"Chocolate! Just like chocolate!"
Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid.
"Milk!" she exclaimed.
"Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her.
* * * * *
The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were
filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the
form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a
fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen.
Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a
spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing.
Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water,
waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap.
The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were
transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then
disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position.
"Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by
the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a
hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars.
We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit
cigarettes and waited.
A few minutes later, Marie entered the room.
I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was
excited, her actions didn't betray it.
She sat next to Verana.
"What happened?" my wife asked.
Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing
a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared
silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect.
Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice--"
"Telepathic?" Verana interrupted.
"Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to
hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was
the _oddest_ feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in
a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt
_something_ search my mind and gather information. I could actually
_feel_ it search my memories!"
"What memories?" I inquired.
She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It
seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched
for memories of our customs and lives in general...."
* * * * *
Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger.
"_Do you know where we are?_" he demanded. "When those damned aliens
got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're
guinea pigs!"
"Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly
remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated
extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She
was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically.
"Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they
explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their
zoo!"
"Start at the beginning," I suggested.
He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This
ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago,
they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living
in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like
when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a
sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made
spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship
and enter it--_like rabbits in a snare!_"
"And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed.
"Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep
us there while they study us."
"How long will the trip take?" I asked.
"Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned
months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!"
Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the
terror inside her.
"Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be
interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us--"
"Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped.
Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A
race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves?
Dissection is primitive. They won't _have to_ dissect us in order to
study us. They'll have more advanced methods."
"Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly.
"We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the
Moon!"
"It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible
source and seemed to fill the room.
* * * * *
Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's
mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!"
Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls.
"Where are you? _Who_ are you?"
"I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine."
"Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?"
"No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted
phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical.
"What are your--your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked
anxiously.
"You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine
you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like
when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on
your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity
toward your race, only compassion and curiosity."
I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship
and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the
ship?"
"The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food,
oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to
prevent the fifth from entering the ship."
"Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll
find some way to make it take us back to Earth."
"It's useless," the ship warned us.
For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to
force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms.
The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were
the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or
hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal.
* * * * *
Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had
been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work
on.
The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that
opened into the corridor.
After intensive searching, we realized there was _no way_ to damage the
ship or reach any section other than our allotted space.
We gave up.
The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to
the "kitchen."
At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and
discussed our predicament.
"Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed
his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out!
Every problem has a solution!"
"You sure?" I asked.
"What?"
"_Does_ every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some
problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our
civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape.
Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A
murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an
entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours
is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned
few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds
to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I
don't think we have a chance."
My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's
wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that
few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry.
* * * * *
For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a
distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth.
Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost
choked.
"Whiskey!"
"My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to
create a comparable one," the machine explained.
I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger
than our own," I informed the machine.
We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at
the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere.
He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised
knuckles.
"Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded.
"_Why?_" Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?"
"My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged
condition."
Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly.
"Shtop me, then!"
"I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you
other than use of your language."
It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment.
After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and
stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana.
I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at
the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools
or weapons.
Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years
could think of one!
I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had
foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented
the wheel. That thought awed me--somehow they had analyzed our brains
thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments
would be.
They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they
hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were
curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the
Moon.
The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't
help thinking, _And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem
impossibly clever_.