"But by all that's holy," said Daley (it was an hour later, and the
eight were gathered in the control room, Kinkare now bandaged and
relieved of pain, but unable to speak), "if he's a brain-picker, and got
his lingo out of our minds, who did he get 'take heart mortals' from?"
The lieutenant glanced at Pinkham. "It may seem little, but it's
minutiae that will give us clues to his nature, and therefore how to
fight him. Take heart, mortals, after all. Who talks like that?"
"You're right," said Pink wearily. "It's little things we've got to look
for. Like, evidently, gin bottles."
"Item," said Jerry, who was eating a sandwich. "He's composed of
something alien to any life we know. Gas? I doubt it. Atomic shock would
disseminate gas. Are his molecules loose and do they edge aside for
obstacles, compress together when he wants to shrink, and so on?
Possible. But anyhow, he's different--and so far as we know,
invulnerable."
"How did he gimmick the guns?" asked Calico, a note of desperation in
his voice. "We picked them up as soon as he'd gone, and they wouldn't
fire."
"Same way he gimmicked the intercom, the life-scanner, the space drive.
Known hereafter as Unknown Method One."
"Another item," went on Jerry. "He talks English without using a
lingoalter. Thus, probably, he's telepathic. 'Take heart mortals' he
might have grubbed out of somebody's subconscious."
"It adds up to this," said Pink. "We're helpless against him. Granting
this, I say let's go get him."
It made no sense, it was the gesture of fools in love with death or of
madmen battling their own futility; but every officer there shouted,
"Right!" Except for Joe Silver.
"I say, sit tight and wait," he said. "Something will happen. There's no
use committing suicide."
"If he wants us alive, and we can't fight him, I think we're better off
dead," said Jerry through his teeth.
"Hell. Where there's life there's hope."
"I suppose you're right," said Pink slowly. His muscles ached, his hands
grasped ceaselessly at the air; he was a man of action, his desire for
combat throttled by incapability. "Twenty-some hours before the other
ships get here. If our deductions are on the beam, he won't do anything
till then. He wants the whole armada."
Then, with a snarl of static, the intercom came to life.
At first they heard a jumble of voices. "What's wrong?" "Nothing
works...." "Are all the officers dead?" It was the crew, beyond the
barriers of the mutiny gates, evidently trying to get into
communication. Over and over one voice said, "Hello, Captain Pinkham.
Come in, Captain Pinkham."
Pink took two strides and flipped the switch of the visiograph. Tuning
it first to one crew station and then another, he told them succinctly
what bad happened. "Don't panic, for God's sake. The mutiny gates are
for your protection. If they work, you may be able to do something
later, regardless of what happens to us."
* * * * *
Their somber faces looked out of the screen at him. "Let us in,
Captain," pleaded one big repairman. "We'll mob the critter."
"No use, Jackson. Stand by." He turned the dial of the visiograph into
the officers' section, scanned one room after another. No alien being
appeared. "I wonder if he's in here with us?" said Pink half-aloud.
Jerry came to him. "I have an idea," he said quietly. Then he whispered
at length into Pinkham's ear.
"It won't work. He knows what he's doing."
"How do we know that? If he needs us, he's ignorant of spaceships. Look
at the intercom--he turned it off, by some means, then turned it on when
he found out what it was. The space drive must have been easy to guess
at; likewise the life-scanner. But the intercom's a lot of complex
machinery that only adds up to a television-telephone communication
system. However he snarls the stuff, it's instantaneous and simple for
him to do. I think he just took a crack at everything that looked
important. Now he's experimenting, learning the ship, finding out what
he threw out of joint. Obviously he doesn't give a damn if we talk to
the crew!"
"You could be right."
"So if I do what I want to, it'll confuse hell out of him. It may give
us an advantage. And we'll certainly learn something."
"It's worth a try." Pink looked at Jerry, his closest friend. "I'll
send Silver to do it," he said.
Jerry shook his lean head. "This is my baby, Pink." Then he opened the
door and went out, closing it behind him.
Pinkham said levelly, "Daley, come here." He whispered the plan into his
lieutenant's ear. Daley said admiringly, "Good deal. And I think that's
sense--he can't know much about the ship. I'll bet he was hiding in that
bottle, casing Sparks's equipment and learning how to operate it. The
quick look he got at the rest of us on our jobs before he started
playing hob must have given him the barest, scantiest idea of things. So
Jerry's notion could work."
"Or it could blow up," said Pink dismally. "Go tell the others. Whisper
it, in case our guest is in here." He struggled briefly with his deepest
feelings. "Don't tell Circe. We can't be sure of her yet."
"Roger." Daley left him alone at the intercom. Pinkham set the dial to
show the large room toward which Jerry was making his way....
Somewhere beyond their ken, the incredible beast from the void made
another decision, or tried another experiment; and the life-scanner
flickered into working order again. Joe Silver saw it first. Its screen
blinked, then its alarm buttons glowed vividly. Without the ship, at a
vast distance but approaching rapidly, were an untold number of organic
entities, life-sources that reacted upon the scanner like approaching
aircraft on a radar set. They could be spaceships, slugjet suits, or
anything that contained the intangible thing called life. And the sister
ships of the _Elephant's Child_ were still too far away to register.
"Great Jupiter!" bellowed Joe Silver, pointing. "What now?"