Murray Leinster: The Aliens

The skipper roared at him.

“Be quiet! Our ship is a wreck! We have to consider the facts! We and these Plumies are in a fix together, and we have to get out of it before we start to teach anybody anything!” He glared at Taine. Then he said heavily: “Mr. Baird, you seem to notice things. Take this Plumie over the ship. Show him our drive melted down, so he’ll realize we can’t possibly tow his ship into an orbit. He knows that we’re armed, and that we can’t handle our war heads at this range! So we can’t fool each other. We might as well be frank. But you will take full note of his reactions, Mr. Baird!”

Baird advanced, and the skipper made a gesture. The Plumie regarded Baird with interested eyes. And Baird led the way for a tour of the Niccola . It was confusing even to him, with right hand converted to up and left hand to down, and sidewise now almost vertical. On the way the Plumie made more clear, flutelike sounds, and more gestures. Baird answered.

“Our gravity pull was that way,” he explained, “and things fell so fast.”

He grasped a handrail and demonstrated the speed with which things fell in normal ship-gravity. He used a pocket communicator for the falling weight. It was singularly easy to say some things, even highly technical ones, because they’d be what the Plumie would want to know. But quite commonplace things would be very difficulty to convey.

Diane’s voice came out of the communicator.

“ There are no novelties outside ,” she said quietly. “ It looks like this is the only Plumie ship anywhere around. It could have been exploring, like us. Maybe it was looking for the people who put up Space-Survey markers. ”

“Maybe,” agreed Baird, using the communicator. “Is that stuff about falling into the sun correct?”

“ It seems so ,” said Diane composedly. “ I’m checking again. So far, the best course I can get means we graze the sun’s photosphere in fourteen days six hours, allowing for acceleration by the sun’s gravity. ”

“And you and I,” said Baird wryly, “have been acting as professional associates only, when—”

“ Don’t say it! ” said Diane shakily. “ It’s terrible! ”

He put the communicator back in his pocket. The Plumie had watched him. He had a peculiarly gallant air, this small figure in golden space armor with its high-crested helmet.

They reached the engine room. And there was the giant drive shaft of the Niccola , once wrapped with yard-thick coils which could induce an incredible density of magnetic flux in the metal. Even the return magnetic field, through the ship’s cobalt-steel hull, was many times higher than saturation. Now the coils were sagging: mostly melted. There were places where re-solidified metal smoked noisomely against nonmetallic floor or wall-covering. Engineers labored doggedly in the trivial gravity to clean up the mess.

“It’s past repair,” said Baird, to the ship’s first engineer.

“It’s junk,” said that individual dourly. “Give us six months and a place to set up a wire-drawing mill and an insulator synthesizer, and we could rebuild it. But nothing less will be any good.”

The Plumie stared at the drive. He examined the shaft from every angle. He inspected the melted, and partly-melted, and merely burned-out sections of the drive coils. He was plainly unable to understand in any fashion the principle of the magnetronic drive. Baird was tempted to try to explain, because there was surely no secret about a ship drive, but he could imagine no diagrams or gestures which would convey the theory of what happened in cobalt-steel when it was magnetized beyond one hundred thousand Gauss’ flux-density. And without that theory one simply couldn’t explain a magnetronic drive.

They left the engine room. They visited the rocket batteries. The generator room was burned out, like the drive, by the inconceivable lightning bolt which had passed between the ships on contact. The Plumie was again puzzled. Baird made it clear that the generator-room supplied electric current for the ship’s normal lighting-system and services. The Plumie could grasp that idea. They examined the crew’s quarters, and the mess room, and the Plumie walked confidently among the members of the human crew, who a little while since had tried so painstakingly to destroy his vessel. He made a good impression.

“These little guys,” said a crewman to Baird, admiringly, “they got something. They can handle a ship! I bet they could almost make that ship of theirs play checkers!”

“Close to it,” agreed Baird. He realized something. He pulled the communicator from his pocket. “Diane! Contact the skipper. He wanted observations. Here’s one. This Plumie acts like soldiers used to act in ancient days—when they wore armor. And we have the same reaction! They will fight like the devil, but during a truce they’ll be friendly, admiring each other as scrappers, but ready to fight as hard as ever when the truce is over. We have the same reaction! Tell the skipper I’ve an idea that it’s a part of their civilization—maybe it’s a necessary part of any civilization! Tell him I guess that there may be necessarily parallel evolution of attitudes, among rational races, as there are parallel evolutions of eyes and legs and wings and fins among all animals everywhere! If I’m right, somebody from this ship will be invited to tour the Plumie! It’s only a guess, but tell him!”

“ Immediately ,” said Diane.

The Plumie followed gallantly as Baird made a steep climb up what once was the floor of a corridor. Then Taine stepped out before them. His eyes burned.

“Giving him a clear picture, eh?” he rasped. “Letting him spy out everything?”

Baird pressed the communicator call for the radar room and said coldly:

“I’m obeying orders. Look, Taine! You were picked for your job because you were a xenophobe. It helps in your proper functioning. But this Plumie is here under a flag of truce—”

“Flag of truce!” snarled Taine. “It’s vermin! It’s not human! I’ll—”

“If you move one inch nearer him,” said Baird gently, “just one inch—”

The skipper’s voice bellowed through the general call speakers all over the ship:

“ Mr. Taine! You will go to your quarters, under arrest! Mr. Baird, burn him down if he hesitates! ”

Then there was a rushing, and scrambling figures appeared and were all about. They were members of the Niccola’s crew, sent by the skipper. They regarded the Plumie with detachment, but Taine with a wary expectancy. Taine turned purple with fury. He shouted. He raged. He called Baird and the others Plumie-lovers and vermin-worshipers. He shouted foulnesses at them. But he did not attack.

When, still shouting, he went away, Baird said apologetically to the Plumie:

“He’s a xenophobe. He has a pathological hatred of strangers—even of strangeness. We have him on board because—”

Then he stopped. The Plumie wouldn’t understand, of course. But his eyes took on a curious look. It was almost as if, looking at Baird, they twinkled.

Baird took him back to the skipper.

“He’s got the picture, sir,” he reported.

The Plumie pulled out his sketch plate. He drew on it. He offered it. The skipper said heavily:

“You guessed right, Mr. Baird. He suggests that someone from this ship go on board the Plumie vessel. He’s drawn two pressure-suited figures going in their air lock. One’s larger than the other. Will you go?”

“Naturally!” said Baird. Then he added thoughtfully: “But I’d better carry a portable scanner, sir. It should work perfectly well through a bronze hull, sir.”

The skipper nodded and began to sketch a diagram which would amount to an acceptance of the Plumie’s invitation.