Cassetti got up. “Damn it! We’ve been trained. We aren’t as dumb as the computer claims!”
Richards settled back. “Take it easy. If MC3C is doing the kind of job I think it’s doing, we may get a chance yet.”
Cassetti glanced at the screen, which still showed only the outside of the gigantic extraterrestrial ship. Richards waited patiently.
For a few moments the background was almost silent, then there was a heavy thud, followed by whistles, rumbles, clangs, and unclassifiable sounds that faded abruptly in and out, all now remote and muffled.
Cassetti tried the hatch to the corridor. The hatch didn’t budge.
Richards said, “Surely you have confidence in our wise and genial boss?”
Cassetti spat out a bad word.
The deck jumped.
Between the screens, the red light flashed on. There was a crackle, and suddenly a familiar voice: “Subparagraph 7.1 of your Employment Contract requires ‘prompt externalization of relevant personnel should Computer-Extraterrestrial contact prove counterproductive.’ To signify compliance, you must immediately take one step forward.”
They instantly stepped forward. There was trundling noise, and a pair of what looked like exceptionally bulky spacesuits came in dangling from overhead trolleys.
Richards and Cassetti, who had drilled till the routine was second nature, helped each other into the bulky suits, then stepped into a brightly lit testing chamber with mirrored walls, hand-grips, foot rests, and pressure controls; they ran the air pressure warily up and down to check the suit seals, studied the suits in the multiple reflectors, and carefully went through a voice checklist.
Cassetti said, “Done?”
“With the easy checks.”
“Right.”
Now they tested the controls inside the suits’ big outer helmets. Placed inside to avoid possible interference from aliens whose customs might involve unpredictable personal contact, the controls were spaced to either side of the outer faceplate, lit by faint miniature lights, and worked by an outthrust projection on the inner helmet, which moved the specially shaped and color-coded switch-han-dles of light plastic. Only a slight pressure was needed to control the faceplate wipers and the other odds and ends, as well as the “unlimited,” “timed,” and “end-controlled” jets for maneuvering in low gravity.
Cassetti experimentally moved his head to check the lens that slid down over the faceplate of the inner helmet to bring the switches into focus, then slid up as he faced forward to look through the outer faceplate.
Each time, this lens gave a squeak, and then a little catch before it slid back up again. There was also what looked like a set of flyspecks somewhere on the multiple supposedly transparent surfaces; this blur stayed in his field of vision even when he used the wipers.
Richards growled, “What happens if this lens gets stuck in the wrong position?”
“MC3C says it’s impossible.”
“This one hesitates, and it squeaks.”
“So does mine.”
A tone inside the helmets now gave notice that the suits’ communicators were receiving a signal from the computer.
Cassetti said, “Contact Team Commander to Computer Data Control. Ready to begin contact.”
“Computer Data Control to Contact Team Commander. You will immediately leave the on-call compartment, and enter the space-corridor airlock.”
They stepped clumsily through the hatchway, leaving the two big screens behind them, and walked along a narrow corridor, the suits awkward and ungainly, but gradually becoming more familiar and predictable. Then they eased through the narrow hatchway of the compartment next to the airlock, crossed the compartment to step over the lock’s wide sill, and, behind them, the hatch went shut. The hatch in front slowly opened, and they went out into a kind of antechamber where they were still in the ship, but in front of them was a shiny flexible corrugated cylinder suggestive of the inside of a giant metal snake.
Cassetti turned slowly, adjusting his suit’s external mirrors. In a comer between a massive bulkhead and the exterior hull, there came into view a pile made up of cable chopped into short lengths. Nearby was a chunk of crushed metal and broken plastic the size of a beach ball, with wheels and metal arms bent, wheel-tracks dismounted, and the grille of a speaker tom loose and hanging by one comer.
Cassetti gave a low fervent oath. “There’s MC3C’s Mobile Communicator.”
Richards grunted. “Contact was ‘counterproductive,’ all right. Well, now we get to earn our money.”
They turned toward the corridor, and Cassetti said, “Watch it—no artificial gravity here.”
As they cautiously nudged controls in the helmets, short-lived bursts from the shoulder jets lifted them, and, moving almost horizontally, they passed through the first part of a long continuous bend, drifted toward the flickering corrugated face of the corridor, moved away with wary use of the jets, swung further around the continued bend, and now the suits’ external mirrors showed ahead of them a fast enlarging hatchway into a lighted chamber.
Richards said, “We’d better slow down, or we’ll be in there before we know it.”
With a shock, Cassetti realized he had fallen into a daze watching the flickering corridor wall. He nudged the controls, and swung further toward the center of the corridor, to be vertical to what looked like the deck ahead on the far side of the hatchway.
Richards said, “Still too fast.”
“Right. Damn it.”
They slowed further, and approached the airlock still decelerating, their feet swinging out ahead of them.
Abruptly, something slammed them sideways. There was a shock, a crash, and a roar.
Cassetti’s lower lip hurt, his ears rang, and somewhere there was a voice nearly drowned out by the roar. On the far side of the outer faceplate, there was a blur. It dawned on him that his idea of “vertical” must have been ninety degrees off. He had floated, to all practical purposes side-wise and horizontal, into the airlock while in effect trying to land on a wall—then when he slammed to the deck, he must have banged one of the helmet’s switches.
Richards shouted, “Ed! Controls!”
The lens plate, which should have slid down to make it easy to focus on the controls a few inches away, now hung up, so the color-coded stalks with their little glowing lights blended into a jolting frame with a Christmas-like effect around the chaos in the faceplate. Somewhere, again, there was a voice. Cassetti realized he must have bumped one of the ‘unlimited’ switches, so there wasn’t just a timed burst, but a blast that wouldn’t end until he found the switch or ran out of propellant. In trying to tap the right stalk at the wrong instant, he now got another one instead.
He yelled, “Grab hold!”
“What do you think I’m—Look out!”
For an instant after they hit the wall of the airlock, everything was still, and he managed to get one switch off. They reeled through three or four wild circles, slammed a wall again, and he managed to get the other switch. Then again they were going around in circles, and it dawned on him that Sam Richards must have hit one. Again a voice roared out amid the bangs and crashes. Then again they smashed to a stop in a heap in a comer, and after an instant’s silence Richards snarled, “Who in hell designed these suits?”
“Are you serious? Who do you think?”
A new voice spoke slowly and distinctly:
“Is this an argualage of the planet-ere computer?”
Cautiously, they got to their feet.
The voice spoke again, its words faulty but very clear:
“Is this a assaglage of the plammed-dare calculator?”
Cassetti checked to be sure the suit’s external speaker was off. Richards’s voice spoke in his earphones: “Sounds a little mixed up. But according to the computer’s cram course for making contact, the other side may estimate our capabilities by making calculated errors, and seeing if we understand anyway. Whereupon we can do the same.”