by James White
"And I'm not complaining," said Walters.
For the analysis of the air sample taken in the corridor had shown that the alien atmosphere was not harmful to human beings and was, in fact, much less toxic than the air of an average city. But the sample taken in the lock chamber contained a quantity of vaporized liquid which could only have come from the leak in the hydraulic system. Apparently the stuff Walters had breathed was about as damaging as a similar quantity of tear gas.
But McCullough had conducted his examination of the hapless pilot as if he had been engaged on a slightly premature post-mortem . . .
"Now we must decide what to do next. I'd like the doctor and Major Walters to put forward any suggestions they may have. After all, you two have more Ship experience than anyone else. How do you see the situation now?"
"I can't see anything," Walters said hoarsely. "My throat is too sore . . ."
There was an irritated, overamplified sigh from the speaker grill. McCullough nodded quickly to Walters, thought for a moment, then began to speak.
So far as he was concerned, the trip inside the alien vessel had not answered any of the major questions regarding its origin and purpose. It remained a hulking brute of a ship nearly half a mile long, orbiting the sun at a distance of one hundred and sixty million miles, seemingly in a powered-down condition and refusing to acknowledge all signals. The precision with which it had been inserted into orbit, together with the reactions of what must have been a damage-control party of its crew, seemed to rule out the earlier theory that the Ship was in a derelict or distressed condition.
Present indications were that it was deliberately refusing contact because it was here merely to conduct a survey of some description. Perhaps they did not want contact with an inferior race, or had orders forbidding such contact. McCullough was very careful to use the word 'survey' rather than 'reconnaissance,' but he was afraid the people at home would jump to conclusions no matter which word he used.
So far as the physical structure of the Ship was concerned, photographic and other observations made it clear that it had not been designed to withstand massive accelerations or even a takeoff from an average planet. However, if the netting they had observed covered all the corridors in the ship, it was unlikely that they had gravity control either inside the ship or as a means of propulsion. Since there were no rocket venturis or any other visible signs of conventional reaction propulsion capable of moving such a massive vessel, it seemed obvious that whatever method of propulsion was being used, the ship remained in the weightless condition whether it was under power or not.
Where the crew of the alien ship was concerned, they had a little more to go on.
"In addition to the physiological details in the photographs," McCullough went on, "which will tell us a lot when we have a chance to study them properly, we know that the crew is composed of three distinct species. The alien with the white fur or clothing seemed to be in a position of authority or influence over the others -- even though their curiosity regarding us must have been intense, they left the area as soon as Type Three appeared."
McCullough went on, "The second type, which we encountered first when Walters was attacked, is much more aggressive or impulsive than Type Three. As I see it, the Three is their equivalent of an officer, while the Twos are a damage-control party of crew members who were angered by the damage to their lock's hydraulic system, and expressed their anger by taking a swipe at Walters. But if we assume that their orders were to ignore us and let the repairs wait until after we had gone away, and Type Three arrived on the scene to remind the others of their orders in no uncertain terms and to chase them off . . ."
"They followed the Three," Walters put in. "It didn't chase them . . ."
"I don't think that matters," said McCullough, then continued, "Taking a swipe at one of us is, in the circumstances, an understandable reaction. It is not a friendly reaction, of course, but it does show that we have certain emotional responses in common which could form a basis for a wider understanding in time -- if we are allowed to maintain contact with them.
"I, personally, do not think we will be.
"For there can be no doubt that they know we are here," McCullough ended seriously. "Perhaps they have known about us from the moment we left Earth. But we are not welcome here and we should leave before they take more positive steps to discourage us."
For a long time there was silence, then Berryman said, "Surely we've come too far just to turn and run. We can investigate and photograph those hyperdrive blisters, or whatever they are, without actually entering the Ship. I agree it is good sense to run away, but make it tomorrow or sometime next week . . ."
"I -- I agree," said Hollis from P-One. The overamplification which made the colonel's voice sound authoritative simply magnified the physicist's timidity. "Accurate photographs of those generators -- which must be connected with their propulsion system -- might not give us everything we want to know, but they would at least keep our people from following too many useless avenues of research.
"At the same time I agree with the doctor. We should not go into the Ship again if we aren't welcome . . ."
There came a sound of Morrison's throat being cleared, and Hollis broke off. Obviously the colonel was willing for the other to speak so long as he said the right things, and talking about leaving was not one of the right things, so it was equally obvious that the colonel also wanted to stay.
Walters found his voice suddenly and said, "We made a mistake by damaging their lock mechanism, but that doesn't necessarily mean they will chase us away like small boys caught robbing an orchard! That would be too -- too petty an act for a race capable of interstellar flight . . ."
"I'd like to think so, too," McCullough said sharply. "But I keep remembering the petty things we did in the sailing ship and stagecoach era, and how many of us are still doing them."
"But we're unarmed!" Berryman broke in. "Our ships are downright primitive by their standards. And in a sense we belong to the same club. Space travel is not as dangerous for them as for us, of course, but . . ."
"But you feel," McCullough finished for him, with a sarcastic edge to his voice, "that the alien captain should pipe the plucky primitives aboard with full honors. Don't you think it possible that this sort of thing may have happened many times to this particular ship? Maybe they are a little tired of primitives busting a gut to get out to look over their ships. So much so, perhaps, that they won't even toss a metaphorical coin into the water to see us do tricks for them because of the danger of us fouling their metaphorical propellors."
"Walters' idea of the alien might be too noble," Berryman protested, "but yours is too base and cynical. This isn't like you, Doctor."
"No indeed," said Walters, stifling a cough. "And aren't we forgetting that practically all of this is sheer guesswork? They might not be noble or base. They might not even be all that far advanced technically, judging by their ship's construction. And I don't think we should run away until we at least know what we are running away from. McCullough is completely off-base in this."
"Calm down, gentlemen. We are not going to leave, not immediately and not even next week. It seems Control have been keeping us in the dark -- for our peace of mind, they say -- about certain new developments which make it necessary for us to stay put. The period mentioned was a minimum of three weeks.
"You see, our people were a little late in cutting the transmission to the networks when things became exciting at the Ship, and the political side effects have yet to be evaluated. At the present time I am receiving new, modified, amended or downright contradictory orders on an average of three times a day . . ."
The incident on the Ship had gone out in its entirety, via translators or commentators where non-English speaking nations were concerned, to practically everyone on Earth. Prometheus had wanted to cut transmission, but a quite incredible amount of pressure had been brought to bear on them to continue relaying the signals from the Alien -- it was already b
eing capitalized and used in the same sentences with words like Invader and Enemy -- so far as the colonel knew, they would still receive everything he sent. He had used his discretion, however, regarding the signals recently received from P-Two.
Already there was talk of trebling NASA's appropriation, building an armada, knitting warm sweaters -- public reaction was fluid and still somewhat confused, but the general feeling was that something positive should be done. It was being suggested that the U.S. and Russia pool their space capability against the common enemy . . .
". . . The Russians would already be out here with us if they hadn't jumped the gun by launching that rather ambitious manned Venus Orbiting Station just before the Ship appeared, and their present capability may be stretched to the limit keeping it supplied. However, if our stay out here becomes extended, Biakonur have offered Prometheus the use of two of their high-acceleration supply vehicles, with no strings attached other than that they must not be used to carry weapons.
"You will appreciate the political implications which have grown out of our handling of this situation -- our bungled handling of the first contact, some say. The U.N. are being quite critical . . .
"But now we must try to devise tactics to cover this situation. You are all free to interrupt and offer suggestions at any time . . ."
The first interruption came within seconds, from Berryman, who suggested very strongly that it would be a criminal waste of opportunity to run away without trying to find out a little more about alien science and, if possible, culture, adding that any tactics used against the aliens must be purely defensive. Hollis, Walters and McCullough interrupted to agree with this, and Drew said that considering the relative sizes of the vessels concerned, they had no choice.
Irritated, Morrison replied that he had no intention of declaring war on anybody, and would they all please make their suggestions more constructive and less general in nature.
Finally it was decided that P-One and P-Two would be joined together nose-to-nose. There was provision for doing this in design, and the result would be that Walters would have access to both command modules without having to don a spacesuit. There would also be a saving in power by having one life-support system serve two ships, since it might come about that the other men would be absent on the alien Ship for extended periods of time. The duties of this single watch-keeping officer would be to maintain contact with the men investigating the alien vessel and Prometheus Control, and to report progress.
Drew had a lot to say on the subject of defensive weapons. They had no intention of hurting, much less killing, anyone on the alien Ship. But if they did re-enter the vessel, they would have to have a means of protecting themselves and their irreplaceable spacesuits from injury. With the aid of the doctor's as yet incomplete physiological data on the known alien life-forms, they devised and built a prototype weapon, rather like a ski stick, which would fend off aliens and prick them lightly if they became too persistent.
They discussed alien motivation and possible methods of communication at great length, and somehow it became an accepted, although not formally agreed fact that they would go aboard the alien Ship again . . .
Many hours later, while they were closing with P-One for the docking operation, Walters said hoarsely, "I'm sorry for what I said back there, Doctor. But you put up such a good, sensible case for leaving, I thought the colonel might decide there and then to do just that, and this is such a unique opportunity for -- for . . ."
"Getting clobbered?" Berryman asked, grinning. He went on, "But I wouldn't apologize, Walters, if I were you. It seems to me that if your mind was capable of really devious thinking, and if you weren't just an amateur psychologist, you would have realized by now that he was indulging in a piece of psychological sleight of hand. Probably he had it all worked out with the colonel in advance -- talking good, sound common sense, verbalizing all our own secret fears and survival instincts, then making us argue against them to show how superior we thought we were to him. In short, and to mix a metaphor slightly, propping up our weakening resolve with an obviously broken reed.
"Not that he is likely to admit any of this, of course."
They were both staring at him.
McCullough felt his face burning, but deep inside him there was another and much more pleasant feeling of warmth. It occurred to him suddenly that there were none so blind as those who could see perfectly, but shut their eyes because they happened to be looking at a friend.
"It's a thought," said McCullough. To himself he added, A happy afterthought . . .
chapter ten
As the only member of the expedition with both a spacesuit and firsthand alien experience, McCullough was placed in charge of the second boarding party. Those were the reasons given by Morrison and, without actually saying so, the others gave McCullough the impression that they considered it a sensible arrangement.
Five minutes after leaving the P-ships, however, Morrison was no longer even pretending that McCullough was in charge.
The entry point chosen was a personnel lock about one hundred yards aft of the first one. McCullough operated the seal mechanism and entered, followed by the colonel, Berryman, Hollis and Drew. This time he did not slam the door or test the hydraulic actuator to destruction. Inside he demonstrated the working of the light switches. The chamber differed only in detail from the previous one, but this time they were going to examine the fine details.
There were no aliens in the lock chamber or in the corridor outside.
Morrison had brought a spotlight from P-One. Using the access doors on four sides of the chamber and the large transparent panels set into them, he mapped the space between the Ship's double hull while Drew kept watch on the corridor and reported progress to Walters on P-Two. Berryman, Hollis and McCullough scoured the place for identification numbers.
"I realize," said Berryman during the first few minutes of the examination, "that robust construction, together with simplicity of design is supposed to reduce the danger of component failure, but this angle bracket is so simple it is downright crude!"
But the badly finished support bracket, like all the other small structural members they were examining, possessed the expected symbols of identification.
Their idea was simply that any piece of machinery beyond a certain degree of complexity -- from a car or light aeroplane up to and including spaceships half a mile long -- required an enormous amount of prior design work, planning and tooling long before the first simple parts and subassemblies became three-dimensional metal on someone's workbench. The number of general assembly and detail drawings, material specification charts, wiring diagrams and so on for a vessel of this size must have been mind-staggering, and the purpose of all this paperwork was simply to instruct people of average intelligence in the manufacture and fitting together of the parts in this gigantic three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
If normal human practice was observed -- and the aircraft engineers who had lectured them on the trip out insisted that there was no easier way short of waving a magic wand -- then these drawings together with the components they described must include exact instructions for the placing of these parts within the jigsaw.
It was possible that the aliens had some exotic method of identifying components -- such as impressing each part with a telepathic identity tag, or tactile coding systems instead of using visible printed symbols. But considering the size of the project and the tremendous number of parts to be identified, they were fairly sure that the aliens would do it the easy way, which was to mark the surface material of the component with symbols which could be read at a glance.
The system used on the Ship seemed to be some kind of vibro-etch technique. It was nice to know that, in the philosophy of aircraft and spaceship construction at least, the e-t's and humans thought alike.
"You notice there are no curved lines in these symbols," said Hollis at one point. "The result of having pincers instead of fingers and an opposable thumb, would you say, Doctor?"
>
"Not necessarily," said McCullough. "If we had continued to use Roman instead of Arabic numerals . . ."
