There was such an overwhelming relief in being
shut in, out of the void, that for a space that was all I felt—until the knowledge that I was now caught in another trap dispelled
my only too short sensation of safety. My hand was still fast
against the door and I could not pull it loose. Rather, it dragged
me further and further forward, until my whole body was flat to
that surface, almost as if the strength of the attraction could
ooze me through the age-worn metal itself. And a second wave of
fear arose in me at the thought that I would be held so for all
time, trapped in this hatchway.
The glow from the stone was no longer so bright as it had been.
In these confined quarters it would have been blinding had its
brilliance shown as it had in space. But it was still flickering. I
struggled wildly against the hold, until I wilted, exhausted, held
upright by my hand against the door.
As I hung there, staring dully at the light, my hand, and the
door, a fact broke through my bemusement. The flickering was now
more deliberate. Almost it followed a pattern—on, off, on, off,
with varying intervals between flashes. The suit was insulated, of
course, but where the palm of my glove met the substance of the
door, a reddish stain was spreading. Even through that insulation I
could feel a tingle of concentrated energy.
Again I sensed I was only a thing to be used by the stone, that
I was its tool and not it mine. The tingle became pain, and finally
agony, with nothing I could do to ease it. The red stain brightened
and at last I saw dark lines crack open. As the agony grew, the
door began to give way. It fell in broken shards from the frame and
I was pulled on.
I caught only glimpses of corridors, for it seemed that the
stone now sped to make up for the time lost in defeating the
barrier at the hatch: I was twice pulled past breaks in the
hull.
My journey ended in a section where there were strange shapes of
machines—or I believed them to be machines. And this part of the
ship seemed intact, undamaged by whatever had struck to finish its
life. The stone whisked me around and through a maze of rods,
cylinders, latticework, piping, coming at last to a box wherein I
could see a tray. And set on that were black lumps. With a last
spurt the stone once more plastered my hand to the viewplate of the
box. It flared in a burst of dazzling light. And behind the plate I
saw a small answering flicker from one of those lumps. But it was
only a flicker and quickly gone. Then the glow of the stone died,
too, and my hand fell limply to swing by my side, a dead weight. I
was alone in the dark bowels of a long-dead ship.
I collapsed, to float, and then felt the bump of the box in
which my companion traveled. How much air I had left in my suit
tank I did not know, but I doubted whether it was enough to keep me
living long. The stone had clearly led me to my death, not in a
void where I would have spun forever, but in this tomb of blasted
metal.
There is the ancient fear of my species of the dark and what may
creep therein. I raised my left hand and fumbled with the button on
the fore of my harness until the sharp ray of a beamer glowed,
picking out the case of lumps which might once have been stones to
rival that in the ring. There was, of course, no hope that I could
find any compartment with air remaining, or any form of escape. But
neither would I stay supine where I was, just waiting for
suffocation to finish me.
My right arm was still useless. I took that hand with my left
and wedged it into the front of my harness, keeping it across my
chest. I would have cast off the box with the dead creature, only,
when I looked down at that tightly curled body, to my vast
amazement, I saw the head move, caught the gleam of eyes. So it had
also survived our voyage to the derelict!
The magnetic plates on my boots allowed me to walk along the
deck, though the slow spin of the ship made the deck become wall,
or even ceiling. Finally I loosed the plates and pulled along by
handholds.
All ships of my own time carried lifeboats, with directional
finders which would locate the nearest planetary body and would
then direct the boat there—though there was always a chance the
survivors might be landed on a world inhospitable to human life.
Perhaps this ship had a similar arrangement for the safety of
passengers and crew. If so—and I could find one—though they
might have all been used when the ship was first abandoned—I
might still have a thin chance.
It is the nature of my species that we find it necessary to keep
fighting for life until a last blow ends us. That inborn instinct
drove me now.
The stone, I deduced, had brought me to the engine section of
the ship. Whatever empowered it in space and acted as a homing
device had drawn it straight to those burned-out bits in the box,
once, perhaps, the motive power for the ship.
I pulled myself through the remains of the engine room. There
might, I thought, be other energy sources in the lifeboats. They
should be several decks higher, close to the crew and passenger
quarters—always supposing this ship duplicated the general layout
of those I knew.
I found no ladders, only wells which were cut through the
levels. There were hints here and there that this vessel had never
housed beings of my type. At the foot of the second well I
hesitated. The ship rolled lazily; I might float through one of
these—only my beamer showed no handholds to pull me along, and to
be sucked in and then spin helplessly—At last I used my boot
plates, walking up along walls which moved ever to make my head
swim and induce a return of the vertigo which had been a symptom of
my illness.
The next level had cabins, most of their doors open. I peered
into one or two. There were shelves which might have been bunks,
save that they were very short and narrow, and they were so uniform
in the interior design I thought this must have been crew
territory.
Once more I made a spin walk to the next level There had been a
carpet on the floor here and the cabins were larger. My beam
illuminated a splash of color on the wall, focused on a picture or
mural—queerly disjointed figures or objects, which my eyes could
not follow, colors which hurt. Passenger territory. Now—along
here I should find LB hatches.
There was something floating against the wall of the corridor.
It seemed to lurch at me and I fended it off with aversion,
refusing to look closely. Passenger or crewman, here was one who
had not reached any LB. My touch sent it swirling back and
away.
I had begun to think I was wrong in my hopes when I came to the
first port and looked through its door into an empty socket. The LB
had been launched, which meant live passengers had reached it. Some
had escaped that long-ago wreck. And though the port was empty, it
raised my flagging hopes.
The dial on my air tank had swung far toward red. I glanced at
it once and then swiftly away. Better not to know how near I was to
the end. Even were I able to find a usable LB and launch it, how
long would it be before I reached a planet? If and if and if
again—
Suddenly the numb arm across my breast twitched and pulled
against the confining strap. I looked down. The stone shone. Was it
answering once more a call from an installation similar to the one
I had found in the engine room?
Though the pull tugged at my secured arm, it was not enough to
jerk it free of the fastening. But it did provide a guide along
this corridor. Past two more empty berths I traveled. Then my arm
gave a hard jerk, which did tear it loose and bring its dead weight
around to point to a surface now almost under me as the ship
rolled. There was another hatch to an LB berth—but it was closed.
Perhaps no one had reached it.
Again my glove went to that door, anchored me, and the light
from the stone flared. But this time it did not burn through. The
hatch cover rolled aside and I saw the projectile shape of an LB.
Once more my arm dropped, but I pulled myself along with my left
hand, pried at the hatch of the LB. It gave and I fell into its
interior, bringing the box of the creature with me.
There was a flickering of light, not only from the stone, but on
a panel at the nose end of the LB. There were hammock-like slings
to take the bodies of passengers and one was close enough for me to
clutch. I could feel a vibration through the small cabin. Whatever
energized this LB was not dead—the thing had at least enough
power to cruise out of its sling inside the skin of the parent
ship. We shot forth with enough force to pin me down, and I blacked
out.
“Air—”
I looked blearily about. The beamer still shone, now straight
against a curving wall, to be reflected back dazzlingly into my
eyes. Suddenly I realized that I was breathing in shuddering gasps,
coughing a little. For the air I fought to draw into my lungs had a
strange odor which irritated my nasal passages. On my shoulder was
a furry burden, and a whiskered face was thrust close to mine, dark
beads of eyes watching me intently.
“Air it is,” I answered dreamily. More and more this
had the cast of a weird nightmare. Logical, perhaps, after a
fashion which nightmares seldom are, but certainly not believable.
For now, however, I was content to lie half entangled in the
hammock, rapidly breathing that disagreeable air.
When I turned my head a fraction I could see a board of
controls. The numerous lights which had played so swiftly across it
at my first entrance now were cut to three—one yellow-white, in
the center and a little above the other two, one red, and the other
a ghostly blue. I looked down at my hand. There was still a glint
of light in the stone, showing beneath the clouded surface, and a
faint tingling prickled in my hand.
At least I was still alive, I was free of the dead ship in an
LB, and I had air to breathe even if it was not the air my lungs
craved. It would seem my entrance into the projectile had activated
its ancient mechanism.
If we were on course for the nearest planet, how long a voyage
did we face? And what kind of a landing might we have to endure? I
could breathe, but I would need food and water. There might be
supplies—E-rations—on board. But could they still be used after
all these years—or could a human body be nourished by them?
With my teeth I twisted free the latch which fastened my left
glove, scraped that off, and freed my hand. Then I felt along my
harness. These suits were meant to be worn planetside as well as
for space repairs; they must have a supply of E-rations. My fingers
fumbled over some loops of tools and found a seam-sealed pouch. It
took me a few moments to pick that open.
I had not felt hunger before; now it was a pain devouring me. I
brought the tube I had found up to eye level. It was more than I
could manage to sit up or even raise my head higher, but the
familiar markings on the tube were heartening. One moment to insert
the end between my teeth, bite through, and then the semiliquid
contents flooded my mouth and I swallowed greedily. I was close to
the end of that bounty when I felt movement against my bared throat
and remembered I was not alone.
It took a great deal of resolution to pinch tight that tube and
hold it to the muzzle of the furred one. Its pointed teeth seized
upon the container with the same avidity I must have shown, and I
squeezed the tube slowly while it sucked with a vigor I could feel
through the touching of its small body to mine.
There were three more tubes in my belt pouch. Each one, I knew,
was intended to provide a day’s rations, perhaps two if a man
were hard pushed. Four days—maybe, we could stretch that to
eight. But the gamble was such as no sane man would have taken by
choice.
I lay quietly until my strength began to return. The leaden
weight of my right arm tingled a little, not from the action of the
stone, but as if circulation returned. With that came a painful
cramping. I forced myself to flex my fingers inside the glove, to
raise and lower my forearm, setting my teeth against the hurt those
exercises caused me.
In time my arm obeyed me as well as it had before the stone had
taken over. I pulled myself up into a sitting position and gazed
about the LB. There were six of the hammock slings, three on each
wall, and I lay in the last to the right. None of them had been
placed close enough to the control board for the occupant to reach
it. This was true also of the regulation escape boats I knew. Their
course tapes were set, so that if a badly injured man managed to
reach one of them, it would serve without need for human
manipulation.
Like the bunks I had seen in the ship, these hammocks, gauging
by their size, were not intended for the human frame. And certainly
the air still rasping my nose and lungs was not normal. I wondered
briefly if it held some poisonous element which would in time
finish me. But if that were true there was nothing I could do about
it.
On the wall I traced outlines which I thought marked storage
compartments. Whether E-rations lay behind those still—The dreamy
state continued to hold me. Though my strength returned to my body;
it was as if I watched all this from a distance and nothing really
mattered. Once I raised my hand to look at it. Those dark patches
which had been the purple, swollen blisters, and then scaling
scabs, had rubbed off their rough surfaces inside the glove. The
skin beneath was shiny pink and new.
Again the furred body moved and I felt the wiry hair rasp
against my neck. Then my companion moved out, crawling down my
body, reaching out a hand-paw to catch at the webbing of the next
hammock. It was a long space to span, and at last the creature dug
the claws of its hind legs into the stuff of my suit, lunged
forward, and so was just able to grasp the edge of the web. With
sinuous dexterity it took firm hold and swung over to its new
position.
The hammock served it as a ladder and it climbed agilely to one
of the outlined lockers. Holding with a left forepaw and both hind
legs to its swaying anchorage, it ran the other set of small gray
fingers over the surface. When it pressed or released, I could not
tell, but a panel swung open with such speed that the creature had
to duck to escape.
Behind were two tubes secured in a rack. Each had something
vaguely resembling a laser grip, and I thought they might be
weapons—or perhaps survival tools. Leaving that door aswing, the
creature went methodically to the next. I was a little troubled as
I watched it.
Even after our communication I had continued to think of my
companion as an animal. It was clearly the offspring of Valcyr,
strange though its begetting had been. I had heard of mutant
animals able to communicate with man. But now it was brought home
to me that whatever this creature was, it had intelligence above
the level I had assigned it. And now I asked, my voice overloud in
the small cabin:
“Who are you?”
Perhaps it would have been better to ask, “What are
you?”
It paused, its forepaw still outstretched, its long neck
twisting so that it could look straight at me. And for the first
time I remembered I had awakened without my helmet, with the air
reviving me. Surely I had not taken it off while unconscious—so
—
“Eet.”
A single word with a queer sound—if a word in one’s mind
may also register as a sound.
“Eet,” I repeated aloud. “Do you mean you are
Eet as I am Murdoc Jern, or Eet as I am a man?”
“I am Eet, myself, me—” If it understood my division
of terms it was not interested. “I am Eet,
returned—”
“Returned—how? From where?”
It settled back into the hammock, which swayed under its weight
as light as it was, so that it must clutch at the webbing to keep
its position.
“Returned to a body,” it replied matter-of-factly.
“The animal made me a body—different, but usable. Though
perhaps it needs some altering. But that can come when there is
time and the necessary nutrients.”
“You mean you were a native, one of those we could not
find? That because Valcyr ate that seed, you—” My thoughts
jumped from one wild possibility to the next.
“I was not native to that world!” There was a snap
to that, as if Eet resented the suggestion. “They did not
have that in them which could make Eet a body. It was necessary to
wait until the proper door was opened, the right covering prepared.
The beast from the ship had what I needed—thus she was attracted
to the seed and took inside her the core from which Eet could be
born again—”
“Born again—from where?”
“From the time of hibernation.” There was impatience
now. “But that is past—it need not be considered. What is
of importance in this hour is survival—mine—yours—”
“So I am important to you?” Why had it urged me out
of the Vestris, saved me by removing my helmet in the LB? Did it
need me in some way?
“It is true that we have need of one another. Life forms
in partnership sometimes make a great one out of a lesser,”
Eet observed. “I have obtained a body which has some
advantages, but it lacks bulk and strength, which you can supply.
On the other hand, I have skills I am able to lend to your fight
for life.”
“And this partnership—it has some future
goal?”
“That has yet to be revealed. Now we think of continuing
to live, a matter of major importance.”
“I agree to that. What are you hunting for?”
“What you have already imagined might be here, the food
and drink intended to sustain those escaping in this small
ship.”
“If it is still here and has not dried to dust, or if it
will feed us and not be poison.” But I pulled myself up yet
farther in the hammock and watched Eet claw open another
locker.
This contained two canisters set in shock-absorbing bands. And
though Eet wrestled with them, he could not free either. At last I
dragged my weak-legged self from my hammock to the next and managed
to pry the nearest canister from its hooks.
It had a nozzled tip. I gripped it between my knees and used one
of the small tools from my harness to open it. Then I shook the can
gently. There was the slosh of liquid inside. I sniffed, my mouth
dry again as I thought of the wonderful chance that it might
actually hold water. The semiliquid E-ration contained moisture but
not really enough to allay thirst.
Its smell was pungent, but not unpleasant. What I held could be
drink, or fuel, or anything. Another chance among all those I—we—
had taken since we had left the Vestris.
“Drink or fuel, or what have you?” I stated the
guesses to Eet, holding out the canister so that he, she, or it
could sniff in turn.
“Drink!” was the decided answer.
“How can you be so sure?”
“You think I say so just because I wish it? No. This much
have I in this body: what is harmful to it, that I shall know. This
is good—drink it and see.”
So authoritative was the command that I forgot it came from a
small furred creature of unknown species. I put the nozzle to my
lips and sucked. Then I almost spilled the container, for though
the stuff which filled my mouth was liquid, it had a sour bite. Not
wine as I knew it, but certainly not water either. Yet after I had
swallowed inadvertently, my throat was cool and my mouth felt
fresh, as if I had drunk my fill of some cool stream. I took
another drink and then passed it to Eet, holding the container
while it sucked. Thus we had our necessary moisture. But for food
we were not so lucky. We found in another locker blocks of a
pinkish stuff, dried and hard. Eet pronounced them dangerous, and
if they were the E-rations of the LB, they were not for us.
He found some queerly shaped tools and another set of weapons,
but that was all—except for a box, in the last compartment, that
had various dials and two rods which could be pulled out from a
place of safekeeping on its back. These extended, and between them
there was a thin tissue which expanded to form a film. I judged it
a com device—doubtless meant to beep a distress signal once the
party aboard the LB made their landing. But those it might have
summoned were long since vanished from this portion of the
galaxy.
Since my species entered space we have known we were latecomers
to the star lanes. There were other races who voyaged space,
empires and confederations of many worlds which rose and fell, long
before we knew the wheel and fire, and reached for metal to fashion
sword and plow. We discover traces of them from time to time and
there is a very brisk trade in antiques from such finds. The
Zacathans, I believe, have archaeological records of at least three
star empires, or alliances, all vanished before they pioneered
space, and the Zacathans are the oldest people we have firsthand
knowledge of, with a written history covering two million planet
years! They are a long-lived race and prize knowledge above all
else.
Even this LB, could we possibly by some fluke land on an
inhabited planet, would bring me enough from its sale to set me up
as a gem buyer. But the chance of that happening was so small as to
be infinitesimal. I would settle gladly for any sort of a landing
where the air was breathable and there was enough food and water to
sustain life.
There was no reckoning time in the LB. I slept and so did Eet.
We ate very sparingly, when we could no longer stand the demands of
our bodies, and drank the liquid of the vanished voyagers. I tried
to get more information out of Eet, but he stubbornly curled into a
ball and would not answer. I say “he,” for while he
never stated his sex, if he had one, I came to think of him as
male, and since he did not correct that assumption, I continued in
it.
We had but half a tube of nourishment left when that white light
on the board, so steady that it had ceased to interest us, flashed
into yellow and there was a warning buzz along the walls. I hoped
(or did I fear?) that this meant a landing. And I huddled back in
the hammock, Eet sprawled flat against me, wondering how well we
would set down in a craft ages old and powered by energy close to
extinction.
There was such an overwhelming relief in being
shut in, out of the void, that for a space that was all I felt—until the knowledge that I was now caught in another trap dispelled
my only too short sensation of safety. My hand was still fast
against the door and I could not pull it loose. Rather, it dragged
me further and further forward, until my whole body was flat to
that surface, almost as if the strength of the attraction could
ooze me through the age-worn metal itself. And a second wave of
fear arose in me at the thought that I would be held so for all
time, trapped in this hatchway.
The glow from the stone was no longer so bright as it had been.
In these confined quarters it would have been blinding had its
brilliance shown as it had in space. But it was still flickering. I
struggled wildly against the hold, until I wilted, exhausted, held
upright by my hand against the door.
As I hung there, staring dully at the light, my hand, and the
door, a fact broke through my bemusement. The flickering was now
more deliberate. Almost it followed a pattern—on, off, on, off,
with varying intervals between flashes. The suit was insulated, of
course, but where the palm of my glove met the substance of the
door, a reddish stain was spreading. Even through that insulation I
could feel a tingle of concentrated energy.
Again I sensed I was only a thing to be used by the stone, that
I was its tool and not it mine. The tingle became pain, and finally
agony, with nothing I could do to ease it. The red stain brightened
and at last I saw dark lines crack open. As the agony grew, the
door began to give way. It fell in broken shards from the frame and
I was pulled on.
I caught only glimpses of corridors, for it seemed that the
stone now sped to make up for the time lost in defeating the
barrier at the hatch: I was twice pulled past breaks in the
hull.
My journey ended in a section where there were strange shapes of
machines—or I believed them to be machines. And this part of the
ship seemed intact, undamaged by whatever had struck to finish its
life. The stone whisked me around and through a maze of rods,
cylinders, latticework, piping, coming at last to a box wherein I
could see a tray. And set on that were black lumps. With a last
spurt the stone once more plastered my hand to the viewplate of the
box. It flared in a burst of dazzling light. And behind the plate I
saw a small answering flicker from one of those lumps. But it was
only a flicker and quickly gone. Then the glow of the stone died,
too, and my hand fell limply to swing by my side, a dead weight. I
was alone in the dark bowels of a long-dead ship.
I collapsed, to float, and then felt the bump of the box in
which my companion traveled. How much air I had left in my suit
tank I did not know, but I doubted whether it was enough to keep me
living long. The stone had clearly led me to my death, not in a
void where I would have spun forever, but in this tomb of blasted
metal.
There is the ancient fear of my species of the dark and what may
creep therein. I raised my left hand and fumbled with the button on
the fore of my harness until the sharp ray of a beamer glowed,
picking out the case of lumps which might once have been stones to
rival that in the ring. There was, of course, no hope that I could
find any compartment with air remaining, or any form of escape. But
neither would I stay supine where I was, just waiting for
suffocation to finish me.
My right arm was still useless. I took that hand with my left
and wedged it into the front of my harness, keeping it across my
chest. I would have cast off the box with the dead creature, only,
when I looked down at that tightly curled body, to my vast
amazement, I saw the head move, caught the gleam of eyes. So it had
also survived our voyage to the derelict!
The magnetic plates on my boots allowed me to walk along the
deck, though the slow spin of the ship made the deck become wall,
or even ceiling. Finally I loosed the plates and pulled along by
handholds.
All ships of my own time carried lifeboats, with directional
finders which would locate the nearest planetary body and would
then direct the boat there—though there was always a chance the
survivors might be landed on a world inhospitable to human life.
Perhaps this ship had a similar arrangement for the safety of
passengers and crew. If so—and I could find one—though they
might have all been used when the ship was first abandoned—I
might still have a thin chance.
It is the nature of my species that we find it necessary to keep
fighting for life until a last blow ends us. That inborn instinct
drove me now.
The stone, I deduced, had brought me to the engine section of
the ship. Whatever empowered it in space and acted as a homing
device had drawn it straight to those burned-out bits in the box,
once, perhaps, the motive power for the ship.
I pulled myself through the remains of the engine room. There
might, I thought, be other energy sources in the lifeboats. They
should be several decks higher, close to the crew and passenger
quarters—always supposing this ship duplicated the general layout
of those I knew.
I found no ladders, only wells which were cut through the
levels. There were hints here and there that this vessel had never
housed beings of my type. At the foot of the second well I
hesitated. The ship rolled lazily; I might float through one of
these—only my beamer showed no handholds to pull me along, and to
be sucked in and then spin helplessly—At last I used my boot
plates, walking up along walls which moved ever to make my head
swim and induce a return of the vertigo which had been a symptom of
my illness.
The next level had cabins, most of their doors open. I peered
into one or two. There were shelves which might have been bunks,
save that they were very short and narrow, and they were so uniform
in the interior design I thought this must have been crew
territory.
Once more I made a spin walk to the next level There had been a
carpet on the floor here and the cabins were larger. My beam
illuminated a splash of color on the wall, focused on a picture or
mural—queerly disjointed figures or objects, which my eyes could
not follow, colors which hurt. Passenger territory. Now—along
here I should find LB hatches.
There was something floating against the wall of the corridor.
It seemed to lurch at me and I fended it off with aversion,
refusing to look closely. Passenger or crewman, here was one who
had not reached any LB. My touch sent it swirling back and
away.
I had begun to think I was wrong in my hopes when I came to the
first port and looked through its door into an empty socket. The LB
had been launched, which meant live passengers had reached it. Some
had escaped that long-ago wreck. And though the port was empty, it
raised my flagging hopes.
The dial on my air tank had swung far toward red. I glanced at
it once and then swiftly away. Better not to know how near I was to
the end. Even were I able to find a usable LB and launch it, how
long would it be before I reached a planet? If and if and if
again—
Suddenly the numb arm across my breast twitched and pulled
against the confining strap. I looked down. The stone shone. Was it
answering once more a call from an installation similar to the one
I had found in the engine room?
Though the pull tugged at my secured arm, it was not enough to
jerk it free of the fastening. But it did provide a guide along
this corridor. Past two more empty berths I traveled. Then my arm
gave a hard jerk, which did tear it loose and bring its dead weight
around to point to a surface now almost under me as the ship
rolled. There was another hatch to an LB berth—but it was closed.
Perhaps no one had reached it.
Again my glove went to that door, anchored me, and the light
from the stone flared. But this time it did not burn through. The
hatch cover rolled aside and I saw the projectile shape of an LB.
Once more my arm dropped, but I pulled myself along with my left
hand, pried at the hatch of the LB. It gave and I fell into its
interior, bringing the box of the creature with me.
There was a flickering of light, not only from the stone, but on
a panel at the nose end of the LB. There were hammock-like slings
to take the bodies of passengers and one was close enough for me to
clutch. I could feel a vibration through the small cabin. Whatever
energized this LB was not dead—the thing had at least enough
power to cruise out of its sling inside the skin of the parent
ship. We shot forth with enough force to pin me down, and I blacked
out.
“Air—”
I looked blearily about. The beamer still shone, now straight
against a curving wall, to be reflected back dazzlingly into my
eyes. Suddenly I realized that I was breathing in shuddering gasps,
coughing a little. For the air I fought to draw into my lungs had a
strange odor which irritated my nasal passages. On my shoulder was
a furry burden, and a whiskered face was thrust close to mine, dark
beads of eyes watching me intently.
“Air it is,” I answered dreamily. More and more this
had the cast of a weird nightmare. Logical, perhaps, after a
fashion which nightmares seldom are, but certainly not believable.
For now, however, I was content to lie half entangled in the
hammock, rapidly breathing that disagreeable air.
When I turned my head a fraction I could see a board of
controls. The numerous lights which had played so swiftly across it
at my first entrance now were cut to three—one yellow-white, in
the center and a little above the other two, one red, and the other
a ghostly blue. I looked down at my hand. There was still a glint
of light in the stone, showing beneath the clouded surface, and a
faint tingling prickled in my hand.
At least I was still alive, I was free of the dead ship in an
LB, and I had air to breathe even if it was not the air my lungs
craved. It would seem my entrance into the projectile had activated
its ancient mechanism.
If we were on course for the nearest planet, how long a voyage
did we face? And what kind of a landing might we have to endure? I
could breathe, but I would need food and water. There might be
supplies—E-rations—on board. But could they still be used after
all these years—or could a human body be nourished by them?
With my teeth I twisted free the latch which fastened my left
glove, scraped that off, and freed my hand. Then I felt along my
harness. These suits were meant to be worn planetside as well as
for space repairs; they must have a supply of E-rations. My fingers
fumbled over some loops of tools and found a seam-sealed pouch. It
took me a few moments to pick that open.
I had not felt hunger before; now it was a pain devouring me. I
brought the tube I had found up to eye level. It was more than I
could manage to sit up or even raise my head higher, but the
familiar markings on the tube were heartening. One moment to insert
the end between my teeth, bite through, and then the semiliquid
contents flooded my mouth and I swallowed greedily. I was close to
the end of that bounty when I felt movement against my bared throat
and remembered I was not alone.
It took a great deal of resolution to pinch tight that tube and
hold it to the muzzle of the furred one. Its pointed teeth seized
upon the container with the same avidity I must have shown, and I
squeezed the tube slowly while it sucked with a vigor I could feel
through the touching of its small body to mine.
There were three more tubes in my belt pouch. Each one, I knew,
was intended to provide a day’s rations, perhaps two if a man
were hard pushed. Four days—maybe, we could stretch that to
eight. But the gamble was such as no sane man would have taken by
choice.
I lay quietly until my strength began to return. The leaden
weight of my right arm tingled a little, not from the action of the
stone, but as if circulation returned. With that came a painful
cramping. I forced myself to flex my fingers inside the glove, to
raise and lower my forearm, setting my teeth against the hurt those
exercises caused me.
In time my arm obeyed me as well as it had before the stone had
taken over. I pulled myself up into a sitting position and gazed
about the LB. There were six of the hammock slings, three on each
wall, and I lay in the last to the right. None of them had been
placed close enough to the control board for the occupant to reach
it. This was true also of the regulation escape boats I knew. Their
course tapes were set, so that if a badly injured man managed to
reach one of them, it would serve without need for human
manipulation.
Like the bunks I had seen in the ship, these hammocks, gauging
by their size, were not intended for the human frame. And certainly
the air still rasping my nose and lungs was not normal. I wondered
briefly if it held some poisonous element which would in time
finish me. But if that were true there was nothing I could do about
it.
On the wall I traced outlines which I thought marked storage
compartments. Whether E-rations lay behind those still—The dreamy
state continued to hold me. Though my strength returned to my body;
it was as if I watched all this from a distance and nothing really
mattered. Once I raised my hand to look at it. Those dark patches
which had been the purple, swollen blisters, and then scaling
scabs, had rubbed off their rough surfaces inside the glove. The
skin beneath was shiny pink and new.
Again the furred body moved and I felt the wiry hair rasp
against my neck. Then my companion moved out, crawling down my
body, reaching out a hand-paw to catch at the webbing of the next
hammock. It was a long space to span, and at last the creature dug
the claws of its hind legs into the stuff of my suit, lunged
forward, and so was just able to grasp the edge of the web. With
sinuous dexterity it took firm hold and swung over to its new
position.
The hammock served it as a ladder and it climbed agilely to one
of the outlined lockers. Holding with a left forepaw and both hind
legs to its swaying anchorage, it ran the other set of small gray
fingers over the surface. When it pressed or released, I could not
tell, but a panel swung open with such speed that the creature had
to duck to escape.
Behind were two tubes secured in a rack. Each had something
vaguely resembling a laser grip, and I thought they might be
weapons—or perhaps survival tools. Leaving that door aswing, the
creature went methodically to the next. I was a little troubled as
I watched it.
Even after our communication I had continued to think of my
companion as an animal. It was clearly the offspring of Valcyr,
strange though its begetting had been. I had heard of mutant
animals able to communicate with man. But now it was brought home
to me that whatever this creature was, it had intelligence above
the level I had assigned it. And now I asked, my voice overloud in
the small cabin:
“Who are you?”
Perhaps it would have been better to ask, “What are
you?”
It paused, its forepaw still outstretched, its long neck
twisting so that it could look straight at me. And for the first
time I remembered I had awakened without my helmet, with the air
reviving me. Surely I had not taken it off while unconscious—so
—
“Eet.”
A single word with a queer sound—if a word in one’s mind
may also register as a sound.
“Eet,” I repeated aloud. “Do you mean you are
Eet as I am Murdoc Jern, or Eet as I am a man?”
“I am Eet, myself, me—” If it understood my division
of terms it was not interested. “I am Eet,
returned—”
“Returned—how? From where?”
It settled back into the hammock, which swayed under its weight
as light as it was, so that it must clutch at the webbing to keep
its position.
“Returned to a body,” it replied matter-of-factly.
“The animal made me a body—different, but usable. Though
perhaps it needs some altering. But that can come when there is
time and the necessary nutrients.”
“You mean you were a native, one of those we could not
find? That because Valcyr ate that seed, you—” My thoughts
jumped from one wild possibility to the next.
“I was not native to that world!” There was a snap
to that, as if Eet resented the suggestion. “They did not
have that in them which could make Eet a body. It was necessary to
wait until the proper door was opened, the right covering prepared.
The beast from the ship had what I needed—thus she was attracted
to the seed and took inside her the core from which Eet could be
born again—”
“Born again—from where?”
“From the time of hibernation.” There was impatience
now. “But that is past—it need not be considered. What is
of importance in this hour is survival—mine—yours—”
“So I am important to you?” Why had it urged me out
of the Vestris, saved me by removing my helmet in the LB? Did it
need me in some way?
“It is true that we have need of one another. Life forms
in partnership sometimes make a great one out of a lesser,”
Eet observed. “I have obtained a body which has some
advantages, but it lacks bulk and strength, which you can supply.
On the other hand, I have skills I am able to lend to your fight
for life.”
“And this partnership—it has some future
goal?”
“That has yet to be revealed. Now we think of continuing
to live, a matter of major importance.”
“I agree to that. What are you hunting for?”
“What you have already imagined might be here, the food
and drink intended to sustain those escaping in this small
ship.”
“If it is still here and has not dried to dust, or if it
will feed us and not be poison.” But I pulled myself up yet
farther in the hammock and watched Eet claw open another
locker.
This contained two canisters set in shock-absorbing bands. And
though Eet wrestled with them, he could not free either. At last I
dragged my weak-legged self from my hammock to the next and managed
to pry the nearest canister from its hooks.
It had a nozzled tip. I gripped it between my knees and used one
of the small tools from my harness to open it. Then I shook the can
gently. There was the slosh of liquid inside. I sniffed, my mouth
dry again as I thought of the wonderful chance that it might
actually hold water. The semiliquid E-ration contained moisture but
not really enough to allay thirst.
Its smell was pungent, but not unpleasant. What I held could be
drink, or fuel, or anything. Another chance among all those I—we—
had taken since we had left the Vestris.
“Drink or fuel, or what have you?” I stated the
guesses to Eet, holding out the canister so that he, she, or it
could sniff in turn.
“Drink!” was the decided answer.
“How can you be so sure?”
“You think I say so just because I wish it? No. This much
have I in this body: what is harmful to it, that I shall know. This
is good—drink it and see.”
So authoritative was the command that I forgot it came from a
small furred creature of unknown species. I put the nozzle to my
lips and sucked. Then I almost spilled the container, for though
the stuff which filled my mouth was liquid, it had a sour bite. Not
wine as I knew it, but certainly not water either. Yet after I had
swallowed inadvertently, my throat was cool and my mouth felt
fresh, as if I had drunk my fill of some cool stream. I took
another drink and then passed it to Eet, holding the container
while it sucked. Thus we had our necessary moisture. But for food
we were not so lucky. We found in another locker blocks of a
pinkish stuff, dried and hard. Eet pronounced them dangerous, and
if they were the E-rations of the LB, they were not for us.
He found some queerly shaped tools and another set of weapons,
but that was all—except for a box, in the last compartment, that
had various dials and two rods which could be pulled out from a
place of safekeeping on its back. These extended, and between them
there was a thin tissue which expanded to form a film. I judged it
a com device—doubtless meant to beep a distress signal once the
party aboard the LB made their landing. But those it might have
summoned were long since vanished from this portion of the
galaxy.
Since my species entered space we have known we were latecomers
to the star lanes. There were other races who voyaged space,
empires and confederations of many worlds which rose and fell, long
before we knew the wheel and fire, and reached for metal to fashion
sword and plow. We discover traces of them from time to time and
there is a very brisk trade in antiques from such finds. The
Zacathans, I believe, have archaeological records of at least three
star empires, or alliances, all vanished before they pioneered
space, and the Zacathans are the oldest people we have firsthand
knowledge of, with a written history covering two million planet
years! They are a long-lived race and prize knowledge above all
else.
Even this LB, could we possibly by some fluke land on an
inhabited planet, would bring me enough from its sale to set me up
as a gem buyer. But the chance of that happening was so small as to
be infinitesimal. I would settle gladly for any sort of a landing
where the air was breathable and there was enough food and water to
sustain life.
There was no reckoning time in the LB. I slept and so did Eet.
We ate very sparingly, when we could no longer stand the demands of
our bodies, and drank the liquid of the vanished voyagers. I tried
to get more information out of Eet, but he stubbornly curled into a
ball and would not answer. I say “he,” for while he
never stated his sex, if he had one, I came to think of him as
male, and since he did not correct that assumption, I continued in
it.
We had but half a tube of nourishment left when that white light
on the board, so steady that it had ceased to interest us, flashed
into yellow and there was a warning buzz along the walls. I hoped
(or did I fear?) that this meant a landing. And I huddled back in
the hammock, Eet sprawled flat against me, wondering how well we
would set down in a craft ages old and powered by energy close to
extinction.