The Wailing Asteroid

  Chapter 6

  There was a tiny shock; in a minute, trivial contact of the ship withsomething outside it. Drifting within the now brightly lighted bore, ithad touched the wall. There was no force to the impact.

  Keller made an interested noise. When eyes turned to him, he pointed toa dial. A needle on that dial pointed just past the figure "30." Burkegrunted.

  "The devil! We've been waiting for things to happen, and they alreadyhave! It's our move."

  "According to that needle," agreed Holmes, "somebody has kindly putthirty point seven mercury inches of air-pressure around the shipoutside. We can walk out and breathe, now."

  "If," said Burke, "it's air. It could be something else. I'll have tocheck it."

  He got out the self-contained diving apparatus that had been broughtalong to serve as a strictly temporary space suit.

  "I'll try a cigarette-lighter. Maybe it will burn naturally. Maybe itwill go out. It could make an explosion. But I doubt that very much."

  "We'll hope," said Holmes, "that the lighter burns."

  Burke climbed into the diving suit, which had been designed foramateurs of undersea fishing to use in chilly waters. On Earth itwould have been intolerably heavy, for a man moving about out of theocean. But there was no weight here. If M-387 had a gravitational fieldat all, which in theory it had to have, it would be on the order ofmillionths of the pull of Earth.

  Keller sat in the control-chair, watching the instruments and theoutside television screens which showed the bore now reduced to fiftyfeet. Somehow the more distant parts of the tunnel looked hazy, asif there were a slight mist in whatever gas had been released init. Sandy watched Burke pull on the helmet and close the face-plate.She grasped a hand-hold, her knuckles turning white. Pam nestledcomfortably in a corner of the ceiling of the control-room. Holmesfrowned as Burke went into the air-lock and closed the inner door.

  His voice came immediately out of a speaker at the control-desk.

  "I'm breathing canned air from the suit," he said curtly.

  There were scrapings. The outer lock-door made noises. There was whatseemed to be a horribly long wait. Then they heard Burke's voice again.

  "I've tried it," he reported. "The lighter burns when it's next to theslightly opened door. I'm opening wide now."

  More noises from the air-lock.

  "It still burns. Repeat. The lighter burns all right. The tunnel isfilled with air. I'm going to crack my face-plate and see how itsmells."

  Silence, while Sandy went white. But a moment later Burke said crisply,"It smells all right. It's lifeless and stuffy, but there's nothing init with an odor. Hold on--I hear something!"

  A long minute, while the little ship floated eerily almost in contactwith the walls about it. It turned slowly. Then there came brisk,brief fluting noises. They were familiar in kind. But this was a shortmessage, of some fifteen or twenty seconds length, no more. It ended,was repeated, ended, was repeated, and went on with an effect ofmechanical and parrot-like repetition.

  "It's good air," reported Burke. "I'm breathing normally. But it mighthave been stored for ages. It's stale. Do you hear what I do?"

  "Yes," said Sandy in a whisper to the control-room. "It's a call. It'stelling us to do something. Come back inside, Joe!"

  They heard the outer air-lock door closing and its locking-dogsengaging. The fluting noises ceased to be audible. The inner door swungwide. Burke came into the control-room, his helmet face-plate open. Hewriggled out of the diving suit.

  "Something picked up the fact that we'd entered. It closed a doorbehind us. Then it turned on lights for us. Then it let air into theentrance-lock. Now it's telling us to do something."

  The ship surged, ever so gently. Keller had turned on an infinitesimaltrace of drive. The walls of the bore floated past on the televisionscreens. There was mist in the air outside. It seemed to clear as theship moved.

  Keller made a gratified small sound. They could see the end of thetunnel. There was a platform there. Stairs went to it from the side ofthe bore. There was a door with rounded corners in the end wall. Thatwall was metal.

  Keller carefully turned the ship until the stairway was in properposition for a landing, if there had been gravitation to make thestairs usable. Very, very gently, he lowered the ship upon the platform.

  There was a singular tugging sensation which ceased, came again,ceased, and gradually built up to a perfectly normal feeling of weight.They stood upon the floor of the control-room with every physicalsensation they'd felt during one-gravity acceleration on the way outhere, and which they'd have felt if the ship were aground on Earth.

  "Artificial gravity! Whoever made this knew something!" Burke said.

  Pam swallowed and spoke with an apparent attempt at nonchalance.

  "Now what do we do?"

  "We--look for the people," said Sandy in a queer tone.

  "There's nobody here, Sandy!" Burke said irritably. "Can't you see?There can't be anybody here! They'd have signaled us what to doif there had been! This is machinery working. We do something andit operates. But then it waits for us to do something else. It'slike--like a self-service elevator!"

  "We didn't come here for an elevator ride," said Sandy.

  "I came to find out what's here," said Burke, "and why it's signalingto Earth. Holmes, you stay here with the girls and I'll take a lookoutside."

  "I'd like to mention," said Holmes drily, "that we haven't a weapon onthis ship. When they shot rockets at us back on Earth, we didn't haveeven a pea-shooter to shoot back with. We haven't now. I think thegirls are as safe exploring as they are here. And besides, we'll allfeel better if we're together."

  "I'm going!" said Sandy defiantly.

  Burke hesitated, then shrugged. He unlatched the devices which keptboth doors to the air-lock from being open at the same time. It wasnot a completely cautious thing to do, but caution was impractical.The ship was imprisoned. It was incapable of defense. There was simplynothing sensible about precautions that couldn't prevent anything.

  Burke threw open the outer lock door. One by one, the five of themclimbed down to the platform so plainly designed for a ship of space--asmall one--to land upon. Nothing happened. Their surroundings werecompletely uninformative. This landing-platform might have been builtby any race on Earth or anywhere else, provided only that it usedstairs.

  "Here goes," said Burke.

  He went to the door with rounded corners. There was something like ahandle at one side, about waist-high. He put his hand to it, tuggedand twisted, and the door gave. It was not rusty, but it badly neededlubrication. Burke pulled it wide and stared unbelievingly beyond.

  Before him there stretched a corridor which was not less than twentyfeet high and just as wide. The long, glowing tubes of light thatilluminated the ship-tunnel were here, too, fixed in the ceiling. Thecorridor reached away, straight and unbroken, until its end seemed amere point in the distance. It looked about a full mile long. Therewere doorways in both its side walls, and they dwindled in the distancewith a monotonous regularity until they, too, were mere verticalspecks. One could not speak of the length of this corridor in feet oryards. It was a mile.

  It was incredible. It was overwhelming. And it was empty. It shone inthe glare of the light tubes which made a river of brilliance overhead.It seemed preposterous that so vast a construction should have noliving thing in it. But it was absolutely vacant.

  They stared down its length for long seconds. Then Burke seemed toshake himself.

  "Here's the parlor. Let's walk in, even if there's no welcomingcommittee."

  His voice echoed. It rolled and reverberated and then diminished veryslowly to nothing.

  Burke strode forward with Sandy close to him. Pam stared blankly, andinstinctively moved up to Holmes. Once they were through the door, thesensation was not that of adventure in a remote part of space, but ofbeing in some strange and impossible monument on Earth. The feeling ofweight, if not completely normal, was so near it as not to be noticed.They could
have been in some previously unknown structure made by men,at home.

  This corridor, though, was not built. It was excavated. Some processhad been used which did not fracture the stone to be removed. Thesurface of the rock about them was smooth. In places it glittered.The doorways had been cut out, not constructed. They were of a sizewhich made them seem designed for the use of men. The compartments towhich they gave admission were similarly matter-of-fact. They werewindowless, of course, but their strangeness lay in the fact that theywere empty, as if to insist that all this ingenuity and labor had beenabandoned thousands of years before. Yet from somewhere in the asteroida call still went out urgently, filling the solar system with plaintivefluting sounds, begging whoever heard to come and do something whichwas direly necessary.

  A long, long way down the gallery there were two specks. A quarter-milefrom the entrance, they saw that one of the rooms contained a pile ofmetal ingots, neatly stacked and bound in place by still-glisteningwire. At half a mile they came upon the things in the gallery itself.One was plainly a table with a single leg, made of metal. It wasunrusted, but showed signs of use. The other was an object with ahollow top. In the hollow there were twisted, shriveled shreds ofsomething unguessable.

  "If men had built this," said Burke, and again his voice echoed androlled, "that hollow thing would be a stool with a vanished cushion,and the table would be a desk."

  Sandy said thoughtfully, "If men had built this, there'd be signssomewhere marking things. At least there'd be some sort of numbers onthese doorways!"

  Burke said nothing. They went on.

  The gallery branched. A metal door closed off the divergent branch.Burke tugged at an apparent handle. It did not yield. They continuedalong the straight, open way.

  They came to a larger-than-usual opening in the side wall. Inside itthere were rows and rows and rows of metal spheres some ten feet indiameter. There must have been hundreds of them. Beside the door therewas a tiny shelf, with a tinier box fastened to it. A long way farther,they came to what had appeared to be the end of this corridor. But itdid not end. It slanted upward and turned and they found themselves inthe same corridor on a different level, headed back in the directionfrom which they had come. Their footsteps echoed hollowly in thestill-enormous emptiness. There were other closed doors. Burke triedsome. Holmes tried others. They did not open. Keller moved raptly,gazing at this and that.

  Everything was strange, but not strange enough to be frightening. Onecould have believed this place the work of men, except that thiswas beyond the ability of men to make. There must be miles of vacantrooms carved out of solid rock. They came upon some hundreds of yardsof doorways, and in every room on which they opened, there were metalframes about the walls. Holmes said suddenly, "If men had built thisplace, those could be bunks."

  They came to another place where there was dust, and a group of sixhuge rooms communicating not only with the corridor but with eachother. They found hollow metal things like cook pans. They found ahollow small object which could have been a drinking vessel. It wasbroken. It was of a size suitable for men.

  "If men built this," said Holmes again, "these could be mess-halls. ButI agree with Sandy that there should be signs."

  Yet another closed door. It resisted their efforts to open it, justlike the others. Keller put out his hand and thoughtfully touched thestone beside it. He looked astonished.

  "What?" asked Burke. He touched the stone as Keller had. It wasbitterly, bitterly cold. "The air's warm and the stone's cold! What'sthis?"

  Keller wetted the tip of his finger and rubbed it on the rocky sidewall. Instantly, frost appeared. But the air remained warm.

  The gallery turned again, and again rose. The third-level passagewaywas shorter; barely half a mile in length. Here they passed door afterdoor, all open, with each compartment containing a huge and somehowmalevolent shape of metal. And beside each doorway there was a littleshelf with a small box fastened to it.

  "These," said Holmes, "could be guns, if there were any way for them toshoot anything. Just by the look of them I'd say they were weapons."

  Burke said abruptly, "Keller, the stone being freezing cold while theair's warm means that this place has been heated up lately. Heat's beenpoured into it. Within hours!"

  Keller considered. Then he shook his head.

  "Not heat. Warmed air."

  Burke went scowling onward. He followed, actually, the only routethat was open. Other ways were cut off by doors which refused toopen. Sandy, beside him, noted the floor. It was stone like the wallsand ceiling. But it was worn. There were slight inequalities in it,beginning a foot or so from the walls. Sandy envisioned thousands offeet moving about these resonant corridors for hundreds or thousandsof years in order to wear away the solid stone in this fashion.She felt age about her--incredible age reaching back to time pastimagining, while the occupants of this hollow world swarmed about itsinterior. Doing what?

  Burke considered other things. There were the ten-foot metal spheres,ranged by hundreds in what might be a magazine below. There were thesquat and ugly metal monsters which seemed definitely menacing tosomebody or something. There were the metal frameworks like bunks.There was no rust, here, which could be accounted for if Kellerhappened to be right and warmed air had been released lately incorridors which before--for ten thousand years or more--had containedonly the vacuum of space. And there were those rooms which could bemess-halls.

  These items were subject matter for thought. But if what they hintedat was true, there must be other specialized compartments elsewhere.There must be storerooms for food for those who managed the guns--ifthey were guns--and the spheres, and lived in the bunk-rooms and atein the mess-halls. There'd be storerooms for equipment and supplies ofall sorts. And again, if Keller were right about the air, there must beenormous pressure-tanks which had held the asteroid's atmosphere underhigh pressure for millennia, only to warm it and release it within thehour so that those who came by ship could use it.

  An old phrase occurred to Burke. "A mystery wrapped in an enigma."It applied to these discoveries. Plainly the release of air had beendone without the command of any living creature. There could be nonehere! As plainly, the signals from space had been begun without theinterposition of life. The transmitter which still senselessly flungits message to Earth was a robot. The operation of the ship-lock, thewarming of air, the lighting of the ship-lock and the corridors--allhad been accomplished by machinery, obeying orders given to thetransmitter first by some unguessable stimulus.

  But why? Other mysteries aside, there had plainly been meticulouspreparation for the welcoming of a ship from space. No, not welcoming.Acceptance of a ship from space. Somebody had been expected to respondto those plaintive fluting noises which went wailing through the solarsystem. Who were those waited-for visitors expected to be? What werethey expected to do? For that matter, what was the purpose of theasteroid itself? What had it been built for? At some time or another itmust have contained thousands of inhabitants. What were they here for?What became of them? And when the asteroid was left--abandoned--whatconceivable situation was to trigger the transmitter to send out urgentcalls, and then a directional guiding-signal the instant the call wasanswered? When Burke's ship came, the asteroid accepted it withoutquestion and carried out mechanical operations to make it possiblefor that ship's crew to roam at will through it. What activated thismechanism of so many eons ago?

  The five newly-arrived humans, three men and two girls, trudged alongthe echoing gallery cut out of the asteroid's heart. Murmurous soundsaccompanied them. Once they came to a place where a whispering-galleryeffect existed. They heard their footsteps repeated loudly as if theasteroid inhabitants were approaching invisibly, but no one came.

  "I don't like this!" Pam said uneasily.

  Then her own voice mocked her, and she realized what it was, andgiggled nervously. That also was repeated, and sounded like somethingwhich seemed to sneer at them. It was unpleasant.

  They came to the end of the ga
llery. There was a stair leading upward.There was nowhere else to go, so Burke started up, Sandy close behindhim, and Holmes and Pam behind them. Keller brought up the rear. Theyclimbed, and small noises began to be audible.

  They were fluting sounds. They grew louder as the party from Earth wentup and up. They reached a landing, and here also there was a metal doorwith rounded corners. Through it and from beyond it came the pipingnotes that Burke had heard in his dream some hundreds of times and thatlately had come to Earth from emptiness. The sounds seemed to pause andto begin again, and once more to pause. It was not possible to tellwhether they came from one source, speaking pathetically, or from twosources in conversation.

  Sandy went utterly white and her eyes fixed upon Burke. He was nearlyas pale, himself. He stopped. Here and now there was no trace ofribbony-leaved trees or the smell of green things, but only air whichwas stuffy and lifeless as if it had been confined for centuries. Andthere was no sunset sky with two moons in it, but only carved andseamless stone. Yet there were the familiar fluting sounds....

  Burke put his hand to the curiously-shaped handle of the door. Ityielded. The door opened inward. Burke went in, his throat absurdlydry. Sandy followed him.

  And again there was disappointment. Because there was no livingcreature here. The room was perhaps thirty feet long and as wide.There were many vision-screens in it, and some of them showed thestars outside with a precision of detail no earthly television couldprovide. The sun glowed as a small disk a third of its proper diameter.It was dimmer, too. The Milky Way showed clearly. And there were verymany screens which showed utterly clear views of the surface of theasteroid, all broken, chaotic, riven rock and massy, unoxydized metal.

  But there was no life. There were not even symbols of life. There wereonly machines. They noticed a large transparent disk some ten feetacross. Specks of light glowed within its substance. Off at one side anangular metal arm held a small object very close to the disk's surface,a third of the way from its edge. It did not touch the disk, but underit and in the disk there was a little group of bright-red speckswhich quivered and wavered. They were placed in a strict mathematicalarrangement which very, very slowly changed so that it would be hoursbefore it had completed a rotation and had exactly the same appearanceagain.

  The flutings came from a tall metal cone on the floor. Another machinenearby held a round plate out toward the cone. "There's nobody here,"said Sandy in a strange voice. "What'll we do now, Joe?"

  "This must be the transmitter," he murmured. "The sound-record for thebroadcasts must be in here, somehow. It's possible that this plate is asort of microphone--"

  Keller, beaming, pointed to a round spot which quivered with an eerieluminescence. It glowed more brightly and dimmed according to theflutings. Burke said "The devil!" and the round spot flickered up verybrightly for an instant.

  "Yes," said Burke. "It's a mike. It's quite likely--" the round spotflared up and dimmed with the modulations of his voice--"it's quitelikely that what I say goes into the broadcast to Earth."

  The cone ceased to emit fluting noises. Burke said very steadily--andthe spot flickered violently with the sounds--"I think I amtransmitting to Earth. If so, this is Joe Burke. I announce the arrivalof my ship at Asteroid M-387. The asteroid has been hollowed out andfitted with an air-lock which admitted our ship. It is a--a--"

  He hesitated, and Holmes said curtly, "It's a fortress."

  "Yes," said Burke heavily. "It's a fortress. There are weapons wehaven't had time to examine. There are barracks for a garrison ofthousands. But there is no one here. It has been deserted, but notabandoned, because the transmitter was set up to send out a call whensome occasion arose. It seems to have arisen. There is a big platehere which may be a star map, with a scale on which light-years maybe represented by inches. I don't know. There are certain bright-redspecks on it. They are moving. There is a machine to watch thosespecks. Apparently it actuated the transmitter to make it call to allthe solar system."

  Keller suddenly put his finger to his lips. Burke nodded and saidcurtly, "I'll report further."

  Keller flipped over an odd switch with something of a flourish--afterwhich he looked embarrassed. The transmitter went dead.

  "He's right," said Holmes. "Back home they know we're here, I suspect,and you've told enough to give them fits. I think we'd better becareful what we say in the clear."

  Burke nodded again. "There'll be calls from Earth shortly and we candecide whether or not to use code then. Keller, can you trace the leadsto this transmitter and find the receiver that picked up that WestVirginia beam-signal and changed the first broadcast to the second? Itshould be as sensitive as this transmitter is powerful."

  Keller nodded confidently.

  "It'll take thirty-some minutes for that report of mine to reach Earthand an answer to get back," observed Burke, "if everything worksperfectly and the proper side of Earth is turned this way. I think wecan be sure there's nobody but us in the fortress."

  His sensations were peculiar. It was exciting to have found a fortressin space, of course. It was the sort of thing that might have satisfieda really dedicated scientist completely. Burke realized the importanceof the discovery, but it was an impersonal accomplishment. It didnot mean, to Burke, that he'd carried out the purpose behind hiscoming here. This fortress was linked to a dream about a world withtwo moons in its sky and someone or something running breathlesslybehind unearthly swaying foliage. But this place was not the place ofthat dream, nor did it fulfill it. Mystery remained, and frustration,and Burke was left in the state of mind of a savage who has found atreasure which means much to civilized men, but doesn't make him anyhappier because he doesn't want what civilized men can give him.

  He grimaced and spoke without elation.

  "Let's go back to the ship and get a code message ready for Earth."

  He led the way out of this room of many motionless but operatingmachines. The incredibly perfect vision-screen images still portrayedthe cosmos outside with all the stars and the sun itself moving slowlyacross their plates. They saw sunshine and starlight shining on thebroken, chaotic outer surface of the asteroid. Wavering, curiouslywrithing red specks on the ten-foot disk continued their crawlingmotion. Keller fairly glowed with enthusiasm as he began to investigatethis apparatus.

  They all went back to the ship, except for Keller. They retraced theirway along the long and brilliantly lighted galleries. They descendedramps and went along more brilliantly lighted corridors. Then theycame to the branch which had been blocked off by a door that would notopen. It was open now. They could see along the new section for a long,long way. They passed places where other doors had been closed, butnow were open. What they could see inside them was almost exclusivelya repetition of what they saw outside of them. They passed the placewhere hundreds of ten-foot metal spheres waited for an unknown use.They passed the table with a single leg, and the compartment with manymetal ingots stored in it.

  Finally, they came to the door with rounded corners, went through it,and there was their ship with its air-lock doors open, waiting in thebrightly lighted tunnel.

  They went in, and the feeling was of complete anticlimax. They knew, ofcourse, that they had made a discovery beside which all arch?ologicaldiscoveries on Earth were trivial. They had come upon operatingmachines which must be old beyond imagining, unrusted because preservedin emptiness, and infinitely superior to anything that men had evermade. They had come upon a mystery to tantalize every brain on Earth.The consequences of their coming to this place would re-make all ofEarth's future. But they were singularly unelated.

  "I'll make up a sort of report," said Burke heavily, "of what we saw aswe arrived, and our landing, and that sort of thing. We'll get it incode and ready for transmission. We can use the asteroid's transmitter."

  Holmes scowled at the floor of the little ship.

  "You'll make a report, too," said Burke. "You realized that this is afortress. There can't be any doubt. It was built and put here to fightsomething.
It wasn't built for fun. But I wonder who it was meant to dobattle with, and why it was left by its garrison, and why they set up atransmitter to broadcast when something happened! Maybe it was to callthe garrison back if they were ever needed. But thousands of years--Youmake a report on that!"

  Holmes nodded.

  "You might add," said Pam, shivering a little, "that it's a terriblycreepy place."

  "What I don't understand," said Sandy, "is why nothing's labelled.Nothing's marked. Whoever built it must have known how to write, insome fashion. A civilized race has to have written records to staycivilized! But I haven't seen a symbol or a pointer or even a colorused to give information."

  She got out the papers on which she would code the reports as Burkeand Holmes turned them over for transmission. She began to write out,carefully, the elaborate key to the coding. Almost reluctantly, Pamprepared to do the same with Holmes' narrative of what he'd seen.

  But if enthusiasm was tempered in the ship, there was no such reservein the United States. Burke's voice had cut into one of the spacebroadcasts which arrived every seventy-nine minutes. There had been theusual cryptic, plaintive piping noises, repeating for the thousandthtime their meaningless message. Then a human voice said almostinaudibly, "_... 'll we do now, Joe?_" It was heard over an entirehemisphere, where satellite-tracking stations and radar telescopeslistened to and recorded every broadcast from space.

  It was a stupendous happening. Then Burke's voice came through theflutings. "_This must be the transmitter. The sound-record for thebroadcasts must be in here, somehow. It's quite possible that thisplate is a sort of microphone...._" A few seconds later he was heard tosay, "_The devil!_" And later still he addressed himself directly tohis listeners on Earth.

  He'd spoken the words eighteen and a fraction minutes before theyarrived, though they traveled at the speed of light. Broadcast andecstatically reported in the United States, they touched off a popularreaction as widespread as that triggered by the beginning of thesignals themselves. Broadcasters abandoned all other subject matter.Announcers with lovely diction stated the facts and then expandedthem into gibbering nonsense. Man had reached M-387. Man had spokento Earth across two hundred seventy million miles of emptiness. Manhad taken possession of a fortress in space. Man now had an outpost, astepping-stone toward the stars. Man had achieved.... Man had risen....Man now took the first step toward his manifest destiny, which was tooccupy and possess all the thousands of thousands of planets all theway to the galaxy's rim.

  But this was in the United States. Elsewhere, rejoicing was much less,especially after a prominent American politician was reported to havesaid that America's leadership of Earth was not likely ever to bechallenged again. A number of the smaller nations immediately protestedin the United Nations. That august body was forced to put upon itsagenda a full-scale discussion of U.S. space developments. MiddleEuropean nations charged that the purpose of America was to monopolizenot only the practical means of traveling to other members of thesolar system, but all natural and technical resources obtained by suchjourneyings. With a singular unanimity, the nations at the edge of theRussian bloc demanded that there should be equality of information onEarth. No nation should hold back scientific information. In fact,there was bitter denunciation of the use of code by the humans now onM-387. It was demanded that they answer in the clear all scientificinquiries made by any government--in the clear so everybody couldeavesdrop.

  In effect, the United States rejoiced in and boasted of theachievements of some of its citizens who, after escaping attack byAmerican guided missiles, had found a stepping-stone toward the stars.But the rest of the world jealously demanded that the United Statesreap no benefit from the fact. International tension, in fact, rose toa new high.

  And Burke and the others laboriously gathered this bit of informationand discovered the lack of that. They found incredible devices whosepurpose or workings they could not understand. They found everypossible evidence of a civilization beside which that of Earth wasintolerably backward. But the civilization had abandoned the asteroid.

  By the second day the mass of indigestible information had becomealarming. They could marvel, but they could not understand. And notto understand was intolerable. They could comprehend that there wasa device with red sparks in it which had made another device send afluting, plaintive call to all the solar system. Nothing else wasunderstandable. The purpose of the call remained a mystery.

  But the communicators hummed with messages from Earth. It seemedthat every radar telescope upon the planet had been furnished with atransmitter and that every one bombarded the asteroid with a tight beamcarrying arguments, offers, expostulations and threats.

  "This ought to be funny," said Burke dourly. "But it isn't. All we knowis that we've found a fortress which was built to defend a civilizationabout which we know nothing except that it isn't in the solar system.We know an alarm went off, to call the fortress' garrison back toduty, but the garrison didn't come. We did. We've some evidence thata fighting fleet or something similar is headed this way and that itintends to smash this fortress and may include Earth. You'd think thatthat sort of news would calm them down, on Earth!"

  The microwave receiver was so jammed with messages that there was nocommunication at all. None could be understood when all arrived atonce. Burke had to send a message to Earth in code, specifying a newand secret wavelength, before it became possible to have a two-waycontact with Earth. But the messages continued to come out, every oneclamoring for something else of benefit to itself alone.