without specific orders!Defensive action is another matter. Mr. Baird! I consider this weldingbusiness pure accident. No one would be mad enough to plan it. You watchthe Plumies and keep me informed!_"
His voice ceased. And Baird had again the frustrating duty of remainingstill and keeping his head while other men engaged in physicalactivity. He helped Diane to a chair--which was fastened to thefloor-which-was-now-a-wall--and she wedged herself fast and began areview of what each of the outside scanners reported. Baird called formore batteries. Power for the radar and visions was more important thananything else, just then. If there were more Plumie ships ...
* * * * *
Electricians half-floated, half-dragged extra batteries to the radarroom. Baird hooked them in. The universe outside the ship again appearedfilled with brilliantly colored dots of light which were stars. Moresatisfying, the globe-scanners again reported no new objects anywhere.Nothing new within a quarter million miles. A half-million. Later Bairdreported:
"Radars report no strange objects within a million miles of the_Niccola_, sir."
"_Except the ship we're welded to! But you are doing very well. However,microphones say there is movement inside the Plumie._"
Diane beckoned for Baird's attention to a screen, which Baird hadexamined before. Now he stiffened and motioned for her to report.
"We've a scanner, sir," said Diane, "which faces what looks like a portin the Plumie ship. There's a figure at the port. I can't make outdetails, but it is making motions, facing us."
"_Give me the picture!_" snapped the skipper.
Diane obeyed. It was the merest flip of a switch. Then her eyes wentback to the spherical-sweep scanners which reported the bearing anddistance of every solid object within their range. She set up twoinstruments which would measure the angle, bearing, and distance of thetwo planets now on this side of the sun--the gas-giant and theoxygen-world to sunward. Their orbital speeds and distances were known.The position, course, and speed of the _Niccola_ could be computed fromany two observations on them.
Diane had returned to the utterly necessary routine of the radar roomwhich was the nerve-center of the ship, gathering all information neededfor navigation in space. The fact that there had been a collision, thatthe _Niccola's_ engines were melted to unlovely scrap, that the Plumieship was now welded irremovably to a side-keel, and that a Plumie wassignaling to humans while both ships went spinning through space towardan unknown destination--these things did not affect the obligations ofthe radar room.
Baird got other images of the Plumie ship into sharp focus. So near, thescanners required adjustment for precision.
"Take a look at this!" he said wryly.
She looked. The view was of the Plumie as welded fast to the _Niccola_.The welding was itself an extraordinary result of the Plumie'sbattle-tactics. Tractor and pressor beams were known to men, of course,but human beings used them only under very special conditions. Theiroperation involved the building-up of terrific static charges. Unless atractor-beam generator could be grounded to the object it was to pull, ittended to emit lightning-bolts at unpredictable intervals and in entirelyrandom directions. So men didn't use them. Obviously, the Plumies did.
They'd handled the _Niccola's_ rockets with beams which charged thegolden ship to billions of volts. And when the silicon-bronze Plumie shiptouched the cobalt-steel _Niccola_--why--that charge had to be shared. Itmust have been the most spectacular of all artificial electric flames.Part of the _Niccola's_ hull was vaporized, and undoubtedly part of thePlumie. But the unvaporized surfaces were molten and in contact--and theystuck.
For a good twenty feet the two ships were united by the most perfect ofvacuum-welds. The wholly dissimilar hulls formed a space-catamaran, witha sort of valley between their bulks. Spinning deliberately, as theunited ships did, sometimes the sun shone brightly into that valley, andsometimes it was filled with the blackness of the pit.
While Diane looked, a round door revolved in the side of the Plumie ship.As Diane caught her breath, Baird reported crisply. At his first wordsTaine burst into raging commands for men to follow him through the_Niccola's_ air lock and fight a boarding party of Plumies in emptyspace. The skipper very savagely ordered him to be quiet.
"Only one figure has come out," reported Baird. The skipper watched on avision plate, but Baird reported so all the _Niccola's_ company wouldknow. "It's small--less than five feet ... I'll see better in a moment."Sunlight smote down into the valley between the ships. "It's wearing apressure suit. It seems to be the same material as the ship. It walks ontwo legs, as we do ... It has two arms, or something very similar ... Thehelmet of the suit is very high ... It looks like the armor knights usedto fight in ... It's making its way to our air lock ... It does not usemagnetic-soled shoes. It's holding onto lines threaded along the othership's hull ..."
The skipper said curtly:
"_Mr. Baird! I hadn't noticed the absence of magnetic shoes. You seem tohave an eye for important items. Report to the air lock in person. LeaveLieutenant Holt to keep an eye on outside objects. Quickly, Mr. Baird!_"
* * * * *
Baird laid his hand on Diane's shoulder. She smiled at him.
"I'll watch!" she promised.
He went out of the radar room, walking on what had been a side wall. Thegiddiness and dizziness of continued rotation was growing less, now. Hewas getting used to it. But the _Niccola_ seemed strange indeed, with thestandard up and down and Earth-gravity replaced by a vertical which wasall askew and a weight of ounces instead of a hundred and seventy pounds.
He reached the air lock just as the skipper arrived. There were othersthere--armed and in pressure suits. The skipper glared about him.
"I am in command here," he said very grimly indeed. "Mr. Taine has aspecial function, but I am in command! We and the creatures on the Plumieship are in a very serious fix. One of them apparently means to come onboard. There will be no hostility, no sneering, no threatening gestures!This is a parley! You will be careful. But you will not betrigger-happy!"
He glared around again, just as a metallic rapping came upon the_Niccola's_ air-lock door. The skipper nodded:
"Let him in the lock, Mr. Baird."
Baird obeyed. The humming of the unlocking-system sounded. There wereclankings. The outer air lock dosed. There was a faint whistling as airwent in. The skipper nodded again.
Baird opened the inner door. It was 08 hours 10 minutes ship time.
The Plumie stepped confidently out into the topsy-turvy corridors of the_Niccola_. He was about the size of a ten-year-old human boy, andfeatures which were definitely not grotesque showed through the clearplastic of his helmet. His pressure suit was, engineering-wise, a veryclean job. His whole appearance was prepossessing. When he spoke, veryclear and quite high sounds--soprano sounds--came from a smallspeaker-unit at his shoulder.
"For us to talk," said the skipper heavily, "is pure nonsense. But I takeit you've something to say."
The Plumie gazed about with an air of lively curiosity. Then he drew outa flat pad with a white surface and sketched swiftly. He offered it tothe _Niccola's_ skipper.
"We want this on record," he growled, staring about.
Diane's voice said capably from a speaker somewhere nearby:
"_Sir, there's a scanner for inspection of objects brought aboard. Holdthe plate flat and I'll have a photograph--right!_"
The skipper said curtly to the Plumie:
"You've drawn our two ships linked as they are. What have you to sayabout it?"
He handed back the plate. The Plumie pressed a stud and it was blankagain. He sketched and offered it once more.
"Hm-m-m," said the skipper. "You can't use your drive while we're gluedtogether, eh? Well?"
The Plumie reached up and added lines to the drawing.
"So!" rumbled the skipper, inspecting the additions. "You say it's up tous to use our drive for both ships." He growled approvingly: "Youconsider there's a truce.
You must, because we're both in the same fix,and not a nice one, either. True enough! We can't fight each otherwithout committing suicide, now. But we haven't any drive left! We're aderelict! How am I going to say that--if I decide to?"
Baird could see the lines on the plate, from the angle at which theskipper held it. He said:
"Sir, we've been mapping, up in the radar room. Those last lines aremap-co-ordinates--a separate sketch, sir. I think he's saying that thetwo ships, together, are on a falling course toward the sun. That we haveto do something or both vessels will fall into it. We should be able tocheck this, sir."
"Hah!" growled the skipper. "That's all we need! Absolutely all we need!To come here, get
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