Joe-Jim fumbled around, trying to find controls which would produce a simulacrum of the heavens on the blank glass before him. There were no such controls and he had no way of knowing that the glass was an actual view port, obscured by the hull of the Ship proper, rather than a view screen.
But he did manage to actuate the controls that occupied the corresponding position. These controls were labeled LAUNCHING; Joe-Jim had disregarded the label because he did not understand it. Actuating them produced no very remarkable results, except that a red light blinked rapidly and a transparency below the label came into life. It read: AIR-LOCK OPEN.
Which was very lucky for Joe-Jim, Hugh, and Bobo. Had they closed the doors behind them and had the little Converter contained even a few grams of mass available for power, they would have found themselves launched suddenly into space, in a Ship’s boat unequipped for a trip and whose controls they understood only by analogy with those in the Control Room. Perhaps they could have maneuvered the boat back into its cradle; more likely they would have crashed attempting it.
But Hugh and Joe-Jim were not yet aware that the “apartment” they had entered was a spacecraft; the idea of a Ship’s boat was still foreign to them.
“Turn on the lights,” Hugh requested. Joe-Jim did so.
“Well?” Hugh went on. “What do you make of it?”
“It seems pretty obvious,” answered Jim. “This is another Control Room. We didn’t guess it was here because we couldn’t open the door.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Joe objected. “Why should there be two Control Rooms for one Ship?”
“Why should a man have two heads?” his brother reasoned. “From my point of view, you are obviously a supernumerary.”
“It’s not the same thing; we were born that way. But this didn’t just happen; the Ship was built.”
“So what?” Jim argued. “We carry two knives, don’t we? And we weren’t born with ’em. It’s a good idea to have a spare.”
“But you can’t control the Ship from here,” Joe protested. “You can’t see anything from here. If you wanted a second set of controls, the place to put them would be the Captain’s veranda, where you can see the stars.”
“How about that?” Jim asked, indicating the wall of glass.
“Use your head,” his brother advised. “It faces the wrong direction. It looks into the Ship, not out. And it’s not an arrangement like the Control Room; there isn’t any way to mirror the stars on it.”
“Maybe we haven’t located the controls for it.”
“Even so, you’ve forgotten something. How about that little Converter?”
“What about it?”
“It must have some significance. It’s not here by accident. I’ll bet you that these controls have something to do with that Converter.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Why are they here together if there isn’t some connection?”
Hugh broke his puzzled silence. Everythmg the twins had said seemed to make sense, even the contradictions. It was all very confusing. But the Converter, the little Conver– “Say, look,” he burst out.
“Look at what?”
“Do you suppose — Do you think that maybe this part of the Ship could move?”
“Naturally. The whole Ship moves.”
“No,” said Hugh, “no, no. I don’t mean that at all. Suppose it moved by itself. These controls and the little Converter, suppose it could move right away from the Ship.”
“That’s pretty fantastic.”
“Maybe so … but if it’s true, this is the way out.”
“Huh?” said Joe. “Nonsense. No door to the Outside here either.”
“But there would be if this apartment were moved away from the Ship: the way we came in!”
The two heads snapped simultaneously toward him as if jerked by the same string. Then they looked at each other and fell to arguing. Joe-Jim repeated his experiment witit the controls. “See?” Joe pointed out “‘Launching.’ It means to start something, to push something away.”
“Then why doesn’t it?”
“‘Air Lock Open.’ The doors we came through; it has to be that. Everything else is closed.”
“Let’s try it.”
“We would have to start the Converter first.”
“O.K.”
“Not so fast. Get out, and maybe you can’t come back. We’d starve.”