Five minutes after leaving the P-ships, however, Morrison was no longer
even pretending that McCullough was in charge.
The entry point chosen was a personnel lock about one hundred yards aft
of the first one. McCullough operated the seal mechanism and entered,
followed by the colonel, Berryman, Hollis and Drew. This time he did
not slam the door or test the hydraulic actuator to destruction. Inside
he demonstrated the working of the light switches. The chamber differed
only in detail from the previous one, but this time they were going to
examine the fine details.
There were no aliens in the lock chamber or in the corridor outside.
Morrison had brought a spotlight from P-One. Using the access doors on
four sides of the chamber and the large transparent panels set into them,
he mapped the space between the Ship's double hull while Drew kept watch
on the corridor and reported progress to Walters on P-Two. Berryman,
Hollis and McCullough scoured the place for identification numbers.
"I realize," said Berryman during the first few minutes of the examination,
"that robust construction, together with simplicity of design is supposed
to reduce the danger of component failure, but this angle bracket is so
simple it is downright crude!"
But the badly finished support bracket, like all the other small structural
members they were examining, possessed the expected symbols of
identification.
Their idea was simply that any piece of machinery beyond a certain degree
of complexity -- from a car or light aeroplane up to and including spaceships
half a mile long -- required an enormous amount of prior design work,
planning and tooling long before the first simple parts and subassemblies
became three-dimensional metal on someone's workbench. The number of
general assembly and detail drawings, material specification charts,
wiring diagrams and so on for a vessel of this size must have been
mind-staggering, and the purpose of all this paperwork was simply to
instruct people of
average intelligence
in the manufacture and
fitting together of the parts in this gigantic three-dimensional jigsaw
puzzle.
If normal human practice was observed -- and the aircraft engineers
who had lectured them on the trip out insisted that there was no easier
way short of waving a magic wand -- then these drawings together with
the components they described must include exact instructions for the
placing of these parts within the jigsaw.
It was possible that the aliens had some exotic method of identifying
components -- such as impressing each part with a telepathic identity tag,
or tactile coding systems instead of using visible printed symbols. But
considering the size of the project and the tremendous number of parts
to be identified, they were fairly sure that the aliens would do it the
easy way, which was to mark the surface material of the component with
symbols which could be read at a glance.
The system used on the Ship seemed to be some kind of vibro-etch technique.
It was nice to know that, in the philosophy of aircraft and spaceship
construction at least, the e-t's and humans thought alike.
"You notice there are no curved lines in these symbols," said Hollis
at one point. "The result of having pincers instead of fingers and an
opposable thumb, would you say, Doctor?"
"Not necessarily," said McCullough. "If we had continued to use Roman
instead of Arabic numerals . . ."
"Discuss your findings later, gentlemen," said Morrison impatiently.
"We will take a quick look along the corridor. Berryman and I will move
aft, Hollis and McCullough forward, and Drew will guard the lock chamber.
Go only as far as the first intersection -- that should make it impossible
for any of us to be cut off. Make a map showing door positions and
anything else of interest. If the doors have transparent panels, shoot
whatever you can get a picture of and sketch in room dimensions and
contents of what you can't shoot.
"Be as quick as you can," he ended. "If you meet anything, retreat or
defend yourselves without hurting it. All right, Drew, crack the seal."
They split up as directed, McCullough keeping slightly ahead of Hollis
so as not to prod him with his ridiculous weapon. Since the Ship seemed
to be designed for free fall conditions, there was no clearly defined
floor, ceiling or walls in the corridor. The netting was supported a
few inches out from each wall and stretched taut and was interrupted at
regular intervals by the entrances to what seemed to be storerooms. Being
cautious men, they shone their lights only into the rooms whose doors had
transparent panels in them and left the others alone even though they
would have opened at a touch -- they were simple, sliding doors rather
than pressure seals. Every door bore two sets of identifying symbols
placed upside down to each other so as to be easily read whatever the
direction of approach.
Lighting fixtures and switches were set at intervals along the corridor,
but McCullough did not turn them on. The torches of Hollis and himself
gave enough light at short range and there was no point in letting
the aliens in their control room know that the humans had moved into
the corridor.
At the intersection, one corridor continued forward while another curved
away in each direction, following the lateral curvature of the hull so
that they could see only twenty yards or so along it. Just at the limit
of vision in each branch there were the mouths of two other corridors
paralleling their own.
"If we went back along one of them," said Hollis, pointing, "and then
took the first outboard turning, we should meet up with the colonel
and Berryman."
"Do you want to try it?" said McCullough.
"No," said Hollis.
The physicist busied himself with his sketch pad while McCullough kept
watch in four directions. But they were not disturbed by anything until
the colonel's voice ordered them back to the lock chamber.
Ten minutes later they were outside the Ship again and heading for a
lock close to one of the big transparent blisters. Hollis was literally
babbling with excitement over the prospect of tinkering with a real live
-- Walters on P-Two warned that it was probably several million volts
live -- hyperspatial generator. McCullough said nothing and thought
seriously about Colonel Morrison's voice.
Morrison had the irritating habit of using too much volume during
transmission and sounding like a short-tempered hurler of thunderbolts
rather than the simple voice of authority. But now the doctor was
beginning to wonder if the overamplification and, perhaps, the judicious
use of the tone control to make it sound deeper as well as louder, was the
sole reason for Morrison's stern-sounding, authoritative tone. Certainly
the difference in his natural and radio voice was amazing. McCullough
had the uncomfortable feeling that every time the colonel opened his
mouth in ordinary face-to-face conversation he nibbled away a little of
his own authority.
It was becoming obvious that the Colonel Morrison whom Berryman, Walters
and he himself knew as a voice from P-One was not necessarily the same
person Drew and Hollis knew on the colonel's own ship. It was becoming
much easier to believe Morrison capable of gossiping like an old woman
to Drew while excluding Hollis and allowing the physicist to get into
the sorry state McCullough had found him in when he had been shot across
to the other ship.
At the same time McCullough knew that he must guard against a too sudden
reversal of feeling. One unexpected weakness -- especially in an area
so susceptible to misinterpretation as a tone of voice -- did not mean
that the colonel was automatically weak, ineffectual and unsuited to
wield authority and had, therefore, no right to their obedience.
McCullough worried about the colonel all the way to their next point
of entry.
This time they stayed only a few minutes in the lock chamber and did
not go into the corridor at all. Access to the space between outer and
inner hulls was by a simple, unpressurized sliding door, and the air on
the other side of it was at corridor pressure. Masses of cable conduits,
plumbing and enigmatic cabinets sprouted among a forest of girders on all
sides, except where a narrow ladder of netting stretched forward through
a tunnel cleared in the metallic jungle. At the other end of the ladder
the colonel's spotlight showed the entrance, if their calculations were
correct, to one of the blisters.
"Use our own lighting," Morrison said, "and don't wander away from the
net. We might accidentally short-circuit something and kill ourselves."
"I don't think so, sir," said Berryman. "The cables all seem to be
well insulated."
"I agree," said Hollis, "but we should examine the markings on cables
entering the blister to help us separate lighting and instrumentation
circuits from power lines."
"Be careful anyway!" said the colonel sharply. "Drew, guard the lock chamber.
The rest of you follow me."
Two days ago Berryman might have argued against the colonel like that,
McCullough thought, but not Hollis.
The atmosphere remained tense until they entered the blister through an
airlock. Inside they found no atmosphere at all. This did not surprise
Hollis, who said that he had expected the generators to operate in
a vacuum. A few minutes later they discovered that the vacuum was
maintained by having the blister open to space, although the openings
in the transparent canopy were too narrow to allow passage to a man or,
McCullough suspected, an alien. Sunlight flooded through the transparent
plastic, throwing dazzling highlights off the bare metal and pale blue
ceramics all around them. The two P-ships were clearly visible in the
black sky and the canopy was no barrier to communications.
"There are bare power lines in this room," said the colonel stiffly,
"so be careful."
"Yes, sir," said Hollis quickly. "But I don't think there will be any
danger from them -- the generator isn't switched on. At the same time,
it will take weeks to study this place properly and I should like to
make absolutely sure of our safety while doing so."
His idea was to short the power lines where they entered the blister.
He was fairly sure that the generator's design incorporated protective
fusing and similar fail-safe devices so that the valuable generator itself
would not be destroyed. If he was building the thing, that was how Hollis
would do it. There was perhaps no need for him to point out that this
intricate piece of equipment was not a crudely built structure -- it looked
as if it had been put together by watchmakers.
It was also possible that the generator would not operate if foreign
bodies -- themselves -- were present in the blister. At the same time
Hollis said he would feel much more comfortable investigating the place
when he was less likely at any moment to be struck by alien lightning.
"You're the physicist," said the colonel. "But it occurs to me that
spiking one of their generators will make them feel annoyed. Even more
annoyed than slamming an airlock door!"
Instead of netting, a rigid plastic ladder arrangement curved around and
through the masses of equipment projecting into the blister, twisting and
widening out into an outsize tennis racket shape where it was obvious that
more than one alien was meant to work on it. Hollis did not talk during
the investigation except for the single occasion when he told McCullough
with great fervor that his camera contained the most valuable pictures
ever taken.
But McCullough was only half listening to him. He had the feeling that
they were all being too enthusiastic, not worrying nearly enough about
the people of the Ship and what they would think of all this and generally
tending to forget where they were. Maybe they wanted to forget where they
were, of course, and the enthusiasm and lack of proper thought were aids
to accomplishing this, but McCullough had the awful feeling that they
should all stop and have a good, long think.
He wished Morrison would take a firm grip on the situation and
make
them stop and think!
The colonel's last remark had brought back to his mind the name of the
old-time author responsible for a story called 'First Contact.' He had
also written one entitled 'The Ethical Equations' and during the trip
out, they had talked over these and a great many other fictional first
contacts -- science fiction data being the only kind available to them --
and the ethical equations had been very thoroughly discussed.
They had all gained, McCullough now realized, much comfort from them.
In substance the equations stated that if one did a person or an alien
a good turn, an equal reward would ultimately be forthcoming, and that
the same would apply if someone did something wrong. Eventually an exact
balance of punishment or reward would occur. Assuming then that the crew
of the alien Ship did, after their own fashion, subscribe to this ethic,
what had the human boarding party done that was inherently, basically wrong?
They were guilty of blundering into a situation which they did not
understand. They had damaged alien property and they were guilty of
trespass. Their intentions had not been evil, of course, but that
fact would not be apparent to the aliens. However, an intelligent
extraterrestrial species capable of crossing interstellar space should
possess enough understanding or empathy to credit another intelligent
species with the normal amount of scientific curiosity, and the sins of
trespass and minor property damage were venial to say the least.