Free Definitely Maybe by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky

the bud. He, the redhead, could name such names as Dmitri Alekseevich Malianov, astronomer; Zakhar Zakharovich Gubar, engineer; and Arnold Pavlovich Snegovoi, physicist. They were giving V. A. Weingarten three days, starting right now, to think it over, after which the supercivilization would feel that it had the right to employ the rather harsh “measures of the third degree.”
    “While he was telling me all of this,” Weingarten said, “buddies, all I was thinking about was how he had gotten intothe apartment without a key. Especially since I had the door bolted. Could he be some thief who had gotten in a long time ago and got bored hiding under the couch? Well, I’ll show him, I thought. But while I was thinking all of that, the redhead finished up his little speech.” Weingarten paused for effect.
    “And flew out the window,” Malianov said, gritting his teeth.
    “That’s for your flying out the window!” Weingarten, unembarrassed by the child, made an eloquent gesture. “He simply vanished!”
    “Val,” said Malianov.
    “I’m telling you, buddy! He was sitting right in front of me on the desk. I was just about to give it to him on the kisser, without even standing up … when he was gone! Like in the movies, you know?”
    Weingarten grabbed the last piece of sturgeon and shoved it into his mouth.
    “Moam?” he said. “Moam mooam?” He swallowed with difficulty and, blinking his tear-filled eyes, went on: “I’m a little calmer now, buddies, but back then, let me tell you, I leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes, and remembered his words; everything in me was quivering and shaking, like a pig’s tail. I thought I was going to die right then and there. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. I somehow made it to my mother-in-law’s room, grabbed her valerian drops—didn’t help. Then I saw she had bromides, and I took those, too.”
    “Wait,” Malianov said irritably. “Drop the clowning. I’m in no mood … What really happened? But please, without the red-haired aliens!”
    “Chum,” Weingarten said, eyes bulging to the limit. “I’ll cross myself, on my Pioneer’s honor!” He made the sign of the cross, clumsily, with a Catholic accent. “I wasn’t in any mood for joking myself …”
    Excerpt 12.…
collected stamps, very energetically. Weingarten once took away with a satisfied purr the remnants of the stamp collection Malianov had as a teenager. He knew about stamps. He lost his tongue for a while. Yes, of course the royal collection had all of them. Mr. Stulov in New York had a few of these too. But if you just take the state collection … without even mentioning simple collectors …
    “Counterfeit,” said Malianov finally. Contemptuously, Weingarten said nothing. “Well, then, brand new.”
    “You fool,” Weingarten barked and put away the book.
    Malianov couldn’t think of a comeback. If all this had been a lie or even the simple truth, rather than the horrible truth, Weingarten would have done it just the other way around. He would have shown them the stamps first, and then made up and given them that more-or-less accurate bull story about them.
    “Well, and what do you do now?” Malianov asked, feeling his heart sinking somewhere again.
    No one answered. Weingarten poured himself another glass, drank it, and ate the last herring roll. Gubar watched listlessly as his strange son played with the glasses, his serious, pale face intent. Then Weingarten took up the story again, without any jokes this time, as though too weary for them, barely moving his lips. How he called Gubar, and Gubar did not answer; how he called Malianov and discovered that Snegovoi did exist; how scared he was when Malianov went to let Lidochka in and didn’t come back to the phone for so long; how he didn’t sleep all night, pacing his room and thinking, thinking, thinking, taking bromides and thinking some more; how he called Malianov this morning and realized that they had