by James White
"Discuss your findings later, gentlemen," said Morrison impatiently. "We will take a quick look along the corridor. Berryman and I will move aft, Hollis and McCullough forward, and Drew will guard the lock chamber. Go only as far as the first intersection -- that should make it impossible for any of us to be cut off. Make a map showing door positions and anything else of interest. If the doors have transparent panels, shoot whatever you can get a picture of and sketch in room dimensions and contents of what you can't shoot.
"Be as quick as you can," he ended. "If you meet anything, retreat or defend yourselves without hurting it. All right, Drew, crack the seal."
They split up as directed, McCullough keeping slightly ahead of Hollis so as not to prod him with his ridiculous weapon. Since the Ship seemed to be designed for free fall conditions, there was no clearly defined floor, ceiling or walls in the corridor. The netting was supported a few inches out from each wall and stretched taut and was interrupted at regular intervals by the entrances to what seemed to be storerooms. Being cautious men, they shone their lights only into the rooms whose doors had transparent panels in them and left the others alone even though they would have opened at a touch -- they were simple, sliding doors rather than pressure seals. Every door bore two sets of identifying symbols placed upside down to each other so as to be easily read whatever the direction of approach.
Lighting fixtures and switches were set at intervals along the corridor, but McCullough did not turn them on. The torches of Hollis and himself gave enough light at short range and there was no point in letting the aliens in their control room know that the humans had moved into the corridor.
At the intersection, one corridor continued forward while another curved away in each direction, following the lateral curvature of the hull so that they could see only twenty yards or so along it. Just at the limit of vision in each branch there were the mouths of two other corridors paralleling their own.
"If we went back along one of them," said Hollis, pointing, "and then took the first outboard turning, we should meet up with the colonel and Berryman."
"Do you want to try it?" said McCullough.
"No," said Hollis.
The physicist busied himself with his sketch pad while McCullough kept watch in four directions. But they were not disturbed by anything until the colonel's voice ordered them back to the lock chamber.
Ten minutes later they were outside the Ship again and heading for a lock close to one of the big transparent blisters. Hollis was literally babbling with excitement over the prospect of tinkering with a real live -- Walters on P-Two warned that it was probably several million volts live -- hyperspatial generator. McCullough said nothing and thought seriously about Colonel Morrison's voice.
Morrison had the irritating habit of using too much volume during transmission and sounding like a short-tempered hurler of thunderbolts rather than the simple voice of authority. But now the doctor was beginning to wonder if the overamplification and, perhaps, the judicious use of the tone control to make it sound deeper as well as louder, was the sole reason for Morrison's stern-sounding, authoritative tone. Certainly the difference in his natural and radio voice was amazing. McCullough had the uncomfortable feeling that every time the colonel opened his mouth in ordinary face-to-face conversation he nibbled away a little of his own authority.
It was becoming obvious that the Colonel Morrison whom Berryman, Walters and he himself knew as a voice from P-One was not necessarily the same person Drew and Hollis knew on the colonel's own ship. It was becoming much easier to believe Morrison capable of gossiping like an old woman to Drew while excluding Hollis and allowing the physicist to get into the sorry state McCullough had found him in when he had been shot across to the other ship.
At the same time McCullough knew that he must guard against a too sudden reversal of feeling. One unexpected weakness -- especially in an area so susceptible to misinterpretation as a tone of voice -- did not mean that the colonel was automatically weak, ineffectual and unsuited to wield authority and had, therefore, no right to their obedience.
McCullough worried about the colonel all the way to their next point of entry.
This time they stayed only a few minutes in the lock chamber and did not go into the corridor at all. Access to the space between outer and inner hulls was by a simple, unpressurized sliding door, and the air on the other side of it was at corridor pressure. Masses of cable conduits, plumbing and enigmatic cabinets sprouted among a forest of girders on all sides, except where a narrow ladder of netting stretched forward through a tunnel cleared in the metallic jungle. At the other end of the ladder the colonel's spotlight showed the entrance, if their calculations were correct, to one of the blisters.
"Use our own lighting," Morrison said, "and don't wander away from the net. We might accidentally short-circuit something and kill ourselves."
"I don't think so, sir," said Berryman. "The cables all seem to be well insulated."
"I agree," said Hollis, "but we should examine the markings on cables entering the blister to help us separate lighting and instrumentation circuits from power lines."
"Be careful anyway!" said the colonel sharply. "Drew, guard the lock chamber. The rest of you follow me."
Two days ago Berryman might have argued against the colonel like that, McCullough thought, but not Hollis.
The atmosphere remained tense until they entered the blister through an airlock. Inside they found no atmosphere at all. This did not surprise Hollis, who said that he had expected the generators to operate in a vacuum. A few minutes later they discovered that the vacuum was maintained by having the blister open to space, although the openings in the transparent canopy were too narrow to allow passage to a man or, McCullough suspected, an alien. Sunlight flooded through the transparent plastic, throwing dazzling highlights off the bare metal and pale blue ceramics all around them. The two P-ships were clearly visible in the black sky and the canopy was no barrier to communications.
"There are bare power lines in this room," said the colonel stiffly, "so be careful."
"Yes, sir," said Hollis quickly. "But I don't think there will be any danger from them -- the generator isn't switched on. At the same time, it will take weeks to study this place properly and I should like to make absolutely sure of our safety while doing so."
His idea was to short the power lines where they entered the blister. He was fairly sure that the generator's design incorporated protective fusing and similar fail-safe devices so that the valuable generator itself would not be destroyed. If he was building the thing, that was how Hollis would do it. There was perhaps no need for him to point out that this intricate piece of equipment was not a crudely built structure -- it looked as if it had been put together by watchmakers.
It was also possible that the generator would not operate if foreign bodies -- themselves -- were present in the blister. At the same time Hollis said he would feel much more comfortable investigating the place when he was less likely at any moment to be struck by alien lightning.
"You're the physicist," said the colonel. "But it occurs to me that spiking one of their generators will make them feel annoyed. Even more annoyed than slamming an airlock door!"
Instead of netting, a rigid plastic ladder arrangement curved around and through the masses of equipment projecting into the blister, twisting and widening out into an outsize tennis racket shape where it was obvious that more than one alien was meant to work on it. Hollis did not talk during the investigation except for the single occasion when he told McCullough with great fervor that his camera contained the most valuable pictures ever taken.
But McCullough was only half listening to him. He had the feeling that they were all being too enthusiastic, not worrying nearly enough about the people of the Ship and what they would think of all this and generally tending to forget where they were. Maybe they wanted to forget where they were, of course, and the enthusiasm and lack of proper thought were aids to accomplishing this, but McCullo
ugh had the awful feeling that they should all stop and have a good, long think.
He wished Morrison would take a firm grip on the situation and make them stop and think!
The colonel's last remark had brought back to his mind the name of the old-time author responsible for a story called 'First Contact.' He had also written one entitled 'The Ethical Equations' and during the trip out, they had talked over these and a great many other fictional first contacts -- science fiction data being the only kind available to them -- and the ethical equations had been very thoroughly discussed.
They had all gained, McCullough now realized, much comfort from them.
In substance the equations stated that if one did a person or an alien a good turn, an equal reward would ultimately be forthcoming, and that the same would apply if someone did something wrong. Eventually an exact balance of punishment or reward would occur. Assuming then that the crew of the alien Ship did, after their own fashion, subscribe to this ethic, what had the human boarding party done that was inherently, basically wrong?
They were guilty of blundering into a situation which they did not understand. They had damaged alien property and they were guilty of trespass. Their intentions had not been evil, of course, but that fact would not be apparent to the aliens. However, an intelligent extraterrestrial species capable of crossing interstellar space should possess enough understanding or empathy to credit another intelligent species with the normal amount of scientific curiosity, and the sins of trespass and minor property damage were venial to say the least.
But in the deeper recesses of his brain, in the levels of mind which operated on hunches and guesswork and insufficient data, McCullough refused to be reassured or even comforted. To the contrary, his fear mounted steadily with every hour that passed. And when Walter's voice sounded suddenly in his 'phones he started so violently that he almost lost his camera.
"Sir!" said the pilot. "Drew reports activity in the corridor outside his position. Five Type Twos along the corridor in the direction of your blister. He had the lock chamber lights switched on and saw them clearly, though they didn't see him."
"Everybody out!" said the colonel. "Hurry it up! We'll go back the way we came, avoiding the corridor. I -- I don't think we should attempt a formal contact just yet . . ."
"He also says there is something like a Type One in the interhull space, clinging to the netting."
"We'll ignore it," said Morrison, "and hope it does the same. Hollis, move!"
They went through the blister lock and along the net, with Morrison leading, Hollis and McCullough facing each other on opposite sides of the netting and Berryman bringing up the rear. They pulled themselves hand over hand toward Drew and the opened lock chamber while their eyes searched the dark spaces between the cabinets and masses of plumbing on all sides of them.
"Doctor!"
Morrison's spotlight had picked out a small, bristling alien, something like a Siamese twin porcupine, which was flip-flopping along the net away from them. McCullough still could not see what it used for hands.
"Got it," he said, replacing his camera and hurrying on.
Drew had taken up a classic defensive position outside the open door, crouching with one leg hooked into the net to steady himself. The haft of his ski stick was wedged against the wall plating with the business end pointing back the way they had come. A little self-consciously, Morrison took up a similar position on the other side of the opening and waved the others through.
McCullough entered first, then Hollis. They turned to assist Berryman then, and had a hand under each armpit when it happened.
His radio went into a howl of oscillation as four voices tried to use it at the same time, and McCullough saw aliens swarming toward them out of the dark spaces between the supposedly solid masses of equipment. Morrison and Drew he could not see at all. The colonel had lost his spotlight, and Berryman was being pulled away from them.
One of the aliens had anchored itself to the combing with two of its tentacles while the other two were wrapped around the pilot's feet. Another e-t had swarmed onto his back, its sting jabbing furiously -- McCullough could hear it clanking against Berryman's air tanks. He knew that it had only to shift its position by a few inches for the pilot to be very horribly dead.
chapter eleven
For several seconds McCullough could do nothing except stare in fascination at the colonel's spotlight as it was sent spinning to and fro by the struggling, colliding bodies around the entrance. Lit by that wildly rotating beam, the scene took on the flickering, unreal quality of an old-time silent film. The spotlight was blinding and confusing the men as much as the aliens, because it was some time before McCullough realized that Berryman had freed one foot and was using it to kick at the tentacle holding the other -- he had been viewing the operation as a series of disconnected stills.
Hollis was mouthing at him -- the suit radio still emitted a constant howl of oscillation because too many people were trying to use it at the same time -- and pointing at the wall net. The physicist was on his knees beside the sliding door and had worked his feet and lower legs between the net and the wall. McCullough got the idea and did the same, and together they took a firm, two-handed grip on each of Berryman's arms and pulled hard.
Berryman came free of the first alien so suddenly that his visor cracked against the edge of the opening and the force of the pull sent him shooting past so quickly that they had to grab his feet. The second alien was still clinging to his back, still stabbing at his air tanks.
A pair of legs were coming through the opening. McCullough gave one of them a tug to help whoever it was on their way. There were long tears in the fabric covering one leg and blood was oozing out of one of them.
The constant howling made it difficult to think.
They pulled Berryman down between them, hooked his legs into the netting, then concentrated their efforts on the alien clinging to his back. Its tentacles were still wrapped tightly around the pilot's chest, and Hollis pushed the butt of a ski stick between the alien's underbelly and Berryman's back and tried to lever it away. The alien jerked violently -- Hollis must have prodded a sensitive area -- but did not let go. Then McCullough discovered the answer. If they reached under Berryman's chest and gripped the tentacles by their tips, they could be peeled back relatively easily.
There was a muffled clang. McCullough looked round quickly and saw that everyone was inside. Drew was slotting his weapon into the piping which ran along both sides of the sliding door and through the ring handle so as to form a bar. Possibly the aliens could open it, but not without tearing out a chunk of their hydraulic system.
The howling in his earphones was beginning to break into fragments of words and sentences.
". . . My suit's torn. I'm losing air . . . Get it off me! Get it off . . . Shut up, all of you, and . . . Stop it wriggling or it will stab . . . My leg, dammit, where's the doctor? Off your radio and open your visors . . . Quiet, and open your helmets . . . !"
McCullough kept quiet as ordered, realizing suddenly that he himself had been contributing as much as everyone else to the uproar. But he did not open his visors because his hands were full of alien tentacles.
For the few minutes it took to pull the twisting, heaving body off Berryman's back, McCullough had a really close look at the alien. There was a shallow recess between the roots of its tentacles, set so low as to be almost on the edge of its underbelly, and in it there was the soft, wet gleam of something which could only be an eye. The opening and closing mechanism seemed to be a double-lid arrangement operating vertically rather than horizontally and the eye was quite definitely looking at him. The ends of its tentacles quivered as they tried to pull away, and for some odd reason McCullough was reminded of the big, stupid, friendly dog he had had once and of the time he had tried to teach it to shake hands.
But this creature certainly was not friendly -- at least, not as human beings understood the word -- and neither was it stupid. Unless . . .
<
br /> He was unable to finish the thought because Berryman had wriggled from beneath the alien and the creature was bouncing up and down between them as it tried furiously to curl and then uncurl its tentacles. Berryman snatched a weapon which was floating nearby and slid it under the being. He pushed it away as Hollis and McCullough let go and the alien went spinning helplessly into the center of the chamber.
