, it was already late evening after Walter s
chastisement, Lin had proposed that they play Pandora to relax, and Pandora
was played with great gusto. Athos, Lin, and the Captain were hunters, and
Polly the giant crayspider, while the park was the Pandoran
jungle impenetrable, marshy, and terrifying. The moon, which showed up at just
the right time, played EN 9, one of Pandora s suns. They played until the
giant crayspider, leaping from a tree onto Lin the hunter, tore his
superdurable tet-raconethylene pants down their entire length. Then they had
to go home. They did not want to disturb the housefather, and the Captain was
about to propose that they go in through the garbage chute (a magnificent idea
that flashed like lightning through his gloomy ruminations), but then decided
to take advantage of a humble workshop window.
They came into Room 18 noisily, discussing on the run the dazzling prospects
opening up in connection with the idea of the garbage chute, and then they saw
Teacher sitting at Athos s desk with a book in his hands.
I ripped my pants, Pol said in confusion. Naturally he forgot to say good
evening.
Really! exclaimed the teacher. Tetraconethylene?
Uh-huh. Pol basked in his glory.
Lin grew green with envy.
But boys, said the teacher, I don t know how to mend them!
The crew began to yell with triumph. They all knew how. They all thirsted to
demonstrate, to talk and to do the repair.
Go ahead, the teacher agreed. But Navigator Sidorov will fix not the pants,
but the transparancy system. Fate is cruel to him.
Great galaxies! said Athos. He could hardly reconcile himself to it.
Everyone got busy, including the Captain. For some reason he felt happy. We
won t leave tomorrow, he thought. We ll stay a little longer and make plans.
The idea of running away no longer seemed so attractive to him, but he could
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not very well let six weeks of study go for nothing.
There are remarkable and interesting problems, Teacher told them, deftly
wielding the high-frequency nozzle. There are problems as great as the world.
But there are also problems that are small but extremely interesting. A few
days back I was reading an old, old book very interesting. One thing it said
was that up to that time the problem of ignis fatuus had never been solved you
know, the will-o -the-wisp, in swamps? It was clear that it was some sort of
chemiluminescent substance, but what? Phosphorus trisulphide, for example? I
linked up with the Infor-matoreum, and what do you think? That riddle isn t
solved even today!
Why not?
The fact is that it s very hard to catch this ignis fatuus. Like Truth, it
flickers in the distance and refuses to be apprehended.
Lepelier tried to construct a cybernetic system to hunt it down, but nothing
came of it.
Teacher Tenin s head ached unbearably. He felt awful. In the past four hours
he had read and mastered four books on atmosphere regeneration, and had
memorized the Venus plan. He had been forced to resort to the hypnoteacher for
this, and after the hypnoteacher it was absolutely essential to lie down and
sleep it off. But he couldn t. Perhaps he should not have overloaded his brain
that way, but the teacher did not want to take chances. He had to know ten
times more about Venus and about the project than the four of them put
together. Otherwise his plan wasn t worth wasting time on.
Waiting for the moment to turn to the attack, he told them about the search
for ignis fatuus, and he saw their childish eyes open wide, and saw the flame
of great imagination writhe and flare in them, and as always it felt
surprisingly gladdening and good to see this, even though his head was
splitting into pieces.
But the boys were already sloshing through a marsh, wearing real, entrancing
swamp boots, and around them were night, darkness, fog, and mysterious
thickets; and from the depths of the swamp rushed clouds of repulsive
exhalations, and it was very dangerous and frightening, but you mustn t be
afraid. In front flickered the bluish tongues of ignis fatuus, whose secret as
was now clear it was vital to discover, and on the chest of each of the
hunters hung a miniaturized control for the trusty agile cyb-ers who were
stumbling through the quagmire. And these cybers had to be invented quickly,
immediately, or else the last swamps would be drained and everyone would be
left looking like fools.
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