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Aliens (Version 2)-Murray Leinster · 4 Science Fiction Stories by Mack Reynolds

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: PART ONE At zero-four hours, ten minutes ship-time, the Nicola
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: was well inside the Thetagesol solar system. She had previously
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: secured excellent evidence that this was not the home of
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: the plumy civilization. There was no tuned radiation, there was
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: no evidence of interplanetary travel, rockets would be more than obvious,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: and a magnetronic drive had a highly characteristic radiation pattern
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: So the real purpose of the Nicola's voyage would not
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: be accomplished here. She wouldn't find out where the plumies
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: came from. There might, though, be one or more of
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: those singular conical hollow-topped cairns sheltering silicon-bronze plates, which constituted
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the evidence that plumies existed. The Nicola went sunward toward
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the inner planets to see. Such cairns had been found
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: on conspicuous landmarks on oxygen-type planets, over a range of
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: some twelve hundred light years. By the vegetation about them
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: some were nearly a century old. On the same evidence
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: others had been erected only months or weeks or even
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: days before a human space survey ship arrived to discover them.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: And the situation was unpromising. It wasn't likely that the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: galaxy was big enough to hold two races of rational
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: beings capable of space travel. Back on ancient Earth a
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: planet had been too small to hold two races with
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: tools and fire. Historically that problem was settled when Homo
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: sapiens exterminated Homo netherlandis. It appeared that the same situation
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: had arisen in space. There were humans and there were plumies.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Both had interstellar ships. To humans the fact was alarming.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: The need for knowledge and the danger that plumies might
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: know more first, and thereby be able to exterminate humanity,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: was appalling. Therefore the Nicola. She drove on sunward. She
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: had left one frozen outer planet far behind. She had
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: crossed the orbits of three others. The last of these
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: was a gas giant with innumerable moonlets revolving about it.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: It was now some thirty millions of miles back and
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: twenty to one side. The sun, ahead, flared and flamed
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: in emptiness against that expanse of tinted stars. John Baird
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: worked steadily in the Nicola's radar room. He was one
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: of those who hoped that the Plumies would not prove
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: to be the natural enemies of mankind. Now it looked
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: like this ship wouldn't find out in this solar system.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: There were plenty of other ships on the hunt. From
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: here on it looked like routine to the next unvisited
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: family of planets. But meanwhile he worked. Opposite him Diane
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Holt worked aesthetically, her dark head bent intently over a
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: radar graph in formation. The immediate job was the completion
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: of a map of the meteor swarms following cometary orbits
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: about this sun. They interlaced emptiness with hazard to navigation,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: and nobody would try to drive through a solar system
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: without such a map. Elsewhere in the ship everything was normal.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: The engine-room was a place of stillness and peace, save
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: for the almost inaudible hum of the drive, running at
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: about half a million gauss flux density. The skipper did
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: whatever skippers do when they are invisible to their subordinates.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: The weapons officer Tain thought appropriate thoughts. In the navigation
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: room the second officer conscientiously glanced at each separate instrument
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: at least once in each five minutes, and then carefully
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: surveyed all the screens showing space outside the ship. The
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: stewards disposed of the debris of the last meal, and
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: began to get ready for the next. In the crew's
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: quarters those off duty read or worked at Scrimshaw, or
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: simply and contentedly loafed. Diane handed over the transparent radar
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: graph to be fitted into the three-dimensional map in the making.'
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: There' s a lump of stuff here,' she said interestedly.' It
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: could be the comet that once followed this orbit, now
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: so old it's lost all its gases and isn't a
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: comet any longer.' At this instant, which was zero-four hours,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: twenty-five minutes ship-time, the alarm bell rang. It clanged stridently
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: over Baird's head. Repeater gongs sounded all throughout the ship,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: and there was a scurrying and a closing of doors.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: The alarm gong could mean only one thing. It made
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: one's breath come faster, or one's hair stand on end,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: according to temperament. The skipper's face appeared on the direct-line
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: screen from the navigation room.' Bloomies?' he demanded harshly.' Mr. Baird, Bloomies?'
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Baird's hands were already flipping switches and plugging the radar
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: room apparatus into a new setup.' There' s a contact, sir,'
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: he said curtly.' No, there was a contact. It's broken now.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Something detected us. We picked up a radar pulse. One.'
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: The word one meant much. A radar system that could
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: get adequate information from a single pulse was not the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: work of amateurs. It was the product of a very
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: highly developed technology. Setting all equipment to full globular scanning,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Baird felt a certain crawling sensation at the back of
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: his neck. He'd been mapping within a narrow range above
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and below the line of this system's eclipse. A lot
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: could have happened outside the area he'd had under long-distance scanning.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: But seconds passed. They seemed like years. The all-globe scanning
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: covered every direction out from the Nicola. Nothing appeared which
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: had not been reported before. The gas giant planted far behind,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: and the only inner one on this side of the
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: sun would return their pulses only after minutes. Meanwhile the
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: radars reported very faithfully, but they only repeated previous reports.'
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: No new object within half a million miles,' said Baird
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: after a suitable interval. Presently he added, Nothing new within
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: three-quarter million miles. Then, Nothing new within a million miles.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: The skipper said bitingly, Then you'd better check on objects
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: that are not new. He turned aside and his voice
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: came more faintly as he spoke into another microphone. Mr. Tain,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: arm all rockets and have your tube crew stand by
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: in combat readiness. Engine room. Prepare drive for emergency maneuvers.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Damage control parties. Put on pressure suits and take combat
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: posts with equipment. His voice rose again in volume.' Mr. Baird,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: how about observed objects?' Dane murmured. Baird said briefly,' Only
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: one suspicious object, sir, and that shouldn't be suspicious. We're
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: sending an information beam at something we'd classed as a
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: burned-out comet.' Pulse going out now, sir. Dane had the
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: distant information transmitter aimed at what she said might be
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: a dead comet. Baird pressed the button. An extraordinary complex
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: of information-seeking frequencies and forms sprang into being and leaped
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: across emptiness. There were microwaves of strictly standard amplitude for
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: measurement standards. There were frequencies of other values which would
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: be selectively absorbed by this material and that. There were
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: laterally and circularly polarized beams. When they bounced back they
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: would bring a surprising amount of information. They returned. They
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: did bring back news. The thing that had registered as
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: a larger lump in a meteor swarm was not a
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: meteor at all. It returned four different frequencies with a
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: relative intensity pattern which said that they'd been reflected by bronze,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: probably silicon bronze. The polarized beams came back depolarized, of course,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: but with phase changes which said the reflector had a rounded,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: regular form. There was a smooth hull of silicon bronze
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: out yonder. There was other data.' It will be a
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: plumy ship, sir,' said Baird very steadily. At a guess
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: they picked up our mapping beam and shot a single
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: pulse at us to find out who and what we were.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: For another guess, by now they've picked up and analyzed
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: our information beam and know what we've found out about them.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: The skipper scowled.' How many of them?' he demanded.' Have
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: we run into a fleet?'' I' ll check, sir,' said Baird.'
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: We picked up no tuned radiation from outer space, sir,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: but it could be that they picked us up when
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: we came out of overdrive and stopped all their transmissions
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: until they had us in a trap. Find out how
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: many there are, barked the skipper. Make it quick. Report
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: additional data instantly. His screen clicked off. Diane, more than
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: a little pale, worked swiftly to plug the radar-room equipment
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: into a highly specialized pattern. The Nicola was very well equipped, radar-wise.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: She'd been a Type G-8 survey ship, and on her
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: last stay in port she'd been rebuilt especially to hunt
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: for and make contact with plumies. Since the discovery of
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: their existence, that was the most urgent business of the
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: space survey. It might well be the most important business
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: of the human race, on which its survival or destruction
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: would depend. Other remodeled ships had gone out before the Nicola,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: and others would follow until the problem was solved. Meanwhile,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: the Nicola's twenty-four rocket tubes and stepped-up drive and computer-type
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: radar system equipped her for plumy hunting as well as
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: any human ship could be. Still, if she'd been lured
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: deep into the home system of the plumies, the prospects
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: were not good. The new setup began its operation, instantly
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the last contact closed. The three-dimensional map served as a
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: matrix to control it. The information beam projector swung and
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: flung out its bundle of oscillations. It swung and flashed,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and swung and flashed. It had to examine every relatively
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: nearby object for a constitution of silicon bronze and a
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: rounded shape. The nearest objects had to be examined first.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Speed was essential, but three-dimensional scanning takes time even at
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: some hundreds of pulses per minute. Nevertheless, the information came in.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: No other silicon bronze object within a quarter-million miles, within
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: a half-million, a million, million and a half two million
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: baird called the navigation room looks like a single plumy
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: ship sir he reported at least there's one ship which
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: is nearest by a very long way ha grunted the
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: skipper then we'll pay him a visit keep an open
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: line mr baird his voice changed mr taine report here
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: at once to plan tactics Baird shook his head to himself.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: The Nicola's orders were to make contact without discovery, if
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: such a thing were possible. The ideal would be a
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: plumie ship, or the plumie civilization itself, located and subject
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: to complete and overwhelming envelopment by human ships, before the
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: plumies knew they'd been discovered. And this would be the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: human ideal, because humans have always had to consider that
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: a stranger might be hostile, until he'd proven otherwise. Such
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: a viewpoint would not be optimism, but caution. Yet caution
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: was necessary. It was because the survey brass felt the
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: need to prepare for every unfavorable eventuality that Tain had
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: been chosen as weapons officer of the Nicola. His choice
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: had been deliberate, because he was a xenophobe. He had
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: been a problem personality all his life. He had a
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: seemingly congenital fear and hatred of strangers, which in mild
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: cases is common enough, but Tain could not be cured
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: without a complete breakdown of personality. He could not serve
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: on a ship with a multiracial crew, because he was
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: invincibly suspicious of, and hostile to, all but his own
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: small breed. Yet he seemed ideal for weapons officer on
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: the Nicola, provided he never commanded the ship. because if
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: the plumies were hostile a well-adjusted normal man would never
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: think as much like them as a tain. He was
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: capable of the kind of thinking plumies might practice if
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: they were xenophobes themselves. But to Baird so extreme a
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: precaution as a known psychopathic condition in an officer was
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: less than wholly justified. It was by no means certain
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: that the plumies would instinctively be hostile. Suspicious, yes. Cautious, certainly.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: But the only fact known about the plumy civilization came
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: from the currents and silicon-bronze inscribed tablets they left on
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: oxygen-type worlds over a twelve-hundred-light-year range in space. And the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: only thing to be deuced about the plumies themselves came
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: from the decorative, formalized symbols like feathery plumes which were
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: found on all their bronze tablets. The name plumies came
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: from that symbol. Now, though, Tain was called to the
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: navigation room to confer on tactics. The Nicola swerved and
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: drove toward the object Baird identified as a plumy ship.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: This was at zero five hours ten minutes ship time.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: The human ship had a definite velocity sunward, of course.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: The plumy ship had been concealed by the meteor swarm
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: of a totally unknown comet. It was an excellent way
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: to avoid observations. On the other hand, the Nicola had
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: been mapping, which was bound to attract attention. Now each
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: ship knew of the other's existence. Since the Nicola had
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: been detected, she had to carry out orders and attempt
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: a contact to gather information. Baird verified that the Nicola's
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: course was exact for interception at her full drive speed.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: He said in a flat voice,' I wonder how the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: plummies will interpret this change of course.' They know we're
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: aware they're not a meteorite, but charging at them without
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: even trying to communicate could look ominous. We could be
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: stupid or too arrogant to think of anything but a fight.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: He pressed the skipper's call and said evenly, Sir, I
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: request permission to attempt to communicate with the plumy ship.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: We're ordered to try to make friends if we know
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: we've been spotted. Tain had evidently just reached the navigation rooms.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: His voice snapped from the speaker.' I advise against that, sir.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: No use letting them guess our level of technology,' Baird
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: said coldly.' They' ve a good idea already. We beamed them
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: for data.' There was silence, with only the very faint
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: humming sound which was natural in the ship in motion.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: It would be deadly to the nerves if there were
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: absolute silence. The skipper grumbled.' Request some advice.' Dammit, Mr. Baird,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: you might wait for orders. But I was about to
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: ask you to try to make contact through signals. Do so.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: His speaker clicked off. Baird said, It's in our laps, Diane,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: and yet we have to follow orders. Send the first roll.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Diane had a tape threaded into a transmitter. It began
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: to unroll through a pickup head. She put on headphones.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: The tape began to transmit toward the plumie. Back at
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: base it had been reasoned that a pattern of clickings,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: plainly artificial and plainly stating facts known to both races,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: would be the most reasonable way to attempt to open contact.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: The tape sent a series of cardinal numbers, one to five,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: then an addition table from one plus one to five
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: plus five, then a multiplication table up to five times five,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: It was not startlingly intellectual information to be sent out
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: in tiny clicks, ranging up and down the radio spectrum,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: but it was orders. Baird sat with compressed lips. Dane
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: listened for a repetition of any of the transmitted signals
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: sent back by the plumie. The speakers about the radar
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: room murmured the orders given through all the ship. Radar
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: had to be informed of all orders and activity so
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: it could check their results outside the ship. So Baird
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: heard the orders for the engine room to be sealed
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: up and the duty force to get into pressure suits,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: in case the Nikola fought and was hulled. Damage control
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: parties reported themselves on post in suits with equipment ready.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Then Tain's voice snapped. Rocket crews, arm even-numbered rockets with
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: chemical-explosive warheads. Leave odd-numbered rockets armed with atomics. Report back.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Dane strained her ears for a possible retransmission of the
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Nicola's signals, which would indicate the plumie's willingness to try conversation.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: But she suddenly raised her hand and pointed to the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: radar-graph instrument. It repeated the position of dots which were stray,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: meteoric matter in the space between worlds in this system.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: What had been a spot, the plumie ship, was now
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: a line of dots. Baird pressed the buttons.' Radar reporting,'
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: he said curtly.' The Plumie ship is heading for us.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I'll have relative velocity in ten seconds.' He heard the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: skipper swear. Ten seconds later the Doppler measurement became possible.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: It said the Plumie plunged toward the Nicola at miles
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: per second. In half a minute it was tens of
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: miles per second. There was no retransmission of signals. The
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: plumy ship had found itself discovered. Apparently it considered itself attacked.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: It flung itself into a headlong dash for the Nicola.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Time passed, interminable time. The sun flared and flamed and
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: writhed in emptiness. The great gas-giant planet rolled through space
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: in splendid state, its moonlets spinning gracefully about its bulk.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: The oxygen-atmosphere planet to sunward was visible only as a crescent,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: but the mottlings on its lighted part changed as it revolved,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: seas and islands and continents receiving the sunlight as it turned.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Meteor swarms, so dense in appearance on a radar screen,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: yet so tenuous in reality, floated in their appointed orbits
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: with a seeming vast leisure. The feel of slowness was
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: actually the result of distance. Men have always acted upon
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: things close by. Battles have always been fought within eye-range, anyhow.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: But it was actually zero six hours thirty-five minutes ship-time
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: before the two spacecraft sighted each other, more than two
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: hours after they plunged toward a rendezvous. The plumy ship
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: was a bright golden dot at first. It decelerated swiftly.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: In minutes it was a rounded end on disk. Then
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: it swerved lightly, and presented an elliptical broadside to the Nicola.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: The Nicola was in full deceleration, too, by then. The
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: two ships came very nearly to a stop with relation
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: to each other when they were hardly twenty miles apart,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: which meant great daring on both sides. Baird heard the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: skipper grumbling.' Damn cocky!' he roared suddenly.' Mr. Baird, how've
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: you made out in communication with him?'' Not at all, sir,'
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: said Baird grimly.' They don't reply.' He knew from Diane's
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: expression that there was no sound in the headphones except
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the frying noise all main-sequence stars give out, and the
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: infrequent thumping noises that come from gas-giant planets' lower atmospheres.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: and the Jansky radiation hiss which comes from everywhere. The
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: skipper swore. The plumy ship lay broadside, too, less than
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a score of miles away. It shone in the sunlight.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: It acted with extraordinary confidence. It was as if it
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: dared the Nikola to open fire. Tain's voice came out
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: of a speaker, harsh and angry.' Even- numbered tubes, prepare to
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: fire on command!' Nothing happened. The two ships floated sunward together,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: neither approaching nor retreating. But with every second the need
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: for action of some sort increased.' Mr. Baird,' barked the skipper,'
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: this is ridiculous. There must be some way to communicate.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: We can't sit here glaring at each other forever. Raise them.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Get some sort of acknowledgment.' I'm trying, said Baird bitterly,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: according to orders. But he disagreed with those orders. It
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: was official theory that arithmetic values repeated in proper order
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: would be the way to open conversation. The assumption was
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: that any rational creature would grasp the idea that orderly
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: signals were rational attempts to open communication. But it had
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: occurred to Baird that a plumie might not see this point.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Perception of order is not necessarily perception of information. In fact,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: quite the contrary. A message is a disturbance of order.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: A microphone does not transmit a message when it sends
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: an unvarying tone. A message has to be unpredictable or
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: it conveys no message. Orderly clicks, even if overheard, might
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: seem to plummies the result of methodically operating machinery. A
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: race capable of interstellar flight was not likely to be
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: interested or thrilled by exercises a human child goes through
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: in kindergarten. They simply wouldn't seem meaningful at all. But
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: before he could ask permission to attempt to make talk
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: in a more sophisticated fashion, voices exclaimed all over the ship.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: They came blurringly to the loudspeakers.' What was that? What's
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: he doing? Spinning like—' From every place where there was
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: a vision-plate on the Nikola. Men watched the plumy ship
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: and babbled. This was at 06 hours 50 minutes ship time.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: End of Part 1 Part 2 of The Aliens by
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Murray Leinster This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Part 2 The elliptical golden object darted into swift and
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: eccentric motion. Lacking an object of known size for comparison
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: there was no scale. The golden ship might have been
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the size of an autumn leaf, and in fact its
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: maneuvers suggested the heedless tumblings and scurrying of falling foliage.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: It fluttered in swift turns and somersaults and spinnings. There
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: were weavings like the purposeful feints of boxers not yet
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: come to battle. There were indescribably graceful swoops and loops
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: and curving dashes, like some preposterous dance in emptiness. Tain's
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: voice crashed out of a speaker.' All even-numbered rockets!' he barked.' Fire!'
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: The skipper roared a countermand, but too late. The crunching,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: grunting sounds of rockets leaving their launching tubes came before
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: his first syllable was complete. Then—' There was silence while
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the skipper gathered breath for a masterpiece of profanity. But
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Tain snapped. That dance was a sneak-up. The plumie came
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: four miles nearer while we watched. Baird jerked his eyes
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: from watching the plumie. He looked at the master radar.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: It was faintly blurred with the fading lines of past gyrations,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: but the golden ship was much nearer the Nicola than
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: it had been.' Radar reporting,' said Baird sickishly.' Mr. Tain
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: is correct. The plumy ship did approach us while it danced.'
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Tain's voice snarled.' Reload even numbers with chemical explosive warheads.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Then remove atomics from odd numbers and replace with chemicals.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: The range is too short for atomics.' Baird felt curiously
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: divided in his own mind. He disliked Tain very much.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Tain was arrogant and suspicious and intolerant even on the Nicola.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: But Tain had been right twice now. The plumy ship
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: had crept closer by pure trickery, and it was right
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: to remove atomic warheads from the rockets. They had a
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: pure blast radius of ten miles. To destroy the plumy
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: ship within twice that would endanger the Nicola, and leave
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: nothing of the plumy to examine afterward. The plumy ship
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: must have seen the rocket flares, but it continued to dance,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: coming nearer and ever nearer in seemingly heedless and purposeless
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: plungings and spinnings in star-speckled space. But suddenly there were racing,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: rushing trails of swirling vapor. Half the Nicola's port broadside
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: plunged toward the golden ship. The fraction of a second
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: later the starboard half-dozen chemical-explosive rockets swung furiously around the
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: ship's hull and streaked after their brothers. They moved in
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: utterly silent, straight-lined, ravening ferocity toward their target. Baird thought
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: irrelevantly of the vapor trails of an atmosphere liner in
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the planet's upper air. The ruled-line straightness of the first
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: six rockets' course abruptly broke. One of them veered crazily
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: out of control. It shifted to an almost right-angled course.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: A second swung wildly to the left. A third and
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: fourth and fifth, the sixth of the first-line rockets, made
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: a great sweeping turn and came hurtling back toward the Nicola.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: It was like a nightmare. Lunatic, erratic lines of sunlit
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: vapor eeled before the background of all the stars in creation.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Then the second half-dozen rockets broke ranks, as insanely and
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: irremediably as the first. Tain's voice screamed out of a speaker,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: hysterical with fury. Detonate! Detonate! They've taken over the rockets
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: and are throwing them back at us! Detonate all rockets!
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: The heavens seemed streaked and laced with lines of expanding smoke.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: But now one plunging line erupted at its tip. A
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: swelling globe of smoke marked its end. Another blew up,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: and another. The Nicola's rockets faithfully blew themselves to bits
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: on command from the Nicola's own weapons control. There was
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: nothing else to be done with them. They'd been taken
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: over in flight. They'd been turned and headed back toward
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: their source. They'd have blasted the Nicola to bits but
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: for their premature explosions. There was a peculiar stunned hush
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: all through the Nicola. The only sound that came out
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: of any speaker in the radar room was Tain's voice,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: high-pitched and raging, mouthing unspeakable hatred for the plumies whom
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: no human being had yet seen. Baird sat tense in
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the frustrated and deliberate composure of the man who can
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: only be of use while he is sitting still and
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: keeping his head. The vision screen was now a blur
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: of writhing mist, lighted by the sun and torn at
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: by emptiness. There was luminosity where the ships had encountered
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: each other. It was sunshine upon thin smoke. It was
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: like the insanely enlarging head of a newborn comet. whose
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: tail would be formed presently by light pressure. The plumy
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: ship was almost invisible behind the unsubstantial stuff. But Baird
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: regarded his radar screens. Microwaves penetrated the mists of rapidly
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: ionizing gases.' Radar to navigation,' he said sharply.' The plumy
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: ship is still approaching, dancing as before.' The skipper said,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: with enormous calm,' Any other plumy ships, Mr. Baird?' Diane interposed.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: No sign anywhere. I've been watching. This seems to be
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: the only ship within radar range. We've time to settle
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: with it, then, said the skipper. Mr. Tain, the plumie
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: ship is still approaching. Baird found himself hating the plumies.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: It was not only that humankind was showing up rather
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: badly at the moment. It was that the plumie ship
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: had refused contact and forced a fight. It was that
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: if the Nicola were destroyed the plumie would carry news
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: of the existence of humanity and of the tactics which
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: worked to defeat them. The plumies could prepare an irresistible fleet.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Humanity could be doomed. But he overheard himself saying, bitterly,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I wish I'd known this was coming, Diane. I wouldn't
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: have resolved to be strictly official only until we got
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: back to base. Her eyes widened. She looked startled. Then
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: she softened.' If you mean that, I wish so, too.''
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: It looks like they've got us,' he admitted unhappily.' If
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: they can take our rockets away from us—' Then his
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: voice stopped. He said,' Hold everything, and press the navigation-room button.'
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: He snapped.' Radar to navigation. It appears to take the
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: plumies several seconds to take over a rocket.' They have
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: to aim something, a presser or tractor beam most likely,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: and pick off each rocket separately. Nearly forty seconds was
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: consumed in taking over all twelve of our rockets. At
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: shorter range, with less time available, a rocket might get through.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: The skipper swore briefly, then,' Mr. Tain, when the plumies
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: are near enough our rockets may strike before they can
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: be taken over. You follow?' Baird heard Tain's shrill-voiced acknowledgment.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: in the form of practically chattered orders to his rocket-tube crews.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Baird listened, checking the orders against what the situation was
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: as the radar saw it. Haynes' voice was almost unhuman,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: so filled with frantic rage that it cracked as he spoke.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: But the problem at hand was the fulfillment of all
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: his psychopathic urges. He commanded the starboard-side rocket battery to
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: await special orders. Meanwhile the port-side battery would fire two
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: rockets on wildly divergent courses, curving to join at the
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: plumy ship. They'd be seized. They were to be detonated,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: and another port-side rocket fired instantly, followed by a second
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: hidden in the rocket tail the first would leave behind,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: then the starboard side.' I' m afraid Tain's our only chance,'
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: said Baird reluctantly.' If he wins we'll have time to talk,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: as other people do who like each other.' if it
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: doesn't work. Diane said quietly,' Anyhow, I'm glad you wanted
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: me to know. I wanted you to know, too.' She
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: smiled at him yearningly. There was the crump, crump of
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: two rockets going out together. Then the radar told what happened.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: The plumy ship was no more than six miles away,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: dancing somehow deftly in the light of a yellow sun,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: with all the cosmos spread out as shining pinpoints of
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: colored light behind it. The radar reported the dash and
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: the death of the two rockets, after their struggle with
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: invisible things that gripped them. They died when they headed
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: reluctantly back to the Nicola, and detonated two miles from
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: their parent ship. The skipper's voice came. Mr. Tain, after
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: your next salvo I shall head for the plumie at
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: full drive to cut down the distance and the time
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: they have to work in. Be ready. The rocket tubes
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: went crump, crump again, with a fifth of a second interval.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: The radar showed two tiny specks speeding through space toward
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: the weaving, shifting speck which was the plumie. Outside, in emptiness,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: there was a filmy haze. It was the rocket fumes
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: and exploding gases spreading with incredible speed. It was thin
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: as gossamer. The plumy ship undoubtedly spotted the rockets, but
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: it did not try to turn them. It somehow seized
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: them and deflected them, and darted past them toward the Nicola.'
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: They see the trick,' said Diane, dry-throated.' If they can
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: get in close enough they can turn it against us.'
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: There were noises inside the Nicola now. Payne fairly howled
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: in order. There were yells of defiance and excitement. There
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: were more of those inadequate noises as rockets went out.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Every tube on the starboard side emptied itself in a
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: series of savage grunts, and the Nicola's magnetronic drive roared
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: at full flux density. The two ships were less than
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: a mile apart when the Nicola let go her full
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: double broadside of missiles, and then it seemed that the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: plumy ship was doomed. There were simply too many rockets
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: to be seized and handled before at least one struck.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: But there was a new condition. The plumy ship weaved
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: and dodged its way through them. The new condition was
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: that the rockets were just beginning their run. They had
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: not achieved the terrific velocity that would accumulate in ten
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: miles of no gravity. They were new-launched, loggy, clumsy. not
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: the streaking, flashing death and destruction they would become with
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: thirty more seconds of acceleration. So the plumy ship dodged
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: them with a skill and daring past relief. With an
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: incredible agility it got inside them, nearer to the Nicola
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: than they, and then it hurled itself at the human
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: ships as if bent upon a suicidal crash which would
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: destroy both ships together. Baird in the radar room and
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: the skipper in navigation knew that it would plunge brilliantly
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: past at the last instant. And then they knew that
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: it would not, because very suddenly and very abruptly there
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: was something the matter with the plumeyship. The life went
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: out of it, it ceased to accelerate or decelerate, it
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: ceased to steer, it began to turn slowly on an
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: axis somewhere amidships, Its nose swung to one side, with
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: no change in the direction of its motion. It floated onward.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: It was broadside to its line of travel. It continued
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: to turn. It hurtled stern first toward the Nicola. It
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: did not swerve, it did not dance. It was a
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: lifeless hulk, a derelict in space. and it would hit
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the Nicola amidships with no possible result but destruction for
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: both vessels. The Nicola's skipper bellowed orders as if shouting
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: would somehow give them more effect. The magnetotronic drive roared.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: He demanded a miracle of it, and he almost got one.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: The drive strained its thrust members. It hopelessly overloaded its coils.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: The Nicola's cobalt-steel hull became more than saturated with the
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: dry field, and it leaped madly upon an evasion course.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And it very nearly got away. It was swinging clear
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: when the plumy ship drifted within fathoms, it was turning
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: aside when the plumy ship was within yards, and it
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: was almost safe when the golden hull of the plumy,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: shadowed now by the Nicola itself, barely scraped a side keel.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: There was a touch, seemingly deliberate and gentle. But the
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Nicola shuddered horribly. Then the vision screens flared with such
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: a light as might herald the crack of doom. There
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: was a brightness greater than the brilliance of the sun.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: And then there was a wrenching, heaving shock. Then there
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: was blackness. Baird was flung across the radar room, and
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Diane cried out, and he careened against a wall and
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: heard glass shatter. He called, Diane. He clutched crazily at him.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and called her name again. The Nicola's internal gravity was
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: cut off, and his head spun, and he heard collision
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: doors closing everywhere. But before they closed completely he heard
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the rasping sound of giant arcs leaping in the engine room.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Then there was silence.' Diane!' cried Baird fiercely.' Diane!'' I' m here,'
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: she panted.' I' m dizzy, but I think I'm all right.'
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: The battery-powered emergency light came on. It was faint, but
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: he saw her clinging to a bank of instruments where
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: she'd been thrown by the collision. He moved to go
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: to her and found himself floating in mid-air. But he
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: drifted to a side wall and worked his way to her.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: She clung to him, shivering. I think, she said unsteadily,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: that we're going to die, aren't we? We'll see, he
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: told her. Hold on to me. Guided by the emergency light,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: he scrambled to the bank of communicator buttons. What had
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: been the floor was now a side wall. He climbed
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: it and thumbed the navigation room switch. Radar room reporting,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: he said curtly. Power out, gravity off, no reports from
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: outside from power failure. No great physical damage. He began
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: to hear other voices. There had never been an actual
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: space collision in the memory of man, but reports came crisply,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: and the cut-in speakers in the radar room repeated them.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Ship gravity was out all over the ship. Emergency lights
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: were functioning and were all the lights there were. There
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: was a slight unexplained gravity drift toward what had been
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: the ship's port side, but damage control reported no loss
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: of pressure in the Nicola's inner hull, though four areas
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: between inner and outer hulls had lost air pressure to space. Mr. Baird,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: rasped the skipper, we're blind. Forget everything else and give
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: us eyes to see with. We'll try battery power to
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: the vision plates, Baird told Diane. No full resolution, but
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: better than nothing. They worked together, feverishly. They were dizzy.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Something close to nausea came upon them from pure giddiness.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: What had been the floor was now a wall, and
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: they had to climb to reach the instruments that had
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: been on a wall and now were on the ceiling.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: But their weight was ounces only. Baird said abruptly,' I
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: know what's the matter. We're spinning. The whole ship's spinning.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: That's why we're giddy and why we have even a
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: trace of weight. Centrifugal force. Ready for the current?' There
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: was a tiny click, and the battery light dimmed, but
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: a vision screen lighted faintly. The stars it showed were
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: moving specks of light. The sun passed deliberately across the screen.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Baird switched to other outside scanners. There was power for
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: only one screen at a time, but he saw the
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: starkly impossible. He pressed the navigation room button.' Radar room reporting,'
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: he said urgently. The plumy ship is fast to us
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: in contact with our hull. Both ships are spinning together.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: He was trying yet other scanners as he spoke, and
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: now he said,' Got it. There were no lines connecting
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: us to the plumy, but it looks— yes. That flash when
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: the ships came together was a flashover of high potential.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: We're welded to them along twenty feet of our hull.'
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: The skipper,' Damnation!' Any sign of intention to board us?
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Not yet, sir. Tain burst in, his voice high-pitched and
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: thick with hatred. Damage control parties attention! Arm yourselves and
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: assemble at starboard airlock. Rocket crews get into suits and
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: prepare to board this plumbing. Countermand, bellowed the skipper from
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: the speaker beside Baird's ear. Those orders are cancelled. Dammit!
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: If we were successfully boarded we'd blow ourselves to bits.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Those are our orders. Do you think the plumies would
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: let their ship be taken? And wouldn't we blow up
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: with them? Mr. Tain, you will take no offensive action
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: without specific orders. Defensive action is another matter. Mr. Baird,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: I consider this welding business pure accident. No one would
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: be mad enough to plan it. You watch the plumies
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: and keep me informed. His voice ceased, and Baird had
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: again the frustrating duty of remaining still and keeping his
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: head while other men engaged in physical activity. He helped
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Diane to a chair which was fastened to the floor
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: which was now a wall, and she wedged herself fast
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: and began a review of what each of the outside
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: scanners reported. Baird called for more batteries. Power for the
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: radar and visions were more important than anything else just then.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: If there were more plumy ships! Electricians half-floated, half-dragged extra
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: batteries to the radar room. Baird hooked them in. The
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: universe outside the ship again appeared filled with brilliantly colored
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: dots of light which were stars. More satisfying, the globe-scanners
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: again reported no new objects anywhere. Nothing new within a
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: quarter-million miles. A half-million. Later Baird reported,' Radar reports no
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: strange objects within a million miles of the Nicola, sir.''
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Except the ship we're welded to. But you are doing
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: very well. However, microphones say there is movement inside the plumie.'
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Diane beckoned for Baird's attention to a screen which Baird
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: had examined before. Now he stiffened and motioned for her
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: to report.' We' ve a scanner, sir,' said Diane. which faces
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: what looks like a port in the plumy ship. There's
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: a figure at the port. I can't make out details,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: but it's making motions facing us.' Give me the picture,'
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: snapped the skipper. Diane obeyed. It was the merest flip
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: of a switch. Then her eyes went back to the
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: spherical sweep scanners, which reported the bearing and distance to
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: every solid object within their range. She set up two
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: instruments which would measure the angle, bearing, and distance of
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the two planets now on this side of the sun,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the gas giant and the oxygen world to someward. Their
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: orbital speeds and distances were known. The position, course, and
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: speed of the Nicola could be computed from any two
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: observations on them. Diane had returned to the utterly necessary
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: routine of the radar room which was the nerve center
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: of the ship. gathering all information needed for navigation in space.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: The fact that there had been a collision, that the
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Nicola's engines were melted to unlovely scrap, that the plumie
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: ship was now welded irremovably to a side keel, and
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: that a plumie was signaling to humans while both ships
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: were spinning through space toward an unknown destination, these things
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: did not affect the obligations of the radar rooms. Baird
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: got other images of the plumy ship into sharp focus.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: So near the scanners required adjustment for precision.' Take a
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: look at this,' he said wryly. She looked. The view
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: was of the plumy as welded fast to the Nicola.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: The welding was itself an extraordinary result of the plumy's
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: battle tactics. Tractor and presser beams were known to men,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: of course, but human beings used them only under very
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: special conditions. Their operation involved the building up of terrific
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: static charges. Unless a tractor-beam generator could be grounded to
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: the object it was to pull, it tended to emit
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: lightning bolts at unpredictable intervals and in entirely random directions,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: so men didn't use them. Obviously the plumies did. They'd
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: handled the Nikola's rockets with beams which charged the golden
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: ship to billions of volts. and when the silicon-bronze plumie
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: ship touched the cobalt-steel Nicola, why, that charge had to
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: be shared. It must have been the most spectacular of
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: all artificial electric flames. Part of the Nicola's hull was vaporized,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: and undoubtedly part of the plumie, but the unvaporized surfaces
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: were molten and in contact, and they stuck. For a
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: good twenty feet the two ships were united by the
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: most perfect of vacuum wells. The wholly dissimilar hulls formed
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: a space catamaran with a sort of valley between their bulks.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Spinning deliberately, as the united ships did, sometimes the sun
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: shone brightly into that valley, and sometimes it was filled
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: with the blackness of the pit. While Diane looked, a
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: round door revolved in the side of the plumy ship,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: as Diane caught her breath, bared, reported crisply. At his
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: first words, Tain burst into raging commands for men to
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: follow him through the Nicola's airlock and fight a boarding
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: party of plumies in empty space. The skipper very savagely
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: ordered him to be quiet. Only one figure has come out,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: reported Baird. The skipper watched on a vision plate, but
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Baird reported so all the Nicola's company would know. It's small,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: less than five feet. I'll see better in a moment.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Sunlight smote down into the valley between the ships. It's
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: wearing a pressure suit. It seems to be the same
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: material as the ship. It walks on two legs, as
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: we do. It has two arms, or something very similar.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: The helmet of the suit is very high. It looks
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: like the armor knights used to fight in. It's making
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: its way to our airlock. It does not use magnetic-soled shoes.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: It's holding on to lines threaded along the other ship's hull.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: The skipper said curtly, Mr. Baird, I hadn't noticed the
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: absence of magnetic shoes. You seem to have an eye
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: for important items. Report to the airlock in person. Leave
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant Holt to keep an eye on outside objects. Quickly, Mr. Baird.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: Baird laid his hand on Diane's shoulder. She smiled at him.'
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: I' ll watch,' she promised. He went out of the radar room,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: walking on what had been a side wall. The giddiness
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: and dizziness of continued rotation was growing less now. He
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: was getting used to it. But the Nicola seemed strange
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: indeed with the standard up-and-downs. and earth gravity replaced by
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: a vertical which was all askew, and a weight of
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: ounces instead of a hundred and seventy pounds. He reached
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: the airlock just as the skipper arrived. There were others there,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: armed and in pressure suits. The skipper glared about him.'
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: I am in command here,' he said very grimly indeed.' Mr.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: Kane has a special function, but I am in command.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: We and the creatures on the Plumie ship are in
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: a very serious fix. One of them apparently means to
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: come on board. There will be no hostility, no sneering,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: no threatening gestures. This is a parley. You will be careful,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: but you will not be trigger-happy. He glared around again,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: just as the metallic wrapping came upon the Nicola's airlock door.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: The skipper nodded.' Let him in the lock, Mr. Baird.'
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Baird obeyed. The humming of the unlocking system sounded. There
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: were clankings. The outer airlock closed. There was a faint
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: whistling as air went in. The skipper nodded again. Baird
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: opened the inner door. It was zero, eight hours, ten minutes,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: ship time. The plumie stepped confidently out into the top
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: sea-turvy corridors of the Nicola. He was about the size
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: of a ten-year-old human boy. and features which were definitely
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: not grotesque showed through the clear plastic of his helmet.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: His pressure suit was, engineering-wise, a very clean job. His
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: whole appearance was prepossessing. When he spoke, very clear and
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: quite high sounds, soprano sounds, came from a small speaker
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: unit at his shoulder.' For us to talk,' said the
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: skipper heavily,' is pure nonsense. But I take it you've
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: something to say?' The plumie gazed about with an air
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: of lively curiosity. Then he drew out a flat pad
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: with a white surface and sketched swiftly. He offered it
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: to the Nicola's skipper. We want this on record, he growled,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: staring about. Diane's voice said capably from a speaker somewhere nearby, Sir,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: there's a scanner for inspection of objects brought aboard. Hold
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: the plate flat and I'll have a photograph. Right. The
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: skipper said curtly to the plumie, You've drawn our two
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: ships linked as they are. What have you to say
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: about it? He handed back the plate. The plumie pressed
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: a stud, and it was blank again. He sketched and
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: offered it once more.' H' m,' said the skipper.' You can't
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: use your drawing while we're glued together, eh? Well?' The
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: plumie reached up and added lines to the drawing.' So,'
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: rumbled the skipper, inspecting the additions, You say it's up
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: to us to use our drive for both ships? he
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: growled approvingly. You consider there's a truce. You must, because
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: we're both in the same fix, and not a nice
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: one either. True enough. We can't fight each other without
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: committing suicide now. But we haven't any drive left. We're
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: a derelict. How am I going to say that, if
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: I decide to? Baird could see the lines on the
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: plate from the angle at which the skipper held it.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: He said, Sir, we've been mapping up in the radar room.
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Those last lines are map coordinates. A separate sketch, sir.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: I think he's saying that the two ships together are
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: on a falling course toward the sun. But we have
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: to do something or both vessels will fall into it.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: We should be able to check this, sir. Ha! growled
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: the skipper. That's all we need. Absolutely all we need.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: To come here, get into a crazy fight, have our
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: drive melt to scrap, get crazily welded to a plumy ship,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: and then for both of us to fry together. We
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: don't need anything more than that. Diane's voice came on
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: the speaker.' Sir, the last radar fixes on the planet
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: in range gave us a course directly toward the sun.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: I'll repeat the observations.' The skipper growled. Tain thrust himself forward.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: He snarled. Why doesn't this plumie take off its helmet?
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: It lands on oxygen planets. Does it think it's too
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: good to breathe our air? Baird caught the plumie's eye.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: He made a gesture suggesting the removal of the space helmet.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: The plumie gestured and returned to a tiny vent in
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: the suit. He opened something and gas whistled out. He
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: cut it off. The question of why he did not
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: open or remove his helmet was answered. The atmosphere he
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: breathed would not do men any good, nor would theirs
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: do him any good either. Tain said suspiciously,' How do
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: we know he's breathing the stuff he let out, then?
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: This creature isn't human. It's got no right to attack humans.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Now it's trying to trick us.' His voice changed to
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: a snarl.' We' d better wring its neck, teach its kind
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: a lesson.' The skipper roared at him.' Bee! quiet. Our
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: ship is a wreck. We have to consider the facts.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: We and these plumies are in a fix together, and
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: we have to get out of it before we start
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: to teach anybody anything, he clared at Tain. Then he
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: said heavily, Mr. Baird, you seem to notice things. Take
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: this plumie over the ship. Show him our drive melted
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: down so he'll realize we can't possibly tow his ship
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: into an orbit. He knows that we're armed and that
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: we can't handle our warheads at this range. So we
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: can't fool each other. We might as well be frank.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: But you will take full note of his reactions, Mr. Baird.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: Baird advanced, and the skipper made a gesture. The plumie
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: regarded Baird with interested eyes, and Baird led the way
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: for a tour of the Nicola. It was confusing even
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: to him, with right hand converted to up and left
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: hand to down, and sideways now almost vertical. On the
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: way the plumie made more clear flute-like sounds and more gestures.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Baird answered, Our gravity-pull was that way, he explained, and
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: things fell so fast. He grasped a hand-rail and demonstrated
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: the speed with which things fell in normal ship gravity.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: He used a pocket communicator for the falling weight. It
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: was singularly easy to say some things, even highly technical ones,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: because that'd be what the plumie would want to know.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: But quite commonplace things would be very difficult to convey.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: Diane's voice came out of the communicator.' There are no
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: novelties outside,' she said quietly.' It looks like this is
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: the only plumie ship anywhere around. It could have been
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: exploring like us. Maybe it was looking for the people
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: who put up space survey markers.' Maybe, agreed Baird, using
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: the communicator. Is that stuff about falling into the sun correct?
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: It seems so, said Diane composedly. I'm checking again. So
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: far the best course I can get means we graze
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: the sun's photosphere in fourteen days, six hours, allowing for
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: acceleration by the sun's gravity. And you and I, said
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Baird wryly, have been acting as professional associates only when'
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: Don' t say it,' said Diane shakily.' It' s terrible.' He put
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: the communicator back in his pocket. The plumie had watched him.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: He had a peculiarly gallant air, this small figure in
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: golden space armor with its high-crested helmet. They reached the
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: engine room, and there was the giant driveshaft of the Nikola,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: once wrapped with yard-thick coils which could induce an incredible
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: density of magnetic flux in the metal. Even the return
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: magnetic field through the ship's cobalt-steel hull was many times
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: higher than saturation. Now the coils were sagging, mostly melted.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: There were places where re-solidified metal smoked noisomely against non-metallic
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: floor or wall covering. Engineers labored doggedly in the trivial
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: gravity to clean up the mess. It's past repair, said
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Baird to the ship's first engineer. It's junk, said that
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: individual dourly. Give us six months and a place to
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: set up a wire-drawing mill and an insulation synthesizer and
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: we could rebuild it, but nothing less will be any good.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: The plumie stared at the drive. He examined the shaft
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: from every angle. He inspected the melted and partly melted
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: and merely burned-out sections of the drive coils. He was
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: plainly unable to understand in any fashion the principle of
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: the magnetronic drive. Baird was tempted to try to explain,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: because there was surely no secret about a ship drive,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: but he could imagine no diagrams or gestures which would
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: convey the theory of what happened in cobalt steel when
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: it was magnetized beyond one hundred thousand gauss flux density.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: And without that theory one simply couldn't explain a magnetronic drive.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: They left the engine room. They visited the rocket batteries.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: The generator room was burned out, like the drive, by
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: the inconceivable lightning bolt which had passed between the ships
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: on contact. The plumie was again puzzled. Baird made it
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: clear that the generator room supplied electric current for the
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: ship's normal lighting system and services. The plumie could grasp
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: that idea. They examined the crew's quarters and the mess room,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: and the plumie walked confidently among the members of the
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: human crew, who a little while since had tried so
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: painstakingly to destroy his vessel. He made a good impression.'
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: These little guys,' said a crewman to Baird admiringly, They
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: got something. They can handle a ship. I bet they
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: could almost make that ship of theirs play checkers.' Close
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: to it,' agreed Baird. He realized something. He pulled the
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: communicator from his pocket.' Diane, contact the skipper. He wanted observations.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: Here's one. The Plumy acts like soldiers used to act
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: in ancient days, when they wore armor. And we have
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: the same reaction. They will fight like the devil.' But
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: during a truce they'll be friendly, admiring each other as scrappers,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: but ready to fight as hard as ever when the
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: truce is over. We have the same reaction. Tell the
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: skipper I've an idea that it's a part of their civilization.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's a necessary part of any civilization. Tell him
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: I guess that there may be necessarily parallel evolution of
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: attitudes among rational races. as there are parallel evolutions of
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: eyes and legs and wings and fins among all animals everywhere.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: If I'm right, somebody from this ship will be invited
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: to tour the plumie. It's only a guess, but tell him.'' Immediately,'
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: said Diane. The plumie followed gallantly as Baird made a
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: steep climb up what once was the floor of a corridor.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Then Tain stepped out before them, his eyes burned.' Giving
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: him a clear picture, eh?' he rasped.' Letting him spy
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: out everything?' Baird pressed the communicator call for the radar
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: room and said coldly,' I' m obeying orders. Look, Tain, you
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: were picked for your job because you were a xenophobe.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: It helps in your proper functioning. But this plumie is
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: here under a flag of truce.'' Flag of truce?' snarled Tain.'
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: It' s vermin. It's not human.' If you move one inch
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: nearer him, said Baird gently, just one inch. The skipper's
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: voice bellowed through the general call speakers all over the ship. Mr. Tain,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: you will go to your quarters under arrest. Mr. Baird,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: burn him down if he hesitates. Then there was a rushing,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: and scrambling figures appeared and were all about. They were
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: members of the Nicola's crew sent by the skipper. They
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: regarded the plumie with detachment, but Payne with wary expectancy.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Tain turned purple with fury. He shouted. He raged. He
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: called Baird and the others plumie-lovers and vermin-worshippers. He shouted
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: foulnesses at them. But he did not attack. When, still shouting,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: he went away, Baird said apologetically to the plumie, He's
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: a xenophobe. He has a pathological hatred of strangers, even
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: of strangeness. We have him on board because—' Then he stopped.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: The plumie wouldn't understand, of course, but its eyes took
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: on a curious look. It was almost as if, looking
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: at Baird, they twinkled. Baird took him back to the skipper.'
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: He' s got the picture, sir,' he reported. The plumie pulled
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: out his sketch-plate. He drew on it. He offered it.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: The skipper said heavily, You guessed right, Mr. Baird. He
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: suggests that someone from this ship go on board the
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: plumy vessel. He's drawn two pressure-suited figures going in their airlock.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: One's larger than the other. Will you go? Naturally, said Baird.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Then he added thoughtfully, But I'd better carry a portable scanner, sir.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: It should work perfectly well through a bronze hull, sir.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: The skipper nodded and began to sketch a diagram which
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: would amount to an acceptance of the plumie's invitation. This
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: was at zero-seven hours, forty minutes ship-time. Outside the sedately
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: rotating metal hulls, the one a polished blue-silver and the
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: other a glittering golden-bronze, the cosmos continued to be as always.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: The haze from explosive fumes and rocket fuel was perhaps
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: a little thinner. The brighter stars shone through it. The
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: gas-giant planet outward from the sun was a perceptible disk
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: instead of a diffuse glow. The oxygen planet to sunward
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: showed again as a lighted crescent. Presently bared in a
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: human spacesuit, accompanied the plumie into the Nikola's airlock and
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: out to emptiness. His magnetic-soled shoes clung to the Nikola's
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: cobalt-steel skin. Fastened to his shoulder there was a tiny
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: scanner and microphone, which would relay everything he saw and
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: heard back to the radar room and to Diane. She
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: watched tensely as he went inside the plumy ship. Other
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: screens relayed the image and his voice to other places
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: on the Nicola. He was gone a long time. From
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: the beginning, of course, there were surprises. When the plumy
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: escort removed his helmet on his own ship, The reason
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: for the helmet's high crest was apparent. He had a
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: high crest of what looked remarkably like feathers, and it
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: was not artificial. It grew there. The reason for conventionalized
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: plumes on bronze survey plates was clear. It was exactly
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: like the reason for human features or figures as decorative
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: additions to the inscriptions on space survey marker plates. Even
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: the plumie's hands had odd cresolets which stood out when
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: he bent his fingers. The other Plumies were no less
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: graceful and no less colorful. They had equally clear soprano voices.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: They were equally miniature and so devoid of apparent menace.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: But there were also technical surprises. Baird was taken immediately
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: to the Plumie ship's engine-room, and Diane heard the sharp
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: intake of breath with which he appeared to recognize its
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: working principle. There were plumy engineers working feverishly at it,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: attempting to discover something to repair, but they found nothing.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: The plumy drive simply would not work. They took Baird
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: through the ship's entire fabric, and their purpose, when it
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: became clear, was startling. The plumy ship had no rocket tubes.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: It had no beam projectors except small-sized objects, which must
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: be their projectors of tractor and presser beams. They were
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: elaborately grounded to the ship's substance, but they were not
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: originally designed for ultra-heavy service. They hadn't and couldn't have
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: the enormous capacity Baird had expected. He was astounded. When
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: he returned to the Nicola he went instantly to the
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: radar room to make sure that pictures taken through his
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: scanner had turned out well. And there was Diane. But
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: the skipper's voice boomed at him from the wall. Mr. Baird!
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: What have you to add to the information you sent back?''
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: Three items, sir,' said Baird. He drew a deep breath.'
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: For the first, sir, the plumie ship is unarmed. They've
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: tractor and presser beams for handling material. They probably used
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: them to build their cairns. But they weren't meant for weapons.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: The plumies, sir, hadn't a thing to fight with when
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: they drove for us after we detected them. The skipper
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: blinked hard.' Are you sure of that, Mr. Baird?'' Yes, sir,'
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: said Baird, uncomfortably.' The plumie ship is an exploring ship,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: a survey ship, sir. You saw their mapping equipment.' But
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: when they spotted us and we spotted them they bluffed.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: When we fired rockets at them they turned them back
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: with tractor and presser beams. They drove for us, sir,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: to try to destroy us with our own bombs, because
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: they didn't have any of their own. The skipper's mouth
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: opened and closed.' Another item, sir,' said Baird, more uncomfortably still.'
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: They don't use iron or steel.' Every metal object I
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: saw was either a bronze or a light metal. I
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: suspect some of their equipment's made of potassium, and I'm
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: fairly sure they used sodium in place of aluminum. Their
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: atmosphere's quite different from ours, obviously. They'd use bronze for
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: their ship's hull because they could venture into an oxygen
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: atmosphere in a bronze ship. A sodium-hulled ship would be lighter,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: but it would burn in oxygen. Where there was moisture— the
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: skipper blinked. But they couldn't drive in a non-magnetic hull,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: he protested. A ship has to be magnetic to drive. Sir,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: said Baird, his voice still shaken, they don't use a
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: magnetronic drive. I once saw a picture of the drive
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: they use in a stereo on the history of space travel.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: The principle's very old. We've practically forgotten it. End of
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: Part 3 It's a Dirac pusher drive, sir. Among us
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: humans it came right after rockets. The planets of Sol
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: were first reached by ships using Dirac pushers, but— he paused— they
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: won't operate in a magnetic field above seventy gauss, sir—
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: It's a static charge reaction, sir, and in a magnetic
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: field it simply stops working. The skipper regarded Baird unwinkingly
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: for a long time.' I think you're telling me,' he
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: said at long last,' that the plumies' drive would work
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: if they were cut free of the Nicola?'' Yes, sir,'
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: said Baird.' Their engineers were opening up the drive elements
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: and checking them, and then closing them up again. They
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: couldn't seem to find anything wrong.' I don't think they
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: know what the trouble is. It's the Nicola's magnetic field.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: I think it was our field that caused the collision
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: by stopping their drive and killing all their controls when
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: they came close enough.' Did you tell them?' demanded the skipper.'
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: There was no easy way to tell them by diagrams, sir.'
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: Tain's voice cut in. It was feverish. It was strident.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: It was triumphant.' Sir!' The Nicola is effectively a wreck
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: and unrepairable. But the plumie ship is operable if cut loose.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: As weapons officer I intend to take the plumie ship,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: let out its air, fill its tanks with our air,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: start up its drive, and turn it over to you
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: for navigation back to base. Baird raged, but he said coldly,'
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: We' re a long way from home, Mr. Tain, and the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: D-Rock pusher drive is slow.' If we headed back to
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: base in the plumy ship with its D-Rock pusher, we'd
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: all be dead of old age before we'd gone halfway.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: But unless we take it, raged Tain, we hit the
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: sun in fourteen days. We don't have to die now.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: We can land on the oxygen planet up ahead. We've
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: only to kill these vermin and take their ship, and
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: we'll live. Diane's voice said dispassionately,' Report.' A plumie in
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: a pressure suit has just come out of their airlock.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: It's carrying a parcel toward our airlock. Tain snarled instantly.'
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: They' ll sneak something in the Nicola to blast it, and
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: then cut free and go away,' the skipper said very grimly.' Mr. Tain,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: credit me with minimum brains. There is no way the
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: plumies can take this ship without an atomic bomb exploding
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: to destroy both ships. You should know it. Then he snapped.'
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: Airlock area. Listen for a knock and let in the
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: plumie or the parcel he leaves.' There was silence. Baird
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: said very quietly,' I doubt they think it possible to
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: cut the ships apart. A torch is no good on
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: thick silicon bronze. It conducts heat too well, and they
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: don't use steel. They probably haven't a cutting torch at all.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: From the radar room he watched the plumie place an
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: object in the airlock and withdraw. He watched from a
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: scanner inside the ship as someone brought in what the
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: plumie had left. An electronics man bustled forward. He looked
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: it over quickly. It was complex, but his examinations suddenly
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: seemed satisfying to him. But a grayish vapor developed, and
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: he sniffed and wrinkled his nose. He picked up a communicator.' Sir?'
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: They've sent us a power generator. Some of its parts
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: are going bad in our atmosphere, sir, but this looks
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: to me like a hell of a good idea for
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: a generator. I never saw anything like it, but it's good.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: You can set it for any voltage and it'll turn
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: out plenty juice.' Put it in helium,' snapped the skipper.'
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: It won't break down in that. Then see how it serves.'
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: In the radar room Baird drew a deep breath. He
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: went carefully to each of the screens and every radar.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: Diane saw what he was about and checked with him.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: They met at the middle of the radar room.' Everything' s
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: checked out,' said Baird gravely.' There' s nothing else around. There's
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: nothing we can be called on to do before something happens.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: So we can act like people.' Diane smiled very faintly.'
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: Not like people. Just like us,' she said wistfully. Don't
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: you want to tell me something? Something you intended to
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: tell me only after we got back to base? He did.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: He told it to her. And there was also something
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: she had not intended to tell him at all unless
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: he told her first. She said it now. They felt
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: that such sayings were of the greatest possible importance. They
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: clung together, saying them again. and it seemed wholly monstrous
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: that two people who cared so desperately had wasted so
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: much time acting like professional associates, explorer-ship officers, when things
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: like this were to be said. As they talked incoherently,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: or were even more eloquently silent, the ship's ordinary lights
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: came on. The battery lamp went on. We've got to
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: switch back to ship's circuit, said Baird reluctantly. They separated
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: and restored the operating circuits to normal.' We' ve got fourteen days,'
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: he added.' And so much time to be on duty,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: and we've lost a lifetime to live in fourteen days.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: Diane—' She flushed vividly. So Baird said very politely into
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: the microphone to the navigation room,' Sir, Lieutenant Holt and
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: myself would like to speak directly to you in the
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: navigation room, may we?'' Why not?' growled the skipper. You've
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: noticed that the plumy generator is giving the whole ship
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: lights and services? Yes, sir, said Baird. We'll be there
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: right away. They heard the skipper's grunt as they hurried
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: through the door. A moment later the ship's normal gravity returned,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: also through the plumy generator. Up was up again, and
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: down was down, and the corridors and cabins of the
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: Nicola were brightly illuminated. Had the ship been other than
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: an engineless wreck, Falling through a hundred and fifty million
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: miles of emptiness into the flaming photosphere of a sun,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: everything would have seemed quite normal, including the errand Baird
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: and Diane were upon, and the fact that they held
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: hands self-consciously as they went about it. They skirted the
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: bulkhead of the main air-tank. They headed along the broader
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: corridor which went past the indented inner door of the air-lock.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: They had reached that indentation when Baird saw that the
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: inner air-lock door was closing. He saw a human pressure
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: suit past its edge. He saw the corner of some
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: object that had been put down on the airlock floor.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: Baird shouted and rushed toward the lock. He seized the
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: inner handle and tried to force open the door again
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: so that no one inside could emerge into the emptiness without.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: He failed. He wrenched frantically at the controls of the
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: outer door. It suddenly swung freely. The outer door had
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: been put on manual. could be and was being opened
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: from inside. Tell the skipper, raged Baird. Kane's taking something out.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: He tore open a pressure-suit cupboard in the wall beside
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: the lock-door. He'll make the plumies think it's a return
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: gift for the generator. He eeled into the pressure-suit and
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: zipped it up to his neck. The man's crazy. He
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: thinks we can take their ship and stay alive for
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: a while. Damn it, our air would ruin half their equipment.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: Tell the skipper to send help. He wrenched at the
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: door again, jamming down his helmet with one hand. And
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: this time the control worked. Tain, most probably, had forgotten
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: that the inner control was disengaged only when the manual
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: was actively in use. The hand raced away, panting. Baird
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: swore bitterly at the slowness of the outer door's closing.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: He was tearing at the inner door long before he
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: could be opened. He flung himself in and dragged it shut,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: and struck the emergency air-release, which bled the air-lock into
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: space for speed of operation. He thrust out the outer
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: door and plunged through. His momentum carried him almost too far.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: He fell, and only the magnetic soles of his shoes
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: enabled him to check himself. He was in that singular
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: valley between the two ships where their hulls were impregnably
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: welded fast. Round-hulled, plumy ship and ganoid-shaped Nicola they stuck
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: immovably together as if they had been that way since
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: time began. Where the sky appeared above Barret's head The
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: stars moved in stately procession across the valley roof. He
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: heard a metallic rapping through the fabric of his space armor.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: Then sunlight glittered, and the valley filled with a fierce glare,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: and a man in a human space suit stood on
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: the Nicola's plating opposite the plumy airlock. He held a
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: bulky object under his arm. With his other gauntlet he
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: rapped again.' You fool!' shouted Baird.' Stop that! We couldn't
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: use their ship anyhow. His space phone had turned on
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: with the air supply. Tain's voice snarled.' We' ll try. You
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: keep back. They are not human.' But Baird ran toward him.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: The sensation of running upon magnetic-soled shoes was unearthly. It
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: was like trying to run on flypaper or bird-lime. But
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: in addition there was no gravity here and no sense
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: of balance. and there was the feeling of perpetual fall.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: There could be no science nor any skill in an
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: encounter under such conditions. Baird partly ran and partly staggered
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: and partly skated to where Tain faced him, snarling. He
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: threw himself at the other men, and then the sun
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: vanished behind the bronze ship's hull, and only stars moved
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: visibly in all the universe. but the sound of his
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: impact was loud in Baird's ears inside the suit. There
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: was a slightly different sound when his armor struck Tain's,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: and when it struck the heavier metal of the two ships.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: He fought. But the suits were intended to be defense
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: against greater stresses than human blows could offer. In the
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: darkness it was like two blindfolded men fighting each other
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: while encased in pillows. Then the sun returned, floating sedately
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: above the valley, and Baird could see his enemy. He saw, too,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: that the plumy airlock was now open, and that a small, erect,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: and somehow jaunty figure in golden space armor stood in
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: the opening and watched gravely as the two men fought.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: Tain cursed, panting with hysterical hate. He flung himself at Baird,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: and Baird toppled because he'd put one foot past the
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: welded boundary between the Nicola's cobalt steel and the plumy
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: ship's bronze, one foot held to nothing. And that was
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: a ghastly sensation, because if Tain only rugged his other
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: foot free and heaved, why, then Baird would go floating
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: away from the rotating, now twinned ships, floating farther and
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: farther away, for ever. But darkness fell, then he scrambled
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: back to the Nicola's hull, as a disorderly parade of
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: stars went by above him. He pantingly waited fresh attack.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: He felt something, and it was the object Tain had
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: meant to offer as a return present to the plumies.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: It was unquestionably explosive, either booby-trapped or time to explode
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: inside the plumie's ship. Now it rocked gently, gripped by
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: the magnetism of the steel. The sun appeared again, and
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: Tain was yards away crawling and fumbling for Baird. Then
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: he saw him, and rose and rushed. and the clankings
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: of his shoe-soles were loud. Baird flung himself at Tain
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: in a savage tackle. He struck Tain's legs a glancing blow,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: and the kobold steel held his armor fast, but Tain
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: careened and bounced against the round bronze wall of the plumie,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: and bounced again. Then he screamed, because he was floating
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: slowly out to emptiness, his arms and legs jerking spasmodically
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: while he shrieked. The plumie in the airlock stepped out.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: He trailed a cord behind him. He leaped briskly toward nothingness.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: There came a quick darkness once more, and Baird struggled
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: erect despite the adhesiveness of the Nicola's hull. When he
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: was fully upright, sick with horror at what had come about,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: there was sunlight yet again, and men were coming out
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: of the Nicola's airlock, and the plumie who'd leaped for
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: space was pulling himself back to his own ship again.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: He had a loop of cord twisted around Tain's leg,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: but Tain screamed and screamed inside his space suit. It
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: was odd that one could recognize the skipper even inside
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: space armor. But Baird felt sick. He saw Tain received,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: still screaming, and carried into the lock. The skipper growled
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: an infuriated demand for details. His space phone had come on, too,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: when his air supply began. Baird explained, his teeth chattering. Ha!
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: grunted the skipper. Tain was a mistake. He shouldn't ever
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: have left ground. When a man's potty in one fashion
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: there'll be cracks in him all over. What's this? The
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: plumie in the golden armor very soberly offered the skipper
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: the object Tain had meant to introduce into the plumie ship.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: Baird said desperately that he'd fought against it because he
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: believed it a booby trap to kill the plumies so
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: men could take their ship and fill it with air
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: and cut it free and then make a landing somewhere.'
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: Damned foolishness!' rumbled the skipper.' Their ship'd begin to crumble
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: with our air in it. If it held to a
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: landing—' Then he considered the object he'd accepted from the plumie.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: It could have been a rocket warhead enclosed in some
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: container that would detonate it if opened. Or there might
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: be a timing device. The skipper grunted. He heaved it skyward.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: The misshapen object went floating away toward emptiness. Sunlight smote
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: harshly upon it.' Don' t want it back in the Nicola,'
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: growled the skipper.' But just to make sure—' He fumbled
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: a hand-weapon out of his belt. He raised it, and
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: it spurted flame, very tiny blue-white sparks, and each one
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: indicating a pellet of metal flung away at high velocity.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: One of them struck the shining, retreating container. It exploded
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: with a monstrous, soundless violence. It had been a rocket's warhead.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: There could have been only one reason for it to
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: be introduced into a plumage ship. Baird ceased to be shaking.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: Instead he was ashamed. The skipper growled inarticulately. He looked
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: at the plumie, again standing in the golden ship's airlock.'
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: We' ll go back, Mr. Baird. What you've done won't save
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: our lives, and nobody will ever know you did it.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: But I think well of you. Come along.' This was
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: eleven hours, five minutes ship-time. A good half-hour later the
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: skipper's voice bellowed from the speakers all over the Nicola.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: His heavy, jowled features stared doggedly out of screens wherever
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: men were on duty or at ease.' Hear this,' he
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: said forbiddingly.' We have checked our course and speed. We
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: have verified that there is no possible jury-rig for our
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: engines that could get us into any sort of orbit,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: let alone land us on the only planet in this
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: system with air we could breathe. It is officially certain
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: that in thirteen days, nine hours from now, The Nicola
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: will be so close to the sun that her hull
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: will melt down. Which would be no loss to us,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: because we'll be dead then, still going on into the
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: sun to be vaporized with the ship. There is nothing
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: to be done about it. We can do nothing to
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: save our own lives. He glared out of each and
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: every one of the screens, wherever there were men to
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: see him.' But,' he rumbled, The plumies can get away
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: if we help them. They have no cutting torches. We have.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: We can cut their ship free. They can repair their drive,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: but it's most likely it'll operate perfectly when they're a
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: mile from the Nikola's magnetic field. They can't help us,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: but we can help them. And sooner or later some
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: plumie ship is going to encounter some other human ship.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: If we cut these plumies loose they'll report what we did.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: When they meet other men they'll be cagey because they'll
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: remember Tain. but they'll know they can make friends because
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: we did them a favor when we'd nothing to gain
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: by it. I can offer no reward, but I ask
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: for volunteers to go outside and cut the plumie ship loose,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: so the plumies can go home in safety instead of
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: on into the sun with us. He glared and cut
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: off the image. Diane held tightly to Barrett's hand in
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: the radar room. He said evenly,' They' ll be volunteers.' The
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: plumies are pretty sporting characters, putting up a fight with
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: an unarmed ship and so on. If there aren't enough
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: other volunteers, the skipper and I will cut them free
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: by ourselves. Diane said, dry-throated,' I' ll help, so I can
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: be with you. We've got so little time.'' I' ll ask
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: the skipper as soon as the plumie ship's free.'' Yes,'
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: said Diane, and she pressed her face against his shoulder
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: and wept. This was at 01 hours 20 minutes of
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: ship time. At 03 hours even there was peculiar activity
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: in the valley between the welded ships. There were men
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: in space armor working cutting torches, where for twenty feet
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: the two ships were solidly attached. Blue-white flames bored savagely
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: into solid metal, and melted copper gave off strangely colored
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: clouds of vapor, which emptiness whisked away to nothing. and
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: molten iron and cobalt made equally lurid clouds of other colors.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: There were plumies in the airlock, watching. At zero three
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: hours forty minutes ship-time, all the men but one drew back.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: They went inside the Nicola. Only one man remained, cutting
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: at the last sliver of metal that held the two
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: ships together. It parted. The plumy ship swept swiftly away,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: moved by the centrifugal force of the rotary motion the
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: joined vessels had possessed. It dwindled and dwindled. It was
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: a half-mile away, a mile. The last man on the
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: outside of the Nicola's hull thriftily brought the torch to
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: the airlock and came in. Suddenly the distant golden hull
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: came to life. It steadied. It ceased to spin, however slowly.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: It darted ahead. It checked. It swung to the right
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: and left and up and down. It was alive again.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: In the radar room, Diane walked into Baird's arms and said, shakily,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: Now we— we have almost fourteen days. Wait, he commanded. When
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: the plumies understood what we were doing and why, they
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: drew diagrams. They hadn't thought of cutting free out in
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: space without the spinning saws they used to cut bronze with.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: But they asked for a scanner and a screen. They
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: checked on its use. I want to see. He flipped
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: on the screen, and there was instantly a plumie looking
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: eagerly out of it for some sign of communication established.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: There were soprano sounds, and he waved a hand for attention.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Then he zestfully held up one diagram after another. Baird
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: drew a deep breath, a very deep breath. He pressed
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: the navigation-room call. The skipper looked dourly at him.' Well?'
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: said the skipper, forbiddingly.' Sir,' said Baird, very quietly indeed,'
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: the plumies are talking by diagram over the communicator set
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: we gave them. Their drive works. They're as well off
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: as they ever were. And they've been modifying their tractor beams,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: stepping them up to higher power.'' What of it?' demanded
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: the skipper, rumbling.' They believe,' said Baird,' that they can
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: handle the Nicola with their beefed-up tractor beams.' He whetted
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: his lips.' They' re going to tow us to the oxygen
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: planet ahead, sir. They're going to set us down on it.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: They'll help us find the metals we need to build
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: the tools to repair the Nicola, sir. You see the reasoning, sir?'
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: We turn them loose to improve the chance of friendly
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: contact when another human ship runs into them. They want
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: us to carry back, to be proof that plumies and
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: men can be friends. It seems that they like us, sir.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: He stopped for a moment. Then he went on, reasonably.'
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: And besides that, it'll be one hell of a fine
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: business proposition. We never bother with hydrogen-methane planets.' They've minerals
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: and chemicals we haven't got, but even the stones of
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: a methane-hydrogen planet are ready to combine with the oxygen
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: we need to breathe. We can't carry or keep enough
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: oxygen for real work. The same thing's true with them
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: on an oxygen planet. We can't work on each other's planets,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: but we can do fine business in each other's minerals
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: and chemicals from those planets. I've got a feeling, sir,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: that the plummy corns— location notices, markers set up over
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: ore deposits they can find but can't hope to work.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: Yet they claim against the day when their scientists find
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: a way to make them worth owning. I'm willing to bet, sir,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: that if we explored hydrogen planets as thoroughly as oxygen
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: ones we'd find Carnes on their type planets that they
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: haven't colonized yet. The skipper stared. His mouth dropped open.'
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: And I think, sir, said Baird, that until they detected
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: us they thought they were the only intelligent race in
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: the galaxy. They were upset to discover suddenly that they
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: were not, and at first they'd no idea what we'd
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: be like. But I'm guessing now, sir, that they're figuring
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: out on what chemicals and ores to start swapping with us.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: Then he added,' When you think of it, sir, probably
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: the first metal they ever used was aluminum, where our
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: ancestors used copper.' and they had a bilyrium age next
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: instead of iron. And right now, sir, it's probably as
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: expensive for them to refine iron as it is for
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: us to handle titanium and bilyrium and osmium, which are
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: duck soup for them. Our two cultures ought to thrive
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: as long as we're friends, sir. They know it already,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: and we'll find out in a hurry. The skipper's mouth moved.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: It closed and then dropped open again. The search for
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: the plumies had been made because it looked like they
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: had to be fought. But Baird had just pointed out
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: some extremely common-sense items which changed the situation entirely, and
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: there was evidence that the plumies saw the situation the
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: new way. The skipper felt such enormous relief that his
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: manner changed. He displayed what was almost effusive cordiality for
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: the skipper. He cleared his throat.' Very good, Mr. Baird,'
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: he said formidably.' And, of course, with time and air
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: and metals we can rebuild our drive. For that matter
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: we could rebuild the Nicola. I'll notify the ship's company, Mr. Baird.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: Very good.' He moved to use another microphone. Then he
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: checked himself.' Your expression is odd, Mr. Baird. Did you
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: wish to say something more?'' Yes, sir,' said Baird. He
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: held Diane's hand fast.' It' ll be months before we get
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: back to port, sir, and it's normally against regulations, but
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: under the circumstances, would you mind as skipper marrying Lieutenant
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: Holt and me?' The skipper snorted. Then he said almost,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: almost amiably,' H' m! You've both done very well, Mr. Baird. Yes,
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: come to the navigation room and we'll get it over with, say,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: ten minutes from now. Baird grinned at Diane. Her eyes
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: shone a little. That was at zero four hours ten
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: minutes ship time. It was exactly twelve hours since the
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: alarm bell rang. End of Part 4 End of The
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: Aliens By Murray Linster The story recorded by Phil Chenevert,
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: December 2021.