so much time actinglike professional associates--explorer-ship officers--when things likethis were to be said ...
As they talked incoherently, or were even more eloquently silent, theship's ordinary lights came on. The battery-lamp went on.
"We've got to switch back to ship's circuit," said Baird reluctantly.They separated, and restored the operating circuits to normal. "We've gotfourteen days," he added, "and so much time to be on duty, and we've alost lifetime to live in fourteen days! Diane--"
She flushed vividly. So Baird said very politely into the microphone tothe navigation room:
"Sir, Lieutenant Holt and myself would like to speak directly to you inthe navigation room. May we?"
"_Why not?_" growled the skipper. "_You've noticed that the Plumiegenerator is giving the whole ship lights and services?_"
"Yes, sir," said Baird. "We'll be there right away."
* * * * *
They heard the skipper's grunt as they hurried through the door. A momentlater the ship's normal gravity returned--also through the Plumiegenerator. Up was up again, and down was down, and the corridors andcabins of the _Niccola_ were brightly illuminated. Had the ship beenother than an engineless wreck, falling through a hundred and fiftymillion miles of emptiness into the flaming photosphere of a sun,everything would have seemed quite normal, including the errand Baird andDiane were upon, and the fact that they held hands self-consciously asthey went about it.
They skirted the bulkhead of the main air tank. They headed along thebroader corridor which went past the indented inner door of the air lock.They had reached that indentation when Baird saw that the inner air-lockdoor was closing. He saw a human pressure suit past its edge. He saw thecorner of some object that had been put down on the air-lock floor.
Baird shouted, and rushed toward the lock. He seized the inner handle andtried to force open the door again, so that no one inside it could emergeinto the emptiness without. He failed. He wrenched frantically at thecontrol of the outer door. It suddenly swung freely. The outer door hadbeen put on manual. It could be and was being opened from inside.
"Tell the skipper," raged Baird. "Taine's taking something out!" He toreopen a pressure-suit cupboard in the wall beside the lock door. "He'llmake the Plumies think it's a return-gift for the generator!" He eeledinto the pressure suit and zipped it up to his neck. "The man's crazy! Hethinks we can take their ship and stay alive for a while! Dammit, our airwould ruin half their equipment! Tell the skipper to send help!"
He wrenched at the door again, jamming down his helmet with one hand. Andthis time the control worked. Taine, most probably, had forgotten thatthe inner control was disengaged only when the manual was actively inuse. Diane raced away, panting. Baird swore bitterly at the slowness ofthe outer door's closing. He was tearing at the inner door long before itcould be opened. He flung himself in and dragged it shut, and struck theemergency air-release which bled the air lock into space for speed ofoperation. He thrust out the outer door and plunged through.
His momentum carried him almost too far. He fell, and only the magneticsoles of his shoes enabled him to check himself. He was in that singularvalley between the two ships, where their hulls were impregnably weldedfast. Round-hulled Plumie ship, and ganoid-shaped _Niccola_, they stuckimmovably together as if they had been that way since time began. Wherethe sky appeared above Baird's head, the stars moved in statelyprocession across the valley roof.
He heard a metallic rapping through the fabric of his space armor. Thensunlight glittered, and the valley filled with a fierce glare, and a manin a human spacesuit stood on the _Niccola's_ plating, opposite thePlumie air lock. He held a bulky object under his arm. With his othergauntlet he rapped again.
"You fool!" shouted Baird. "Stop that! We couldn't use their ship,anyhow!"
His space phone had turned on with the air supply. Taine's voice snarled:
"_We'll try! You keep back! They are not human!_"
But Baird ran toward him. The sensation of running upon magnetic-soledshoes was unearthly: it was like trying to run on fly-paper orbird-lime. But in addition there was no gravity here, and no sense ofbalance, and there was the feeling of perpetual fall.
There could be no science nor any skill in an encounter under suchconditions. Baird partly ran and partly staggered and partly skated towhere Taine faced him, snarling. He threw himself at the other man--andthen the sun vanished behind the bronze ship's hull, and only stars movedvisibly in all the universe.
* * * * *
But the sound of his impact was loud in Baird's ears inside the suit.There was a slightly different sound when his armor struck Taine's, andwhen it struck the heavier metal of the two ships. He fought. But thesuits were intended to be defense against greater stresses than humanblows could offer. In the darkness, it was like two blindfolded menfighting each other while encased in pillows.
Then the sun returned, floating sedately above the valley, and Bairdcould see his enemy. He saw, too, that the Plumie air lock was now openand that a small, erect, and somehow jaunty figure in golden space armorstood in the opening and watched gravely as the two men fought.
Taine cursed, panting with hysterical hate. He flung himself at Baird,and Baird toppled because he'd put one foot past the welded boundarybetween the _Niccola's_ cobalt steel and the Plumie ship's bronze. Onefoot held to nothing. And that was a ghastly sensation, because if Taineonly rugged his other foot free and heaved--why--then Baird would gofloating away from the rotating, now-twinned ships, floating farther andfarther away forever.
But darkness fell, and he scrambled back to the _Niccola's_ hull as adisorderly parade of stars went by above him. He pantingly waited freshattack. He felt something--and it was the object Taine had meant to offeras a return present to the Plumies. It was unquestionably explosive,either booby-trapped or timed to explode inside the Plumie ship. Now itrocked gently, gripped by the magnetism of the steel.
The sun appeared again, and Taine was yards away, crawling and fumblingfor Baird. Then he saw him, and rose and rushed, and the clankings of hisshoe-soles were loud. Baird flung himself at Taine in a savage tackle.
He struck Taine's legs a glancing blow, and the cobalt steel held hisarmor fast, but Taine careened and bounced against the round bronze wallof the Plumie, and bounced again. Then he screamed, because he wentfloating slowly out to emptiness, his arms and legs jerkingspasmodically, while he shrieked ...
The Plumie in the air lock stepped out. He trailed a cord behind him. Heleaped briskly toward nothingness.
There came quick darkness once more, and Baird struggled erect despitethe adhesiveness of the _Niccola's_ hull. When he was fully upright, sickwith horror at what had come about, there was sunlight yet again, and menwere coming out of the _Niccola's_ air lock, and the Plumie who'd leapedfor space was pulling himself back to his own ship again. He had a loopof the cord twisted around Taine's leg. But Taine screamed and screamedinside his spacesuit.
It was odd that one could recognize the skipper even inside space armor.But Baird felt sick. He saw Taine received, still screaming, and carriedinto the lock. The skipper growled an infuriated demand for details. Hisspace phone had come on, too, when its air supply began. Baird explained,his teeth chattering.
"_Hah!_" grunted the skipper. "_Taine was a mistake. He shouldn't everhave left ground. When a man's potty in one fashion, there'll be cracksin him all over. What's this?_"
The Plumie in the golden armor very soberly offered the skipper theobject Taine had meant to introduce into the Plumie's ship. Baird saiddesperately that he'd fought against it, because he believed it a boobytrap to kill the Plumies so men could take their ship and fill it withair and cut it free, and then make a landing somewhere.
"_Damned foolishness!_" rumbled the skipper. "_Their ship'd begin tocrumble with our air in it! If it held to a landing--_"
Then he considered the object he'd accepted from the Plumie. It couldhave been a rocket war head, enclosed
in some container that woulddetonate it if opened. Or there might be a timing device. The skippergrunted. He heaved it skyward.
The misshapen object went floating away toward emptiness. Sunlight smoteharshly upon it.
"_Don't want it back in the _Niccola__," growled the skipper, "_but just tomake sure--_"
He fumbled a hand weapon out of his belt. He raised it, and it spurtedflame--very tiny blue-white sparks, each one indicating a pellet of metalflung away at high velocity.
One of them struck the shining, retreating container. It exploded with amonstrous, soundless, violence. It had been a rocket's war head. Therecould have been only one reason for it to be introduced into a Plumieship. Baird ceased to be shaky. Instead,