Читать книгу The Adventures of Anna Atom - Elizabeth Wasserman - Страница 10

Chapter 6

THE ADMIRAL’S ARK

The admiral’s Space Ark was orbiting 25 000 kilometres above Earth.

As it glided against the backdrop of the Milky Way, its smooth hull shimmered softly with the light of a million stars. Unlike the upper layers of the earth’s atmosphere, which was clouded with pollution, the blackness of space was filled with clear starlight and colourful clouds of plasma. They reminded the Admiral of the vast oceans he loved so much.

He felt almost at home.

The egg-shaped hull of the Space Ark was semi-transparent so that light or other probing waves simply passed through it without registering its presence. The more sophisticated equipment of Earth’s large observatories occasionally picked up slight electric disturbances caused by the Space Ark’s large solar generators, but astrologers generally disregarded it as one of the unknown phenomena so frequently observed in space.

Inside the station, the admiral floated effortlessly, breathing with ease in the artificial atmosphere. In the weightless environment, his molecules attracted each other just well enough to keep his body roughly in its human shape. But sometimes, without the slightest warning, he bloated up like a puffer fish or stretched out like an eel.

He was so flexible that during idle hours he sometimes bent his feet around to the front of his face to inspect the soles of his rubber boots.

The admiral was not alone. Two by two in luminescent plasma, sleeping animals floated around in huge transparent bubbles. Occasionally one stirred as it dreamt of its home far, far away. On Earth, the existence of all these animals was threatened in some way, and a pair of each was being kept in reserve here in space, safe from whatever harm was threatening their earthly cousins. In their giant sphere, the ears of a pair of sleeping African elephants spread out from their huge grey bodies, as if they were in flight. Smaller spheres housed collections of rats and rabbits, anteaters, monkeys, a couple of small brown buck, and rare species of scaly armadillo. There were separate sections for pairs of birds, insects and reptiles, and the admiral’s favourite: the marine-animals section.

If it had not been for the accident that had forced him to leave Earth, Admiral Atom would never have left his beloved family. But shortly after his strange injury, the admiral’s old friend Dr Uranus Drake had offered him this job. And as he’d no choice, it had been a fortunate coincidence that the Space Ark had been completed at the same time. The admiral had now been working on the project for eight years, and he was grateful that he was still in regular contact with his family. But he missed the feel of Anna’s soft hair, and the way his wife had massaged his back when he was tired.

The fact was that nobody could look after the animals like he could. Putting his knowledge of molecular biology into practice, he had invented the Bioplasmid, which slightly altered the genetic make-up of the animals: it caused them to enter a state of inactivity, almost like hibernation, in which they needed almost no air to breathe, and no food to eat. In this dormant state, they didn’t become old or die. They were like seeds, perfectly preserved until the time came to wake them up.

“Ahoy, Abraham!” A hologram of the famous marine biologist, Dr Uranus Drake, suddenly appeared. The admiral and Uranus were great friends, having studied and worked on projects together for most of their adult lives. Dr Drake appeared to be standing on a wall of the Space Ark – although one could never be sure what was the ceiling or the floor, as all sides looked alike.

The admiral kicked himself away from where he was working and drifted towards his friend. “Delighted to see you, old eel!” he beamed.

Uranus Drake cut a remarkable figure. More than two metres tall, he had carrot-orange hair and his face was densely freckled. His nose was long and thin, with a strange bony knob in the middle. His eyes, a yellowish shade of green, were set very close together, and he wore his long, thin beard in a plait fastened with a black rubber band. Today Uranus was casually dressed in a baby-blue bathrobe, his feet stuffed in furry pink slippers. Yet he still looked strangely elegant.

“Just stepped out of the bath?” the admiral asked, laughing.

Uranus merely nodded. He seldom smiled.

“Your timing is excellent, my friend! I have good news: our project is almost finished. We have only a few more specimens to go, and our Ark will be complete.”

The famous marine biologist frowned. “No, Abraham, you’re mistaken. We will have a complete collection of currently endangered species. But what about those that have already disappeared?”

“Uranus, I know you’re as proud as I am of sabre tooth tigers and mammoths we cloned from the specimens you retrieved from Siberia.”

Uranus snorted. “Ah, but animals that became extinct during the Ice Age are easy. A mere trifle, finding good frozen specimens. But the ones that lived in the tropics are a challenge. You know well that hot, humid conditions cause rapid decay of genetic material, and your cloning technique doesn’t work on dry bone, so suitable specimens are nowhere to be found. It’s a disaster!”

“That may be so, Uranus,” the admiral tried to soothe his friend. “But what we’ve done already is an enormous achievement. When you decide to reveal your work to the world, you’ll be even more famous than you already are!”

The marine biologist flushed crimson. “The admiration of the human race is of no consequence – they’re all fools! Only the animals matter. Humans have displaced the animals from their natural homes, and every day they are butchered and poisoned. Soon we may only have these left.” He swept his arm to indicate the sleeping animals floating around them in the Space Ark’s dimly lit interior. “Imagine the world,” he continued with a strange gleam lighting up his yellow eyes, “before the scourge of human civilisation contaminated the oceans and forests. What I wouldn’t give to see that! And we will, I tell you!” He shook his fist in the air.

The admiral was used to these ranting speeches. He’d always brushed them off as signs of overwork and stress. But Uranus’s statements had been getting wilder and more feverish, and these days the admiral sometimes feared for his friend’s sanity.

Uranus Drake stamped his furry slippers in the air. “A dodo, Abraham! What I wouldn’t do to get my hands on a good dodo specimen!”

The admiral knew this was unlikely – dodos became extinct centuries ago, and their feathers and flesh had long since turned to dust in the tropical forests of Mauritius. The few bones that palaeontologists had found weren’t enough to work on. The huge birds had disappeared from the earth without leaving a trace, and they were gone forever.

It was a shame indeed.