And it would hit theNiccola amidships with no possible result but destruction for both vessels.
TheNiccola "s skipper bellowed orders, as if shouting would somehow give them more effect. The magnetronic drive roared. He"d demanded a miracle of it, and he almost got one. The drive strained its thrust-members. It hopelessly overloaded its coils. TheNiccola "s cobalt-steel hull became more than saturated with the drive-field, and it leaped madly upon an evasion course- And it very nearly got away. It was swinging clear when the Plumie ship drifted within fathoms. It was turning aside when the Plumie ship was within yards. And it was almost safe when the golden hull of the Plumie-shadowed now by theNiccola itself-barely sc.r.a.ped a side-keel.
There was a touch, seemingly deliberate and gentle. But theNiccola shuddered horribly. Then the vision screens flared from such a light as might herald the crack of doom. There was a brightness greater than the brilliance of the sun. And then there was a wrenching, heaving shock. Then there was blackness.
Baird was flung across the radar room, and Diane cried out, and he careened against a wall and heard gla.s.s shatter. He called: "Diane!"
He clutched crazily at anything, and called her name again. TheNiccola "s internal gravity was cut off, and his head spun, and he heard collision-doors closing everywhere, but before they closed completely he heard the rasping sound of giant arcs leaping in the engine room. Then there was silence.
"Diane!" cried Baird fiercely. "Diane!"
"I"m I . . . 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 her clinging to a bank of instruments where she"d been thrown by the collision. 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 of communicator-b.u.t.tons. What had been the floor was now a side wall. He climbed it and thumbed the navigation-room switch.
"Radar room reporting," he said curtly. "Power out, gravity off, no reports from outside from power failure. No great physical damage."
He began to hear other voices. There had never been an actual s.p.a.ce-collision in the memory of man, but reports came crisply, and the cut-in speakers in the radar room repeated them. Ship-gravity was out all over the ship. Emergency lights were functioning, and those were all the lights there were. There was a slight, unexplained gravity-drift toward what had been the ship"s port side. But damage-control reported no loss of pressure in theNiccola "s inner hull, though four areas between inner and outer hulls had lost air pressure to s.p.a.ce.
"Mr. Baird," rasped the skipper. "We"re blind! Forget everything else and give us eyes to see with!"
"We"ll try battery power to the vision plates," Baird told Diane. "No full resolution, but better than nothing-"
They worked together, feverishly. They were dizzy. Something close to nausea came upon them from pure giddiness. What had been the floor was now a wall, and they had to climb to each of the instruments that had been on 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 screen lighted faintly. The stars it showed were moving specks of light. The sun pa.s.sed deliberately across the screen. Baird switched to other outside scanners. There was power for only one screen at a time. But he saw the starkly impossible. He pressed the navigation-room b.u.t.ton. "Radar room reporting," he said urgently. "The Plumie ship is fast to us, in contact with our hull! Both ships are spinning together!" He was trying yet other scanners as he spoke, and now he said: "Got it!
There are no lines connecting us to the Plumie, but it looks . . . yes! That flash when the ships came together was a flashover of high potential. We"re welded to them along twenty feet of our hull!"
The skipper: "d.a.m.nation! 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 a.s.semble at starboard air lock! Rocket crews get into suits and prepare to board this Plumie-"
"Countermand!" bellowed the skipper from the speaker beside Baird"s ear. "Those orders are canceled!
Dammit, if we were successfully boarded we"d blow ourselves to bits! Those are our orders! D"you think the Plumies 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 welding business pure accident. No one would be mad enough to plan it. You watch the Plumies and keep me informed!"
His voice ceased. And Baird had again the frustrating duty of remaining still and keeping his head while other men engaged in physical activity. He helped Diane to a chair-which was fastened to the floor-which-was-now-a-wall-and she wedged herself fast and began a review of what each of the outside scanners reported. Baird called for more batteries. Power for the radar and visions was more important than anything else, just then. If there were more Plumie ships . . .
Electricians half-floated, half-dragged extra batteries to the radar room. Baird hooked them in. The universe outside the ship again appeared filled with brilliantly colored dots of light which were stars. More satisfying, the globe-scanners again reported no new objects anywhere. Nothing new within a quarter million miles. A half-million. Later Baird reported: "Radars report no strange objects within a million miles of theNiccola , 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 had examined before. Now he stiffened and motioned for her to report.
"We"ve a scanner, sir," said Diane, "which faces what looks like a port in the Plumie ship. There"s a figure at the port. I can"t make out details, 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 went back to the spherical-sweepscanners which reported the bearing and distance of every solid object within their range. She set up two instruments which would measure the angle, bearing, and distance of the two planets now on this side of the sun-the gas-giant and the oxygen-world to sunward. Their orbital speeds and distances were known. The position, course, and speed of theNiccola could be computed from any two observations on them.
Diane had returned to the utterly necessary routine of the radar room which was the nerve-center of the ship, gathering all information needed for navigation in s.p.a.ce. The fact that there had been a collision, that theNiccola "s engines were melted to unlovely sc.r.a.p, that the Plumie ship was now welded irremovably to a side keel, and that a Plumie was signaling to humans while both ships went spinning through s.p.a.ce toward an unknown destination-these things did not affect the obligations of the radar room.
Baird got other images of the Plumie ship into sharp focus. So near, the scanners required adjustment for precision.
"Take a look at this!" he said wryly.
She looked. The view was of the Plumie as welded fast to theNiccola . The welding was itself an extraordinary result of the Plumie"s battle-tactics. Tractor and pressor beams were known to men, of course, but human beings used them only under very special conditions. Their operation involved the building-up of terrific static charges. Unless a tractor-beam generator could be grounded to the object it was to pull, it tended to emit lightning-bolts at unpredictable intervals and in entirely random directions.
So men didn"t use them. Obviously, the Plumies did.
They"d handled theNiccola "s rockets with beams which charged the golden ship to billions of volts. And when the silicon-bronze Plumie ship touched the cobalt-steelNiccola -why-that charge had to be shared. It must have been the most spectacular of all artificial electric flames. Part of theNiccola "s hull was vaporized, and undoubtedly part of the Plumie. But the unvaporized surfaces were molten and in contact-and they stuck.
For a good twenty feet the two ships were united by the most perfect of vacuum-welds. The wholly dissimilar hulls formed a s.p.a.ce-catamaran, with a sort of valley between their bulks. Spinning deliberately, as the united ships did, sometimes the sun shone brightly into that valley, and sometimes 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 word Taine burst into raging commands for men to follow him through theNiccola "s air lock and fight a boarding party of Plumies in empty s.p.a.ce. The skipper very savagely ordered him to be quiet.
"Only one figure has come out," reported Baird. The skipper watched on a vision plate, but Baird reported so all theNiccola "s company would know. "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 a pressure suit. It seems to be the same material as the ship. It walks on two legs, as we do . . . It has two arms, or something very similar . . . The helmet of the suit is very high . . . It looks like the armor knights used to fight in . . . It"s making its way to our air lock . . . It does not use magnetic-soled shoes. It"s holding onto lines threaded along the other ship"s hull . . ."
The skipper said curtly: "Mr. Baird! I hadn"t noticed the absence of magnetic shoes. You seem to have an eye for important.i.tems. Report to the air lock in person. Leave Lieutenant 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. The giddiness and dizziness of continued rotation was growing less, now. He was getting used to it. But theNiccola seemed strange indeed, with the standard up and down and Earth-gravity replaced by a vertical which was all 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 others there-armed and in pressure suits. The skipper glared about him.
"I am in command here," he said very grimly indeed. "Mr. Taine has a special function, but I am in command. We and the creatures on the Plumie ship are in a very serious fix. One of them apparently means to come on board. There will be no hostility, no sneering, no threatening gestures. This is a parley!
You will be careful. But you will not be trigger-happy!"
He glared around again, just as a metallic rapping came upon theNiccola "s air-lock door. The skipper nodded: "Let him in the lock, Mr. Baird."
Baird obeyed. The humming of the unlocking-system sounded. There were clankings. The outer air lock closed. There was a faint whistling as air went 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 theNiccola . He was about the size of a ten-year-old human boy, and features which were definitely not grotesque showed through the clear plastic of his helmet. His pressure suit was, engineering-wise, a very clean job. His whole appearance was prepossessing. When he spoke, very clear and quite high sounds-soprano sounds-came from a small speaker-unit at his shoulder.
"For us to talk," said the skipper heavily, "is pure nonsense. But I take it you"ve something to say."
The Plumie gazed about with an air of lively curiosity. Then he drew out a flat pad with a white surface and sketched swiftly. He offered it to theNiccola "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. Hold the 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 say about it?"
He handed back the plate. The Plumie pressed a stud and it was blank again. He sketched and offered it once more.
"Hm-m-m," said the skipper. "You can"t use your drive while we"re glued together, eh? Well?"
The Plumie reached up and added lines to the drawing.
"So!" rumbled the skipper, inspecting the additions. "You say it"s up to us to use our drive for both ships." He growled approvingly: "You consider 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 other without committing suicide, now.
But we haven"t any drive left! We"re a derelict! How am I going to say that-if I decide to?"
Baird could see the lines on the plate, from the angle at which the skipper held it. He said: "Sir, we"ve been mapping, up in the radar room. Those last lines are map coordinates-a separate sketch, sir. I think he"s saying that the two ships, together, are on a falling course toward the sun. That we have to do something or both vessels will fall into it. We should be able to check this, sir."
"Hah!" growled the skipper. "That"s all we need. Absolutely all we need! To come here, get into a crazy fight, have our drive melt to sc.r.a.p, get crazily 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 course directly toward the sun. I"ll repeat the observations."
The skipper growled. Taine thrust himself forward. He snarled: "Why doesn"t this Plumie take off his 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 removal of the s.p.a.ce helmet. The Plumie gestured, in return, to a tiny vent in the suit. He opened something and gas whistled out. He cut it off. The question of why he did not open or remove his helmet was answered. The atmosphere he breathed would not do men any good, nor would theirs do him any good, either. Taine said suspiciously: "How do we know he"s breathing the stuff he let out then? This creature isn"t human. It"s got no right to attack humans! Now it"s trying to trick us!" His voice changed to a snarl. "We"d better wring its neck!
Teach its kind a lesson-"
The skipper roared at him.
"Be quiet! Our ship is a wreck! We have to consider the facts. We and these Plumies are in a fix together, and we have to get out of it before we start to teach anybody anything!" He glared at Taine.
Then he said heavily: "Mr. Baird, you seem to notice things. Take this Plumie over the ship. Show him our drive melted down, so he"ll realize we can"t possibly tow his ship into an orbit. He knows that we"re armed, and that we can"t handle our war heads at this range. So we can"t fool each other. We might aswell be frank. But you will take full note of his reactions, Mr. Baird!"
Baird advanced, and the skipper made a gesture. The Plumie regarded Baird with interested eyes. And Baird led the way for a tour of theNiccola . It was confusing even to him, with right hand converted to up and left hand to down, and sidewise now almost vertical. On the way the Plumie made 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 fell in normal ship-gravity. He used a pocket communicator for the falling weight. It was singularly easy to say some things, even highly technical ones, because they"d be what the Plumie would want to know. But quite commonplace things would be very difficult to convey.
Diane"s voice came out of the communicator.
"There are no novelties outside," she said quietly. "It looks like this is the only Plumie ship anywhere around. It could have been exploring, like us. Maybe it was looking for the people who put up s.p.a.ce-Survey markers."
"Maybe," agreed Baird, using the communicator. "Is that stuff about falling into the sun correct?"
"It seems so," said Diane composedly. "I"m checking again. So far, the best course I can get means we graze the sun"s photosphere in fourteen days six hours, allowing for acceleration by the sun"s gravity."
"And you and I," said Baird wryly, "have been acting as professional a.s.sociates 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 s.p.a.ce armor with its high-crested helmet.
They reached the engine room. And there was the giant drive shaft of theNiccola , once wrapped with yard-thick coils which could induce an incredible density of magnetic flux in the metal. Even the return magnetic field, through the ship"s cobalt-steel hull, was many times higher than saturation. Now the coils were sagging: mostly melted. There were places where re-solidified metal smoked noisomely against non-metallic floor or wall-covering. Engineers labored doggedly in the trivial 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 place to set up a wire-drawing mill and an insulator synthesizer, and we could rebuild 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-out sections of the drive coils. He was plainly unable to understand in any fashion the principle of the magnetronic drive. Baird was tempted to try to explain, because there was surely no secret about a ship drive, but he could imagine no diagrams or gestures which would convey the theory of what happened in cobalt-steel when it was magnetized beyond one hundred thousand Gauss" flux-density. And without that theory one simply couldn"t explain a magnetronic drive. They left the engine room. They visited the rocket batteries. The generator room was burned out, like the drive, by the inconceivable lightning bolt which had pa.s.sed between the ships on contact. The Plumie was again puzzled. Baird made it clear that the generator-room supplied electric current for the ship"s normal lighting-system and services. The Plumie could grasp that idea. They examined the crew"s quarters, and the mess room, and the Plumie walked confidently among the members of the human crew, who a little while since had tried so painstakingly to destroy his vessel. He made a good impression.
"These little guys," said a crewman to Baird, admiringly, "they got something. They can handle a ship! I bet they could almost make that ship of their play checkers!"
"Close to it," agreed Baird. He realized something. He pulled the communicator from his pocket. "Diane!
Contact the skipper. He wanted observations. Here"s one. This Plumie acts like soldiers used to act in ancient days-when they wore armor. And we have the same reaction. They will fight like the devil, but during a truce they"ll be friendly, admiring each other as sc.r.a.ppers, but ready to fight as hard as ever when the truce is over. We have the same reaction. Tell the skipper I"ve an idea that it"s a part of their civilization-maybe it"s a necessary part of any civilization! Tell him I guess that there may be necessarily parallel evolution of att.i.tudes, among rational races, as there are parallel evolutions of eyes and legs and wings and fins among all animals everywhere. If I"m right, somebody from this ship will be invited to tour the Plumie. It"s only a guess, but tell him."
"Immediately," said Diane.
The Plumie followed gallantly as Baird made a steep climb up what once was the floor of a corridor.
Then Taine stepped out before them. His eyes burned.
"Giving him a clear picture, eh?" he rasped. "Letting him spy out everything?"
Baird pressed the communicator call for the radar room and said coldly: "I"m obeying orders. Look, Taine! You were picked for your job because you were a xenophobe. It helps in your proper functioning. But this Plumie 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-"