The thing is, though, it wasn't a meteoroid.
"What's this?" said Joe, finally.
It was a small cylinder stuck to the outer wall of Computer-Two, the first abnormality we had found in its outward appearance. It was about half a centimeter in diameter and perhaps six centimeters long. Just about cigarette-size for any of you who've been caught up in the antique fad of smoking.
We brought out our small flashlights.
I said, "That's not one of the external components."
"It sure isn't," muttered Joe.
There was a faint spiral marking running round the cylinder from one end to the other. Nothing else. For the rest, it was clearly metal, but of an odd, grainy texture-at least to the eye.
Joe said, "It's not tight."
He touched it gently with a fat and gauntleted finger and it gave. Where it had made contact with the surface of Computer-Two it lifted, and our flashes shone down on a visible gap.
"There's the reason gas pressure inside declined to zero," I said.
Joe grunted. He pushed a little harder and the cylinder popped away and began to drift. We managed to snare it after a little trouble. Left behind was a perfectly round hole in the skin of Computer-Two, half a centimeter across.
Joe said, "This thing, whatever it is, isn't much more than foil."
It gave easily under his fingers, thin but springy. A little extra pressure and it dented. He put it inside his pouch, which he snapped shut and said, "Go over the outside and see if there are any other items like that on it. I'll go inside."
It didn't take me very long. Then I went in. "It's clean," I said. "That's the only thing there is. The only hole."
"One is enough," said Joe, gloomily. He looked at the smooth aluminum of the wall and, in the light of the flash, the perfect circle of black was beautifully evident.
It wasn't difficult to place a seal over the hole. It was a little more difficult to reconstitute the atmosphere. Computer-Two's reserve gas-forming supplies were low and the controls required manual adjustment. The solar generator was limping but we managed to get the lights on.
Eventually, we removed our gauntlets and helmet, but Joe carefully placed the gauntlets inside his helmet and secured them both to one of his suit-loops.
"I want these handy if the air-pressure begins to drop," he said, sourly.
So I did the same.
There was a mark on the wall just next to the hole. I had noted in the light of my flash when I was adjusting the seal. When the lights came on, it was obvious.
"You notice that, Joe?" I said.
"I notice."
There was a slight, narrow depression in the wall, not very noticeable at all, but there beyond a doubt if you ran your finger over it. It could be noticed for nearly a meter. It was as though someone had scooped out a very shallow sampling of the metal so that the surface was distinctly less smooth than elsewhere.
I said, "We'd better call Computer-Central downstairs."
"If you mean back on Earth, say so," said Joe. "I hate the phony space-talk. In fact, I hate everything about space. That's why I took an Earth-side job-I mean a job on Earth-or what was supposed to be one."
I said patiently, "We'd better call Computer Central back on Earth."
"Oddly enough, I do. And what caused the hole? It wasn't a meteoroid. I never saw one that would leave a perfectly circular hole with no signs of buckling or melting. And I never saw one that left a cylinder behind." He took the cylinder out of his suit pocket and smoothed the dent out of its thin metal, thoughtfully. "Well, what caused the hole?"
I didn't hesitate. I said, "I don't know."
"If we report to Computer-Central, they'll ask the question and we'll say we don't know and what will we have gained? Except hassle?"
"They'll call us, Joe, if we don't call them."
"Sure. And we won't answer, will we?"
"They'll assume something killed us, Joe, and they'll send up a relief party."
"You know Computer-Central. It will take them two days to decide on that. We'll have something before then and once we have something, we'll call them."
The internal structure of Computer-Two was not really designed for human occupancy. What was foreseen was the occasional and temporary presence of trouble-shooters. That meant there needed to be room for maneuvering, and there were tools and supplies.
There weren't any armchairs, though. For that matter, there was no gravitational field, either, or any centrifugal imitation of one.
We both floated in mid-air, drifting slowly this way or that. Occasionally, one of us touched the wall and gently rebounded. Or else part of one of us overlapped part of the other.
"Keep your foot out of my mouth," said Joe, and pushed it away violently. It was a mistake because we both began to turn. Of course, that's not how it looked to us. To us, it was the interior of ComputerTwo that was turning, which was most unpleasant, and it took us a while to get relatively motionless again.
We had the theory perfectly worked out in our planet side training, but we were short on practice. A lot short.
By the time we had steadied ourselves, I felt unpleasantly nauseated. You can call it nausea, or astronausea, or space-sickness, but whatever you call it, it's the heaves and it's worse in space than anywhere else, because there's nothing to pull the stuff down. It floats around in a cloud of globules and you don't want to be floating around with it. So I held it back; so did Joe.
I said, "Joe, it's clearly the computer that's at fault. Let's get at its insides." Anything to get my mind off my insides and let them quiet down. Besides, things weren't moving fast enough. I kept thinking of Computer-Three on its way down the tube; maybe Computer-One and Four by now, too; and thousands of people in space with their lives hanging on what we did.
Joe looked a little greenish, too, but he said, "First I've got to think. Something got in. It wasn't a meteoroid, because whatever it was chewed a neat hole out of the hull. It wasn't cut out because I didn't find a circle of metal anywhere inside. Did you?"
"No. But I hadn't thought to look."
"I looked, and it's nowhere in here."
"With the cylinder covering the hole till I pulled it away? A likely thing. Did you see anything come flying out?"
"No."
Joe said, "We may still find it in here, of course, but I doubt it. It was somehow dissolved and something got in." "What something? Whose is it?"
Joe's grin was remarkably ill-natured. "Why do you bother asking questions to which there are no answers? If this was last century, I'd say the Russians had somehow stuck that device onto the outside of Computer-Two-no offense. If it was last century, you'd say it was the Americans."
I decided to be offended. I said, coldly, "We're trying to say something that makes sense this century, losif" giving it an exaggerated Russian pronunciation.
"We'll have to assume some dissident group."
"If so," I said, "we'll have to assume one with a capacity for space flight and with the ability to come up with an unusual device."
Joe said, "Space-flight presents no difficulties, if you can tap into the orbiting Computers illegally-which has been done. As for the cylinder, that may make more sense when it is analyzed back on Earth-downstairs, as you space-buffs would say."
"It doesn't make sense," I said. "Where's the point in trying to disable Computer-Two?"
"As part of a program to cripple space flight."
"Then everyone suffers. The dissidents, too."
"But it get's everyone's attention, doesn't it, and suddenly the cause of whatever-it-is makes news. Or the plan is to just knock out Computer-Two and then threaten to knock out the other three. No real damage, but lots of po tential, and lots of publicity."