Thomakein, the Ertinian, stopped the recorder as the Terran ship
reversed itself painfully and began to decelerate for the trip back to
home. He nodded to himself and made a verbal addition to the recording,
stating that the smaller ship had been satisfied as to the destruction
of the larger, otherwise a continuance of the fight would have been
inevitable. Then Thomakein placed the recording in a can and placed it
on a shelf containing other recordings. He forgot about it then, for
there was something more interesting in view.
That derelict warship would be a veritable mine of information about
the culture of this system. All warships are gold mines of information
concerning the technical abilities, the culture, the beliefs, and the
people themselves.
Could he assume the destruction of the crew in the derelict?
The smaller ship had--unless they were out of the battle and forced
to withdraw due to lack of fighting contact. That didn't seem right
to Thomakein. For the smaller ship to attack the larger ship meant a
dogged determination. There would have been a last-try stand on the
part of the smaller ship no matter how much faster the larger ship
were. At worst, the determination seemed to indicate that ramming the
larger ship was not out of order.
But the smaller ship had not rammed the larger. Hadn't even tried. In
fact, the smaller ship had turned and started to decelerate as soon as
the larger ship had doubled her speed.
Thomakein couldn't read either of the name plates of the two fighting
ships. He had no idea as to the origin of the two. As an Ertinian,
Thomakein couldn't even recognize the characters let alone read them.
He was forced to go once more on deduction.
The course of the larger vessel. It was obviously fleeing from the
smaller ship. Thomakein played with his computer for a bit and came to
two possibilities, one of which was remote, the other pointing to the
fourth planet.
A carefully collected table of masses and other physical constants of
the planets of Sol was consulted.
Thomakein retrieved his recording, set it up and added:
"The smaller ship, noticing the increased acceleration of the larger,
assumed--probably--that the larger ship's crew was killed by the
increased gravity-apparent. Since the larger ship was fleeing, it
would in all probability have used every bit of acceleration that the
crew could stand. Its course was dead-center for the fourth planet's
position if integrated for a course based on the larger ship's velocity
and direction and acceleration at and prior to the engagement.
"This fourth planet has a surface gravity of approximately one-eighth
of the acceleration of the larger ship. Doubling this means that the
crew must withstand sixteen gravities. The chances of any being of
intelligent size withstanding sixteen gravities is of course depending
upon an infinite number of factors. However, the probable reasoning of
the smaller ship is that sixteen gravities will kill the crew of the
larger ship. Otherwise they would have continued to try to do battle
with the larger ship. Their return indicates that they were satisfied."
Thomakein nodded again, replaced the recording, and then paced the
derelict _Mardinex_ for a full hour with every constant at his disposal
on the recorders.
At the end of that hour, Thomakein noted that nothing had registered
and he smiled with assurance.
He stretched and said to himself: "I can stand under four gravities. I
can live under twelve with the standard Ertinian acceleration garb. But
sixteen gravities for one hour? Never."
Thomakein noted the acceleration of the derelict as being slightly over
six gravities on his own accelerometer, which registered the Ertinian
constant.
Then he began to maneuver his little ship toward the derelict.
Entering the _Mardinex_ through the blasted observation dome was no
great problem. The lower meteor spotters and most of the machinery had
gone with the dome and so no pressor came forth to keep Thomakein from
his intention.
The insides were a mess. Broken girders and ruined equipment made a bad
tangle of the lower third of the great warship. Thomakein jockeyed the
little ship back and forth inside of the derelict until he had lodged
it against the remainder of a lower deck in such a manner as to keep it
there under the six Terran gravities of acceleration. Then he donned
spacesuit and started to prowl the ship. It was painful and heavy
going, but Thomakein made it slowly.
* * * * *
An hour later, Thomakein heard the ringing of alarms, coming from
somewhere up above, and the sound made him stop suddenly. Sound, he
reasoned, requires air for propagation. The sound came through the
floor, but somewhere there must be air inside of the derelict.
So upward he went through the damage. He found an air-tight door and
fought the catch until it puffed open, nearly throwing him back into
the damaged opening. White-faced, Thomakein held on until his breath
returned, and then with a determined look at the gap below--and
the place where he would have been if he had fallen out of the
derelict--Thomakein tried the door again. He closed the outer door and
tried the inner.
His alien grasp of mechanics was not universal enough to discover his
trouble immediately. But it was logical, and logic told him to look for
the air vent. He found it, and turned the valve permitting air to enter
the air-tight door system. The inner door opened easily and Thomakein
entered a portion of the hull where the alarm bells rang loud and clear.
He found them ringing in a room filled with control instruments.
Throwing the dome of his suit back over his head, Thomakein looked
around him with interest. There was nothing in the room that logic or a
grasp of elementary mechanics could solve. It did Thomakein no good to
look at the Martian characters that labeled the instruments and dials,
for he recognized nothing of any part of the Solar System.
He did recognize the bloody lump of inert flesh as having once been the
operator of this room--or one of them he came to conclude as his search
found others.
Thomakein was not squeamish. But they did litter up the place and the
pools of blood made the floor slippery which was dangerous under 6-G
Terran--or for Thomakein, five point six eight. So Thomakein struggled
with the Martian bodies and hauled them to the corridor where he let
them drop over the edge of the central well onto the bulkhead below.
He returned to the instrument room in an attempt to find out what the
bell-ringing could mean.
He inspected the celestial globe with some interest until he noticed
that the upper limb contained some minute, luminous spheres--prolate
spheroids to be exact. Wondering, Thomakein tried to look forward and
up with respect to the ship's course.
His anxiety increased. He was about to meet a whole battle fleet that
was spread out in a dragnet pattern. Then before he could worry about
it he was through the network and some of the ships tried to follow but
with no success. The _Mardinex_ bucked and pitched as tractors were
applied and subsequently broken as the tension reached overload values.
Thomakein smiled. Their inability to catch him plus their obvious
willingness to let the matter drop with but a perfunctory try gave him
sufficient evidence as to their origin.
They could never catch a ship under six gravities when the best they
could do was three. The functions with respect to one another would be
as though the faster ship were accelerating away from the slower ship
by 3-G plus the initial velocity of the faster ship's intrinsic speed,
for the pursuers were standing still.
The _Mardinex_ swept out past Mars and Thomakein smiled more and more.
This maze of equipment was better than anything that he had expected.
The Ertinians would really get the information as to the kind of people
who inhabited this system.
* * * * *
Thomakein wandered idly from room to room, finding dead Martians and
dropping them onto the bulkhead. Two he saved for the surgeons of
Ertene to inspect; they were in fair physical condition compared to the
rest but they were no less dead from acceleration pressure.
Eventually, Thomakein came to the room wherein Guy Maynard was lying
strapped to the surgeon's table. The Ertinian opened the door and
walked idly in, looking the room over quickly to see which item of
interest was the most compelling.
His glance fell upon Maynard and passed onward to the equipment on
the cart beyond the Terran. Then Thomakein's eyes snapped back to the
unconscious Terran and Thomakein's jaw fell while his face took on an
astonished look.
Thomakein often remarked afterwards that it was a shame that no one
of his photographically inclined friends had been present. He'd have
enjoyed a picture of himself at that moment and he realized the fact.
Thomakein had ignored the dead Martians. They were different enough to
permit him a certain amount of callousness.
But the man strapped to the table, and hooked up to the diabolical
looking machine was the image of an Ertinian! Thomakein didn't know
what the machine was for, but his logical mind told him that if this
man, different from the rest, were strapped to a table with some sort
of electronic equipment tied to his hands, feet, and head, it was
sufficient evidence that this was a captive and the machine some sort
of torture. He stepped forward and jerked the electrodes from Maynard's
inert frame and pushed the machine backward onto the floor with a foot.
A quick check told Thomakein that the unknown man was not dead, though
nearly so.
He raced through the derelict to his own ship and returned with a
stimulant. The man remained unconscious but alive. His eyes opened
after a long time, but behind them was no sign of intelligence. They
merely stared foolishly, and closed for long periods.
Thomakein tended the man as best he could with the limited supplies
from his own ship and then began to plan his return to Ertene with his
find.
* * * * *
Days passed, and Thomakein unwillingly abandoned any hope of having
this man give him any information. The man was as one dead. He could
not speak, nor could he understand anything. Thomakein decided that
the best thing to do was to take the unknown man to Ertene with him.
Perhaps Charalas, or one of his contemporary neuro-surgeons could bring
this man to himself. Thomakein diagnosed the illness as some sort of
nerve shock though he knew that he was no man of medicine.
Yet the surgeons of Ertene were brilliant, and if they could bring this
unknown man to himself, they would have a gold mine indeed.
So at the proper time, Thomakein took off from the derelict with the
mindless Guy Maynard. By now, the derelict was far beyond the last
outpost of the Solar System and obviously beyond detection. Thomakein
installed a repeater-circuit detector in the wrecked ship; it would
enable him to find the _Mardinex_ at some later time.
So unknowing, Guy Maynard came to Ertene.
The first thing that reached across the mental gap to Guy Maynard was
music. Faint, elfin music that seemed to sway and soothe the ragged
edges of his mind. It came and it went depending on how he felt.
But gradually the music increased in strength and power, and the
lapses were shorter. Warm pleasant light assailed him now and gave
him a feeling of bodily well-being. Flashes of clear thinking found
him considering the satisfied condition of his body, and the fear and
nerve-racking torture of the Martian method of extracting information
dropped deeper and deeper into the region of forgetfulness.
Then he realized, one day, that he was being fed. It made him ashamed
to be fed at his age, but the thought was fleeting and gone before he
could clutch at it and consider why he should be ashamed. One portion
of his mind cursed the fleetingness of such thoughts and recognized the
possibilities that might lie in the sheer contemplation of self.
There were periods in which someone spoke to him in a strange tongue.
It was a throaty voice; a woman. Maynard's inquisitive section tried
the problem of what was a woman and why it should stir the rest of
him and came to the meager conclusion that it was standard for this
body to be stirred by woman: especially women with throaty voices. The
tongue was alien; he could understand none of it. But the tones were
soothing and pleasant, and they seemed to imply that he should try to
understand their meaning.
And then the wonder of meaning came before that alert part of Maynard's
mind. What is meaning? it asked. Must things have meaning? It decided
that meaning must have some place in the body's existence. It reasoned
thus: There is light. Then what is the meaning of light? Must light
have a meaning? It must have some importance. Then if light has
importance and meaning, so must all things!
Even self!
So the voices strived to teach Ertinian to the Terran while he was
still in the mindless state, and gradually he came to think in terms of
this alien tongue. But he had been taught to think in Terran, and the
Terran words came to mind slowly but surely.
And then came the day when Guy Maynard realized that he _was_ Guy
Maynard, and that he had been saved, somehow, from the terrors of
the Martian inquisition. He saw the alien tongue for what it was and
wondered about it.
Where was he?
Why?
The days wore on with Maynard growing stronger mentally. They gave
him everything they could, these Ertinians. Scrolls were given to him
to read, and the movement of reflections from his eyeballs motivated
recording equipment that spoke the word he was scanning into his ear
in that pleasant throaty voice. It was lightning-fast training, but
it worked, once Guy's mentality went to work as an entity. Maynard
learned to read Ertinian printing and lastly the simplified cursory
writing.
Then with handwriting at the gate of learning, they placed his hand
around a controlled pencil, and the voice spoke as the controlled
pencil wrote. They spoke Ertinian to him, not knowing Terran, though
his earlier replies were recorded.
And as he strengthened, his replies made sense, and for every Ertinian
word impressed upon his mind, he gave them the Terran word. They taught
him composition and grammar as he taught them, and whether it was by
the written script or the spoken word, the interchange of knowledge was
complete.