The aliens plainly took no chances. As they did not imagine friendly commerce—implying loyalty—between different races, they did not imagine loyalty or, courage in their own. So a pyramid-ship was not trusted to meet and report upon emergencies.
As a power-storage unit and a transmitter was built into the traps they set for other civilizations, so similar devices were built into their ships. In the unthinkable event that one of their crews was wiped out by a race unknown to them the crew was not depended on to report with their last trace of strength.
When the stick-like creatures in a pyramid-ship died the ship itself sent out a death-cry of radiation which could travel across half a galaxy. Perhaps there were relays to receive and transmit communications faster than the speed of light. When a ship was destroyed, a monstrous, overwhelming fleet could be sent instantly to avenge and destroy.
The winking spects of light moved on. Probably they would englobe the planet on which the looting-party had been destroyed. They might blast the planet itself out of existence. Or perhaps—
Rod ground his teeth. He'd made a mistake. He'd lost precious hours out of exaggerated caution. But he would not make that mistake again.
He went back into the ship to give crisp and savage orders.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Enemy
THERE was no alarm but the suspense itself was hair-raising. Joe the electrician and an arc-welder with a torch cut loose the generator of the deadly tractor-pressor radiation. Already there was a tendency to call it "the push-pull beam" instead of tractor-pressor or supersonic radiation.
While they did so Rod and two others assailed the fallen and apparently helpless pyramid-ship. They cut into its airlock door—and gagged at the smell within. It was a living-thing smell.
It was, in fact, the personal smell of the aliens. It was indescribable and revolting. In all probability the aliens themselves were unconscious of it, as humans are unaware of the human smell which is so comforting to a dog. But this reek filled men with rage.
They went through the monstrous ship, hand-flashes flickering here and there. They were armed with nothing more deadly than spanners but they looked fiercely to see if anything remained alive. They ignored machinery and weapons and technical devices, seeking only dangerous life. They found none though there were many bodies.
They clambered out again and found the vehicle they'd used as a beam-mount and trundled it to the Stellaris' air-lock door. They helped heave off the block of plastic which acted as a giant vacuum tube.
Joe the electrician observed casually, "Say! When we were fussin' around that pyramid we musta stepped on somethin'. Their little booby-trap got all hotted up and melted itself down Okay?"
"Very much so," Rod told him. "They'll think somebody opened it, or maybe that it went off of itself. But they won't see where we cut it open. It should puzzle them a bit. Come along!"
With two others he set the little vehicle off at top speed through the dead city's streets. His spine was literally crawling with apprehension but he went on grimly. If the newly-come fleet simply surrounded the planet and at a signal blasted it with the deadly push-pull radiation, every square inch of the planet's surface would become death itself. Nothing could live. It could happen at any instant.
And there was no conceivable defense against it.
But he'd lost twelve hours, waiting in other-space out of apprehension, overestimating the pyramid-ships' means of defense. Now he knew that a race so careful of its own life that it practised murder as a trade would be a very fearful one. It was likely to overestimate the enemy that had struck at it.
Instead of a manned ship it would probably send a robot —a drone—to investigate the weapons used against its vanquished ships. If the drone itself were destroyed the fleet would withdraw until some counter to the new weapon could be devised.
But Rod had no new weapon. He had only—he believed—the instrument by which the aliens did their murders. Even that needed to be powered by apparatus of their construction. He could not destroy anything now. So the aliens would find nothing in particular to alarm them, though it would be some time before they felt safe in landing.
Still, they could be examining the surface of the planet with telescopes—perhaps electron-telescopes—and they might detect the Stellaris. On the other hand they'd have to use infrared on the night side of the planet and infra-red does not give good definition. The ship and its tiny landing-party might—might!—be safe until more light came with the dawn.
He had to risk it He drove to the power-station. The four men cut free the isotopic dynamo and manhandled it to the vehicle. They loaded up four television-machines. They went racing back. The other load had been carried in through the air-lock. Now this load was put on board the Stellaris.
"I'd like to have more food," said Rod, "but we can go on short rations for awhile. All right? Seal her up!"
He took post in the control-room. Joe had connected up more switches, but there were still no instruments. He released the anchoring tractor-beams and pushed the ship up on pressors. He maneuvered above the tumbled pyramid-ship. He sent down tractors and locked them.
The Stellaris sank as the strain came on, but he fed more power to the pressor-beams which held up the earth-ship on unsubstantial stilt-like legs. Presently the pyramid-ship stirred and floated free. Then Rod maneuvered it very gently up against the Stellaris' bottom-plates and pushed up to five thousand feet.
For long minutes the ship hung there, swaying and oscillating with a soggy, burdened motion. But Rod had more controls to set by hand, since the ship was not one-tenth wired for navigation. There had to be tractors—unfocused—set to overlap in a globe all around. The force-field generators had to have certain constants changed.
That was really the ticklish part Rod had designed the generators but he sweated as he worked. And as the crucial instant drew near he felt a despairing certainty that, from somewhere in the star-studded vault overhead, a death-beam would strike down just before he took his final action.
But it didn't.
When he raced to the control-room and glanced out the ports he saw a shimmering, faintly luminous horizon all about and many stars above. He saw far-distant darkness, which was this world's jungle, and at one place a sea.
But directly under the Stellaris a huge flat plate of polished metal shut off all sight of the ground. It was the pyramid-ship. Rod threw the master tractor-switch and, as the ship lurched violently, he threw the force-field switch hard over.
It was all familiar, now. There was only blackness outside and there was no weight whatever, but there were new strange grinding noises. They were against the earth-ship's hull. They were rhythmic and reverberating.
"We made it," Rod told Kit, swallowing. "I was almost sure we wouldn't have time."
Kit held fast to a hand-rail to keep from floating free.
"What's that grinding?" she asked Rod in a frightened voice.
"That's our friend, the enemy," he said. "The force-field generators were intended only to drop the Stellaris into other-space but I designed them so they could be changed. And I just changed them.
"I had them spread out to make a spherical field a half-mile across—well beyond our hull. So when they went on, they dropped the pyramid-ship and everything else within a quarter-mile into other-space with us."