It was Hollis who tried finally to sum up.
"We agree that the line of characters overprinted on the label is some
kind of service routing and identification code or serial number. We
think it is a number rather than a word because of the repetition of
certain characters and because similar combinations were found on Ship
subassemblies and structural details. Markings incorporated in the
label itself, which are similar to those found near airlock controls
and service panels, are words identifying its contents with possibly the
addition of some purely advertising material. The pictorial content of
some of the labels is confusing, but then an illustration of a slice of
bacon would not give an alien very much information about a pig. We must
assume that the containers hold some kind of edible animal or vegetable
tissue, although there is a faint possibility that . . ."
"The labels," Berryman said, grinning, "may carry a picture of the chef."
Hollis ignored him and continued, "The fact that the whole compartment
is below average Ship temperature, and that many of the storage cabinets
are additionally refrigerated, supports the food theory. But the part
which puzzles me is the picture of the Three on the door of that big
refrigerated cabinet, and the tools or eating utensils and assorted
collection of small packages inside it which also carry pictures of
a Three. Is the Three, or certain parts of it, perhaps, some kind of
delicacy?"
Drew shook his head. He said, "In our house we didn't keep the caviar
in the cutlery drawer."
McCullough had been thinking hard while the physicist had been talking.
He said suddenly, "The delicacies are too small, some of them, and too
carefully wrapped to be food, I think, and the utensils are very sharp and
their packaging also bears the emblem of a somewhat stylized Three. To me
this suggests -- well, what animal do you associate with medicine and
errands of mercy?"
Hollis said, "A red -- but no, that isn't an animal. A snake! The staff
and coiled serpents of Asclepius. Or -- or do you mean a St. Bernard?"
McCullough nodded and Berryman began stroking the Three which was wrapped
around his hips and thighs like a great furry diaper.
"Nice doggie," he said happily.
But the great majority of the compartments they examined were puzzling
without being informative. They were large compartments containing
eight, twelve and sometimes sixteen big, hollow cylinders of some kind
of plastic material supported along the center of the room by taut but
flexible cables. The cylinders were just over three yards in length and
were encircled at intervals of a foot or so by wide, flexible bands
of rubbery materials which compressed the soft, hollow tube and made
it look a little like a caterpillar. The material of the cylinder was
thickly padded on the inside.
The compartments were fitted with lighting fixtures, cabinets, and
various enigmatic items whose general design and coloring were less
utilitarian than anything previously met with in the Ship. Invariably,
one of the cabinets bore the picture of a stylized Three on its door
and in some of them the contents showed signs of having been used.
In some of the compartments there were pictures on the walls -- large,
fuzzy pictures which seemed to show trees growing horizontally with
branches doubling as extra roots, or things which looked like heaps of
varicolored spaghetti, or illustrations, sometimes covering most of the
wall, of something resembling marble or coarse-grained wood.
Sometimes a thorough search of these compartments brought to light
mislaid or discarded books, diagrams and photographs. Some of the books
were illustrated, the diagrams were purely technical, and the photographs
were even more confusing since they pictured things or people or events
which were completely alien.
"I wish," said Hollis bitterly as he turned one of the photographs,
playing cards or beer mats over and over in a vain attempt to find a
viewpoint which made sense, "that they had been a little more untidy.
You can find out an awful lot about a person from the contents of his
wastepaper basket."
"If these cylinders are some kind of tubular hammock," said Berryman
to McCullough, "and I don't see what else they can be, the only e-t
they will fit is that big caterpillar we found half eaten in the animal
enclosure. But what really bothers me is the number of these dormitory
compartments and the number of hammocks in each one. What was this Ship? A
troop transport? Some kind of colonization project which went wrong?"
"Maybe a big ship needs a crew to match," Drew put in quickly. "But where
the blazes are they?"
McCullough shook his head. He said, "My theory is that it was, and is,
a very small crew. If there had been a large number of them when the
Twos broke out, we would have found traces of them -- carcasses, bones,
inedible remnants. How that particular caterpillar happened to be in
that cage I don't know, but . . ."
"Suppose it wasn't intelligent," Hollis broke in, "but a species physically
resembling the intelligent e-t life-form. Before we sent a man into space
we tested apes and monkeys because their metabolism and . . ."
"For God's sake," said McCullough irritably, "the situation is complicated
enough as it is! My idea is this. The dormitories were used by the people
who built the Ship, who left when the job was finished. Possibly the
compartments will be used for colonists or passengers on a later trip,
but not this time. This trip the Ship was, is, on her maiden voyage."
"And since control seems to be largely automatic," Berryman added,
"the crew could be very small indeed."
"I want you all to listen to this tape," McCullough said, then added
apologetically, "again."
They listened again to the gobbling of Twos in the enclosure, the chiming
and moaning and the two alien voices. Like the Twos, they could disregard
one of the voices and its accompanying chimes since this was almost
certainly some kind of recorded pre-takeoff warning sequence. The moaning
could have been caused by machinery, perhaps malfunctioning equipment
of some kind, except that no machine should ever make a noise like
that. Hollis and Berryman suggested that it might be music of some kind
being played in the second voice's quarters. The sound could have been
made by a number of wind instruments, but the tonal range and scale
were crazy.
So, in all probability, was the alien.
"I'm beginning to think there is only one intelligent e-t left on the Ship,"
McCullough said as they prepared to leave the compartment, "and that one
is in very poor shape physically and mentally. But to help it, we need
more information about its world and its society, its relations with its
fellows or with members of the opposite sex, or sexes if there are more
than two, and as much data as we can possibly obtain on its own personal
background. Somewhere in the Ship there must be family photographs . . ."
"Psychotherapy is a chancy business," said Berryman quietly, "even
with human beings. Trying it on an emotionally disturbed alien seems --
seems . . ."
"Foolhardy," said Hollis.
Drew did not say anything. Since the time McCullough had revived him with
the Kiss of Life, he had never disagreed with the doctor. But occasionally,
as now, his face became more than usually expressionless.
To make successful contact with it, McCullough told himself firmly,
they would have to see that it was capable of rational behaviour and
show that they themselves were friendly toward it. Clearing the Ship of
the majority of its Twos should prove their good intentions, but only if
the being was sane enough to appreciate and understand what they were
doing. And it possessed, or had possessed, a weapon. Why then did it
not come out of hiding and help them exterminate the Twos?
They needed more information. The trouble was they had to fight for
every single datum and it could be only a matter of time before some
perhaps unimportant scrap of information cost someone their life.
But the material they were sending back to Control was valuable. The reports
and photographs of alien food labels with pictures and text would send
language experts the world over into multilingual paroxysms of joy,
not to mention the methods used to make friends with the Three life-form
and their subsequent activities together. There was also a steady flow
of information on Ship equipment and control systems which would be
nonobjectionable so far as Brady was concerned.
They could not, of course, tell him everything. Some of their troubles
they had to keep to themselves.
Hollis took to crying in his sleep, during the rare occasions when
he was able to get any. Drew collected and trained more Three pets
than was really necessary for self-protection. When he moved he was
surrounded by a flapping phalanx of Threes and, prior to going to sleep,
he stroked and patted them until they had him enclosed in a thick, furry
cocoon. Berryman and McCullough watched each other covertly and talked
about their physical and psychological problems both as individuals and
as a group, the meanings behind the nightmares to which everyone was
subject, and their past lives public and private -- all with a simulated
objectivity which fooled neither of them. Each was waiting for the other
one to break, and each gained strength because the break did not come.
The times they each woke up struggling and screaming did not count,
of course, because they all did that.
Walters, too, was unhappy. Cut off from home except by voice contact with
Prometheus Control, all of whom now sounded more nervous and insincere
while talking to him than he felt while talking to them, it was obvious
that the pilot was desperately concerned for the safety of his friends --
his only friends -- on the Ship. During their infrequent radio contacts
-- it was just not possible these days for McCullough to visit him --
the strain in his voice was an almost tangible thing.
The general and Tokyo Rose were beginning to worry him again. They were
suggesting that the facts supporting McCullough's theory about the Ship's
builders using the dormitory compartments would also support his own,
perhaps more logical theory, that the tubular hammocks were meant to
contain a couple of Twos, and that it was the Twos who were the crew of
the Ship all the time. Walters did not want to bother the doctor with this
kind of talk, but sometimes the general made it sound very believable.
Walters was beginning to hate the general actively, and it showed in
his voice.
chapter twenty
Then one day they were forced to take cover in a room which was more
thoroughly furnished, in the esthetic as well as the structural sense,
than any they had encountered before. The room contained just two tubular
hammocks, its cabinets and fixtures were much less utilitarian than
usual, and there were a great many pictures on the walls. And softly,
in the background, there was the moaning, whistling sound which they
had heard only once before but could never forget.
But in this compartment the structural skeleton did not show and the
metal bones and circulatory system were too well concealed by paneling
for them to hook up a suit radio antenna to a section of plumbing which
would allow contact with Walters. As a result, McCullough could not tell
the pilot of the tremendous discovery they had made or bring him into
the discussion which followed it.
"Crew quarters, no doubt about it," Hollis said, waving his arms in
excitement. "But I don't think this room is only for sleeping in --
its furniture is too diversified, there are too many pictures. Crowding
a bedroom with pictures is in questionable taste . . ."
"So," said Berryman, "is having twin beds."
"Be serious a minute," said Hollis. "The point I'm trying to make is
that there is more than enough space in the Ship for crew members to
have different rooms for sleeping, eating, recreation and so on, while
this compartment -- a surprisingly small room in a very large ship --
appears to combine the functions of all three. I may be jumping to
conclusions here, but it suggests to me that they prefer small, confined,
cozy living quarters. This place looks like -- like an illustrated nest
or -- I give up."
Berryman said, "I am only an amateur psychologist -- a gifted amateur,
naturally -- but I'm inclined to agree with that. The question is, if
the crew prefers to live in cozy little rooms inside a great big ship
-- and with wild Twos roaming the corridors, who could blame them? --
why aren't they at home?"
From the door's transparent panel Drew, who was keeping watch, said,
"The Twos are beginning to leave. A Three just went by, one of the carpets
we haven't made friends with yet, and they took off after it. Can I close
the door?"
"Not yet," said McCullough.
He had been too busy with his camera to join in the discussion and his mind
had been vainly trying to emulate the instrument by absorbing everything
he could see at once. But he was not so wildly excited and curious as to
forget caution, or his own fairly well supported theory of the e-t crew
member being mentally disturbed and in possession of a projectile-firing
weapon. They might be in much more danger from the intelligent alien
than from the hungry Twos, and McCullough had ordered the sliding door
to be kept partly open in case they should have to leave in a hurry.