But Tatiana Petrovna, who had started to feed Alice, told me that many thousands of years ago there had existed on Mars a mysterious civil ization called the Tewteqs. All that remained of them were stone pyramids. Up to now, neither the Martians nor the archaeologists from Earth had been able to find a single example of Tewteq construction. Just pyramids, scattered around the desert and drowned in sand. And here Alice had come across a Tewteq ruin by accident.

“So here we are, and nothing bad happened, again.” I said. “But I am going to take you back home right away, anyway. On Earth you can get lost as much as you want. Without a helmet.

“I like getting lost at home more too.” Alice said.

Two months later I was reading an article entitled “What were the Tewteqs?” in the magazine Around The World. In the article the writers described how they were at last able to examine an intact Tewteq archeological site. The scientists were now occupied with the deciphering of the inscriptions found in the site. But what was most interesting, on the pyramid itself they observed the drawing of a Tewteq, preserved as though it had been carved yesterday. And there was the photograph of the pyramid with the Tewteq portrait….

The portrait was somewhat familiar. I was suddenly overcome with a horrible suspicion.

“Alice.” I said in my strictest of Strict Father voices. “Answer me honestly: did you draw anything at all on the pyramid when you were lost in the desert?”

Before she answered, Alice walked over and looked at the picture in the magazine very carefully.

“You’re right, Papa. I did draw it. Only it wasn’t really drawing. I had to scrape it with a small stone. I was so bored there….”

Shusher the Timid

Alice has many pets: two kittens, a Martian Mantis which lives beneath her bed, and which spends its nights imitating the balalaika, a hedgehog which lived with us for a while and then ran back to the forest, the brontosaur Bronty, who lets Alice ride his back in the Zoo, and finally the neighbor’s dog, Rex, a lap dog I suspect is really a mongrel.