The Aliens
Page 7
ship time. Outside the sedately rotatingmetal hulls--the one a polished blue-silver and the other a glitteringgolden bronze--the cosmos continued to be as always. The haze fromexplosive fumes and rocket-fuel was, perhaps, a little thinner. Thebrighter stars shone through it. The gas-giant planet outward from thesun was a perceptible disk instead of a diffuse glow. The oxygen-planetto sunward showed again as a lighted crescent.
Presently Baird, in a human spacesuit, accompanied the Plumie into the_Niccola's_ air lock and out to emptiness. His magnetic-soled shoes clungto the _Niccola's_ cobalt-steel skin. Fastened to his shoulder there wasa tiny scanner and microphone, which would relay everything he saw andheard back to the radar room and to Diane.
She watched tensely as he went inside the Plumie ship. Other screensrelayed the image and his voice to other places on the _Niccola_.
He was gone a long time. From the beginning, of course, there weresurprises. When the Plumie escort removed his helmet, on his own ship,the reason for the helmet's high crest was apparent. He had a high crestof what looked remarkably like feathers--and it was not artificial. Itgrew there. The reason for conventionalized plumes on bronze surveyplates was clear. It was exactly like the reason for human features orfigures as decorative additions to the inscriptions on Space Surveymarker plates. Even the Plumie's hands had odd crestlets which stood outwhen he bent his fingers. The other Plumies were no less graceful and noless colorful. They had equally clear soprano voices. They were equallyminiature and so devoid of apparent menace.
But there were also technical surprises. Baird was taken immediately tothe Plumie ship's engine room, and Diane heard the sharp intake of breathwith which he appeared to recognize its working principle. There werePlumie engineers working feverishly at it, attempting to discoversomething to repair. But they found nothing. The Plumie drive simplywould not work.
They took Baird through the ship's entire fabric. And their purpose, whenit became clear, was startling. The Plumie ship had no rocket tubes. Ithad no beam-projectors except small-sized objects which were--which mustbe--their projectors of tractor and pressor beams. They were elaboratelygrounded to the ship's substance. But they were not originally designedfor ultra-heavy service. They hadn't and couldn't have the enormouscapacity Baird had expected. He was astounded.
* * * * *
When he returned to the _Niccola_, he went instantly to the radar room tomake sure that pictures taken through his scanner had turned out well.And there was Diane.
But the skipper's voice boomed at him from the wall.
"_Mr. Baird! What have you to add to the information you sent back?_"
"Three items, sir," said Baird. He drew a deep breath. "For the first,sir, the Plumie ship is unarmed. They've tractor and pressor beams forhandling material. They probably use them to build their cairns. But theyweren't meant for weapons. The Plumies, sir, hadn't a thing to fight withwhen they drove for us after we detected them."
The skipper blinked hard.
"_Are you sure of that, Mr. Baird?_"
"Yes, sir," said Baird uncomfortably. "The Plumie ship is an exploringship--a survey ship, sir. You saw their mapping equipment. But when theyspotted us, and we spotted them--they bluffed! When we fired rockets atthem, they turned them back with tractor and pressor beams. They drovefor us, sir, to try to destroy us with our own bombs, because they didn'thave any of their own."
The skipper's mouth opened and closed.
"Another item, sir," said Baird more uncomfortably still. "They don't useiron or steel. Every metal object I saw was either a bronze or a lightmetal. I suspect some of their equipment's made of potassium, and I'mfairly sure they use sodium in the place of aluminum. Their atmosphere'squite different from ours--obviously! They'd use bronze for their ship'shull because they can venture into an oxygen atmosphere in a bronze ship.A sodium-hulled ship would be lighter, but it would burn in oxygen. Wherethere was moisture--"
The skipper blinked.
"_But they couldn't drive in a non-magnetic hull!_" he protested. "_Aship has to be magnetic to drive!_"
"Sir," said Baird, his voice still shaken, "they don't use a magnetronicdrive. I once saw a picture of the drive they use, in a stereo on thehistory of space travel. The principle's very old. We've practicallyforgotten it. It's a Dirac pusher-drive, sir. Among us humans, it cameright after rockets. The planets of Sol were first reached by ships usingDirac pushers. But--" He paused. "They won't operate in a magnetic fieldabove seventy Gauss, sir. It's a static-charge reaction, sir, and in amagnetic field it simply stops working."
The skipper regarded Baird unwinkingly for a long time.
"_I think you are telling me_," he said at long last, "_that the Plumies'drive would work if they were cut free of the _Niccola_._"
"Yes, sir," said Baird. "Their engineers were opening up thedrive-elements and checking them, and then closing them up again. Theycouldn't seem to find anything wrong. I don't think they know what thetrouble is. It's the _Niccola's_ magnetic field. I think it was our fieldthat caused the collision by stopping their drive and killing all theircontrols when they came close enough."
"_Did you tell them?_" demanded the skipper.
"There was no easy way to tell them by diagrams, sir."
Taine's voice cut in. It was feverish. It was strident. It wastriumphant.
"_Sir! The _Niccola_ is effectively a wreck and unrepairable. But thePlumie ship is operable if cut loose. As weapons officer, I intend totake the Plumie ship, let out its air, fill its tanks with our air, startup its drive, and turn it over to you for navigation back to base!_"
Baird raged. But he said coldly:
"We're a long way from home, Mr. Taine, and the Dirac pusher drive isslow. If we headed back to base in the Plumie ship with its Dirac pusher,we'd all be dead of old age before we'd gone halfway."
"_But unless we take it_," raged Taine, "_we hit this sun in fourteendays! We don't have to die now! We can land on the oxygen planet upahead! We've only to kill these vermin and take their ship, and we'lllive!_"
Diane's voice said dispassionately:
"Report. A Plumie in a pressure suit just came out of their air lock.It's carrying a parcel toward our air lock."
Taine snarled instantly:
"_They'll sneak something in the _Niccola_ to blast it, and then cut freeand go away!_"
The skipper said very grimly:
"_Mr. Taine, credit me with minimum brains! There is no way the Plumiescan take this ship without an atomic bomb exploding to destroy bothships. You should know it!_" Then he snapped: "_Air lock area, listen fora knock, and let in the Plumie or the parcel he leaves._"
There was silence. Baird said very quietly:
"I doubt they think it possible to cut the ships apart. A torch is nogood on thick silicon bronze. It conducts heat too well! And they don'tuse steel. They probably haven't a cutting-torch at all."
* * * * *
From the radar room he watched the Plumie place an object in the air lockand withdraw. He watched from a scanner inside the ship as someonebrought in what the Plumie had left. An electronics man bustled forward.He looked it over quickly. It was complex, but his examination suddenlyseemed satisfying to him. But a grayish vapor developed and he sniffedand wrinkled his nose. He picked up a communicator.
"_Sir, they've sent us a power-generator. Some of its parts are going badin our atmosphere, sir, but this looks to me like a hell of a good ideafor a generator! I never saw anything like it, but it's good! You can setit for any voltage and it'll turn out plenty juice!_"
"_Put it in helium_," snapped the skipper. "_It won't break down in that!Then see how it serves!_"
In the radar room, Baird drew a deep breath. He went carefully to each ofthe screens and every radar. Diane saw what he was about, and checkedwith him. They met at the middle of the radar room.
"Everything's checked out," said Baird gravely. "There's nothing elsearound. There's nothing we can be called on to do befo
re somethinghappens. So ... we can ... act like people."
Diane smiled very faintly.
"Not like people. Just like us." She said wistfully: "Don't you want totell me something? Something you intended to tell me only after we gotback to base?"
He did. He told it to her. And there was also something she had notintended to tell him at all--unless he told her first. She said it now.They felt that such sayings were of the greatest possible importance.They clung together, saying them again. And it seemed wholly monstrousthat two people who cared so desperately had wasted