Murray Leinster Read Online Free PDF Page B

about in free space and’ - he hesitated - ‘then it looks like they went into suspended animation. They’re all on board, in transparent cases that have - machinery attached. Maybe they thought they’d be picked up by sister ships sooner or later.’ The skipper blinked.
    ‘Suspended animation? They’re alive?’ Then he said sharply: ‘What sort of ship is it? Cargo?’
    ‘No, sir.’ said Freddy. ‘That’s another problem. Bridges and I agree that it’s a fighting ship, sir. There are rows of generators serving things that could only be weapons. By the way they’re braced, there are tractor beams and pressor beams and - there are vacuum tubes that have grids but apparently work with cold cathodes. By the size of the cables that lead to them, those tubes handle amperages up in the thousands. You can figure that one out, sir.’
    The skipper paced two steps this way, and two steps that. The thing was stupendous. But his instructions were precise.
    ‘I’m under your orders,’ he said doggedly. ‘What are you going to do?’
    ‘I’m going to work myself to death, I suppose,’ said Freddy unhappily, ‘and some other men with me. I want to go over that ship backwards, forwards, and sideways with scanners, and everything the scanners see photographed back on board, here. I want men to work the scanners and technicians on board to direct them for their specialties. I want to get every rivet and coil in that whole ship on film before touching anything.’
    The skipper said grudgingly:
    ‘That’s not too foolish. Very well, Mr. Holmes, it will be done.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Freddy. He started to leave the bridge, and stopped. The men to handle the scanners,’ he added, ‘ought to be rather carefully picked. Imaginative men wouldn’t do. The crew of that ship - they look horribly alive, and they aren’t pretty. And… er… the plastic cases they’re in are arranged to open from inside. That’s another problem still, sir.’
    He went on down. The skipper clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace the bridge furiously. The first object from beyond the stars was a spaceship. It had weapons the Patrol had only vainly imagined. And he, a two-and-a-half striper, had to stand by and take orders for its investigation from a lieutenant junior grade just out of the Academy. Because of politics! The skipper ground his teeth—
    Then Freddy’s last comment suddenly had meaning. The plastic cases in which the alien’s crew lay in suspended animation opened from the inside. From the inside!
    Cold sweat came out on the skipper’s forehead as he realized the implication. Tractor and pressor beams, and the ship’s fuel not quite gone, and the suspended-animation cases opening from the inside—
    There was a slender, coaxial cable connecting the two spacecraft, now. They drifted in sunward together. The little cruiser was dwarfed by the alien giant.
    The sun was very far away; brighter than any star, to be sure, and pouring out a fierce radiation, but still very far from a warming orb. All about were the small, illimitably distant lights which were stars. There was exactly one object in view which had an appreciable diameter. That was Jupiter, a new moon in shape, twenty million miles sunward and eighty million miles farther along its orbit. The rest was emptiness.
    The spidery little spaceboat slid along the cable between the two craft. Spacesuited figures got out and clumped on magnetic-soled shoes to the air lock. They went in.
    Freddy came to the bridge. The skipper said hoarsely:
    ‘Mr. Holmes, I would like to make a request. You are, by orders of the Board, in command of this ship until your investigation of the ship yonder is completed.’
    Freddy’s face was haggard and worn. He said abstractedly: ‘Yes, sir. What is it?’
    ‘I would like,’ said the Amina’s skipper urgently, ‘to send a complete report of your investigation so far. Since you are in command, I cannot do so without your