[Transcriber's note:

This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction August 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyrighton this publication was renewed. ]

THE ALIENS

BY MURRAY LEINSTER

Illustrated by van Dongen

[Illustration]

 _The human race was expanding through the galaxy . . . And so, they knew, were the Aliens. When two expanding empires meet . . . War is inevitable. Or is it . . . ?_

At 04 hours 10 minutes, ship time, the _Niccola_ was well inside theTheta Gisol solar system. She had previously secured excellent evidencethat this was not the home of the Plumie civilization. There was no tunedradiation. There was no evidence of interplanetary travel--rockets wouldbe more than obvious, and a magnetronic drive had a highly characteristicradiation-pattern--so the real purpose of the _Niccola's_ voyage wouldnot be accomplished here. She wouldn't find out where Plumies came from. 

There might, though, be one or more of those singular, conical, hollow-topped cairns sheltering silicon-bronze plates, which constitutedthe evidence that Plumies existed. The _Niccola_ went sunward toward theinner planets to see. Such cairns had been found on conspicuous landmarkson oxygen-type planets over a range of some twelve hundred light-years. By the vegetation about them, some were a century old. On the sameevidence, others had been erected only months or weeks or even daysbefore a human Space Survey ship arrived to discover them. And thesituation was unpromising. It wasn't likely that the galaxy was bigenough to hold two races of rational beings capable of space travel. Backon ancient Earth, a planet had been too small to hold two races withtools and fire. Historically, that problem was settled when _Homosapiens_ exterminated _Homo neanderthalis_. It appeared that the samesituation had arisen in space. There were humans, and there were Plumies. Both had interstellar ships. To humans, the fact was alarming. The needfor knowledge, and the danger that Plumies might know more first, andthereby be able to exterminate humanity, was appalling. 

Therefore the _Niccola_. She drove on sunward. She had left one frozenouter planet far behind. She had crossed the orbits of three others. Thelast of these was a gas giant with innumerable moonlets revolving aboutit. It was now some thirty millions of miles back and twenty to one side. The sun, ahead, flared and flamed in emptiness against that expanse oftinted stars. 

Jon Baird worked steadily in the _Niccola's_ radar room. He was one ofthose who hoped that the Plumies would not prove to be the naturalenemies of mankind. Now, it looked like this ship wouldn't find out inthis solar system. There were plenty of other ships on the hunt. Fromhere on, it looked like routine to the next unvisited family of planets. But meanwhile he worked. Opposite him, Diane Holt worked as steadily, herdark head bent intently over a radar graph in formation. The immediatejob was the completion of a map of the meteor swarms following cometaryorbits about this sun. They interlaced emptiness with hazards tonavigation, and nobody would try to drive through a solar system withoutsuch a map. 

Elsewhere in the ship, everything was normal. The engine room was a placeof stillness and peace, save for the almost inaudible hum of the drive, running at half a million Gauss flux-density. The skipper did whateverskippers do when they are invisible to their subordinates. The weaponsofficer, Taine, thought appropriate thoughts. In the navigation room thesecond officer conscientiously glanced at each separate instrument atleast once in each five minutes, and then carefully surveyed all thescreens showing space outside the ship. The stewards disposed of thedebris of the last meal, and began to get ready for the next. In thecrew's quarters, those off duty read or worked at scrimshaw, or simplyand contentedly loafed. 

Diane handed over the transparent radar graph, to be fitted into thethree-dimensional map in the making. 

"There's a lump of stuff here, " she said interestedly. "It could be thecomet that once followed this orbit, now so old it's lost all its gasesand isn't a comet any longer. "

 * * * * *

At this instant, which was 04 hours 25 minutes ship time, the alarm-bellrang. It clanged stridently over Baird's head, repeater-gongs sounded allthrough the ship, and there was a scurrying and a closing of doors. Thealarm gong could mean only one thing. It made one's breath come faster orone's hair stand on end, according to temperament. 

The skipper's face appeared on the direct-line screen from the navigationroom. 

"_Plumies?_" he demanded harshly. "_Mr. Baird! Plumies?_"

Baird's hands were already flipping switches and plugging the radar roomapparatus into a new setup. 

"There's a contact, sir, " he said curtly. "No. There was a contact. It'sbroken now. Something detected us. We picked up a radar pulse. One. "

The word "one" meant much. A radar system that could get adequateinformation from a single pulse was not the work of amateurs. It was theproduct of a very highly developed technology. Setting all equipment tofull-globular scanning, Baird felt a certain crawling sensation at theback of his neck. He'd been mapping within a narrow range above and belowthe line of this system's ecliptic. A lot could have happened outside thearea he'd had under long-distance scanning. 

But seconds passed. They seemed like years. The all-globe scanningcovered every direction out from the _Niccola_. Nothing appeared whichhad not been reported before. The gas-giant planet far behind, and theonly inner one on this side of the sun, would return their pulses onlyafter minutes. Meanwhile the radars reported very faintfully, but theyonly repeated previous reports. 

"No new object within half a million miles, " said Baird, after a suitableinterval. Presently he added: "Nothing new within three-quarter millionmiles. " Then: "Nothing new within a million miles . . . "

The skipper said bitingly:

"_Then you'd better check on objects that are not new!_" He turned aside, and his voice came more faintly as he spoke into another microphone. "_Mr. Taine! Arm all rockets and have your tube crews stand by in combatreadiness! Engine room! Prepare drive for emergency maneuvers!Damage-control parties, put on pressure suits and take combat posts withequipment!_" His voice rose again in volume. "_Mr. Baird! How aboutobserved objects?_"

Diane murmured. Baird said briefly:

"Only one suspicious object, sir--and that shouldn't be suspicious. Weare sending an information-beam at something we'd classed as a burned-outcomet. Pulse going out now, sir. "

Diane had the distant-information transmitter aimed at what she'd saidmight be a dead comet. Baird pressed the button. An extraordinary complexof information-seeking frequencies and forms sprang into being and leapedacross emptiness. There were microwaves of strictly standard amplitude, for measurement-standards. There were frequencies of other values, whichwould be selectively absorbed by this material and that. There werelaterally and circularly polarized beams. When they bounced back, theywould bring a surprising amount of information. 

They returned. They did bring back news. The thing that had registered asa larger lump in a meteor-swarm was not a meteor at all. It returned fourdifferent frequencies with a relative-intensity pattern which said thatthey'd been reflected by bronze--probably silicon bronze. The polarizedbeams came back depolarized, of course, but with phase-changes which saidthe reflector had a rounded, regular form. There was a smooth hull ofsilicon bronze out yonder. There was other data. 

"It will be a Plumie ship, sir, " said Baird very steadily. "At a guess, they picked up our mapping beam and shot a single pulse at us to find outwho and what we were. For another guess, by now they've picked up andanalyzed our information-beam and know what we've found out about them. "

The skipper scowled. 

"_How many of them?_" he demanded. "_Have we run into a fleet?_"

"I'll check, sir, " said Baird. "We picked up no tuned radiation fromouter space, sir, but it could be that they picked us up when we came outof overdrive and stopped all their transmissions until they had us in atrap. "

"_Find out how many there are!_" barked the skipper. "_Make it quick!Report additional data instantly!_"

His screen clicked off. Diane, more than a little pale, worked swiftly toplug the radar-room equipment into a highly specialized pattern. The_Niccola_ was very well equipped, radar-wise. She'd been a type G8 Surveyship, and on her last stay in port she'd been rebuilt especially to huntfor and make contact with Plumies. Since the discovery of theirexistence, that was the most urgent business of the Space Survey. Itmight well be the most important business of the human race--on which itssurvival or destruction would depend. Other remodeled ships had gone outbefore the _Niccola_, and others would follow until the problem wassolved. Meanwhile the _Niccola's_ twenty-four rocket tubes andstepped-up drive and computer-type radar system equipped her forPlumie-hunting as well as any human ship could be. Still, if she'd beenlured deep into the home system of the Plumies, the prospects were notgood. 

 * * * * *

The new setup began its operation, instantly the last contact closed. Thethree-dimensional map served as a matrix to control it. Theinformation-beam projector swung and flung out its bundle ofoscillations. It swung and flashed, and swung and flashed. It had toexamine every relatively nearby object for a constitution of siliconbronze and a rounded shape. The nearest objects had to be examined first. Speed was essential. But three-dimensional scanning takes time, even atsome hundreds of pulses per minute. 

Nevertheless, the information came in. No other silicon-bronze objectwithin a quarter-million miles. Within half a million. A million. Amillion and a half. Two million . . . 

Baird called the navigation room. 

"Looks like a single Plumie ship, sir, " he reported. "At least there'sone ship which is nearest by a very long way. "

"_Hah!_" grunted the skipper. "_Then we'll pay him a visit. Keep an openline, Mr. Baird!_" His voice changed. "_Mr. Taine! Report here at once toplan tactics!_"

Baird shook his head, to himself. The _Niccola's_ orders were to makecontact without discovery, if such a thing were possible. The ideal wouldbe a Plumie ship or the Plumie civilization itself, located and subjectto complete and overwhelming envelopment by human ships--before thePlumies knew they'd been discovered. And this would be the human idealbecause humans have always had to consider that a stranger might behostile, until he'd proven otherwise. 

Such a viewpoint would not be optimism, but caution. Yet caution wasnecessary. It was because the Survey brass felt the need to prepare forevery unfavorable eventuality that Taine had been chosen as weaponsofficer of the _Niccola_. His choice had been deliberate, because he wasa xenophobe. He had been a problem personality all his life. He had aseemingly congenital fear and hatred of strangers--which in mild cases iscommon enough, but Taine could not be cured without a complete breakdownof personality. He could not serve on a ship with a multiracial crew, because he was invincibly suspicious of and hostile to all but his ownsmall breed. Yet he seemed ideal for weapons officer on the _Niccola_, provided he never commanded the ship. Because _if_ the Plumies werehostile, a well-adjusted, normal man would never think as much like themas a Taine. He was capable of the kind of thinking Plumies mightpractice, if they were xenophobes themselves. 

But to Baird, so extreme a precaution as a known psychopathic conditionin an officer was less than wholly justified. It was by no means certainthat the Plumies would instinctively be hostile. Suspicious, yes. Cautious, certainly. But the only fact known about the Plumiecivilization came from the cairns and silicon-bronze inscribed tabletsthey'd left on oxygen-type worlds over a twelve-hundred-light-year rangein space, and the only thing to be deduced about the Plumies themselvescame from the decorative, formalized symbols like feathery plumes whichwere found on all their bronze tablets. The name "Plumies" came from thatsymbol. 

Now, though, Taine was called to the navigation room to confer ontactics. The _Niccola_ swerved and drove toward the object Bairdidentified as a Plumie ship. This was at 05 hours 10 minutes ship time. The human ship had a definite velocity sunward, of course. The Plumieship had been concealed by the meteor swarm of a totally unknown comet. It was an excellent way to avoid observation. On the other hand, the_Niccola_ had been mapping, which was bound to attract attention. Noweach ship knew of the other's existence. Since the _Niccola_ had beendetected, she had to carry out orders and attempt a contact to gatherinformation. 

 * * * * *

Baird verified that the _Niccola's_ course was exact for interception ather full-drive speed. He said in a flat voice:

"I wonder how the Plumies will interpret this change of course? They knowwe're aware they're not a meteorite. But charging at them without eventrying to communicate could look ominous. We could be stupid, or tooarrogant to think of anything but a fight. " He pressed the skipper's calland said evenly: "Sir, I request permission to attempt to communicatewith the Plumie ship. We're ordered to try to make friends if we knowwe've been spotted. "

Taine had evidently just reached the navigation room. His voice snappedfrom the speaker:

"_I advise against that, sir! No use letting them guess our level oftechnology!_"

Baird said coldly:

"They've a good idea already. We beamed them for data. "

There was silence, with only the very faint humming sound which wasnatural in the ship in motion. It would be deadly to the nerves if therewere absolute silence. The skipper grumbled:

"_Requests and advice! Dammit! Mr. Baird, you might wait for orders! ButI was about to ask you to try to make contact through signals. Do so. _"

His speaker clicked off. Baird said:

"It's in our laps. Diane. And yet we have to follow orders. Send thefirst roll. "

Diane had a tape threaded into a transmitter. It began to unroll througha pickup head. She put on headphones. The tape began to transmit towardthe Plumie. Back at base it had been reasoned that a pattern ofclickings, plainly artificial and plainly stating facts known to bothraces, would be the most reasonable way to attempt to open contact. Thetape sent a series of cardinal numbers--one to five. Then an additiontable, from one plus one to five plus five. Then a multiplication tableup to five times five. It was not startlingly intellectual information tobe sent out in tiny clicks ranging up and down the radio spectrum. But itwas orders. 

Baird sat with compressed lips. Diane listened for a repetition of any ofthe transmitted signals, sent back by the Plumie. The speakers about theradar room murmured the orders given through all the ship. Radar had tobe informed of all orders and activity, so it could check their resultsoutside the ship. So Baird heard the orders for the engine room to besealed up and the duty-force to get into pressure suits, in case the_Niccola_ fought and was hulled. Damage-control parties reportedthemselves on post, in suits, with equipment ready. Then Taine's voicesnapped: "_Rocket crews, arm even-numbered rockets with chemicalexplosive warheads. Leave odd-numbered rockets armed with atomics. Reportback!_"

Diane strained her ears for possible re-transmission of the _Niccola's_signals, which would indicate the Plumie's willingness to tryconversation. But she suddenly raised her hand and pointed to theradar-graph instrument. It repeated the positioning of dots which werestray meteoric matter in the space between worlds in this system. Whathad been a spot--the Plumie ship--was now a line of dots. Baird pressedthe button. 

"Radar reporting!" he said curtly. "The Plumie ship is heading for us. I'll have relative velocity in ten seconds. "

He heard the skipper swear. Ten seconds later the Doppler measurementbecame possible. It said the Plumie plunged toward the _Niccola_ at milesper second. In half a minute it was tens of miles per second. There wasno re-transmission of signals. The Plumie ship had found itselfdiscovered. Apparently it considered itself attacked. It flung itselfinto a headlong dash for the _Niccola_. 

 * * * * *

Time passed--interminable time. The sun flared and flamed and writhed inemptiness. The great gas-giant planet rolled through space in splendidstate, its moonlets spinning gracefully about its bulk. Theoxygen-atmosphere planet to sunward was visible only as a crescent, butthe mottlings on its lighted part changed as it revolved--seas andislands and continents receiving the sunlight as it turned. Meteorswarms, so dense in appearance on a radar screen, yet so tenuous inreality, floated in their appointed orbits with a seeming vast leisure. 

The feel of slowness was actually the result of distance. Men have alwaysacted upon things close by. Battles have always been fought withineye-range, anyhow. But it was actually 06 hours 35 minutes ship timebefore the two spacecraft sighted each other--more than two hours afterthey plunged toward a rendezvous. 

The Plumie ship was a bright golden dot, at first. It deceleratedswiftly. In minutes it was a rounded, end-on disk. Then it swervedlightly and presented an elliptical broadside to the _Niccola_. The_Niccola_ was in full deceleration too, by then. The two ships came verynearly to a stop with relation to each other when they were hardly twentymiles apart--which meant great daring on both sides. 

Baird heard the skipper grumbling:

"_Damned cocky!_" He roared suddenly: "_Mr. Baird! How've you made out incommunicating with them?_"

"Not at all, sir, " said Baird grimly. "They don't reply. "

He knew from Diane's expression that there was no sound in the headphonesexcept the frying noise all main-sequence stars give out, and theinfrequent thumping noises that come from gas-giant planets' loweratmospheres, and the Jansky-radiation hiss which comes from everywhere. 

The skipper swore. The Plumie ship lay broadside to, less than a score ofmiles away. It shone in the sunlight. It acted with extraordinaryconfidence. It was as if it dared the _Niccola_ to open fire. 

Taine's voice came out of a speaker, harsh and angry:

"_Even-numbered tubes prepare to fire on command. _"

Nothing happened. The two ships floated sunward together, neitherapproaching nor retreating. But with every second, the need for action ofsome sort increased. 

"_Mr. Baird!_" barked the skipper. "_This is ridiculous! There must besome way to communicate! We can't sit here glaring at each other forever!Raise them! Get some sort of acknowledgment!_"

"I'm trying, " said Baird bitterly, "according to orders!"

But he disagreed with those orders. It was official theory thatarithmetic values, repeated in proper order, would be the way to openconversation. The assumption was that any rational creature would graspthe idea that orderly signals were rational attempts to opencommunication. 

But it had occurred to Baird that a Plumie might not see this point. Perception of order is not necessarily perception of information--infact, quite the contrary. A message is a disturbance of order. Amicrophone does not transmit a message when it sends an unvarying tone. Amessage has to be unpredictable or it conveys no message. Orderly clicks, even if overheard, might seem to Plumies the result of methodicallyoperating machinery. A race capable of interstellar flight was not likelyto be interested or thrilled by exercises a human child goes through inkindergarten. They simply wouldn't seem meaningful at all. 

But before he could ask permission to attempt to make talk in a moresophisticated fashion, voices exclaimed all over the ship. They cameblurringly to the loud-speakers. "_Look at that!_" "_What's he do--_""_Spinning like--_" From every place where there was a vision-plate onthe _Niccola_, men watched the Plumie ship and babbled. 

This was at 06 hours 50 minutes ship time. 

 * * * * *

The elliptical golden object darted into swift and eccentric motion. Lacking an object of known size for comparison, there was no scale. Thegolden ship might have been the size of an autumn leaf, and in fact itsmaneuvers suggested the heedless tumblings and scurrying of fallingfoliage. It fluttered in swift turns and somersaults and spinnings. Therewere weavings like the purposeful feints of boxers not yet come tobattle. There were indescribably graceful swoops and loops and curvingdashes like some preposterous dance in emptiness. 

Taine's voice crashed out of a speaker:

"_All even-number rockets_, " he barked. "_Fire!_"

[Illustration]

The skipper roared a countermand, but too late. The crunching, gruntingsound of rockets leaving their launching tubes came before his firstsyllable was complete. Then there was silence while the skipper gatheredbreath for a masterpiece of profanity. But Taine snapped:

"_That dance was a sneak-up! The Plumie came four miles nearer while wewatched!_"

Baird jerked his eyes from watching the Plumie. He looked at the masterradar. It was faintly blurred with the fading lines of past gyrations, but the golden ship was much nearer the _Niccola_ than it had been. 

"Radar reporting, " said Baird sickishly. "Mr. Taine is correct. ThePlumie ship did approach us while it danced. "

Taine's voice snarled:

"_Reload even numbers with chemical-explosive war heads. Then removeatomics from odd numbers and replace with chemicals. The range is tooshort for atomics. _"

Baird felt curiously divided in his own mind. He disliked Taine verymuch. Taine was arrogant and suspicious and intolerant even on the_Niccola_. But Taine had been right twice, now. The Plumie ship had creptcloser by pure trickery. And it was right to remove atomic war heads fromthe rockets. They had a pure-blast radius of ten miles. To destroy thePlumie ship within twice that would endanger the _Niccola_--and leavenothing of the Plumie to examine afterward. 

The Plumie ship must have seen the rocket flares, but it continued todance, coming nearer and ever nearer in seemingly heedless andpurposeless plungings and spinnings in star-speckled space. But suddenlythere were racing, rushing trails of swirling vapor. Half the _Niccola's_port broadside plunged toward the golden ship. The fraction of a secondlater, the starboard half-dozen chemical-explosive rockets swungfuriously around the ship's hull and streaked after their brothers. Theymoved in utterly silent, straight-lined, ravening ferocity toward theirtarget. Baird thought irrelevantly of the vapor trails of anatmosphere-liner in the planet's upper air. 

The ruled-line straightness of the first six rockets' course abruptlybroke. One of them veered crazily out of control. It shifted to an almostright-angled course. A second swung wildly to the left. A third andfourth and fifth--The sixth of the first line of rockets made a great, sweeping turn and came hurtling back toward the _Niccola_. It was like anightmare. Lunatic, erratic lines of sunlit vapor eeled before thebackground of all the stars in creation. 

Then the second half-dozen rockets broke ranks, as insanely andirremediably as the first. 

Taine's voice screamed out of a speaker, hysterical with fury:

"_Detonate! Detonate! They've taken over the rockets and are throwing 'emback at us! Detonate all rockets!_"

The heavens seemed streaked and laced with lines of expanding smoke. Butnow one plunging line erupted at its tip. A swelling globe of smokemarked its end. Another blew up. And another--

The _Niccola's_ rockets faithfully blew themselves to bits on commandfrom the _Niccola's_ own weapons control. There was nothing else to bedone with them. They'd been taken over in flight. They'd been turned andheaded back toward their source. They'd have blasted the _Niccola_ tobits but for their premature explosions. 

There was a peculiar, stunned hush all through the _Niccola_. The onlysound that came out of any speaker in the radar room was Taine's voice, high-pitched and raging, mouthing unspeakable hatred of the Plumies, whomno human being had yet seen. 

 * * * * *

Baird sat tense in the frustrated and desperate composure of the man whocan only be of use while he is sitting still and keeping his head. Thevision screen was now a blur of writhing mist, lighted by the sun andtorn at by emptiness. There was luminosity where the ships hadencountered each other. It was sunshine upon thin smoke. It was like theinsanely enlarging head of a newborn comet, whose tail would be formedpresently by light-pressure. The Plumie ship was almost invisible behindthe unsubstantial stuff. 

But Baird regarded his radar screens. Microwaves penetrated the mist ofrapidly ionizing gases. 

"Radar to navigation!" he said sharply. "The Plumie ship is stillapproaching, dancing as before!"

The skipper said with enormous calm:

"_Any other Plumie ships, Mr. Baird?_"

Diane interposed. 

"No sign anywhere. I've been watching. This seems to be the only shipwithin radar range. "

"_We've time to settle with it, then_, " said the skipper. "_Mr. Taine, the Plumie ship is still approaching. _"

Baird found himself hating the Plumies. It was not only that humankindwas showing up rather badly, at the moment. It was that the Plumie shiphad refused contact and forced a fight. It was that if the _Niccola_ weredestroyed the Plumie would carry news of the existence of humanity and ofthe tactics which worked to defeat them. The Plumies could prepare anirresistible fleet. Humanity could be doomed. 

But he overheard himself saying bitterly:

"I wish I'd known this was coming, Diane. I . . . Wouldn't have resolved tobe strictly official, only, until we got back to base. "

Her eyes widened. She looked startled. Then she softened. 

"If . . . You mean that . . . I wish so too. "

"It looks like they've got us, " he admitted unhappily. "If they can takeour rockets away from us--" Then his voice stopped. He said, "Holdeverything!" and pressed the navigation-room button. He snapped: "Radarto navigation. It appears to take the Plumies several seconds to takeover a rocket. They have to aim something--a pressor or tractor beam, most likely--and pick off each rocket separately. Nearly forty secondswas consumed in taking over all twelve of our rockets. At shorter range, with less time available, a rocket might get through!"

The skipper swore briefly. Then:

"_Mr. Taine! When the Plumies are near enough, our rockets may strikebefore they can be taken over! You follow?_"

Baird heard Taine's shrill-voiced acknowledgment--in the form ofpractically chattered orders to his rocket-tube crews. Baird listened, checking the orders against what the situation was as the radars saw it. Taine's voice was almost unhuman; so filled with frantic rage that itcracked as he spoke. But the problem at hand was the fulfillment of allhis psychopathic urges. He commanded the starboard-side rocket-battery toawait special orders. Meanwhile the port-side battery would fire tworockets on widely divergent courses, curving to join at the Plumie ship. They'd be seized. They were to be detonated and another port-side rocketfired instantly, followed by a second hidden in the rocket-trail thefirst would leave behind. Then the starboard side--

"I'm afraid Taine's our only chance, " said Baird reluctantly. "If hewins, we'll have time to . . . Talk as people do who like each other. If itdoesn't work--"

Diane said quietly:

"Anyhow . . . I'm glad you . . . Wanted me to know. I . . . Wanted you to know, too. "

She smiled at him, yearningly. 

 * * * * *

_There was the crump-crump_ of two rockets going out together. Then theradar told what happened. The Plumie ship was no more than six milesaway, dancing somehow deftly in the light of a yellow sun, with all thecosmos spread out as shining pin points of colored light behind it. Theradar reported the dash and the death of the two rockets, after theirstruggle with invisible things that gripped them. They died when theyheaded reluctantly back to the _Niccola_--and detonated two miles fromtheir parent ship. The skipper's voice came:

"_Mr. Taine! After your next salvo I shall head for the Plumie at fulldrive, to cut down the distance and the time they have to work in. Beready!_"

The rocket tubes went _crump-crump_ again, with a fifth of a secondinterval. The radar showed two tiny specks speeding through space towardthe weaving, shifting speck which was the Plumie. 

Outside, in emptiness, there was a filmy haze. It was the rocket-fumesand explosive gases spreading with incredible speed. It was thin asgossamer. The Plumie ship undoubtedly spotted the rockets, but it did nottry to turn them. It somehow seized them and deflected them, and dartedpast them toward the _Niccola_. 

"They see the trick, " said Diane, dry-throated. "If they can get in closeenough, they can turn it against us!"

There were noises inside the _Niccola_, now. Taine fairly howled anorder. There were yells of defiance and excitement. There were more ofthose inadequate noises as rockets went out--every tube on the starboardside emptied itself in a series of savage grunts--and the _Niccola's_magnetronic drive roared at full flux density. 

The two ships were less than a mile apart when the _Niccola_ let go herfull double broadside of missiles. And then it seemed that the Plumieship was doomed. There were simply too many rockets to be seized andhandled before at least one struck. But there was a new condition. ThePlumie ship weaved and dodged its way through them. The new condition wasthat the rockets were just beginning their run. They had not achieved theterrific velocity they would accumulate in ten miles of no-gravity. Theywere new-launched; logy: clumsy: not the streaking, flashingdeath-and-destruction they would become with thirty more seconds ofacceleration. 

So the Plumie ship dodged them with a skill and daring past belief. Withan incredible agility it got inside them, nearer to the _Niccola_ thanthey. And then it hurled itself at the human ship as if bent upon asuicidal crash which would destroy both ships together. But Baird, in theradar room, and the skipper in navigation, knew that it would plungebrilliantly past at the last instant--

And then they knew that it would not. Because, very suddenly and veryabruptly, there was something the matter with the Plumie ship. The lifewent out of it. It ceased to accelerate or decelerate. It ceased tosteer. It began to turn slowly on an axis somewhere amidships. Its noseswung to one side, with no change in the direction of its motion. Itfloated onward. It was broadside to its line of travel. It continued toturn. It hurtled stern-first toward the _Niccola_. It did not swerve. Itdid not dance. It was a lifeless hulk: a derelict in space. 

And it would hit the _Niccola_ amidships with no possible result butdestruction for both vessels. 

 * * * * *

The _Niccola's_ skipper bellowed orders, as if shouting would somehowgive them more effect. The magnetronic drive roared. He'd demanded amiracle of it, and he almost got one. The drive strained itsthrust-members. It hopelessly overloaded its coils. The _Niccola's_cobalt-steel hull became more than saturated with the drive-field, and itleaped madly upon an evasion course--

And it very nearly got away. It was swinging clear when the Plumie shipdrifted within fathoms. It was turning aside when the Plumie ship waswithin yards. And it was almost safe when the golden hull of thePlumie--shadowed now by the _Niccola_ itself--barely scraped a side-keel. 

There was a touch, seemingly deliberate and gentle. But the _Niccola_shuddered horribly. Then the vision screens flared from such a light asmight herald the crack of doom. There was a brightness greater than thebrilliance of the sun. And then there was a wrenching, heaving shock. Then there was blackness. Baird was flung across the radar room, andDiane cried out, and he careened against a wall and heard glass shatter. He called:

"Diane!"

He clutched crazily at anything, and called her name again. The_Niccola's_ internal gravity was cut off, and his head spun, and he heardcollision-doors closing everywhere, but before they closed completely heheard the rasping sound of giant arcs leaping in the engine room. Thenthere was silence. 

"Diane!" cried Baird fiercely. "Diane!"

"I'm . . . Here, " she panted. "I'm dizzy, but I . . . Think I'm all right--"

The battery-powered emergency light came on. It was faint, but he saw herclinging to a bank of instruments where she'd been thrown by thecollision. He moved to go to her, and found himself floating in midair. But he drifted to a side wall and worked his way to her. 

She clung to him, shivering. 

"I . . . Think, " she said unsteadily, "that we're going to die. Aren't we?"

"We'll see, " he told her. "Hold on to me. "

Guided by the emergency light, he scrambled to the bank ofcommunicator-buttons. What had been the floor was now a side wall. Heclimbed it and thumbed the navigation-room switch. 

"Radar room reporting, " he said curtly. "Power out, gravity off, noreports from outside from power failure. No great physical damage. "

He began to hear other voices. There had never been an actualspace-collision in the memory of man, but reports came crisply, and thecut-in speakers in the radar room repeated them. Ship-gravity was out allover the ship. Emergency lights were functioning, and were all the lightsthere were. There was a slight, unexplained gravity-drift toward what hadbeen the ship's port side. But damage-control reported no loss ofpressure in the _Niccola's_ inner hull, though four areas between innerand outer hulls had lost air pressure to space. 

"_Mr. Baird_, " rasped the skipper. "_We're blind! Forget everything elseand give us eyes to see with!_"

"We'll try battery power to the vision plates, " Baird told Diane. "Nofull resolution, but better than nothing--"

They worked together, feverishly. They were dizzy. Something close tonausea came upon them from pure giddiness. What had been the floor wasnow a wall, and they had to climb to reach the instruments that had beenon a wall and now were on the ceiling. But their weight was ounces only. Baird said abruptly:

"I know what's the matter! We're spinning! The whole ship's spinning!That's why we're giddy and why we have even a trace of weight. Centrifugal force! Ready for the current?"

There was a tiny click, and the battery light dimmed. But a vision screenlighted faintly. The stars it showed were moving specks of light. The sunpassed deliberately across the screen. Baird switched to other outsidescanners. There was power for only one screen at a time. But he saw thestarkly impossible. He pressed the navigation-room button. 

"Radar room reporting, " he said urgently. "The Plumie ship is fast to us, in contact with our hull! Both ships are spinning together!" He wastrying yet other scanners as he spoke, and now he said: "Got it! Thereare no lines connecting us to the Plumie, but it looks . . . Yes! Thatflash when the ships came together was a flash-over of high potential. We're welded to them along twenty feet of our hull!"

The skipper:

"_Damnation! Any sign of intention to board us?_"

"Not yet, sir--"

Taine burst in, his voice high-pitched and thick with hatred:

"_Damage-control parties attention! Arm yourselves and assemble atstarboard air lock! Rocket crews get into suits and prepare to board thisPlumie--_"

"_Countermand!_" bellowed the skipper from the speaker beside Baird'sear. "_Those orders are canceled! Dammit, if we were successfully boardedwe'd blow ourselves to bits! Those are our orders! D'you think thePlumies will let their ship be taken? And wouldn't we blow up with them?Mr. Taine, you will take no offensive action 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. 

[Illustration]

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 into a crazy right, have our drive melt to scrap, getcrazily welded to a Plumie ship, and then for both of us to fry together!We don't need anything more than that!"

Diane's voice came on the speaker:

"_Sir, the last radar fixes on the planets in range give us a coursedirectly toward the sun. I'll repeat the observations. _"

The skipper growled. Taine thrust himself forward. He snarled:

"Why doesn't this Plumie take off its helmet? It lands on oxygen planets!Does it think it's too good to breathe our air?"

Baird caught the Plumie's eye. He made a gesture suggesting the removalof the space helmet. The Plumie gestured, in return, to a tiny vent inthe suit. He opened something and gas whistled out. He cut it off. Thequestion of why he did not open or remove his helmet was answered. Theatmosphere he breathed would not do men any good, nor would theirs do himany good, either. Taine said suspiciously:

"How do we know he's breathing the stuff he let out then? This creatureisn't human! It's got no right to attack humans! Now it's trying to trickus!" His voice changed to a snarl. "We'd better wring its neck! Teach itskind a lesson--"

The skipper roared at him. 

"Be quiet! Our ship is a wreck! We have to consider the facts! We andthese Plumies are in a fix together, and we have to get out of it beforewe start to teach anybody anything!" He glared at Taine. Then he saidheavily: "Mr. Baird, you seem to notice things. Take this Plumie over theship. Show him our drive melted down, so he'll realize we can't possiblytow his ship into an orbit. He knows that we're armed, and that we can'thandle our war heads at this range! So we can't fool each other. We mightas well be frank. But you will take full note of his reactions, Mr. Baird!"

 * * * * *

Baird advanced, and the skipper made a gesture. The Plumie regarded Bairdwith interested eyes. And Baird led the way for a tour of the _Niccola_. It was confusing even to him, with right hand converted to up and lefthand to down, and sidewise now almost vertical. On the way the Plumiemade more clear, flutelike sounds, and more gestures. Baird answered. 

"Our gravity pull was that way, " he explained, "and things fell so fast. "

He grasped a handrail and demonstrated the speed with which things fellin normal ship-gravity. He used a pocket communicator for the fallingweight. It was singularly easy to say some things, even highly technicalones, because they'd be what the Plumie would want to know. But quitecommonplace things would be very difficulty to convey. 

Diane's voice came out of the communicator. 

"_There are no novelties outside_, " she said quietly. "_It looks likethis is the only Plumie ship anywhere around. It could have beenexploring, like us. Maybe it was looking for the people who put upSpace-Survey markers. _"

"Maybe, " agreed Baird, using the communicator. "Is that stuff aboutfalling into the sun correct?"

"_It seems so_, " said Diane composedly. "_I'm checking again. So far, thebest course I can get means we graze the sun's photosphere in fourteendays six hours, allowing for acceleration by the sun's gravity. _"

"And you and I, " said Baird wryly, "have been acting as professionalassociates only, when--"

"_Don't say it!_" said Diane shakily. "_It's terrible!_"

He put the communicator back in his pocket. The Plumie had watched him. He had a peculiarly gallant air, this small figure in golden space armorwith its high-crested helmet. 

They reached the engine room. And there was the giant drive shaft of the_Niccola_, once wrapped with yard-thick coils which could induce anincredible density of magnetic flux in the metal. Even the returnmagnetic field, through the ship's cobalt-steel hull, was many timeshigher than saturation. Now the coils were sagging: mostly melted. Therewere places where re-solidified metal smoked noisomely againstnonmetallic floor or wall-covering. Engineers labored doggedly in thetrivial gravity to clean up the mess. 

"It's past repair, " said Baird, to the ship's first engineer. 

"It's junk, " said that individual dourly. "Give us six months and a placeto set up a wire-drawing mill and an insulator synthesizer, and we couldrebuild it. But nothing less will be any good. "

The Plumie stared at the drive. He examined the shaft from every angle. He inspected the melted, and partly-melted, and merely burned-outsections of the drive coils. He was plainly unable to understand in anyfashion the principle of the magnetronic drive. Baird was tempted to tryto explain, because there was surely no secret about a ship drive, but hecould imagine no diagrams or gestures which would convey the theory ofwhat happened in cobalt-steel when it was magnetized beyond one hundredthousand Gauss' flux-density. And without that theory one simply couldn'texplain a magnetronic drive. 

They left the engine room. They visited the rocket batteries. Thegenerator room was burned out, like the drive, by the inconceivablelightning bolt which had passed between the ships on contact. The Plumiewas again puzzled. Baird made it clear that the generator-room suppliedelectric current for the ship's normal lighting-system and services. ThePlumie could grasp that idea. They examined the crew's quarters, and themess room, and the Plumie walked confidently among the members of thehuman crew, who a little while since had tried so painstakingly todestroy his vessel. He made a good impression. 

"These little guys, " said a crewman to Baird, admiringly, "they gotsomething. They can handle a ship! I bet they could almost make that shipof theirs play checkers!"

"Close to it, " agreed Baird. He realized something. He pulled thecommunicator from his pocket. "Diane! Contact the skipper. He wantedobservations. Here's one. This Plumie acts like soldiers used to act inancient days--when they wore armor. And we have the same reaction! Theywill fight like the devil, but during a truce they'll be friendly, admiring each other as scrappers, but ready to fight as hard as ever whenthe truce is over. We have the same reaction! Tell the skipper I've anidea that it's a part of their civilization--maybe it's a necessary partof any civilization! Tell him I guess that there may be necessarilyparallel evolution of attitudes, among rational races, as there areparallel evolutions of eyes and legs and wings and fins among all animalseverywhere! If I'm right, somebody from this ship will be invited to tourthe Plumie! It's only a guess, but tell him!"

"_Immediately_, " said Diane. 

 * * * * *

The Plumie followed gallantly as Baird made a steep climb up what oncewas the floor of a corridor. Then Taine stepped out before them. His eyesburned. 

"Giving him a clear picture, eh?" he rasped. "Letting him spy outeverything?"

Baird pressed the communicator call for the radar room and said coldly:

"I'm obeying orders. Look, Taine! You were picked for your job becauseyou were a xenophobe. It helps in your proper functioning. But thisPlumie is here under a flag of truce--"

"Flag of truce!" snarled Taine. "It's vermin! It's not human! I'll--"

"If you move one inch nearer him, " said Baird gently, "just one inch--"

The skipper's voice bellowed through the general call speakers all overthe ship:

"_Mr. Taine! You will go to your quarters, under arrest! Mr. Baird, burnhim down if he hesitates!_"

Then there was a rushing, and scrambling figures appeared and were allabout. They were members of the _Niccola's_ crew, sent by the skipper. They regarded the Plumie with detachment, but Taine with a waryexpectancy. Taine turned purple with fury. He shouted. He raged. Hecalled Baird and the others Plumie-lovers and vermin-worshipers. Heshouted foulnesses at them. But he did not attack. 

When, still shouting, he went away, Baird said apologetically to thePlumie:

"He's a xenophobe. He has a pathological hatred of strangers--even ofstrangeness. We have him on board because--"

Then he stopped. The Plumie wouldn't understand, of course. But his eyestook on a curious look. It was almost as if, looking at Baird, theytwinkled. 

Baird took him back to the skipper. 

"He's got the picture, sir, " he reported. 

The Plumie pulled out his sketch plate. He drew on it. He offered it. Theskipper said heavily:

"You guessed right, Mr. Baird. He suggests that someone from this ship goon board the Plumie vessel. He's drawn two pressure-suited figures goingin their air lock. One's larger than the other. Will you go?"

"Naturally!" said Baird. Then he added thoughtfully: "But I'd bettercarry a portable scanner, sir. It should work perfectly well through abronze hull, sir. "

The skipper nodded and began to sketch a diagram which would amount to anacceptance of the Plumie's invitation. 

This was at 07 hours 40 minutes 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!_"

[Illustration]

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!_"

[Illustration]

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 before 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 so much time actinglike professional associates--explorer-ship officers--when things likethis were to be said . . . 

As they talked incoherently, or were even more eloquently silent, theship's ordinary lights came on. The battery-lamp went on. 

"We've got to switch back to ship's circuit, " said Baird reluctantly. They separated, and restored the operating circuits to normal. "We've gotfourteen days, " he added, "and so much time to be on duty, and we've alost lifetime to live in fourteen days! Diane--"

She flushed vividly. So Baird said very politely into the microphone tothe navigation room:

"Sir, Lieutenant Holt and myself would like to speak directly to you inthe navigation room. May we?"

"_Why not?_" growled the skipper. "_You've noticed that the Plumiegenerator is giving the whole ship lights and services?_"

"Yes, sir, " said Baird. "We'll be there right away. "

 * * * * *

They heard the skipper's grunt as they hurried through the door. A momentlater the ship's normal gravity returned--also through the Plumiegenerator. Up was up again, and down was down, and the corridors andcabins of the _Niccola_ were brightly illuminated. Had the ship beenother than an engineless wreck, falling through a hundred and fiftymillion miles of emptiness into the flaming photosphere of a sun, everything would have seemed quite normal, including the errand Baird andDiane were upon, and the fact that they held hands self-consciously asthey went about it. 

They skirted the bulkhead of the main air tank. They headed along thebroader corridor which went past the indented inner door of the air lock. They had reached that indentation when Baird saw that the inner air-lockdoor was closing. He saw a human pressure suit past its edge. He saw thecorner of some object that had been put down on the air-lock floor. 

Baird shouted, and rushed toward the lock. He seized the inner handle andtried to force open the door again, so that no one inside it could emergeinto the emptiness without. He failed. He wrenched frantically at thecontrol of the outer door. It suddenly swung freely. The outer door hadbeen put on manual. It could be and was being opened from inside. 

"Tell the skipper, " raged Baird. "Taine's taking something out!" He toreopen a pressure-suit cupboard in the wall beside the lock door. "He'llmake the Plumies think it's a return-gift for the generator!" He eeledinto the pressure suit and zipped it up to his neck. "The man's crazy! Hethinks we can take their ship and stay alive for a while! Dammit, our airwould ruin half their equipment! Tell the skipper to send help!"

He wrenched at the door again, jamming down his helmet with one hand. Andthis time the control worked. Taine, most probably, had forgotten thatthe inner control was disengaged only when the manual was actively inuse. Diane raced away, panting. Baird swore bitterly at the slowness ofthe outer door's closing. He was tearing at the inner door long before itcould be opened. He flung himself in and dragged it shut, and struck theemergency air-release which bled the air lock into space for speed ofoperation. He thrust out the outer door and plunged through. 

His momentum carried him almost too far. He fell, and only the magneticsoles of his shoes enabled him to check himself. He was in that singularvalley between the two ships, where their hulls were impregnably weldedfast. Round-hulled Plumie ship, and ganoid-shaped _Niccola_, they stuckimmovably together as if they had been that way since time began. Wherethe sky appeared above Baird's head, the stars moved in statelyprocession across the valley roof. 

He heard a metallic rapping through the fabric of his space armor. Thensunlight glittered, and the valley filled with a fierce glare, and a manin a human spacesuit stood on the _Niccola's_ plating, opposite thePlumie air lock. He held a bulky object under his arm. With his othergauntlet he rapped again. 

"You fool!" shouted Baird. "Stop that! We couldn't use their ship, anyhow!"

His space phone had turned on with the air supply. Taine's voice snarled:

"_We'll try! You keep back! They are not human!_"

But Baird ran toward him. The sensation of running upon magnetic-soledshoes was unearthly: it was like trying to run on fly-paper orbird-lime. But in addition there was no gravity here, and no sense ofbalance, and there was the feeling of perpetual fall. 

There could be no science nor any skill in an encounter under suchconditions. Baird partly ran and partly staggered and partly skated towhere Taine faced him, snarling. He threw himself at the other man--andthen the sun vanished behind the bronze ship's hull, and only stars movedvisibly in all the universe. 

 * * * * *

But the sound of his impact was loud in Baird's ears inside the suit. There was a slightly different sound when his armor struck Taine's, andwhen it struck the heavier metal of the two ships. He fought. But thesuits were intended to be defense against greater stresses than humanblows could offer. In the darkness, it was like two blindfolded menfighting each other while encased in pillows. 

Then the sun returned, floating sedately above the valley, and Bairdcould see his enemy. He saw, too, that the Plumie air lock was now openand that a small, erect, and somehow jaunty figure in golden space armorstood in the opening and watched gravely as the two men fought. 

Taine cursed, panting with hysterical hate. He flung himself at Baird, and Baird toppled because he'd put one foot past the welded boundarybetween the _Niccola's_ cobalt steel and the Plumie ship's bronze. Onefoot held to nothing. And that was a ghastly sensation, because if Taineonly rugged his other foot free and heaved--why--then Baird would gofloating away from the rotating, now-twinned ships, floating farther andfarther away forever. 

But darkness fell, and he scrambled back to the _Niccola's_ hull as adisorderly parade of stars went by above him. He pantingly waited freshattack. He felt something--and it was the object Taine had meant to offeras a return present to the Plumies. It was unquestionably explosive, either booby-trapped or timed to explode inside the Plumie ship. Now itrocked gently, gripped by the magnetism of the steel. 

The sun appeared again, and Taine was yards away, crawling and fumblingfor Baird. Then he saw him, and rose and rushed, and the clankings of hisshoe-soles were loud. Baird flung himself at Taine in a savage tackle. 

He struck Taine's legs a glancing blow, and the cobalt steel held hisarmor fast, but Taine careened and bounced against the round bronze wallof the Plumie, and bounced again. Then he screamed, because he wentfloating slowly out to emptiness, his arms and legs jerkingspasmodically, while he shrieked . . . 

The Plumie in the air lock stepped out. He trailed a cord behind him. Heleaped briskly toward nothingness. 

There came quick darkness once more, and Baird struggled erect despitethe adhesiveness of the _Niccola's_ hull. When he was fully upright, sickwith horror at what had come about, there was sunlight yet again, and menwere coming out of the _Niccola's_ air lock, and the Plumie who'd leapedfor space was pulling himself back to his own ship again. He had a loopof the cord twisted around Taine's leg. But Taine screamed and screamedinside his spacesuit. 

It was odd that one could recognize the skipper even inside space armor. But Baird felt sick. He saw Taine received, still screaming, and carriedinto the lock. The skipper growled an infuriated demand for details. Hisspace phone had come on, too, when its air supply began. Baird explained, his teeth chattering. 

"_Hah!_" grunted the skipper. "_Taine was a mistake. He shouldn't everhave left ground. When a man's potty in one fashion, there'll be cracksin him all over. What's this?_"

The Plumie in the golden armor very soberly offered the skipper theobject Taine had meant to introduce into the Plumie's ship. Baird saiddesperately that he'd fought against it, because he believed it a boobytrap to kill the Plumies so men could take their ship and fill it withair and cut it free, and then make a landing somewhere. 

"_Damned foolishness!_" rumbled the skipper. "_Their ship'd begin tocrumble with our air in it! If it held to a landing--_"

Then he considered the object he'd accepted from the Plumie. It couldhave been a rocket war head, enclosed in some container that woulddetonate it if opened. Or there might be a timing device. The skippergrunted. He heaved it skyward. 

The misshapen object went floating away toward emptiness. Sunlight smoteharshly upon it. 

"_Don't want it back in the _Niccola__, " growled the skipper, "_but just tomake sure--_"

He fumbled a hand weapon out of his belt. He raised it, and it spurtedflame--very tiny blue-white sparks, each one indicating a pellet of metalflung away at high velocity. 

One of them struck the shining, retreating container. It exploded with amonstrous, soundless, violence. It had been a rocket's war head. Therecould have been only one reason for it to be introduced into a Plumieship. Baird ceased to be shaky. Instead, he was ashamed. 

The skipper growled inarticulately. He looked at the Plumie, againstanding in the golden ship's air lock. 

"_We'll go back, Mr. Baird. What you've done won't save our lives, andnobody will ever know you did it. But I think well of you. Come along!_"

This was at 11 hours 5 minutes ship time. 

 * * * * *

A good half hour later the skipper's voice bellowed from the speakers allover the _Niccola_. His heavy-jowled features stared doggedly out ofscreens wherever men were on duty or at ease. 

"_Hear this!_" he said forbiddingly. "_We have checked our course andspeed. We have verified that there is no possible jury-rig for ourengines that could get us into any sort of orbit, let alone land us onthe only planet in this system with air we could breathe. It isofficially certain that in thirteen days nine hours from now, the _Niccola_will be so close to the sun that her hull will melt down. Which will beno loss to us because we'll be dead then, still going on into the sun tobe vaporized with the ship. There is nothing to be done about it. We cando nothing to save our own lives!_"

He glared out of each and every one of the screens, wherever there weremen to see him. 

"_But_, " he rumbled, "_the Plumies can get away if we help them. Theyhave no cutting torches. We have. We can cut their ship free. They canrepair their drive--but it's most likely that it'll operate perfectlywhen they're a mile from the _Niccola's_ magnetic field. They can't helpus. But we can help them. And sooner or later some Plumie ship is goingto encounter some other human ship. If we cut these Plumies loose, they'll report what we did. When they meet other men, they'll be cageybecause they'll remember Taine. But they'll know they can make friends, because we did them a favor when we'd nothing to gain by it. I can offerno reward. But I ask for volunteers to go outside and cut the Plumie shiploose, so the Plumies can go home in safety instead of on into the sunwith us!_"

He glared, and cut off the image. 

Diane held tightly to Baird's hand, in the radar room. He said evenly:

"There'll be volunteers. The Plumies are pretty sportingcharacters--putting up a fight with an unarmed ship, and so on. If therearen't enough other volunteers, the skipper and I will cut them free byourselves. "

Diane said, dry-throated:

"I'll help. So I can be with you. We've got--so little time. "

"I'll ask the skipper as soon as the Plumie ship's free. "

"Y-yes, " said Diane. And she pressed her face against his shoulder, andwept. 

This was at 01 hours, 20 minutes ship time. At 03 hours even, there waspeculiar activity in the valley between the welded ships. There were menin space armor working cutting-torches where for twenty feet the twoships were solidly attached. Blue-white flames bored savagely into solidmetal, and melted copper gave off strangely colored clouds ofvapor--which emptiness whisked away to nothing--and molten iron andcobalt made equally lurid clouds of other colors. 

There were Plumies in the air lock, watching. 

At 03 hours 40 minutes ship time, all the men but one drew back. Theywent inside the _Niccola_. Only one man remained, cutting at the lastsliver of metal that held the two ships together. 

It parted. The Plumie ship swept swiftly away, moved by the centrifugalforce of the rotary motion the joined vessels had possessed. It dwindledand dwindled. It was a half mile away. A mile. The last man on theoutside of the _Niccola's_ hull thriftily brought his torch to the airlock and came in. 

Suddenly, the distant golden hull came to life. It steadied. It ceased tospin, however slowly. It darted ahead. It checked. It swung to the rightand left and up and down. It was alive again. 

 * * * * *

In the radar room, Diane walked into Baird's arms and said shakily:

"Now we . . . We have almost fourteen days. "

"Wait, " he commanded. "When the Plumies understood what we were doing, and why, they drew diagrams. They hadn't thought of cutting free, out inspace, without the spinning saws they use to cut bronze with. But theyasked for a scanner and a screen. They checked on its use. I want tosee--"

He flipped on the screen. And there was instantly a Plumie lookingeagerly out of it, for some sign of communication established. There weresoprano sounds, and he waved a hand for attention. Then he zestfully heldup one diagram after another. 

Baird drew a deep breath. A very deep breath. He pressed thenavigation-room call. The skipper looked dourly at him. 

"_Well?_" said the skipper forbiddingly. 

"Sir, " said Baird, very quietly indeed, "the Plumies are talking bydiagram over the communicator set we gave them. Their drive works. They're as well off as they ever were. And they've been modifying theirtractor beams--stepping them up to higher power. "

"_What of it?_" demanded the skipper, rumbling. 

"They believe, " said Baird, "that they can handle the _Niccola_ withtheir beefed-up tractor beams. " He wetted his lips. "They're going to towus to the oxygen planet ahead, sir. They're going to set us down on it. They'll help us find the metals we need to build the tools to repair the_Niccola_, sir. You see the reasoning, sir. We turned them loose toimprove the chance of friendly contact when another human ship runs intothem. They want us to carry back--to be proof that Plumies and men can befriends. It seems that--they like us, sir. "

He stopped for a moment. Then he went on reasonably;

"And besides that, it'll be one hell of a fine business proposition. Wenever bother with hydrogen-methane planets. They've minerals andchemicals we haven't got, but even the stones of a methane-hydrogenplanet are ready to combine with the oxygen we need to breathe! We can'tcarry or keep enough oxygen for real work. The same thing's true withthem on an oxygen planet. We can't work on each other's planets, but wecan do fine business in each other's minerals and chemicals from thoseplanets. I've got a feeling, sir, that the Plumie cairns arelocation-notices; markers set up over ore deposits they can find butcan't hope to work, yet they claim against the day when their scientistsfind a way to make them worth owning. I'd be willing to bet, sir, thatif we explored hydrogen planets as thoroughly as oxygen ones, we'd findcairns on their-type planets that they haven't colonized yet. "

The skipper stared. His mouth dropped open. 

"And I think, sir, " said Baird, "that until they detected us they thoughtthey were the only intelligent race in the galaxy. They were upset todiscover suddenly that they were not, and at first they'd no idea whatwe'd be like. But I'm guessing now, sir, that they're figuring on whatchemicals and ores to start swapping with us. " Then he added, "When youthink of it, sir, probably the first metal they ever used wasaluminum--where our ancestors used copper--and they had a beryllium agenext, instead of iron. And right now, sir it's probably as expensive forthem to refine iron as it is for us to handle titanium and beryllium andosmium--which are duck soup for them! Our two cultures ought to thrive aslong as we're friends, sir. They know it already--and we'll find it outin a hurry!"

The skipper's mouth moved. It closed, and then dropped open again. Thesearch for the Plumies had been made because it looked like they had tobe fought. But Baird had just pointed out some extremely commonsenseitems which changed the situation entirely. And there was evidence thatthe Plumies saw the situation the new way. The skipper felt such enormousrelief that his manner changed. He displayed what was almost effusivecordiality--for the skipper. He cleared his throat. 

"_Hm-m-m. Hah! Very good, Mr. Baird_, " he said formidably. "_And ofcourse with time and air and metals we can rebuild our drive. For thatmatter, we could rebuild the _Niccola_! I'll notify the ship's company, Mr. Baird. Very good!_" He moved to use another microphone. Then he checkedhimself. "_Your expression is odd, Mr. Baird. Did you wish to saysomething more?_"

"Y-yes, sir, " said Baird. He held Diane's hand fast. "It'll be monthsbefore we get back to port, sir. And it's normally against regulations, but under the circumstances . . . Would you mind . . . As skipper . . . Marrying Lieutenant Holt and me?"

The skipper snorted. Then he said almost--almost--amiably;

"Hm-m-m. You've both done very well, Mr. Baird. Yes. Come to thenavigation room and we'll get it over with. Say--ten minutes from now. "

Baird grinned at Diane. Her eyes shone a little. 

This was at 04 hours 10 minutes ship time. It was exactly twelve hourssince the alarm-bell rang. 

THE END

[Transcriber's note:

The following typographical errors have been corrected: "congenial" to "congenital" "Mircowaves" to "Microwaves" "undoutbedly" to "undoubtedly" (twice) "seemd" to "seemed" "Lieutenant Hold" to "Lieutenant Holt"]