The face was no more than a sketch, without expression, except for a gentle upward curve of the lipless mouth, a sardonic half-smile. Small, flat-footed, smooth-furred, almost featureless— It looks like a cartoon, Whitbread thought. How could he be afraid of a cartoon?
But Jonathon Whitbread was crouched in a space much too small for him, and the alien was doing nothing about it.
The cabin was a crowded patchwork of panels and dark crevasses, and tiny faces peered at him from the shadows.
Vermin! The ship was infested with vermin. Rats? Foodsupply? The Motie did not seem disturbed as one flashed into the open, then another, more dancing from cover to cover, crowding close to see the intruder.
They were big things. Much bigger than rats, much smaller than men. They peered from the corners, curious but timid. One dodged close and Whitbread got a good look. What he saw made him gasp. It was a tiny Motie!
It was a difficult time for the Engineer. The intruder’s entry should have answered questions, but it only raised more.
What was it? Big, big-headed, symmetrical as an animal, but equipped with its own vehicle like an Engineer or a Master. There had never been a class like this. Would it obey or command? Could the hands be as clumsy as they looked? Mutation, monster, sport? What was it for?
Its mouth was moving now. It must be speaking into a communications device. That was no help. Even Messengers used Language.
Engineers were not equipped to make such decisions; but one could always wait for more data.
Engineers had endless patience.
“There’s air,” Whitbread reported. He watched the telltales that showed in a mirror just above his eye level. “Did I mention that? I wouldn’t want to try breathing it. Normal pressure, oxygen around 18 percent, CO2 about 2 percent, enough helium to register, and—”
“Helium? That’s odd. Just how much?”
Whitbread switched over to a more sensitive scale and waited for the analyzer to work. “Around 1 percent. Just under.”
“Anything else?”
“Poisons. SO2, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides, ketones, alcohols, and some other stuff that doesn’t read out with this suit. The light blinks yellow.”
“Wouldn’t kill you fast, then. You could breathe it a while and still get help in time to save your lungs.”
“That’s what I thought,” Whitbread said uneasily. He began loosening the dogs holding down his faceplate.
“What does that mean, Whitbread?”
“Nothing, sir.” Jonathon had been doubled over far too long. Every joint and muscle screamed for surcease. He had run out of things to describe in the alien cabin. And the thrice-damned Motie just stood there in its sandals and its faint smile, watching, watching…
“Whitbread?”
Whitbread took a deep breath and held it. He lifted the faceplate against slight pressure, looked the alien in the eye, and screamed all in one breath, “Will you for God’s sake turn off that damned force field!” and snapped the faceplate down.
The alien turned to his control board and moved something. The soft barrier in front of Whitbread vanished.
Whitbread took two steps forward. He straightened up a half-inch at a time, feeling the pain and hearing the cracking of unused joints. He had been crouched in that cramped space for an hour and a half, examined by half a dozen twisted Brownies and one bland, patient alien. He hurt!
He had trapped cabin air under his faceplate. The stink caught at his throat, so that he stopped breathing; then self-consciously he sniffed at it in case anyone wanted to know what it was.
He smelled animais and machines, ozone, gasoline, hot oil, halitosis, old sweat socks, burning, glue, and things he had never smelled before. It was unbelievably rich—and his suit was removing it, thank God.
He asked, “Did you hear me yell?”
“Yes, and so did everyone in this ship,” said Cargill’s voice. “I don’t think there’s a man aboard who isn’t following you, unless it’s Buckman. Any result?”
“He turned off the force field. Right away. He was just waiting for me to remind him.
“And I’m in the cabin now. I told you about the repairs? It’s all repairs, all hand made, even the control panels. But it’s all well done, nothing actually in the way, for a Motie, that is. Me, I’m too big. I don’t dare move.
“The little ones have all disappeared. No, there’s one peeping out of a corner… the big one is waiting to see what I do. I wish he’d stop that.”
“See if he’ll come back to the ship with you—”
“I’ll try, sir.”
The alien had understood him before, or seemed to, but it did not understand him now. Whitbread thought furiously. Sign language? His eye fell on something that had to be a Motie pressure suit.
He pulled it from its rack, noting its lightness: no weaponry, no armor. He handed it to the alien, then pointed to MacArthur beyond the bubble.
The alien began dressing at once. In literally seconds it was in full gear, in a suit that, inflated, looked like ten beach balls glued together. Only the gauntlets were more than simple inflated spheres.
It took a transparent plastic sack from the wall and reached suddenly to capture one of the 1/2-meter-high miniatures. He stuffed it into the sack headfirst while the miniature wriggled, then turned to Whitbread and rushed at the middie with lightning speed. It had reached behind Whitbread with two right hands and was already moving away when Whitbread reacted: a violent and involuntary yip!
“Whitbread? What’s happening? Answer me!” Another voice in the background of Whitbread’s suit said crisply, “Marines, stand by.”
“Nothing, Commander Cargill. It’s all right. No attack, I mean, I think the alien’s ready to go—no, it isn’t. It’s got two of the parasites in a plastic sack, and it’s inflating the sack from an air spiggot. One of the little beasts was on my back. I never felt it.
“Now the alien’s making something. I don’t understand what’s keeping it. It knows we want to go to MacArthur—it put on a pressure suit.”
“What’s it doing?”
“It’s got the cover off the control panel. It’s rewiring things. A moment ago it was squeezing sliver toothpaste in a ribbon along the printed circuitry. I’m only telling you what it looks like, of course. YIPE!”
“Whitbread?”
The midshipman was caught in a hurricane. Arms and legs flailing, he snatched frantically for something, anything solid. He was scraped along the side of the air lock, reached and found nothing to grasp. Then night and stars whirled past him.
“The Motie opened the air lock,” he reported. “No warning. I’m outside, in space.” His hands used attitude jets to stop his tumbling. “I think he let all the breathing air out. There’s a great fog of ice crystals around me, and— Oh, Lord, it’s the Motie! No, it isn’t, it’s not wearing a pressure suit. There goes another one.
“They must be the little ones,” Cargill said.
“Right. He’s killed all the parasites. He probably has to do it every so often, to clear them out. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be aboard MacArthur and he doesn’t want them running wild. So he’s evacuated the ship.”
“He should have warned you.”
“Damn right he should! Excuse me, sir.”
“Are you all right, Whitbread?” A new voice. The Captain’s.