Gordon Dickson The Stranger

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Peter picked up a pair of scissors and arranged the prints in their proper
sequence.
"Clear the table," he told Jeff, "and fit these to-
gether as I hand them to you."
For a little while longer, they worked in silence.
Then Peter laid down his scissors.
"That's all," he said. "Now, what have we got?"
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"I don't know," answered Jeff, bewilderment in his
"fr voice. "It looks like nothing I veever seen."
Peter stepped up to the table and squinted at the
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nger.txt shadowy films with eyes practiced in reading rock formations. He
shook his head.
"It is strange," he said, finally.
"Do you see what I see?" demanded Jeff. "There's no real crew space. There's
this one spot up front"
he indicated it with his finger "that's about as big as a good-sized closet.
And nothing more than that
except corridors about twenty inches in diameter running from it to points all
over the ship. She must be flown by a crew of midgets."
"Midgets," echoed the older man, thoughtfully. "I
never heard of an intelligent race that small."
"Then they're something new," said Jeff, with a shrug of his shoulders.
74 Gordon R. Dickson
"No," said his father, slowly. "I don't remember when or where I heard it, but
there's some reason why you couldn't have an intelligent race much smaller
than a good-sized dug. It has something to do with the fact that they grow in
size as their devel-
oping intelligence gives them an increasing advan-
tage over their environment."
"Here's the evidence," Jeff answered, tapping the film with one finger.
"No." Pete was bending over the picture fragments again. "Look at these things
in the corridor. They're obviously controls."
Jeff looked.
"I see what you mean," he said at last. "If there's any similarity betwen
their mechanical system and ours, these controls are built for somebody pretty
big. But look how they're scattered all over the ship.
There's a good fifteen or twenty different groups of instruments and other
things. That means a number of crew members; and you simply can't put a num-
ber of large crew members in those little corridors."
"There's a large amount of total space," Pete be-
gan. Then, suddenly a faint tremor ran through the ship. Jeff leaped for the
screen and his father moved over
"Good Lord," said Jeff, "look at her."
The other ship shook suddenly and rolled slightly to one side. Some unseen
center of gravity pulled her back to her original position. She hesitated a
mo-
ment, and then tried again, with the same results.
She lay quiescent.
Jeff pounced on his radiation drum graph-
"What does il say?" Peter asked.
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Jeff shook his head in astonishment. "Nothing," he answered, "just nothing at
all."
"Nothing?" Peter came over to take a look at the graph himself. It was as Jeff
had said. The line trac-
THE STRANGER
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ing the white surface of the graph was straight and undisturbed.
"But that's impossible." Peter frowned.
The two men turned back to the screen. As they watched, one final shudder
shook the strange ship, and then, like a stranded whale who has given up hope,
it lay still.
"My God!" said Pete, and Jeff turned to him in astonishment. It was the
closest to profanity his fa-
ther had come in twenty years. "Jeff, do you know what I think? 1 think that
ship is manned by just one great big creature like a giant squid. That's why
no radiation registered. He was trying to move his ship by sheer strength."
Jeff stared at his father.
"You're crazy," was all he could manage to say.
"Why, something big enough to shake that ship would have to fill every inch of
space inside it. You can't live in a space ship that way."
"That's right," Pete answered. He clamped his hand on Jeff's shoulder
excitedly and led him back to the jigsaw puzzle on the table. ^
"If I'm right," he said, "that's, no ship at all as we understand it, but some
sort of a space-going suit for something terrifically large. Something like a
giant squid, as I said, or some other long-tentacled crea-
ture. His body would lie here in this space you said was about the size of a
closet and his tentacles, or whatever they are, would reach out in these
corri-
dors to the various groups of instruments."
Jeff frowned.
"It sounds sensible," he muttered. "And in any case, he wouldn't be able to
get outside his ship to fix anything that went wrong. And I take it there is
something wrong, or else he wouldn't be jumping around inside."
"Jeff," Pete said, "I'm going outside to take a close look at him."
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Jeff's head snapped up from the jigsaw puzzle. The old, sick fear had come
back. It washed over him like a wave.
"Why?" he demanded harshly.
"To see if I can find out what's wrong with his ship," said Pete over his
shoulder as he went to the airlock. "Coming?"
"Wait!" cried Jeff. He stood up and followed his father. For a moment there,
they stood facing each other, two tall men with less apparent physical dif-
ference between them than their ages might indicate, poised on the brink of an
open break.
"Wait," said Jeff again, and now his voice was lower, more under control.
"Dad, there's no point in playing around any longer. You aren't going to be
satisfied just to look around out there and then leave.
You're going to do something. And if that's it I want to know now."
There was a moment's silence; then Pete turned back to Jeff, his face set.
"That's right," he said. "I don't have to look. I
know what's wrong- And I know what I'm going to do about it. There's a living
intelligence trapped in that space-thing as you and I might be trapped. I can
set it free with two of our motor jacks. If you've got one inkling of what it
means to be ignored when you're caught like that, you'll help me. If not, I'm
taking two jacks out the airlock and you can fire the motors and take off and
be damned to you."
Between the two big men the tension built and strained and broke. Jeff let out
a ragged sigh.
"All right," he said. "I'm with you."
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"Good," said the older man, and there was new life in his voice. "Get your
suit on. I'll explain as we dress.
"The trouble with our friend there is that he's fallen over- I see you don't
understand, Jeff. Well, THE STRANGER 77
this ship of ours lands on her belly. We've got booster rockets all over the
hull to correct our landing angle.
But ships weren't always that way. They used to have to sit down on their
tail. There's no furrow where that ship landed, only a circular blasted spot,
so it figures. Maybe some of his mechanism went wrong at the last minute. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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