He awoke at dawn, stiff from the unnatural position of his sleep,
momentarily confused as to his whereabouts. Then he caught sight of the
cylinder, and memory came sweeping back.
_Had something come out of it?_
Descending from the car, he approached a group of men standing near
the object. A short, heavy-set major general who appeared to be in
command turned sharp, suspicious eyes toward him.
"What are you doing here?"
Winthrop introduced himself. The general's suspicion vanished and he
clasped the younger man's hand warmly.
"I'm Bert Hill, Winthrop. I heard of your work from Benton Allan. He's
a close personal friend."
"Of mine, too," Winthrop nodded. "Haven't seen him since Nevada."
"He's flying up from Los Alamos," Hill said. "Many of your colleagues
are coming--everyone who might conceivably be useful."
"Any sign of life?" Winthrop asked, gesturing toward the cylinder.
"No. There's a port amidships, and some small apertures forward. But
it might as well be a coffin! Why don't you look it over? But perhaps
you'd like to get comfortable and have breakfast first. We've set up a
temporary mess kitchen in the City Building."
"Thanks, General Hill."
"Call me Bert."
When George Winthrop returned he found that a sizable group of
tired-looking civilians had joined the military. Most of them were
men with whom he had been associated. Greetings were brief, detailed
personal reminiscences sternly contraindicated.
They examined the cylinder. With a great deal of effort an engineer
succeeded in unfastening the port lugs. Signal Corps movie cameras
whirred as the port opened, but nothing emerged.
"Carry on, George," General Hill said. "You've priority."
"Hadn't we better wait?" the other protested. "Who knows what an alien
might consider trespass?"
"We've got to risk it," the general said. "Perhaps they need our help.
Perhaps they're ill or injured."
Hill and Winthrop peered into the interior.
Vacuum tubes shone dully through an indistinct maze of ductwork,
circuitry, relay banks. And directly before them, facing the port--
"It's a fission bomb!" Bert's nervousness was suddenly wild within
Winthrop. He fought it. "Amazingly like ours!" He grasped the port
tightly, fighting trembling unease with taut muscles.
"I must look at it more closely," he went on. "It may not be fully
armed, but I'd better disarm the detonating device if I can. If it's
anything like ours, it wouldn't take much tinkering to set it off.
There's probably enough explosive in the detonator alone to ruin the
interior completely. We could be trapped inside, and blown apart." He
paused, then added courageously, "I'll need light to get the plugs out
quickly."
"That looks like a button switch," the general volunteered, reaching
into the port.
Winthrop slapped his hand away. "Don't be a fool. The slightest touch
might detonate it."
"Guess you're right," the general conceded, turning away. "Montemur,
run an extension over here."
Winthrop crawled into the ship, arose, and stared in bitter indecision.
He remembered a blockhouse at Bikini, another at Frenchman's Flat,
voices harsh on loudspeakers counting the seconds away to zero. He
remembered armed bombs on ghastly, towering frameworks of steel
vibrating beneath his touch with the furious kiss of atomic death
awaiting the slightest slipping of his fingers.
_Get on with it!_
He did. The plugs were out. He was faint, drenched with perspiration.
The general was peering intently through the port.
"It's okay now, Bert."
Cautiously the general entered, then turned back with an abrupt
gesture. "Montemur," he cried to the Signal Corps major, "the equipment
in here is still energized. Take shots of everything. We mustn't chance
accidentally disarranging a single circuit. We've perhaps acquired a
means of conquering space. We mustn't ruin it through carelessness."
Major Montemur joined them with a camera.
"The electronics boys will love this," Winthrop said, pointing
sternward.
Catwalks crisscrossed the complicated cluster of machinery. Everything
was amazingly accessible, the ductwork transparent.
"Strange, George," the general mused. "The science that constructed
this must closely parallel ours. Can't you see the similarities?"