After a few short bursts which lifted the satellite up into a higher
orbit, the jets stopped. The artificial moon went on coasting
innocently around the Earth.
"Well--I'll--be--damned!" said MacIlheny softly. The others, either
silently or verbally, agreed with him.
"Get a reading on that new orbit!" MacIlheny snapped after a moment.
Blake was already on the telephone.
MacIlheny turned to Major Hamacher. "Be ready to take that bird up as
soon as we get orbital readings and bearings. There's something screwy
as hell going on up there, and I want to find out what it is! Those
jets shouldn't be working at all. What could have turned them on at
exactly the right moment?" He was talking more to himself than to the
major, who was busily making last-minute adjustments on the instruments.
The computations on the new orbit came in, were run through the
computers, and then fed into the autopilot section of the remote
controls for the RJ-37.
"Any time you're ready, Major," MacIlheny said.
The major adjusted his controls, threw a switch, and pressed a stud.
Over two thousand miles away, in White Sands Spaceport, New Mexico, the
atomic-powered, fully armed RJ-37 squirted a tongue of white-hot flame
out of her rocket motors, climbed into the air, and launched herself
toward space.
Over Major Hamacher's shoulder, MacIlheny and Blake watched the screen
that showed the scene from the forward port of the space rocket.
For a while, there was nothing to see. As the ship gained altitude, it
burst through a layer of low-hanging clouds, then there was nothing but
the blue sky overhead. Gradually, as the air thinned, the sky became
darker, more purplish. Stars began to appear, and finally the ship was
in the blackness of space.
The major's hands glided smoothly over the controls, guiding the ship
along its precalculated orbit, slowly overtaking the runaway satellite.
At first there was nothing to see--only the distant, fixed stars,
glittering like tiny shards of diamond against a spread of blackest
velvet. Then it became apparent that one of the shards was moving with
relationship to the others. It became brighter, bigger. Then it was no
longer a point of light, but a globe of metal floating in the infinite
darkness of space.
Under the careful manipulation of Major Hamacher, the remote-controlled
RJ-37 moved cautiously up to Satellite Number Four. As the details of
the globe came into focus, every man in the room gasped involuntarily.
"What the hell is _that_?" asked Blake.
No one answered. It was obvious to everyone there that whatever it was
that had crashed into Number Four and driven it off course, it was most
certainly _not_ a meteorite.
* * * * *
At last, MacIlheny said: "I'll be willing to bet my last dollar that
that's a spaceship of some kind."
From a gaping hole in the side of the satellite, there protruded a
long, cigar-shaped shaft of bluish metal. It looked almost as though
someone had shoved a fat blue cigar halfway into a silver tennis ball.
Major Hamacher said softly: "I wonder what kind of metal that ship is
made of?"
"Yeah," said MacIlheny, "I wonder."
It was a good question. The steel hull of the Number Four had crumpled
and torn like cardboard around the hole where the impact of the ship
had melted and volatalized the metal. But the hull of the alien
spaceship wasn't even dented.
"What now?" asked the major.
"Take the RJ-37 in carefully, and lock on with magnetic grapples,"
MacIlheny ordered.
Blake glanced at him. "What if the pilot or crew of that ship is still
alive?"
"They probably are," MacIlheny said. "But we've got an H-bomb in our
ship; if they try anything funny...."
"What makes you think they're alive?" the major asked as he eased the
ship in.
"Somebody set off the atom jets when Number Four approached perigee,"
MacIlheny reminded him.
The RJ-37 approached Number Four closely, then the magnetic grapples
were turned on, and the ship stuck to the hull of the battered space
station with a metallic clank. The RJ-37 was only a few yards from
the edge of the gaping hole that had been torn in the hull of the
satellite. In front of them loomed the queer blue shaft of the alien
ship.
"Okay, hold it," said MacIlheny. "Let's see what happens next. Surely
they felt the jar when the ship landed." Forcing himself to be calm,
MacIlheny struck a match and fired the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe.
* * * * *
They didn't have to wait long. From the edge of the hole, there
suddenly appeared a moving shape. It was a manlike figure clad in a
brilliant crimson spacesuit. The helmet was a dark purple, and it was
difficult to see the head within.
"Looks like a man," said Blake.
"Not quite," MacIlheny said. "Look at the joints in the arms and legs.
He's got two knees and two elbows."
"What's that he's holding cradled in his arms?" Blake wondered.
The major grunted. "Weapon of some sort. Look how he's pointing it
straight at us."
For a full minute, the figure stood there, for all the world as though
he were on the surface of a planet instead of on the outer hull of a
space station. Then, slowly, it lowered the thing in its hands. When
nothing happened, the figure put the weapon down on the steel hull at
its feet and held its oddly double-jointed arms out from its body.
"Wild Bill Hickok," breathed Blake softly.
"Huh?" said the major.
"Hickok used to say: 'I'm a peaceable man.' I guess that's what this
guy's trying to say."
"Looks like it," agreed MacIlheny. "I wish there were some way of
signaling him."
"We've got the spotlights," suggested the major.
MacIlheny shook his head. "Leave 'em alone. We couldn't make any sense
with them, and our friend out there might think they were weapons of
some kind. I don't know what that thing he laid down will do, but I
don't want to find out just yet."
The alien, his hands still out from his sides, walked slowly toward the
RJ-37, his legs moving with a strange, loose suppleness. He came right
up to the forward window and peered inside--at least, the attitude of
his head suggested peering; within the dark purple helmet, the features
could not be distinguished clearly.
At last, the figure stepped back and started making wigwag signs with
his arms.
"Smart boy," said MacIlheny. "He recognizes that the ship is remote
controlled. Wonder what he's trying to say."
The alien waved his hands and made gestures, but there was no
recognizable pattern. None of the hand-signals meant anything to the
Earthmen.
Blake leaned over and whispered into MacIlheny's ear. "Hadn't we better
call the President, Mac? He'll want to know."
MacIlheny considered for a moment, then nodded. "Give him a direct beam
on what's coming over this screen. Then give me a pair of earphones
connected to his office. I want to be able to hear what he says, but I
don't want him countermanding my orders to Major Hamacher."
* * * * *
The alien was still making his meaningless signals when Blake brought
in a pair of earphones and clamped them on MacIlheny's head. A throat
mike around his neck completed the communication circuit. "Can you hear
me, Mr. President?" MacIlheny asked.
"Yes. Your man Blake explained everything to me."
"Got any advice?"
"Not yet. Let's see what happens. By the way, I've given the
impression to the rest of the world that it was through your efforts
that Number Four avoided crashing; I don't think we'd better let this
leak out just yet."
"Right. Meantime, I'm going to try to capture that lad."
"How?" asked the President.
"Invite him into the ship and bring him back with it."
"All right," said the President, "but be careful."
"He's given up," said Blake, gesturing toward the screen.
The alien had given up his incomprehensible gesticulating and stood
with his odd arms folded in an uncomfortable-looking knot.
"Major," said MacIlheny, "open the cargo hold."
The officer looked puzzled, but did as he was told. After all, the
President himself had ordered him to obey MacIlheny. He touched a
button on one side of the control panel. After four or five seconds, a
light came on above it, indicating that the cargo hold of the RJ-37 was
open. The alien evidently saw the door swing inward; he hesitated for a
moment, then went around to the side of the ship, out of range of the
TV camera.
But he didn't go inside immediately. MacIlheny hadn't expected him to;
the alien couldn't be _that_ stupid. After perhaps half a minute, the
alien figure reappeared and strode deliberately back to his own ship.
He opened a port in the side and disappeared within.
Then, quite suddenly, the screen went blank.
"What happened?" snapped MacIlheny.
Blake, who had been watching the beam control instruments, said: "I
don't know how he's done it, but he's managed to jam our radio beam!
We're not getting any signal through!"
The President's voice crackled in MacIlheny's ears.
"Fitz! Detonate that bomb! We can't take any chances!"
MacIlheny half grinned. "Major," he said, "set off the H-bomb."
The major pressed a red button on the control panel.
* * * * *
Twenty minutes later, the screen came on again, showing the same scene
as before. No one was surprised. By then, reports had come in that the
satellite was still visible, still in its orbit. The H-bomb had failed
to go off; the signal had never reached the detonation device.
The alien was standing in front of the camera, holding a large piece of
mechanism in his hands. On Earth, the thing would have been almost too
heavy to lift, but the gravitational pull of Satellite Number Four was
almost negligible.
"_He's got the H-bomb!_"
MacIlheny recognized the President's voice in his ears.
The alien bowed toward the camera, then straightened and went back to
his own ship. He clambered up the side of it with magnetic soles as
easily as he had walked on the hull of the space station. Near the
end of his ship, he opened a small door in the hull. Within was utter
blackness.
Working slowly and deliberately, he pushed the H-bomb into the
blackness. It wasn't just ordinary darkness; it seemed to be an actual,
solid wall, painted deep black. As the bomb went in, it looked as
though it were cut off abruptly at the black wall. Finally, there was
nothing outside except the two detonating wires, which had been clipped
off from inside the Earth ship. The alien took the wires in his hands.
"My God!" said the major. "He's going to blow up his own ship! Is he
crazy?"
"I don't think so," said MacIlheny slowly. "Let's see what happens."
As the two wires came in contact, the black wall inside the small door
became lighter, a pearly gray in color. There was no other result.
"Well I'll be damned," said Blake in a low, shocked voice.
The alien closed the door in the side of his ship and came back down
to the camera. He bowed again. Then he pointed to the weapon that he
had been carrying and waved his hands. He picked it up and brought it
around the RJ-37. From the microphones inside the ship came a faint
scraping sound. Then the alien reappeared in front of the ship. His
arms were empty; he had put the weapon inside the open cargo hold.
"A fair trade is no robbery," Blake said softly.
The alien bowed once more, then turned on his heel and walked back to
his ship. This time, he got inside and closed the door. Then the blue
ship moved.
Slowly, like a car backing out of a garage, it pulled out of the hole
in the satellite. Nowhere on its surface was there a mark or a scratch.
When it was finally free of the satellite, it turned a little, its nose
pointing off into space. A pale, rose-colored glow appeared at the tail
of the ship, and the cigar of blue metal leaped forward. To all intents
and purposes, it simply vanished.
"That," said the major in awe, "is what I call acceleration."
* * * * *
"Here's the way I see it, Mr. President," said MacIlheny several hours
later. "When he cracked up by accidentally plowing into Number Four,
something happened to his energy supply. Maybe he was already low, I
don't know. Anyway, he was out of fuel."
"What do you think he used for fuel?"
"The most efficient there is," said MacIlheny. "Pure energy. Imagine
some sort of force field that will let energy in, but won't let it out.
It would be dead black on the outside, just like that whatever-it-was
in the alien's ship. He just set off the H-bomb inside that field; what
little radiation did get out made the field look gray--and that's a
damned small loss in comparison with the total energy of that bomb."
"You know, Fitz, I'm going to have a hell of a job explaining where
that bomb went," said the President.
"Yeah, but we've got his gun or whatever in exchange."
"But how do you know our technicians will be able to figure it out?"
"I think they will," MacIlheny said. "Their technology must be similar
to ours or he wouldn't have been able to figure out how to fire the
jets on the satellite or how to set off that bomb. He wouldn't have
even known what the bomb was unless he was familiar with something
similar. And he wouldn't have been able to blank out our controls
unless he had a good idea of how they operated. They may be a little
ahead of us, but not too much, and I'll bet we have some things they
haven't."
"The trouble is," the President said worriedly, "that we don't know
where he came from. He knows where we are, but we don't have any idea
where his home planet is."
"That's true. On the other hand, we know something about his physical
characteristics, while he doesn't know anything about ours. For
instance, I doubt if he'd be happy here on Earth; judging by the helmet
he wore, he can't stand too much light. He had it polarized almost
black. Probably comes from a planet with a dim, red sun."
"Well, Fitz, when they do come, I hope it's for trade and not for war."
MacIlheny grinned. "It won't be war. Don't you remember? We've started
trading already!"