Classic Audiobook Collection - The Aliens by Murray Leinster ~ Full Audiobook [scifi]

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

The Aliens by Murray Leinster audiobook. Genre: scifi The human race was expanding through the galaxy ... and so, they knew, were the Aliens. Who were these beings? Traces of them could be found scattered on planets everywhere, some very recent, but the aliens themselves were never encountered. They were obviously just as advanced technologically as humans and obviously looking for planets to expand to, just like humans. But what would happen when the two races, human and alien met? From history it was obvious that a war should be planned for, two expanding empires cannot tolerate rivals and they would clash and it could happen at any time. Would it be a war to the death? Sadly, that was the most probable outcome. Hundreds of human ships were designed specifically to frantically comb the known universe to gather information about them to prepare for war. Which was inevitable of course. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:24:48) Chapter 02 (00:49:28) Chapter 03 (01:10:50) Chapter 04 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Aliens by Murray Lister Part 1 At 0 4 hours, 10 minutes ship time, the Nikola was well inside the Theta-Jissol solar system. She had previously secured excellent evidence that this was not the home of the plume civilization. There was no tuned radiation. There was no evidence of interplanetary travel. Rockets would be more than obvious.

and a magnetronic drive had a highly characteristic radiation pattern, so the real purpose of the Nicola's voyage would not be accomplished here. She wouldn't find out where the Plumies came from. There might, though, be one or more of those singular conical hollow-topped cairns, sheltering silicon bronze plates, which constituted the evidence that Plumies existed. The Nicola went sunward toward the inner planets to sea. Such cairns had been found on conspicuous landmarks on oxygen-type planets over a range of some twelve hundred light-years. By the vegetation about them, some were nearly a century old.

On the same evidence others had been erected only months or weeks or even days before a human space survey ship arrived to discover them. And the situation was unpromising. It wasn't likely that the galaxy was big enough to hold two races of radiance. people capable of space travel. Back on ancient Earth, a planet had been too small to hold two races with tools and fire. Historically, that problem was settled when Homo sapiens exterminated Homo Netherlandus. It appeared that the same situation had arisen in space. There were humans, and there were plummies. Both had interstellar ships. To humans, the fact was

alarming. The need for knowledge and the danger that Plumies might know more first and thereby be able to exterminate humanity was appalling. Therefore, the Nicola. She drove on Sunward. She had left one frozen outer planet far behind. She had crossed the orbits of three others. The last of these was a gas giant with innumerable moonlets revolving about it. It was now, some thirty millions of miles back and twenty to one side. The sun ahead flared and flamed in emptiness against that expanse of tinted stars. John Baird worked steadily in the Nicola's radar room. He was one of those who hoped that the plumees would not prove to be the natural enemies

of mankind. Now it looked like this ship wouldn't find out in this solar system. There were plenty of other ships on the hunt. From here on it looked like routine to the next unvisited family of planets. But meanwhile, he worked. Opposite him, Diane Holt worked steadily. Her dark had bent intently over a radar graph in formation. The immediate job was the completion of a map of the meteor swarms following cometary

orbits about this sun. They interlaced emptiness with hazards to navigation. and nobody would try to drive through a solar system without such a map. Elsewhere in the ship, everything was normal. The engine room was a place of stillness and peace, safe for the almost inaudible hum of the drive, running at about half a million goss flux density. The skipper did whatever skippers do when they are invisible to their subordinates.

The weapons officer, Tane, thought appropriate thoughts. In the navigation room the second officer conscientiously glanced at each separate instrument at least once at each five minutes, and then carefully surveyed all the screens showing space outside the ship. The stewards disposed of the debris of the last meal and began to get ready for the next. In the cruise quarters, those off-duty read or worked at Scrimshaw, or simply and contentedly loafed. Diane handed over the transparent radar graph to be fitted into the three-dimensional map in the making.

There's a lump of stuff here, she said interestingly. It could be the comet that once followed this orbit, now so old, it's lost all its gases, and isn't a comet any longer. At this incident, which was zero-four hours, twenty-five minutes ship time, the alarm bell rang. It clanged stridently over Baird's head. Repeater gong sounded all throughout the ship, and there was a scurrying and a closing of doors. The alarm gong could mean only one thing. It made one's breath come faster,

or one's hair stand on end, according to temper of it. The skipper's face appeared on the direct line screen from the navigation room. Plummies? he demanded harshly. Mr. Baird, Plummies? Baird's hands were already flipping switches and plugging the radar room apparatus into a new setup. "'There's a contact, sir,' he said curtly. "'No, there was a contact. It's broken now. Something detected us. We picked up a radar pulse.

One.' The word one meant much. A radar system that could get adequate information from a single pulse was not the work of amateurs. It was the product of a very highly developed technology. Setting all equipment to full globular scanning, Baird felt a certain crawling sensation at the back of his neck. He'd been mapping within a narrow range above and below the line of this system's eclipse. A lot could have happened outside the area he'd had under long-distance scanning.

But seconds passed. They seemed like years. The all-globe scanning, covered every direction out from the Nicola. Nothing appeared which had not been reported before. The gas giant planet far behind, and the only inner one on this side of the sun would return their pulses only after minutes. Meanwhile, the radars reported very faithfully, but they only repeated previous reports.

No new object within half a million miles, said Baird after a suitable interval. Presently he added, Nothing new within three-quarter a million miles. Then? Nothing new within a million miles. The skipper said, bitingly. Then you'd better check on objects that are not new. He turned aside, and his voice came more faintly as he spoke into another microphone.

Mr. Tane, arm all rockets and have your tube crew stand by in combat readiness. Engine room. Prepare drive for emergency maneuver. maneuvers, damage control parties, put on pressure suits and take combat posts with equipment." His voice rose again in volume. Mr. Baird, how about observed objects?" Dane murmured. Baird said briefly.

Only one suspicious object, sir, and that shouldn't be suspicious. We are sending an information beam at something we classed as a burned-out comet. Posts going out, sir. Dane had the distant information transmitter aimed at what she said might be a dead comet. Baird pressed the button. An extraordinary complex of information seeking frequencies and forms sprang into being and leaped across emptiness. There were microwaves of strictly standard amplitude for measurement standards. There were frequencies of other values which would be selectively absorbed by this material and that.

There were laterally and circularly polarized beams. When they bounced back, they would bring a surprising amount of information. They returned. They did bring back news. The thing that had registered as a larger lump in a meteor swarm was not a meteor at all. It returned four different frequencies with a relative intensity pattern, which said that they'd been reflected by bronze, probably silicon bronze. The polarized beams came back depolarized, of course, but with phase changes which

said the reflector had a rounded, regular form. There was a smooth hull of silicon bronze out yonder. There was other data. "'It will be a plummy ship, sir,' said Baird very steadily, at a guess they picked up our mapping beam and shot a single pulse at us to find out who and what we were. For another guess, by now they've picked up and analyzed. our information beam and know what we found out about them." The skipper scowled.

"'How many of them?' he demanded. "'Have we run into a fleet?' "'I'll check, sir,' said Baird. "'We picked up no-tuned radiation from outer space, sir, but it could be that they picked us up when we came out of overdrive and stopped all their transmissions until they had us in a trap. Find out how many there are, barked the skipper. Make it quick. Report additional data instantly. His screen clicked off. Diane, more than a little pale, worked swiftly to plug the radar room equipment into a highly specialized pattern. The Nicola was very well equipped,

radar-wise. She'd been a type G-8 survey ship, and on her last stay in port she'd been rebuilt especially to hunt for and make contact with plumies. Since the discovery of their existence, that was the most urgent business of the space survey. It might well be the most important business of the human race, on which its survival or destruction would depend. Other remodeled ships had gone out before the NICOLA, and others would follow, until the problem was solved.

Meanwhile, the NICOLA's 24 rocket tube. and stepped-up drive and computer-type radar system equipped her for plummy hunting as well as any human ship could be. Still, if she'd been lured deep into the home system of the plumbies, the prospects were not good. The new setup began its operation. Instantly the last contact closed. The three-dimensional map served as a matrix to control it. The information beam projector swung and flung out its bundle of oscillations.

It swung and flashed, and swung and flashed. It had to examine every relatively nearby object for a constitution of silicon bronze and a rounded shape. The nearest objects had to be examined first. Speed was essential, but three-dimensional scanning takes time even at some hundreds of pulses per minute. Nevertheless, the information came in. No other silicon bronze object within a quarter-million. miles, within a half million, a million, a million and a half, two million. Baird called the navigation room.

Looks like a single plummy ship, sir, he reported. At least there's one ship which is nearest by a very long way. Ha, grunted the skipper. Then we'll pay him a visit. Keep an open line, Mr. Baird. His voice changed. Mr. Tane, report here at once to plan tactics. Baird shook his head to himself.

The Nicola's orders were to make contact without discovery if such a thing were possible. The ideal would be a plummy ship or the plummy civilization itself, located and subject to complete an overwhelming envelopment by human ships, before the plumbies knew they'd been discovered. And this would be the human ideal. because humans have always had to consider that a stranger might be hostile until he proven otherwise. Such a viewpoint would not be optimism, but caution. Yet, caution was necessary. It was because the survey brass felt the need to prepare for every unfavorable eventuality that Tane had been chosen as weapons officer of the Nicola. His choice had been deliberate, because he was a

xenophob. He had been a problem personality all his life. He had a seemingly congenital fear and hatred of strangers, which in mild cases is common enough, but Tane could not be cured without a complete breakdown of personality. He could not serve on a ship with a multiracial crew, because he was invincibly suspicious of and hostile to all but his own small breed. Yet he seemed ideal for weapons officer on the Nicola, provided he never commanded the ship, because if the plumies were hostile, a well-adjusted normal man would never think as much like them as a tane. He was capable of the kind of thinking plumies might practice if they were xenophobes themselves. But to Baird, so extreme a precaution as a known psychopathic condition in an officer was less than wholly

justified. It was by no means certain that the plumbies would instinctively be hostile. Suspicious, yes, cautious, certainly. But the only fact known about the plummy civilization came from the currants and silicon bronze inscribed tablets they left on oxygen-type worlds over a 1,200 light-year range in space. And the only thing to be deuced about the plumbies themselves came from the decorative, formalized symbols like feathery plumes which were found all their bronze tablets. The name Plumies came from that symbol. Now, though, Tane was called to the navigation room to confer on tactics.

The Nacola swerve and drove toward the object Baird identified as a Plumey ship. This was at zero five hours, ten-minute ship time. The human ship had a definite velocity sunward, of course. The Flumy ship had been concealed by the meteor swarm of a totally unknown comet. It was an excellent way to avoid observation. On the other hand, the Nicola had been mapping, which was bound to attract attention. Now, each ship knew of the other's existence. Since the Nicola had been detected, she had to carry out orders and attempt a contact to gather information.

Baird verified that the Nicola's course was exact for interception at her full drive speed. He said in a flat voice, I wonder how the plumbies will interpret this change, of course. They know we're aware they're not a meteorite, but charging at them without even trying to communicate could look ominous. We could be stupid or too arrogant to think of anything but a fight. He pressed the skipper's call and said evenly, Sir, I request permission to attempt to communicate with the plummy ship. We're ordered to try to make friends if we know we've been spotted.

Tain had evidently just reached the navigation room. His voice snapped from the speaker. "'I advise against that, sir. No use letting them guess our level of technology.' Baird said coldly. They've a good idea already. We beamed them for data. There was silence, with only the very faint humming sound which was natural in the ship in motion. It would be deadly to the nerves if there were absolute silence.

The skipper grumbled. Request is an advice. Damn it, Mr. Baird, you might wait for orders. But I was about to ask you to try to make contact through signals. Do so. His speaker clicked off. Bear said, It's in our laps, Diane, and yet we have to follow orders.

Send the first roll. Diane had a tape threaded into a transmitter. It began to unroll through a pickup head. She put on headphones. The tape began to transmit toward the plume. Back at base it had been reasoned that a pattern of clickings, plainly artificial and plainly stating facts known to both races, would be the most reasonable way to attempt to open contact.

The tape sent a series of cardinal numbers, one to five, then an addition table from one plus one to five plus five, then a multiplication table up to five times five. It was not startlingly intellectual information to be sent out in tiny clicks, ranging up and down the radio spectrum, but it was orders. Baird set with compressed lips. Dane listened for a repetition of any of the transmitted signals, sent back by the plume. The speakers about the radar room murmured the orders given through all the ship.

Radar had to be informed of all orders and activity, so it could check their results outside the ship. So Baird heard the orders for the engine room to be sealed up, and the duty force to get into pressure suits, encased the Nicola fought and was hulled. Damage control parties reported themselves on post in suits with equipment ready. Then Tane's voice snapped. Rocket crews! Arm even-numbered rockets with chemical-explosive warheads. Leave odd-numbered Rockets armed with Atomics. Report back.

Dane strained her ears for possible retransmission of the Nicola's signals, which would indicate the Plumie's willingness to try conversation. But she suddenly raised her hand and pointed to the radar-graph instrument. It repeated the position of dots which were stray meteoric matter in the space between worlds in this system. What had been a spot, the Plumey ship, was now a line of dots. Baird pressed the button. Radar reporting, he said curtly.

The Plumy ship is heading for us. I'll have relative velocity in ten seconds. He heard the skipper swear. Ten seconds later, the Doppler measurement became possible. It said the Plumy plunged toward the Nicola at miles per second. In half a minute it was tens of miles per second. There was no retransmission of signals. The plumey ship had found itself discovered.

Apparently, it considered itself attacked. It flung itself into a headlong dash for the Nicola. Time passed. Interminable time. The sun flared and flamed and writhed in emptiness. The great gas giant planet rolled through space in splendid state, its moonlit spinning gracefully about its bulk. The oxygen atmosphere planet to sunward was visible,

only as a crescent, but the mottlings on its lighted part changed as it revolved, seas and islands and continents receiving the sunlight as it turned. Meteor swarms so dense in appearance on a radar screen, yet so tenuous in reality, floated in their appointed orbits with a seeming vast leisure. The feel of slowness was actually the result of distance. Men have always acted upon things close by. Battles have always been fought within eye range, anyhow. But it was actually zero-six hours, thirty-five minutes ship time

before the two spacecraft sighted each other, more than two hours after they plunged toward a rendezvous. The plummy ship was a bright golden dot at first. It decelerated swiftly. In minutes it was a rounded end-on disk. Then it swerved lightly and presented an elliptical broadside to the Nicola. The Nicola was in full deceleration, too, by then. The two ships came very nearly to a stop with relation to each other when they were hardly

twenty miles apart, which meant great daring on both sides. Baird heard the skipper grumbling. Damn cocky, he roared suddenly. Mr. Baird, how have you made out in communication with him? Not at all, sir, said Baird grimly. They don't reply. He knew from Diane's expression that there was no sound in the headphones except the frying noise all main-sequent stars give out, and the infrequent thumping noises that come from

gas-giant planets' lower atmospheres, and the Jansky radiation hiss which comes from everywhere. The skipper swore. The plummy ship lay broadside, too, less than a score of miles away. It shone in the sunlight. It acted with extraordinary confidence. It was as if it dared the Nicola to open fire. Tane's voice came out of a speaker, harsh and angry.

Even numbered tubes prepared a fire on command. Nothing happened. The two ships floated sunward together, neither approaching nor retreating, but with every second the need for action of some sort increased. "'Mr. Baird,' barked the skipper. "'This is ridiculous. There must be some way to communicate. We can't sit here glaring at each other forever.

Raise them. Get some sort of acknowledgement.' "'I'm trying,' said Baird bitterly, according to orders. But he disagreed with those orders. It was official theory that arithmetic values repeated in proper order would be the way to open conversation. The assumption was that any rational creature would grasp the idea that orderly signals were rational attempts to open communication. But it had occurred to Baird that a plumi might not see this point.

Perception of order is not necessarily perception of information. In fact, quite the contrary. A message is a disturbance of order. A microphone does not transmit a message when it sends an unvarying tone. A message has to be unpredictable or conveys no message. Orderly clicks, even if overheard, might seem to plumy's the result of methodically operating machinery. A race capable of interstellar flight was not likely to be interested or thrilled by exercise as a human child goes through in kindergarten. They simply wouldn't seem meaningful at all.

But before he could ask permission to attempt to make talk, in a more sophisticated fashion, voices exclaimed all over the ship. They came blurringly to the loudspeakers. What of that? What's he doing? Spinning like... From every place where there was a vision plate on the Nicola. Men watched the plumey ship, and babbled. This was at 06 hours, 50 minutes ship time. End of part one. Part two of the aliens by Murray Lin. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Part 2 The elliptical golden object darted into swift and eccentric motion.

Lacking an object of known size for comparison there was no scale. The golden ship might have been the size of an autumn leaf, and in fact its maneuver suggested the heedless tumblings and scurrying of falling foliage. it fluttered in swift turns and somersaults and spinnings there were weavings like the purposeful faints of boxers not yet come to battle there were indescribably graceful swoops and loops and curving dashes like some preposterous dance in emptiness taine's voice crashed out of a speaker all even numbered rockets he barked fire the skipper roared a countermand but too late the crunching grunting sounds of rockets leaving their launching tubes came before his first syllable was complete then there was silence while the skipper gathered breath for a masterpiece of profanity but taine snapped that dance was a sneak-up the plumy came four miles nearer while we watched baird jerked his eyes from watching the plumy he looked at the master radar It was faintly blurred with the fading lines of past gyrations, but the golden ship was much nearer than Nicola than it had been.

Radar reporting, said Baird sickishly. Mr. Tain is correct. The plummy ship did approach us while it danced. Tane's voice snarled. Reload even numbers with chemical explosive warheads. Then remove atomics from odd numbers and replace with chemicals. The range is too short for Atomics. Baird felt curiously divided in his own mind.

He disliked Tain very much. Tane was arrogant and suspicious and intolerant even on the Nicola. But Tane had been right twice now. The plummy ship had crept closer by pure trickery, and it was right to remove atomic warheads from the rockets. They had a pure blast radius of ten miles. To destroy the plummy ship within twice that would endanger the Nicola, and leave nothing of the plummy to examine afterward. The plummy ship must have seen the rocket flares, but it continued to dance, coming nearer and ever nearer in seemingly heedless and purposeless plungings and spinnings in star-specled space.

But suddenly there were racing, rushing trails of swirling vapor. Half the Nicola's Port Broadside lunged toward the golden ship. The fraction of a second later the starboard half-dozen chemical explosive rockets swung furiously around the ship's hull and streaked after their brothers. They moved an utterly silent, straight-lined, ravening ferocity toward their target. Baird thought irrelevantly of the vapor trails of an atmosphere liner in the planet's upper air. The ruled-line straightness of the first six rockets course abruptly broke. One of them veered crazily out of control.

It shifted to an almost right-angled course. A second swung wildly to the left. A third and fourth and fifth, the sixth of the first-line rockets, made a great sweeping turn and came hurtling back toward the Nacola. It was like a nightmare. Lunatic erratic lines of sunlit vapor eeled before the background of all the stars in creation. Then the second half-dozen rockets broke ranks,

as insanely and irremediably as the first. Tane's voice, screamed out of a speaker, hysterical with fury. Degenate! Detonate! They've taken over the rockets and are throwing them back at us. Detonate all rockets! The heavens seemed streaked and laced with lines of expanding smoke. But now one plunging line erupted at its tip. A swelling globe of smoke marked its end. Another blew up, and another.

The Nicola's rockets faithfully blew themselves to bits on command from the Nicola's owned weapons control. There was nothing else to be done with them. They'd been taken over in flight. They'd been turned and headed back toward their source. They'd have blasted the Nicola to bits but for their premature. explosions. There was a peculiar stunned hush all through the Nacola.

The only sound that came out of any speaker in the radar room was Tane's voice, high-pitched and raging, mouthing unspeakable hatred for the Plumies whom no human being had yet seen. Baird sat tense in the frustrated and deliberate composure of the man who can only be of use while he is sitting still and keeping his head. The vision screen was now a blur of writhing mist, lighted by the sun and torn at by emptiness. There was luminosity where the ships had encountered each other. It was sunshine upon thin smoke. It was like the insanely enlarging head of a newborn comet, whose tail would be formed presently

by light pressure. The plumey ship was almost invisible behind the unsubstantial stuff. But Baird regarded his radar screens. Microwaves penetrated the mist of rapidly ionizing gases. Radar to navigation, he said sharply. The plummy ship is still approaching, dancing as before. The skipper said with enormous calm. Any other plummy ships, Mr. Baird?

Diane interposed. No sign anywhere. I've been watching. This seems to be the only ship within radar range. We've time to settle with it, then. said the skipper. Mr. Tain, the plume ship is still approaching. Baird found himself hating the plumbies.

It was not only that humankind was showing up rather badly at the moment. It was that the plume ship had refused contact and forced a fight. It was that if the Nekola were destroyed, the plummy would carry news of the existence of humanity and of the tactics which worked to defeat them. The plumbies could prepare an irresistible feel. humanity could be doomed. But he overheard himself, saying, bitterly,

"'I wish I had known this was coming, Diane. I wouldn't have resolved to be strictly official only until we got back to base.' Her eyes widened. She looked startled. Then she softened. "'If you mean that I wish so, too?' "'It looks like they've got us,' he admitted unhappily. if they can take our rockets away from us.

Then his voice stopped, he said, hold everything, and press the navigation room button. He snapped. Radar to navigation, it appears to take the plumeys several seconds to take over a rocket. They have to aim something, a presser or tractor beam most likely, and pick off each rocket separately. Nearly forty seconds was consumed in taking over all twelve of our rockets, At shorter range, with less time available, a rocket might get through.

The skipper swore briefly, then— Mr. Tane, when the plumbies are near enough, our rockets may strike before they can be taken over. You follow? Baird heard Tane's shrill-voiced acknowledgment, in the form of practically chattered orders to his rocket-tube crews. Baird listened, checking the orders against what the situation was as the radar saw it. Hayne's voice was almost unhuman, so filled with frantic rage that it cracked as he spoke. But the problem at hand was the fulfillment of all his psychopathic urges. He commanded the starboard-side rocket battery to await special orders.

Meanwhile, the port-side battery would fire two rockets on wildly divergent courses, curving to join at the plummy ship. They'd be seized. They were to be detonated. and another port-side rocket fired instantly, followed by a second hidden in the rocket-tail the first would leave behind, then the starboard side. I'm afraid Tane's our only chance, said Baird reluctantly. If he wins, we'll have time to talk, as other people do who like each other.

If it doesn't work. Diane said quietly. Anyhow, I'm glad you wanted me to know. I wanted you to know, too. She smiled at him, yearningly. There was the crump, crump of two rockets going out together. Then the radar told what happened. The plummy ship was no more than six miles away,

dancing somehow deftly in the light of a yellow sun, with all the cosmos spread out as shining pinpoints of colored light behind it. The radar reported the dash and the death of the two rockets, after their struggle with invisible things that gripped them. They died when they headed reluctantly back to the Nacola, and detonated two miles from their parentship. The skipper's voice came. Mr. Tane, after your next salvo, I shall head for the plummy at full drive

to cut down the distance and the time they have to work in. Be ready. The rocket tubes went crump, grump again, with a fifth of a second interval. The radar showed two tiny specks speeding through space toward the weaving shifting speck, which was the pluming. Outside, in emptiness, there was a filmy haze. It was the rocket fumes and exploding gases spreading with incredible speed. It was thin as gossamer.

The plummy ship undoubtedly spotted the rockets, but it did not try to turn them. It somehow seized them and deflected them and darted past them. toward the Nacola. They see the trick, said Diane, dry-throated. If they can get in close enough, they can turn it against us. There were noises inside the Nacola now. Tane fairly howled in order. There were yells of defiance and excitement.

There were more of those inadequate noises as rockets went out. Every tube on the starboard side emptied itself in a series of savage grunts. And the Nacola's Magnetronic Drive roared at full floor. flux density. The two ships were less than a mile apart when the Nicola let go her full double broadside of missiles, and then it seemed that the plume ship was doomed. There were simply too many rockets to be seized and handled before at least one struck. But there was a new condition.

The plume ship weaved and dodged its way through them. The new condition was that the rockets were just beginning their run. They had not achieved the terrific velocity that would accumulate in ten miles of no gravity. They were new-launched, loggie, clumsy, not the streaking flashing death and destruction they would become with thirty more seconds of acceleration. So the plumeyship dodged them with a skill and daring past relief. With an incredible agility it got inside them, nearer to the Nicola than they, and then it hurled itself at the human ships as if bent upon a suicidal crash which would destroy both ships together.

But Baird in the radar room and the skipper in navigation knew that it would plunge brilliantly passed at the last instant. And then they knew that it would not, because very suddenly and very abruptly, there was something the matter with the plume ship. The life went out of it. It ceased to accelerate or decelerate. It ceased to steer. It began to turn slowly on an axis somewhere amid ships.

Its nose swung to one side, with no change in the direction of its motion. It floated onward. It was broadside to its line of travel. It continued to turn. It hurtled stern first toward the Nacola. It did not swerve. It did not dance. It was a lifeless hulk, a derelict in space.

and it would hit the NICOLA amid ships with no possible result but destruction for both vessels. The Nacola's skipper bellowed orders as his shouting would somehow give them more effect. The magnetotronic drive roared. He demanded a miracle of it, and he almost got one. The drive strained its thrust members. It hopelessly overloaded its coils. The Nacola's cobalt steel hull. became more than saturated with the dry field, and it leaped madly upon an evasion course.

And it very nearly got away. It was swinging clear when the plume ship drifted within fathoms. It was turning aside when the plume ship was within yards, and it was almost safe when the golden hull of the plume, shadowed now by the Nicola itself, barely scraped a side keel. There was a touch, seemingly deliberate and gentle. But the Nicola shuddered horribly. Then the vision screens flared with such a light as might herald to the crack of doom. There was a brightness greater than the brilliance of the sun. And then there was a wrenching, heaving shock.

Then there was blackness. Baird was flung across the radar room, and Diane cried out, and he careened against a wall and heard glass shatter. He called Diane. He clutched crazily at anything and called her name again. The Nicola's internal gravity was cut off and his head spun, and he heard collision doors closing everywhere. But before they closed completely,

he heard the rasping sound of giant arcs leaping in the engine room. Then there was silence. "'Dian!' cried Baird fiercely. "'Dian! "'I'm here,' she panted. "'I'm dizzy, but I think I'm all right.' The battery-powered emergency light came on. It was faint, but he saw her clinging to a bank of instruments where she'd been thrown by the collision.

He moved to go to her and found himself floating in mid-air, but he drifted to a sidewall and worked his way to her. She clung to him, shivering. I think, she said unsteadily, that we're going to die, aren't we? We'll see, he told her. Hold on to me. Guided by the emergency light, he scrambled to the bank of communicator buttons. What had been the floor was now a side wall. He climbed it and thumbed the navigation room switch.

Radar room reporting, he said currently. power out, gravity off, no reports from outside from power failure, no great physical damage. He began to hear other voices. There had never been an actual space collision in the memory of man, but reports came crisply, and the cut-in speakers in the radar room repeated them. Ship gravity was out all over the ship. Emergency lights were functioning and were all the lights there were. There was a slight, unexplained gravity drift toward what had been the ship's port side.

But damage control reported no loss of pressure in the Nicola's inner hull, though four areas between inner and outer hulls had lost air pressure to space. Mr. Baird, rasked the skipper. We're blind. Forget everything else and give us eyes to sea with. We'll try battery power to the vision plates, Baird told Diane. No full resolution, but better than nothing. They worked together, feverishly.

They were dizzy. Something close to nausea came upon them from pure giddiness. What had been the floor was now a wall, and they had to climb to reach the instruments that had been on a wall and now were on the ceiling. But their weight was ounces only. Baird said abruptly, "'I know what's the matter. We're spinning.

The whole ship's spinning. That's why we're giddy and why we have even a trace of weight. Triphical Force. Ready for the current? There was a tiny click, and the battery light dimmed, but a vision screen lighted faintly. The stars it showed were moving specks of light. The sun passed deliberately across the screen.

Baird switched to other outside scanners. There was power for only one screen at a time, but he saw the starkly impossible. He pressed the navigation room button. "'Radar Room reporting,' he said urgently. "'The Plumey ship is fast to us in contact with our hull. Both ships are spinning together.' He was trying yet other scanners as he spoke, and now he said,

"'Got it! There were no lines connecting us to the Plumy, but it looks—' "'Yes!' That flash when the ships came together was a flash-over of high potential. We're welded to them along twenty feet of our hull. The skipper. Damn nation! Any sign of intention to board us? Not yet, sir. Tane burst in, his voice high-pitched and thick with hatred.

Damage control parties' attention! Arm yourselves and assemble at Starboard Airlock. Rocket crews got into suits and prepared to board this plumbing. Countermand! bellowed the skipper from the speaker beside Baird's ear. Those orders are cancelled. Damn it, if we were successfully boarded, we blow ourselves the bits. Those are our orders.

Do you think the plumbies would let their ship be taken? And wouldn't we blow up with them? Mr. Tane, you will take no offensive action without specific orders. Defensive action is another matter. Mr. Baird, I consider this welding business pure accident. No one would be mad enough to plan it. You watch the plumbies and keep me. informed. His voice ceased, and Baird had again the frustrating duty of remaining still and keeping

his head while other men engaged in physical activity. He helped Diane to a chair, which was fast into the floor, which was now a wall, and she wedged herself fast and began a review of what each of the outside scanners reported. Baird called for more batteries. Power for the radar and visions were more important than anything else just then. If there were more plummy ships! Electricians half-floated, half-dragged extra batteries to the radar room. Baird hooked them in. The universe outside the ship again appeared filled with brilliantly colored dots of light

which were stars. More satisfying, the globe scanners again reported no new objects anywhere. Nothing new within a quarter-million miles. A half million." Later, Bairb reported, Radar reports no strange objects within a million miles of the Nicola, sir. Except the ship we're welded to. But you are doing very well.

However, microphones say there is movement inside the plummy. Diane beckoned for Baird's attention to a screen which Baird had examined before. Now he stiffened and motioned for her to report. We've a scanner, sir. said Diane, which faces what looks like a port in the plume ship. There's a figure at the port. I can't make out details, but it's making motions facing us. Give me the picture, snapped the skipper.

Diane obeyed. It was the merest flip of a switch. Then her eyes went back to the spherical sweep scanners, which reported the bearing and distance to every solid object within their range. She set up two instruments which would measure the angle, bearing, and distance of the two planets, now on this side of the sun, the gas giant, and the oxygen world to someward. Their orbital speeds and distances were known. The position, course, and speed of the Nacola could be computed from any two observations

on them. Diane had returned to the utterly necessary routine of the radar room, which was the nerve center of the ship, gathering all information. needed for navigation in space. The fact that there had been a collision, that the Nicola's engines were melted to unlovely scrap, that the Plumy ship was now welded irremovably to a side keel, and that a Plumie was signaling to humans, while both ships were spinning through space toward an unknown destination, these things did not affect the obligations of the radar room.

Baird got other images of the Plumy ship into sharp focus, so near that the-y-y-ship. the scanners required adjustment for precision. Take a look at this, he said Riley. She looked. The view was of the plume as welded fast to the Nacola. The welding was itself an extraordinary result of the plume's battle tactics. Tractor and presser beams were known to men, of course, but human beings used them only under very special conditions.

Their operation involved the building up of terrific static charges. Unless a tractor-beam generator could be grounded to the object it was to pull, it tended to emit lightning bolts at unpredictable intervals, and in entirely random directions, so men didn't use them. Obviously, the Plumies did. They'd handled the Nacola's rockets with beams which charged the Golden Ship to billions of volts. And when the Silicon Bronze Plumy Ship touched the Cobalt Steel Nacola won, that charge had to be shared.

It must have been the most spectacular of all artificial electric flames. Part of the Nicola's hull was vaporized, and undoubtedly part of the pluming. But the unvaparized surfaces were molten and in contact, and they stuck. For a good twenty feet the two ships were united by the most perfect of vacuum wells. The wholly dissimilar hulls formed a space catamaran, with a sort of valley between their bulks. Spinning deliberately as the United ships did, sometimes the sun shone brightly into that valley,

and sometimes it was filled with the blackness of the pit. While Diane looked, a round door revolved in the side of the plummy ship. As Diane caught her breath, Baird, reported crisply. At his first words, Tane burst into raging commands for men to follow him through the Nicola's air line, and fight a boarding party of plumy's in empty space. The skipper very savagely ordered him to be quiet. End of Part 2.

Part 3 of the aliens by Murray Lister. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Part 3. Only one figure has come out, reported Baird. The skipper watched on a vision plate, but Baird reported so all the Nicola's company would know. It's small, less than five feet. I'll see better in a moment. Sunlight smote down into the valley between the ships.

It's wearing a pressure suit. It seems to be the same material as the ship. It walks on two legs as we do. It has two arms or something very similar. The helmet of the suit is very high. It looks like the armor knights used to fight in. It's making its way to our airlock. It does not use Magnetic Soul's shoes.

It's holding on the lines threaded along the other ship's hull. The skipper said currently. Mr. Baird, I hadn't noticed the absence of magnetic shoes. You seem to have an eye for important items. Report to the airlock in person. Leave Lieutenant Holt to keep an eye on outside objects. Quickly, Mr. Baird. Baird laid his hand on Diane's shoulder.

She smiled at him. I'll watch, she promised. He went out of the radar room, walking on what had been a side wall. The giddiness and dizziness of continued rotation was growing less now. He was getting used to it. But the Nicola seemed strange indeed, with the standard up and down, an earth gravity replaced by a vertical which was all askew, and a weight of ounces instead of 170 pounds. He reached the airlock just as the skipper arrived.

There were others there, armed and in pressure suits. The skipper glared about him. I am in command here, he said very grimly indeed. Mr. Tane has a special function, but I am in command. We and the creatures on the ploobie ship are in a very serious fix. One of them apparently means to come on board. There will be no hostility, no sneering, no threatening gestures. this is a parley.

You will be careful, but you will not be trigger-happy. He glared around again, just as the metallic wrapping came upon the Nicola's airlock door. The skipper nodded. Let him in the lock, Mr. Baird. Baird obeyed. The humming of the unlocking system sounded. There were clankings. The outer airlock closed.

There was a faint whistling as air went in. The skipper nodded again. Baird opened the inner door. It was zero-eight hours, ten minutes ship time. The plumi stepped confidently out into the top sea-turvy corridors of the Nicola. He was about the size of a ten-year-old human boy, and features which were definitely not grotesque showed through the clear plastic of his helmet. His pressure suit was, engineering-wise, a very clean job.

His whole appearance was prepossessing. When he spoke, very clear and quite high sounds, soprano sounds, came from a small speaker unit at his shoulder. For us to talk, said the skipper heavily, is pure nonsense. But I take it you something to say? The plumey gazed about with an air of lively curiosity. Then he drew out a flat pad with a white surface and sketched swiftly. He offered it to the Nicola's skipper.

We want this on record, he growled. staring about. Diane's voice said, Capably from a speaker somewhere nearby. Sir, there's a scanner for inspection of objects brought aboard. Hold the plate flat, and I'll have a photograph. Right. The skipper said curtly to the plummy. You've drawn our two ships linked as they are.

What have you to say about it? He handed back the plate. The plume pressed a stud, and it was blank again. He sketched and offered it once more. "'H'm,' said the Skipper. "'You can't use your drive while we're glued together, eh?' "'Well?' The Plumie reached up and added lines to the drawing.

"'So,' rumble the Skipper, inspecting the additions. "'You say it's up to us to use our drive for both ships?' he growled approvingly. "'You consider there's a truce. You must, because we're both in the same fix, and not a nice one either. True enough. We can't fight each other without committing suicide now. But we haven't any drive left. We're a derelict.

How am I going to say that, if I decide to? Baird could see the lines on the plate from the angle at which the skipper held it. He said, Sir, we've been mapping up in the radar room. Those last lines are map coordinates. A separate sketch, sir. I think he's saying that the two ships together are on a falling course. towards the sun.

But we have to do something, or both vessels will fall into it. We should be able to check this, sir. Ha, growled the skipper. That's all we need. Absolutely all we need. To come here, get into a crazy fight, have our drive melt to scrap, get crazily welded to a plummy ship, and then for both of us to fry together.

We don't need anything more than that. Diane's voice came on the speaker. Sir, the last radar fixes on the planet in range gave us a course directly toward the sun. I'll repeat the observations. The skipper growled. Tane thrust himself forward. He snarled. Why doesn't this plumey take off its helmet?

It lands on oxygen planets. Does it think it's too good to breathe our air? Baird caught the plume's eye. He made a gesture suggesting the removal of the space helmet. The plume he gestured in return to a tiny vent in the suit. He opened something and gas whistled out. He cut it off. The question of why he did not open or remove his helmet was answered.

The atmosphere he breathed would not do men any good, nor would theirs do him any good either. Tane said suspiciously, How do we know he's breeding the stuff he let out then? This creature isn't human. It's got no right to attack humans. Now it's trying to trick us. His voice changed to a snarl. We'd better ring its neck. Teach its kind of lesson. The skipper roared at him. Be quiet. Our ship is a wreck. We have to consider the facts. We and these plumbies are in a fix together and we have to get out of it before we start to teach anybody anything.

He clared at Tane. Then he said heavily, Mr. Baird, you seem to notice things. Take this plummy over the ship. Show him our drive melted down, so he'll realize we can't possibly tow his ship into an orbit. He knows that we're armed and that we can't handle our warheads at this range. So we can't fool each other. We might as well be frank. But you will take full note of his reactions, Mr. Baird.

Baird advanced, and the skipper made a change. gesture. The plume regarded Baird with interested eyes, and Baird led the way for a tour of the Nicola. It was confusing even to him, with right hand converted to up and left hand to down, and sideways, now almost vertical. On the way the plummy made more clear flute-like sounds and more gestures. Baird answered, Our gravity pull was that way, he explained, and things fell so fast. He grasped a handrail and demonstrated the same. He grasped a handrail and demonstrated the speed with which things fell in normal ship gravity. He used a pocket communicator for the falling weight.

It was singularly easy to say some things, even highly technical ones, because that would be what the plummy would want to know. But quite commonplace things would be very difficult to convey. Diane's voice came out of the communicator. There are no novelties outside, she said quietly. It looks like this is the only plummy ship anywhere. around. It could have been exploring like us. Maybe it was looking for the people who put up space survey markers. Maybe, agreed Baird, using the communicator. Is that stuff about falling

into the sun correct? It seems so, said Diane composedly. I'm checking again. So far the best course I can get means we graze the sun's photosphere in 14 days, six hours, allowing for acceleration by the sun's graviting. And you and I, said Baird Riley, have been acting as professional associates only when don't say it, said Diane shakily. It's terrible. He put the communicator back in his pocket. The plumey had watched him. He had a peculiarly gallant air, this small figure in golden space armor with this high-crested helmet. They reached the engine room, and there was the giant drive shaft of the Nicola, once wrapped with yard-thick coils which could induce an incredible density of magnetic flux in the metal. Even the return magnetic field, through the ship's

cobalt steel hull, was many times higher than saturation. Now the coils were sagging, mostly melted. There were places where re-solidified metal smoked noisomely against non-metallic floor or wall covering. Engineers labored doggedly in the trivial gravity. to clean up the mess. It's past repair, said Baird to the ship's first engineer. It's junk, said that individual dourily. Give us six months and a place to set up a wire-drawing mill and an insulation synthesizer, and we could rebuild it, but nothing less will be any good.

The flumy stared at the drive. He examined the shaft from every angle. He inspected the melted and partly melted, and merely burned out, of the drive coils. He was plainly unable to understand in any fashion the principle of the magnetronic drive. Baird was tempted to try to explain because there was surely no secret about a ship drive, but he could imagine no diagrams or gestures which would convey the theory of what happened in cobald steel when it was magnetized beyond 100,000 goss flux density.

And without that theory one simply couldn't explain a magnetronic drive. They left the engine room. They visited the rocket batteries. The generator room was burned out like the drive by the inconceivable lightning bolt which had passed between the ships on contact. The plume was again puzzled. Baird made it clear that the generator room supplied electric current for the ship's normal lighting system and services. The plume could grasp that idea. They examined the crew's quarters in the mess room, and the plumey walked confidently among

the members of the human crew, who, a little while since, had tried so painstakingly to destroy his vessel. He made a good impression. "'These little guys,' said a crewman to Baird, admiringly, "'they got something. They can handle a ship. I bet they could almost make that ship of theirs play checkers.' "'Close to it,' agreed Baird.

He realized something. He pulled the communicator from his pocket. Diane, contact the skipper. He wanted observations. Here's one. The plumey acts like soldiers used to act in ancient days when they wore armor, and we have the same reaction. They will fight like the devil, but during a truce they'll be friendly, admiring each other

with scrappers, but ready to fight as hard as ever when the truce is over. We have the same reaction. Tell the skipper I've an idea that it's a part of their civilization. Maybe it's a necessary part of any civilization. Tell him, I guess that there may be necessarily parallel evolution of attitudes among rational races, as there are parallel evolutions of eyes and legs and wings and fins among all animals everywhere. If I'm right, somebody from this ship will be invited to tour the plume. It's only a guess, but tell him.

Immediately, said Diane. The plumey followed gallantly. as Baird made a steep climb up what once was the floor of a corridor. Then Tane stepped out before them. His eyes burned. Giving him a clear picture, eh? he rasped. Letting him spy out everything. Baird pressed the communicator call for the radar room and said coldly,

I'm obeying orders. Look, Tane, you were picked for your job because you were a xenophob. It helps in your proper functioning. But this plummy is here under a flag of truce. Flag of truce, snarled Tane. It's vermin. It's not human. I'll—if you move one inch nearer him, said Baird gently. Just one inch.

The skipper's voice bellowed through the general call speakers all over the ship. Mr. Tane, you will go to your quarters under arrest. Mr. Baird, burn him down if he hesitates. Then there was a rushing, and scrambling figures appeared and were all about. They were members of the Nicola's crew sent by the skipper. They regarded the plummy with detachment, but pain with wary expectancy. Tane turned purple with fury. He shouted, he raged.

He called Baird and the others Plumie lovers and vermin worshippers. He shouted foulnesses at them, but he did not attack. And still shouting he went away, Baird said apologetically to the flummy. He's a xenophob. He has a pathological hatred of strangers, even of strangeness. We have him on board because—then he stopped. The flumie wouldn't understand, of course, but its eyes took on a curious look. It was almost as if, looking at Baird, they twinkled.

Baird took him back to the skipper. He's got the picture, sir, he reported. The plummy pulled out his sketchplate. He drew on it. He offered it. The skipper said heavily. You guessed right, Mr. Baird. He suggests that someone from this ship go on board the plummy vessel.

He's drawn two pressure-suited figures going in their airlock. One's larger than the other. Will you go? Naturally, said Baird. Then he added thought. thoughtfully, but I'd better carry a portable scanner, sir. It should work perfectly well through a bronze hull, sir. The skipper nodded, and began to sketch a diagram, which would amount to an acceptance of the Plumey's invitation. This was at zero seven hours, forty minutes,

ship time. Outside the sedately rotating metal hulls, the one a polished blue-silver and the other a glittering golden bronze, the cosmos continued to be as always. ways. The haze from explosive fumes and rocket fuel was perhaps a little thinner. The brighter stars shown through it. The gas giant planet outward from the sun was a perceptible disc instead of a diffuse glow. The oxygen planet to sunward showed again as a lighted crescent. Presently bared in a human spacesuit, accompanied the plume into the Nicola's airlock, and out to emptiness. His magnetic-souled shoes clung to the Nicola's cobalt steel skin. Fastened to his shoulder there was a tiny scanner and microphone, which would relay everything he saw and heard back to the radar room and to Diane.

She watched tensely as he went inside the plume ship. Other screens relayed the image and his voice to other places on the Nicola. He was gone a long time. From the beginning, of course, there was a little. surprises. When the plummy escort removed his helmet on his own ship, the reason for the helmet's high crest was apparent. He had a high crest of what looked remarkably like feathers, and it was not artificial.

It grew there. The reason for conventionalized plumes on bronze survey plates was clear. It was exactly like the reason for human features or figures as decorative additions to the instructions on space survey marker plates. Even the Plumie's hands had odd cressilets which stood out when he bent his fingers. The other Plumys were no less graceful and no less colorful. They had equally clear soprano voices. There were equally miniature and so devoid of apparent menace.

But there were also technical surprises. Baird was taken immediately to the Plumey ship's engine room and Diane heard the sharp intake a breath with which he appeared to recognize his working principle. There were plummy engineers working feverishly at it, attempting to discover something to repair, but they found nothing. The plume drive simply would not work. They took Baird through the ship's entire fabric, and their purpose, when it became clear, was startling.

The plummy ship had no rocket tubes. It had no beam projectors except small-sized objects. which must be, their projectors of tractor and presser beams. They were elaborately grounded to the ship's substance, but they were not originally designed for ultra-heavy service. They hadn't and couldn't have the enormous capacity Baird had expected. He was astounded. When he returned to the Nacola,

he went instantly to the radar room to make sure that pictures taken through his scanner had turned out well. And there was Diane. But the skipper's voice boomed at him from the wall. Mr. Baird, what have you to add to the information you sent back? Three items, sir, said Baird. He drew a deep breath. For the first, sir, the plummy ship is unarmed.

They've tractor and presser beams for handling material. They probably use them to build their cairns. But they weren't meant for weapons. The plumbies, sir, hadn't a thing to fight with when they drove for us after we detected them. The skipper blinked hard. Are you sure of that, Mr. Baird? Yes, sir, said Baird uncomfortably.

The Plumy ship is an exploring ship, a survey ship, sir. You saw their mapping equipment. But when they spotted us and we spotted them, they bluffed. When we fired rockets at them, they turned them back with tractor and pressure beams. They drove for us, sir, to try to destroy us with our own bombs because they didn't have any of their own. The Skipper's mouth opened and closed. Another item, sir, said Baird more uncomfortably still.

They don't use iron or steel. Every metal object I saw was either a bronze or a light metal. I suspect some of their equipment's made of potassium, and I'm fairly sure they use sodium in place of aluminum. Their atmosphere is quite different from ours, obviously. They'd use bronze for their ship's hull because they could venture into an oxygen atmosphere in a bronze ship. A sodium-hulled ship would be lighter, but it would burn in oxygen.

Where there was moisture, the skipper blinked. But they couldn't drive in a non-magnetic hull, he protested. A ship has to be magnetic to drive. Sir, said Baird, his voice still shone. They don't use a magnetronic drive. I once saw a picture of the drive they use in a stereo on the history of space travel. The principle is very old. We've practically forgotten it.

Into part three. Part four of the aliens by Murray Lister. This Libre Vox recording is in the public domain. Part four. It's a die-rock pusher drive, sir. Among us humans it came right after rockets. The planets of Saul were first reached by ships using direct pushers, but—he paused. They won't operate in a magnetic field above 70 goss, sir.

It's a static charge reaction, sir, and in a magnetic field it simply stops working. The skipper regarded Baird unwinkingly for a long time. I think you're telling me—he said it long last. that the Plumies' drive would work if they were cut free of the Nacola. Yes, sir, said Baird. Their engineers were opening up the drive elements and checking them, and then closing them up again. They couldn't seem to find anything wrong. I don't think they know what the trouble is.

It's the Nacola's magnetic field. I think it was our field that caused the collision by stopping their drive and killing all their controls when they came close enough. Did you tell them? demanded the skipper. There was no easy way to tell them by diagrams, sir." Tane's voice cut in. It was feverish. It was shrient.

It was triumphant. Sir, the Nicola is effectively a wreck and unrepairable. But the plume ship is operable if cut loose. As weapons officer, I intend to take the plume ship, let out its air, fill its tanks with our air, start up its drive, and turn it up. over to you for navigation back to base." Baird raged, but he said coldly. We're a long way from home, Mr. Tain, and the D-Rock Pusher drive is slow.

If we headed back to base in the plume ship with its D-Rock Pusher, we'd all be dead of old age before we'd go on halfway. But unless we take it, Raged Tane, we hit this sun in fourteen days. We don't have to die now. We can land on the oxygen plant. planet up ahead. We've only to kill these vermin and take their ship, and we'll live." Diane's voice, said dispassionately. Report. A plummy in a pressure suit has just come out of their airlock. It's carrying a

parcel toward our airlock. Tane snarled instantly. They'll sneak something in the Nacola to blast it, and then cut free and go away. The skipper said, very grimly, Mr. Tane, credit me with minimum brains. There is no way the plumbies can take this ship without an atomic bomb exploding to destroy both ships. You should know it. Then he snapped. Airlock area, listen for a knock and let in the plummy or the parcel he leaves. There was silence, Baird said very quietly.

I doubt they think it possible to cut the ships apart. A torch is no good on thick silicon bronze. It conducts heat too well, and they don't use steel. They probably haven't a cutting torch at all. From the radar room he watched the plume placed an object in the airlock and withdraw. He watched from a scanner inside the ship as someone brought in what the plume had left.

An electronics man bustled forward. He looked it over quickly. It was complex, but his examinations suddenly seemed satisfying to him. But a grayish vapor developed, and he sniffed and wrinkled his nose. He picked up a communicator. Sir, they've sent us a power generator. Some of its parts are going bad in our atmosphere, sir.

But this looks to me like a hell of a good idea for a generator. I never saw anything like it, but it's good. You can set it for any voltage, and it'll turn out plenty juice. Put it in helium. snapped the skipper. He won't break down in that. Then see how it serves. In the radar room Baird drew a deep breath.

He went carefully to each of the screens and every radar. Diane saw what he was about and checked with him. They met at the middle of the radar room. Everything's checked out, said Baird gravely. There's nothing else around. There's nothing we can be called on to do before something happens, so we can act like people. Diane smiled very faintly. "'Not like people. Just like us,' she said wistfully.

"'Don't you want to tell me something? Something you intended to tell me only after we got back to base?' "'He did. He told it to her. And there was also something she had not intended to tell him at all unless he told her first. She said it now. They felt that such sayings were of the greatest possible importance. They clung together, saying them again. And it seemed wholly monstrous that two people who cared so desperately had wasted so much time acting like professional associates, explorership officers, when things like this were to be said. As they talked incoherently or were even more eloquently silent, the ship's ordinary lights came on. The battery lamp went on.

We've got to switch back to ship's circuit, said Baird reluctantly. They separated and restored the operating circuits to normal. We've got fourteen days, he added. And so much time to be on duty and we've lost a lifetime to live in fourteen days. Diane, she flushed vividly. So Baird said very politely into the microphone to the navigation room. Sir, Lieutenant Holt and myself would like to speak directly. to you in the navigation room, may we?"

"'Why not?' growled the skipper. "'You've noticed that the plummy generator is given the whole ship lights and services?' "'Yes, sir,' said Baird. "'We'll be there right away.' They heard the skippers grunt as they hurried through the door. A moment later the ship's normal gravity returned, also through the plummy generator. Up was up again and down was down, and the corridors and cabins of the Nicola were brightly illuminated. Had the ship been other than an engineless wreck falling through a hundred and

fifty million miles of emptiness into the flaming photosphere of a sun, everything would have seemed quite normal, including the errand Baird and Diane were upon, and the fact that they held hands self-consciously as they went about it. They skirted the bulkhead of the main air tank. They headed along the broader corridor which went past the indented inner door of the airlock. They had reached that indentation when Baird saw that the inner airlock door was closing. He saw a human pressure suit past its edge. He saw the corner of some object that had been put down on the airlock floor. Baird shouted and rushed toward the lock.

He seized the inner handle and tried to force open the door again so that no one inside could emerge into the emptiness without. He failed. He wrenched frantically at the controls of the outer door. It suddenly swung freely. The outer door had been put on manual. It could be and was being opened from inside. Tell the skipper, raged Baird.

Tane's taking something out. He tore open a pressure suit covered in the wall beside the lock door. He'll make the plumbies think it's a return gift for the generator. He eeled into the pressure suit and zipped it up to his neck. The man's crazy. He thinks we can take their ship and say. stay alive for a while. Damn it, our air would ruin half their equipment.

Tell the skipper to send help. He wrenched at the door again, jamming down his helmet with one hand. And this time the control worked. Tane, most probably, had forgotten that the inner control was disengaged only when the manual was actively in use. Viann raced away, panting. Baird swore bitterly at the slowness of the outer doors closing. He was tearing at the inner door long before he could be opened.

He flung himself in and dragged it shut and struck the emergency air release, which bled the airlock into space for speed of operation. He thrust out the outer door and plunged through. His momentum carried him almost too far. He fell, and only the magnetic soles of his shoes enabled him to check himself. He was in that singular valley between the two ships, where their hulls were impregnably welded fast. Round-hauled, plummy ship, and Ganoid-shaped Nicola,

they stuck immovably together as if they had been that way since time began. Where the sky appeared above Barrett's head, the stars moved in stately procession across the valley roof. He heard a metallic wrapping through the fabric of his space armor. Then sunlight glittered, and the valley filled with a fierce glare. and a man in a human space suit stood on the Nicola's plating opposite the flumy airlock. He held a bulky object under his arm. With this other gauntlet he rapped again.

"'You fool!' shouted Baird. "'Stop that! We couldn't use their ship anyhow!' His space phone had turned on with the air supply. Tane's voice snarled. "'We'll try. You keep back. They are not human!' But Baird ran toward him. The sensation of running upon magnetic-souled shoes was unearthly. It was like trying to run on flypaper or bird-lime.

But in addition there was no gravity here and no sense of balance, and there was the feeling of perpetual fall. There could be no science nor any skill in an encounter under such conditions. Baird partly ran and partly staggered and partly skated to where. Tain faced him snarling. He threw himself at the other man, and then the sun vanished behind the bronze ship's hull, and only stars moved visibly in all the universe. But the sound of his impact was loud in Baird's ears inside the suit. There was a slightly different sound when his armor struck Tane's and when it struck the heavier metal of the two ships. He fought.

But the suits were intended to be defense against greater stresses than human blows could offer. In the darkness it was like two blindfolded men fighting each other while encased in pillows. Then the sun returned, floating sedately above the valley, and Baird could see his enemy. He saw, too, that the plumey airlock was now open, and that a small, erect and somehow jaunty figure in golden space armor stood in the opening, and watched gravely as a little, and watched gravely as the two men fought. Tane cursed, panting with hysterical hate. He flung himself at Baird, and Baird toppled,

because he'd put one foot past the welded boundary between the Nicola's cobald steel and the plummy ship's bronze. One foot held to nothing. And that was a ghastly sensation, because if Tain only rugged his other foot free and heaved, why then Baird would go floating away from the rotating now twinned ships, floating farther and further away, forever. But darkness fell, then he scrambled back to the Nicola's hull as a disorderly parade of stars

went by above him. He pantingly waited fresh attack. He felt something, and it was the object Tane had meant to offer as a return present to the Plumies. It was unquestionably explosive, either booby-trapped or time to explode inside the Blumie ship. Now it rocked gently, gripped by the magnetism of the steel. The sun appeared again, and Tain was yards away crawling and fumbling for Baird. Then he saw him, and rose and rushed, and the clankings of his shoe-soules were loud. Baird flung himself but Tane in a savage tackle.

He struck Tane's legs a glancing blow, and the cobald steel held his armor fast, but Tane careened and bounced against the round bronze wall of the plume, and bounced again. Then he screamed, because he was floating slowly out to emptiness, his arms and legs jerking spasmodically while he shrieked. The plummy in the airlock stepped out. He trailed a cord behind him. He leaped briskly toward nothingness. There came a quick darkness once more, and bared struggle direct despite the adhesiveness of

the Nicola's hull. When he was fully upright, sick with horror at what had come about, there was sunlight yet again, and men were coming out of the Nicola's airlock, and the plummy who'd loop for space was pulling himself back to his own ship again. He had a loop of cord twisted around Tane's leg, but Tane screamed and screamed inside his spacesuit. It was odd that one could recognize the skipper even inside space armor. But Baird felt sick. He saw Tain received, still screaming and carried into the lock. The skipper growled an infuriated demand for details.

His space phone had come on, too, when his air supply began. Baird explained his teeth chattering. Ha, grunted the skipper. Tane was a mistake. He shouldn't ever have left ground. When a man's potty in one fashion they'll be cracker. in him all over. What's this?

The plume in the golden armor very soberly offered the skipper the object Tane had meant to introduce into the plume ship. Baird said desperately that he'd fought against it because he believed it a booby-trap to kill the plumies so men could take their ship and fill it with air and cut it free and then make a landing somewhere. Damned foolishness, rumbled the skipper. Their ship had begun to crumble with our air and it, if it held to a landing. Then he considered the object he'd accepted from the plume.

It could have been a rocket warhead, enclosed in some container that would detonate it if opened, or there might be a timing device. The skipper grunted. He heaved it skyward. The misshaping object went floating away toward emptiness. Sunlight smote harshly upon it. Don't want it back in the Nacola, growled the skisking. shipper, but just to make sure." He fumbled a hand weapon out of his belt. He raised it, and it spurted flame, very tiny blue-white sparks, each one indicating a pellet of metal flung away at high velocity.

One of them struck the shining, retreating container. It exploded with a monstrous, soundless violence. It had been a rocket's warhead. There could have been only one reason for it to be introduced into a plummy ship. Baird ceased to be shaking. Instead, he was ashamed. The skipper growled inarticulately. He looked at the plummy, again standing in the golden ship's airlock. We'll go back, Mr. Baird. What you've done won't save our lives, and nobody will ever know you did it, but I think well of you. Come along.

This was eleven hours, five minutes ship time. A good half hour later the skipper's voice bellowed from the speakers all over the Nacola. His heavy, jowled features stared doggedly out of screens, wherever men were on duty or at ease. Hear this, he said forbiddingly. We have checked our course and speed. We have verified that there is no possible jury rig for our engines that could get us into any sort of orbit, let alone land us on the only planet in this sense. system with air we could breathe.

It is officially certain that in thirteen days nine hours from now, the Nacola will be so close to the sun that her hull will melt down. Which would be no loss to us because we'll be dead then, still going on into the sun to be vaporized with the ship. There is nothing to be done about it. We can do nothing to save our own lives. He cleared out of each and every one of the screens, wherever they're at. were men to see him.

But, he rumbled, the plummies can get away if we help them. They have no cutting torches. We have. We can cut their ship free. They can repair their drive, but it's most likely it'll operate perfectly when they're a mile from the Nicola's magnetic field.

They can't help us, but we can help them. And sooner or later, some plume ship is going to encounter some other human ship. If we cut these plumbies loose, they'll report what we did. When they meet other men, they'll be cagey because they'll remember Tane. But they'll know they can make friends because we did them a favor when we'd nothing to gain by it. I can offer no reward, but I ask for volunteers to go outside and cut the plummy ship loose, so the plumbies can go home in safety instead of on into the sun with us.

He glared and cut off the image. Diane held tightly to bear its hand in the radar room. He said evenly. They'll be volunteers. The plumbies are pretty sporting characters, putting up a fight with an unarmed ship and so on. If there aren't enough other volunteers, the skipper and I will cut them free by ourselves. Diane said, dry-throated. I'll help, so I can be with you.

We've got so little time. I'll ask the skipper as soon as the plummy ship's free. Yes, said Diane, and she pressed her face against his shoulder and wept. This was at zero one hours, twenty minutes of ship time. At zero three hours even, there was peculiar activity in the valley between the welded ships. There were men in space armor working cutting torches, where for twenty feet the two ships were solidly attached.

Blue-white flames bored savagely into solid metal, and melted copper gave off strangely colored clouds of vapor, which emptiness whisked away to nothing, and molten iron and cobalt made equally lurid clouds of other colors. There were plumies in the airlock, watching. At zero-three hours, forty minutes, ship time, all the men but one drew back. They went inside the Nacola. Only one man remained, cutting at the last sliver of metal that held the two ships together.

It parted. The plummy ship swept swiftly away, moved by the centrifugal force of the rotary motion that joined vessels had possessed. It dwindled and dwindled. It was a half-mile away, a mile. The last man on the outside of the Nicola's hull thriftily brought the torch to the airlock and came in. Suddenly the distant golden hull came to life.

It steadied. It ceased to spin, however, slowly. It darted ahead. It checked. It swung to the right and left and up and down. It was alive again. In the radar room, Diane walked into Baird's arm, and said, shakily,

Now we, we have almost fourteen days. Wait, he commanded. When the Plumies understood what we were doing and why, they drew diagrams, they hadn't thought of cutting free out in space without the spinning saws they used to cut bronze with. But they asked for a scanner and a screen. They checked on its use.

I want to see. He flipped on the screen. And there was instantly a screen. plummy looking eagerly out of it for some sign of communication established. There were soprano sounds, and he waved a hand for attention. Then he zestfully held up one diagram after another. Bear drew a deep breath. A very deep breath.

He pressed the navigation room call. The skipper looked dowerly at him. Well, said the skipper, forbiddingly. Sir, said Bear. said Baird very quietly indeed. The Plumies are talking by diagram over the communicator set we gave them. Their drive works. They're as well off as they ever were.

And they've been modifying their tractor beams, stepping them up to higher power. What of it, demanded the skipper, rumbling. They believe, said Baird, that they can handle the Nacola with their beefed-up tractor beams. He wet at his lips. "'They're going to tow us to the oxygen planet ahead, sir. They're going to set us down on it. They'll help us find the metals we need to build the tools to repair the Nicola, sir. You see the reasoning, sir?

We turn them loose to improve the chance of friendly contact when another human ship runs into them. They want us to carry back, to be proof that plumbies and men can be friends. It seems that they like us, sir. He stopped for a moment. Then he went on, reasonably. And besides that, it'll be one hell of a fine business proposition. We never bother with hydrogen methane planets. They've minerals and chemicals we haven't got,

but even the stones of a methane hydrogen planet are ready to combine with the oxygen we need to breathe. We can't carry or keep enough oxygen for real work. The same thing's true with them on an oxygen planet. We can't work on each other's planets, but we can do fine business in each other's minerals and chemicals from those planets. I've got a feeling, sir, that the plummy corns are location notices, markers set up over ore deposits they can find but can't hope to work.

Yet they claim against the day when their scientists find a way to make them worth owning. I'm willing to bet, sir, that if we explored hydrogen planets as thoroughly as oxygen once, we'd find Carnes on their type planets that they haven't colonized yet." The skipper stared. His mouth dropped open. "'And I think, sir,' said Baird, that until they detected us they thought they were the only intelligent race in the galaxy. They were upset to discover suddenly that they were not, and at first they'd no idea what

we'd be like. But I'm guessing now, sir, that they're figuring out on what chemicals and oars to start whopping with us. Then he added, When you think of it, sir, probably the first metal they ever used was aluminum, where our ancestors used copper. And they had a ballerium age next instead of iron. And right now, sir, it's probably as expensive for them to refine iron as it is for us to handle titanium and ballerium and osmium, which are duck soup for them. Our two cultures ought to thrive as long as we're friends, sir. They know it already,

and we'll find out in a hurry. The skipper's mouth moved. It closed and then dropped open again. The search for the plumbies had been made because it looked like they had to be fought. But Barrett had just pointed out some extremely common-sense items which changed the situation entirely,

and there was evidence that the plumee saw the situation the new way. The skipper felt such enormous relief that his manner changed. He displayed what was almost effusive cordiality for the skipper. He cleared his throat. Very good, Mr. Baird, he said, formidably. And, of course, with time and air and metals we can rebuild our drive. For that matter, we could rebuild in the cola.

I'll notify the ship's company, Mr. Baird, very good. He moved to use another microphone. Then he checked himself. Your expression is odd, Mr. Baird. Did you wish to say something more? Yes, sir, said Baird. He held Diane's hand fast. It'll be months before we get back to port, sir.

And it's normally against regulations, but under the circumstances, would you mind as Skipper marrying Lieutenant Holt and me? The Skipper snorted. Then he said almost, almost. amiably. Hmm. You've both done very well, Mr. Baird. Yes.

Come to the navigation room and we'll get it over with, say ten minutes from now." Baird grinned at Diane. Her eyes shone a little. That was at zero four hours ten minutes ship time. It was exactly twelve hours since the alarm bell rang. End of Part Four. of The Aliens by Murray Lister