Gordon R. Dickson
If the alien space craft was not a rocket ship, what was it? And an even bigger question: should they investigate—or run for their lives!
They came down to rest their tubes on an unnamed planet of a little-known star in the Buckhorn Cluster. Because they were tired from weeks in space, they came in without looking. They circled the planet once and spiraled down to an open patch of sand between two rocky cliffs.
"Dad," he said flatly, into
the intercom, "swing the turret!"
Peter Wadley, up in the instrument
room, had already seen the strange ship, and the heavy twin barrels of the
automatic rifles were depressing to cover. Jeff leaned forward to the
communicator.
"Identify yourself!"
The tight beam in Common Code snapped across the little stretch of open sand to
the cliff against which the other seemed to nestle. "We are the mining
ship Emerald Girl, Earth license, five hundred and eighty-two days out of
Arcturus Station. Identify yourself!"
There were steps behind Jeff, and Peter
Wadley came to stand behind his son's tense back.
"Do they answer, Jeff?"
"No."
"Identify yourself. Identify
yourself! Identify yourself!"
The angry demand crackled and arced
invisibly across the space between both vessels. And there was no answer.
***
Jeff sat back from the communicator.
The palms of his hands were wet and he wiped them on the cloth of his breeches.
"Let's get out of here," he
said nervously.
"And leave him?"
his father's lean forefinger indicated the strange silent ship.
"Why not?" Jeff jerked his
face up. "We're no salvage outfit or Government exploration unit."
There was a moment of tenseness between
them. The older man's face tightened.
"We'd better look into it,"
he said.
"Are you crazy?" blazed Jeff.
"It was here when we came. It'll be here if we leave. Let's get going. We
can report it if you want. Let the Federal ships investigate."
"Maybe it just landed," his
father said evenly. "Maybe it's in trouble."
"What if it is?" Jeff insisted.
"Don't you realize we're a sitting target here? And what do you think it
is—Aunt Susie's runabout? Look at it!" And with a savage flip of his hand
he shoved the magnification of the viewing screen up so that the other ship
seemed to loom up a handbreadth beyond their walls.
It was an unnecessary gesture. There
was no mistaking that the lines of the other ship were foreign to any they had
ever seen. It was big: not outlandishly big, but bigger than the Emerald Girl,
and bulb-shaped with most of its bulk in front. There was no sign of ports or
airlocks, only a few stubby fins, which projected forlornly from the body at an
angle of some thirty degrees.
And from its silence and immobility,
its strange inhuman lines, a cold air of alien menace seemed to reach out to
chill the two watching men.
"Well?" challenged Jeff. But
the older man was not listening.
"The radarcamera," he said,
half to himself. He turned on his heel and stalked off. Jeff, sitting tensely
in his chair, heard his father's footsteps die away, to be succeeded seconds
later by the distant clumsy sounds of a man getting into a spacesuit. Jeff
swore, and jumping to his feet, ran to the airlock. His father, radarcamera at
his feet, was already half-dressed to go outside.
"You aren't going out there?"
he asked incredulously.
 |
| "Surely you're not going out there?" |
***
The older man nodded and picked up his
fishbowl helmet. Jeff's face twisted in dismay.
"I won't let you!" he
half-shouted. "You're risking your life and I can't navigate the ship
without you."
Helmet in hand, his father paused, the
deep-graved lines of his face stiffening.
"I'm still master of this
ship!" he said curtly. "Alien or not that other ship may need
assistance. By intraspace law I'm obliged to give it. If you're worried, cover
me from the gun-turret." He dropped the helmet over his head, cutting Jeff
off from further protest.
Seething with mixed fear and anger,
Jeff turned abruptly and climbed hurriedly to the gun-turret. The twin barrels
of the rifles were already centered on their target, which the aiming screen showed,
together with the area between the two vessels and a portion of the Emerald
Girl's airlock, which projected from her side. As Jeff watched, the outer lock
swung open and a grey, space-suited figure raced for the protection of the bow.
It was a dash of no more than five seconds' duration, but to Jeff it seemed
that his father took an eternity to reach safety.
He reached for the microphone on the
ship's circuit and pulled it to him.
"All right, Dad?" In spite of
himself, Jeff's voice was still ragged with anger.
"Fine, Jeff," his father's
voice came back in unperturbed tones. "I'm well shielded and I can get
good, clean shots at every part of her."
"Let me know when you're ready to
start back," said Jeff, and shoved the microphone away from him.
He sat back and lit a cigarette, but
his eyes continued to watch the other ship as a man might watch a dud bomb
which has not yet been disarmed. After a while, he noticed his fingers were
shaking, and he laid the cigarette carefully down in the ashtray.
When he comes back, thought Jeff, it'll
be time. We'll have this thing out then. He's become some sort of a religious
fanatic, and he doesn't know it. How a man who's been all over hell and seen
the worst sides of fifty different races in as many years can think of them all
as lovable human children, I don't know. But, know it or not, this taking of
chances has got to stop someplace; and right here is the best place of all.
When he gets back—if he gets back, we're taking off. And if he doesn't get back
... I'll blow that bloody bastard over there into so many bits....
"Coming in, Jeff," his
father's voice on the speaker interrupted him.
***
Jeff leaned forward, his hands on the
trips of the rifles; the small grey figure suddenly shot back to the protection
of the airlock, which snapped shut behind it. Then, he took a deep breath,
stood up, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He went down to the
instrument room.
Peter Wadley was already out of his
suit and developing the pictures. Jeff picked them up as they came off the
roll, damp and soft to the touch.
"I can't tell much," he said,
holding them up to the light.
"There's a great deal of
overlap," his father answered. "We're going to have to section and
fit the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. Wait'll I'm through here."
For about five minutes more, pictures
continued to come off the roll. Then Peter picked up a pair of scissors and
arranged the prints in their proper sequence.
"Clear the table," he told
Jeff, "and fit these together as I hand them to you."
For a little while longer, they worked
in silence. Then Peter laid down his scissors.
"That's all," he said.
"Now, what have we got?"
"I don't know," answered
Jeff, bewilderment in his voice. "It looks like nothing I've ever
seen."
Peter stepped up to the table and
squinted at the shadowy films with eyes practiced in reading rock formations.
He shook his head.
"It is strange," he said,
finally.
"Do you see what I see?"
demanded Jeff. "There's no real crew space. There's this one spot—up
front—" he indicated it with his finger—"that's about as big as a
good sized closet. And nothing more than that—except corridors about twenty
inches in diameter running from it to points all over the ship. She must be
flown by a crew of midgets."
"Midgets," echoed the older man,
thoughtfully. "I never heard of an intelligent race that small."
"Then they're something new,"
said Jeff, with a shrug of his shoulders.
"No," said his father,
slowly. "I don't remember when or where I heard it, but there's some
reason why you couldn't have an intelligent race much smaller than a good sized
dog. It has something to do with the fact that they grow in size as their
developing intelligence gives them an increasing advantage over their
environment."
"Here's the evidence," Jeff
answered, tapping the film with one finger.
"No," Pete was bending over
the picture fragments again. "Look at these things in the corridor.
They're obviously controls."
Jeff looked.
"I see what you mean," he
said at last. "If there's any similarity between their mechanical system
and ours, these controls are built for somebody pretty big. But look how
they're scattered all over the ship. There's a good fifteen or twenty different
groups of instruments and other things. That means a number of crew members;
and you simply can't put a number of large crew members in those little
corridors."
"There's a large amount of total
space," Pete began. Then, suddenly a faint tremor ran through the ship.
Jeff leaped for the screen and his father moved over to stand behind him.
"Good Lord," said Jeff,
"look at her."
***
The other ship shook suddenly and
rolled slightly to one side. Some unseen center of gravity pulled her back to
her original position. She hesitated a moment, and then tried again, with the
same results. She lay quiescent.
Jeff pounced on his radiation drum
graph.
"What does it say?" Peter
asked.
Jeff shook his head in astonishment.
"Nothing," he answered, "just nothing at all."
"Nothing?" Peter came over to
take a look at the graph himself. It was as Jeff had said. The line tracing the
white surface of the graph was straight and undisturbed.
"But that's impossible,"
Peter frowned.
The two men turned back to the screen.
As they watched, one final shudder shook the strange ship, and then, like a
stranded whale who has given up hope, it lay still.
"My God!" said Pete, and Jeff
turned to him in astonishment. It was the closest to profanity his father had
come in twenty years. "Jeff, do you know what I think? I think that ship
is manned by just one great big creature—like a giant squid. That's why no
radiation registered. He was trying to move his ship by sheer strength."
Jeff stared at his father.
"You're crazy," was all he
could manage to say. "Why, something big enough to shake that ship would
have to fill every inch of space inside it. You can't live in a space ship that
way."
"That's right," Pete
answered. He clamped his hand on Jeff's shoulder excitedly and led him back to
the jigsaw puzzle on the table.
"If I'm right," he said,
"that's no ship at all as we understand it, but some sort of a space-going
suit for something terrifically large. Something like a giant squid, as I said,
or some other long-tentacled creature. His body would lie here—in this space
you said was about the size of a closet—and his tentacles or whatever they are,
would reach out in these corridors to the various groups of instruments."
 |
| The alien controls the ship with its eight deadly testicles...and please don't call me Shirley. |
Jeff frowned.
"It sounds sensible," he
muttered. "And in any case, he wouldn't be able to get outside his ship to
fix anything that went wrong. And I take it there is something wrong, or else
he wouldn't be jumping around inside."
"Jeff," Pete said, "I'm
going outside to take a close look at him."
Jeff's head snapped up from the jigsaw
puzzle. The old, sick fear had come back. It washed over him like a wave.
"Why?" he demanded harshly.
"To see if I can find out what's
wrong with his ship," said Pete over his shoulder as he went to the
airlock. "Coming?"
"Wait!" cried Jeff. He stood
up and followed his father. For a moment there, they stood facing each other,
two tall men with less apparent physical difference between them than their
ages might indicate, poised on the brink of an open break.
"Wait," said Jeff again, and
now his voice was lower, more under control. "Dad, there's no point in
playing around any longer. You aren't going to be satisfied just to look around
out there and then leave. You're going to do something. And if that's it I want
to know now."
***
There was a moment's silence; then Pete
turned back to Jeff, his face set.
"That's right," he said.
"I don't have to look. I know what's wrong. And I know what I'm going to
do about it. There's a living intelligence trapped in that space-thing as you
and I might be trapped. I can set it free with two of our motor jacks. If
you've got one inkling of what it means to be ignored when you're caught like
that, you'll help me. If not, I'm taking two jacks out the airlock and you can
fire the motors and take off and be damned to you."
Between the two big men the tension
built and strained and broke. Jeff let out a ragged sigh.
"All right," he said.
"I'm with you."
"Good," said the older man,
and there was new life in his voice. "Get your suit on. I'll explain as we
dress."
"The trouble with our friend there
is that he's fallen over. I see you don't understand, Jeff. Well, this ship of
ours lands on her belly. We've got booster rockets all over the hull to correct
our landing angle. But ships weren't always that way. They used to have to sit
down on their tail. There's no furrow where that ship landed, only a circular
blasted spot, so it figures. Maybe some of his mechanism went wrong at the last
minute.
"At any rate, I'm betting that if
we get him upright again, he can take care of himself from there on out. So you
and I are going to go out there with a couple of jacks and see if we can't jack
him back up into position."
***
The sand was thick and heavy. The walk
over to the other ship was tedious, with the heavy jacks weighing them down.
They reached the alien hull, paused a moment to get their breath and then
attached the magnetic grapples to the skin of the ship at two points on
opposite sides of the hull and roughly a fourth of the way up from the rocket
tubes.
It was hard to anchor the jacks in the
soft sand. They finally found it necessary to dig them in some three or four feet
to a layer of rock that underlay the sand. Then, when everything was ready,
they took their stations, each at a jack, and Pete called to Jeff on the helmet
set.
"All ready? Start your
motor."
Jeff reached down and flicked a switch.
The tiny, powerful jack motor began to spin, and the jack base settled more
solidly against its rocky bed. When he was sure that it would not slip, he left
it, and went around the rockets to stand by his father.
His face was grey.
"Well," said Pete tensely,
"up she goes."
The nose of the alien ship was raising
slowly from the sand. It quivered softly from some motion inside the ship.
"Yes," said Jeff, "up
she goes." His words were flat and dull. Pete turned to look at him.
"Scared, son?" he asked.
Jeff's lips parted, closed and opened again.
"You know how we stand," he
said, dully. "I've heard what you said from other men, but never from an
alien. Most of the ones we know hit first, and talk afterward. You know that
once this ship is on its feet we're at his mercy. Just his rocket blasts alone
could kill us; and there won't be time to get back to the Girl."
The alien was now at an angle of
forty-five degrees. The little jacks stretched steadily, pushing their thin,
stiff arms against the strange hull. Sand dripped from the rising ship.
"Yes, Jeff," Pete said.
"I know. But the important thing isn't what he does, but what we do. The
fact that we've helped him—can't you see it that way, son?"
Jeff shook his head in bewilderment.
"I don't know," he said
helplessly. "I just don't know."
The ship was now nearly upright.
Suddenly, with an abruptness that startled both men, it shook itself free of
the jacks and teetered free for a second, before coming to rest, its nose
pointing straight up.
"Here it goes," said Pete, a
tinge of excitement in his voice. They moved back some yards to be out of the
way of the takeoff blast. Suddenly the ground trembled under their feet. Pete
put his hand on the younger man's shoulder.
"Here it goes," he repeated,
in a whisper.
Flame burst abruptly from the base of
the ship. It was warming up its tubes. Slowly the flame puffed out from its
base and it began to rise.
***
Jeff shook suddenly with an
uncontrollable shudder. His voice came to Pete through the earphones, starkly
afraid.
"Now what?" he cried.
"What'll he do now?"
Pete's grip tightened on his shoulder.
"Steady boy."
The ship was rising. Up it went, and
up, until it was the size of a man's little finger, a tiny sliver of silver
against the black backdrop of the sky. Then, inexplicably, it halted and began
to reverse itself.
Slowly it turned, until the blunt nose
pointed toward them. Jeff's hoarse breathing was loud in his helmet. Now
it comes, he thought, and his muscles tensed.
A long minute flowed by and still the
alien hung there. Then, abruptly it went into a series of idiotic gyrations; it
twisted and turned, and spun around, swinging its fiery trail of rocket gases
like a luminous tail in the darkness. Then, just as abruptly, it reversed once
more, so that its head was away from them; in the twinkling of a moment it was
gone.
Pete sighed, a deep, ragged sigh.
"Did you see it, boy?" he
cried. "Did you see it?"
.jpg) |
| Gordon R. Dickson. |
"I saw," Jeff's voice was
filled with a new awe. "Now I get it. He wasn't sure—he didn't know we
were really trying to help him until we let him get all the way out there by
himself. Then he knew he was free. That's why he wouldn't answer before."
"Sure, Jeff, sure," said the
older man, a note of triumph in his voice. "But that's not what I mean.
Did you notice all those contortions he was going through up there? What did
they remind you of?"
There was a moment of silence, then the
words came, at first slowly, then in a rush from Jeff's lips.
"Like a puppy," he said,
haltingly, stumbling over the wonder of it. "Like a puppy wagging its
tail."
And the light of a new understanding
broke suddenly in his eyes.
"Dad!" said Jeff, turning to
his father. "Dad! Do you know what I think? I think we've made a
friend."
And the two men stood there, side by
side, looking into the blackness of space where an odd-shaped spacecraft had
vanished. It, they felt, was on its way home.
And they were right. Moreover, It was
hurrying.
For It had a story to tell.
END
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