"Must be ship," said the skag.
Hysterical laughter gripped the officer. From the skag's throat emerged
identical sounds, uproarious cackles; but the brilliant eyes barely
flickered.
* * * * *
From his place in the lifeboat, Second Officer Charlie Guhn had heard
no sound for several hours. He felt cramped in a gray microcosm where
it was hopeless to escape. His mind turned to the cause of the skags'
revivification; it was his knowledge of physics that provided him the
correct answers. The transparent shells surrounding the skags were of
time-impervious materials. Upon entering minus point, the creatures
retrograded in time to a point previous to their suspended animation.
What did they want? What did they plan? Without these answers, Guhn had
no means to deal with them. Rather than dispatch the lifeboat, the deck
officer resolved to attempt snapping the entire vessel back into normal
space. He lowered himself to the foc'sle quarters. Here, the bodies
of six crewmen neatly piled together stunned his eyes. At first, he
supposed they were dead but a confirmatory touch of their flesh showed
they were not. Tortured faces stared at him, as if trying to project a
message.
Guhn stole along the portside catwalk to the engine rooms. Finding no
one, he mounted to the deck. Upon hearing the heavy tread of stumbling
feet, he flattened himself against a bulkhead niche and waited.
Suddenly, words roared out in the still passageway, sung in a
strong-timbered brogue:
"_Oh, our officers are eager
And our crew is full of fight!
And we're blastin' off for Vega
Where we'll drink and fight all night!_"
It was the captain's voice, bursting with life and very merry.
The chant was taken up by another voice, a throbbing metallic speaker
with slurred tones:
"_Cause we've got to get her o-o-over,
O-o-over that hyper hooomp!_"
Holding his body flat in the niche, Charlie Guhn saw the skipper walk
by, keeping time to his own melody by waving his massive arms. Abreast
of him reeled a skag, drenched with narcol fumes. Guhn stepped out
behind them, gripping the trigger of the force band pistol.
"Captain Warren! Step aside."
The skipper wheeled and his face flooded crimson:
"Mr. Guhn, may I ask what you're doing off your watch?"
"Sir, that's a skag. They've taken over the ship."
"You're hysterical, Mr. Guhn. Damned right he's a skag. Been a skag for
a million years. You hear that? Best dream I've ever had. We're going
to get him back to Rigel ... next trip out. Drinks like a blasted fish,
the fellow does."
Incredulity fought fear in Charles Guhn's brain, until the alternate
waves of emotion caused his collapse. Capt. Jock Warren bent over and
raised him. The two men's faces came close together. The skipper's eye
closed slowly, once, twice: "We'll be all right if the juice holds out."
The skag bent over too in an inebriated effort to assist. Then, the
skipper and his million-year-old companion locked arms and hoisted the
flask of narcol.
* * * * *
_From Charlie Guhn's Log_:
_The skags were friendly enough, once barriers broke down. They had
suspended their civilization when a helium cloud passed through their
system. Helium was poisonous to their composition and the skag culture
may have to be transferred to a nitrogen-major planet._
_On termination of the voyage, Mark Caldwell, astrogator, promptly
applied for transfer to the Arcturus run. Second Officer Guhn refused
to sign again and took a berth on the Earth-Mars shuttle. Capt. Jock
Warren posed for a "Captain of Distinction" testimonial for the narcol
people and retired on his earnings, protesting a higher fee paid to a
skag for a similar portrait._
_When last heard from, K'Gol and his skag companions had settled down
to conferring with terrestrial scientists, making and discarding
countless plans to revive the Rigel culture, and drinking narcol._
_Frankly, they didn't seem to be in any hurry about reviving their
brethren. Maybe, they felt they had a damned good deal all by
themselves. Who knows the mind of a skag?_