The intercom, the space drive, the life-scanner. So far apart that one
man _couldn't_ have put them out of whack. No one connected in any way
with the others. Ynohp snoring gently in his stateroom. Pinkham, Daley,
Silver, Kinkare, Jerry Jones, Calico, and the girl, all gathered in the
Captain's quarters, tense, baffled, and all talking at once.
And out of the hubbub, one clear sweet voice saying something that
didn't make sense and yet electrified Pink as if he'd put his hand on a
lighted cigar....
"Maybe it's the space giants?"
"Shut up!" bawled Pinkham. The officers turned toward him, brows
lifting, mouths still open. "Now," he said quietly, "Circe--Miss
Smith--what did you say?"
"Space giants," she repeated "I don't think they exist, but I certainly
saw something."
"Give it to us slow," said Daley.
"Well, a couple of times while I was anchored to the asteroid, watching
tri-di movies, I had the impression that something enormous was floating
just beyond my face plate, watching me. Of course I was slowed down so
far that it must have taken me an hour to register the fact, and another
hour or two to flick my eyes up away from the movies. What was a second
to me was at least that long. But just once I got a clear view of
something incredible. It vanished almost at once."
"What was it?"
"A very big man, naked, bald, with eyes like fires. That's the only way
I can describe him. He looked humanoid, except he was so big."
"How big?"
"I can't tell and hate to make a guess--but at least a thousand feet. Of
course I hadn't anything to compare him with."
"Wait a minute," said Randy Kinkare, the assistant pilot, voice reeking
with unbelief. "How could you see through an opaque face plate?"
"It's not opaque," said Joe Silver officiously. "It's translucent from
without and transparent from within. I took a look at it this
afternoon."
"Space giants," groaned someone. "Oh, Lord!"
"We can't discount it," said Pink, realizing that he was doing just
that, but refusing to disbelieve Circe. Illusion? Not a lie, surely?
"She wasn't drugged, after all. She was in full control of senses that
were merely slowed down."
There was a discomfortable silence.
Intercom, space drive, life-scanner. Maybe other machinery by this time.
Sabotage in such a clever way that no one of the highly skilled officers
and technicians could discover how it was done, what was wrong. Space
giants? Ah, come on, Pink!
Ynohp. Something wrong with him, some flaw in his looks? No, he was
Martian in every oversize pore. Some anachronism?
Hey! Anachronism. Pink's mind fished up the dictionary definition. An
error in chronology by which events are misplaced in regard to each
other....
He had it.
He got to his feet, motioned Jerry and Wash Daley to go with him. They
congregated outside the door, as further talk broke out inside his
quarters. He said urgently, "Remember what Ynohp said about his
cataleptic state? 'Moth and rust do not corrupt.' He said it as if it
were a quotation."
"It is," said Daley. "More or less word for word it's from the King
James version of the Bible."
"Dated, if I remember correctly, about 1611 A.D.?"
"Yes."
"At which date the Martians had been without space flight for about
3,600 years. At which date, further, Ynohp claims to have been sitting
on an asteroid for about 4,000-plus years."
"Coincidence?" asked Jerry.
Pink asked, "Do you think so?"
"Hell," said Jerry, "no."
"Let's go look at his space suit," said Daley urgently. They ran down
the corridor, shoving for the lead.
Ten minutes later they sat back on their heels and stared at the
interior of the suit.
Rust had corrupted here, or at any rate decay; the Martian steel,
ancient and harder than any known metal, was worn to a papery shell, and
in many places tiny holes had eroded clear through the suit.
"No man or Martian or anything I know except the space-eating bacteria
of Pallas could have lived in that suit, cataleptic state or not." Pink
looked around at his friends. "_What in the name of heaven have we
brought into the ship?_"
Then the three were racing for the "Martian's" stateroom. They burst in,
and found that now it was empty of life.
They stood, indecisive, just outside. Pinkham's gaze went to the door,
on which, as was the custom, a hastily-printed card had been placed with
the officer's name upon it. He read it. Then he blinked.
"Look," he said, gesturing.
"What about it?"
The card blared its secret, its pun, at them.
Y N O H P.
"Read it backwards," said Pinkham....