The skipper blinked.
“Suspended animation? They’re alive?” Then he said sharply: “What sort of ship is it? Cargo?”
“No, sir,” said Freddy. “That’s another problem. Bridges and I agree that it’s a fighting ship, sir. There are rows of generators serving things that could only be weapons. By the way they’re braced, there are tractor beams and pressor beams and—there are vacuum tubes that have grids but apparently work with cold cathodes. By the size of the cables that lead to them, those tubes handle amperages up in the thousands. You can figure that one out, sir.”
The skipper paced two steps this way, and two steps that. The thing was stupendous. But his instructions were precise.
“I’m under your orders,” he said doggedly. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to work myself to death, I suppose,” said Freddy unhappily, “and some other men with me. I want to go over that ship backwards, forwards and sideways with scanners, and everything the scanners see photographed back on board, here. I want men to work the scanners and technicians on board to direct them for their specialties. I want to get every rivet and coil in that whole ship on film before touching anything.”
The skipper said grudgingly:
“That’s not too foolish. Very well, Mr. Holmes, it will be done.”
“Thank you,” said Freddy. He started to leave the bridge, and stopped. “The men to handle the scanners,“he added, “ought to be rather carefully picked. Imaginative men wouldn’t do. The crew of that ship—they look horribly alive, and they aren’t pretty. And ... er … the plastic cases they’re in are arranged to open from inside. That’s another problem still, sir.”
He went on down. The skipper clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace the bridge furiously. The first object from beyond the stars was a spaceship. It had weapons the Patrol had only vainly imagined. And he, a two-and-a-half-striper, had to stand by and take orders for its investigation from a lieutenant junior grade just out of the Academy. Because of politics! The skipper ground his teeth—
Then Freddy’s last comment suddenly had meaning. The plastic cases in which the alien’s crew lay in suspended animation opened from the inside. From the inside!
Cold sweat came out on the skipper’s forehead as he realized the implication. Tractor and pressor beams, and the ship’s fuel not quite gone, and the suspended animation cases opening from the inside—
There was a slender, coaxial cable connecting the two spacecraft, now. They drifted in sunward together. The little cruiser was dwarfed by the alien giant.
The sun was very far away; brighter than any star, to be sure, and pouring out a fierce radiation, but still very far from a warming orb. All about were the small, insuitably distant lights which were stars. There was exactly one object in view which had an appreciable diameter. That was Jupiter, a new moon in shape; twenty million miles sunward and eighty million miles farther along its orbit. The rest was emptiness.
The spidery little spaceboat slid along the cable between the two craft. Spacesuited figures got out and clumped on magnetic-soled shoes to the air lock. They went in.
Freddy came to the bridge. The skipper said hoarsely:
“Mr. Holmes, I would like to make a request. You are, by orders of the Board, in command of this ship until your investigation of the ship yonder is completed.”
Freddy’s face was haggard and worn. He said abstractedly:
“Yes, sir. What is it?”
“I would like,” said the Arnina’s skipper urgently, “to send a complete report of your investigation so far. Since you are in command, I cannot do so without your permission.”
“I would rather you didn’t, sir,” said Freddy. Tired as he was, his jaws clamped. “Frankly, sir, I think they’d cancel your present orders and issue others entirely.”
The skipper bit his lip. That was the idea. The scanners had sent back complete images of almost everything in the other ship, now. Everything was recorded on film. The skipper had seen the monsters which were the crew of the extrasolar vessel. And the plastic cases in which they had slumbered for at least two thousand years did open from the inside. That was what bothered him. They did open from the inside!
The electronics technicians of the Arnina were going about in silly rapture, drawing diagrams for each other and contemplating the results with dazed appreciation. The gunnery officer was making scale, detailed design drawings for weapons he had never hoped for, and waking up of nights to feel for those drawings and be sure that they were real. But the engineer officer was wringing his hands. He wanted to take the other ship’s engines apart. They were so enormously smaller than the Arnina’s drive, and yet they bad driven a ship with eighty-four times the Arnina’s mass—and he could not see how they could work.
The alien ship was ten thousand years ahead of the Arnina. Its secrets were being funneled over to the little Earth-ship at a rapid rate. But the cases holding its still living crew opened from the inside.
“Nevertheless, Mr. Holmes,” the skipper said feverishly, “I must ask permission to send that report.”
“But I am in command,” said Freddy tiredly, “and I intend to stay in command. I will give you a written order forbidding you to make a report, sir. Disobedience will be mutiny.”
The skipper grew almost purple.
“Do you realize,” he demanded savagely, “that if the crew of that ship is in suspended animation, and if their coffins or containers open only from inside—do you realize that they expect to open them themselves?”
“Yes, sir,” said Freddy wearily. “Of course. Why not?”
“Do you realize That cables from those containers lead to thermobatteries in the ship’s outer plating? The monsters knew they couldn’t survive without power, but they knew that in any other solar system they could get it! So they made sure they’d pass close to our sun with what power they dared use, and went into suspended animation with a reserve of power to land on and thermobatteries that would waken them when it was time to set to work!”
“Yes, sir,” said Freddy, as wearily as before. “They had courage, at any rate. But what would you do about that?”
“I’d report it to Headquarters!” raged the skipper. “I’d report that this is a warship capable of blasting the whole Patrol out of the ether and smashing our planets! I’d say it was manned by monsters now fortunately helpless, but with fuel enough to maneuver to a landing. And I’d ask authority to take their coffins out of their ship and destroy them! Then I’d—”
“I did something simpler,” said Freddy. “I disconnected the tbermobatteries. They can’t revive. So I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep. If you’ll excuse me—”
He went to his own cabin and threw himself on his bunk.
Men with scanners continued to examine every square inch of the monster derelict. They worked in spacesuits. To have filled the giant hull with air would practically have emptied the Arnina’s tanks. A spacesuited man held a scanner before a curious roll of flexible substance, on which were inscribed symbols. His headphones brought instructions from the photo room. A record of some sort was being duplicated by photography. There were scanners at work in the storerooms, the crew’s quarters, the gun mounts. So far no single article had been moved from the giant stranger. That was Freddy’s order. Every possible bit of information was being extracted from every possible object, but nothing had been taken away. Even chemical analysis was being done by scanner, using cold-light spectrography applied from the laboratory on the cruiser.