The other radiated indecision for a moment, then it made the soft, barking sound that Earth-humans called laughter and said, “Right. But I have the feeling that if Pathologist Murchison had been here she would give you an argument about that, as well as subjecting me to a great deal of verbal abuse for allowing you to take the risk. Chen?”
“Sir,” replied the engineering officer. “We intend closing to a distance of twenty meters, very slowly,” Fletcher went on. “Be ready to pull us out again faster than that.”
By the time Fletcher and himself had suited-up and flown clear of Rhabwar’s personnel lock, Prilicla had had time for many second thoughts and had foolishly discarded all of them. It was not always an advantage to carry Educator tapes whose donors were less cowardly than himself, especially when he allowed them to influence his own thinking. The alien vessel was now rolling ponderously at a distance of about thirty meters, but no attempt had been made to kill its spin because the tractor beam might have furnished an avenue for electronic infection. As they compensated for its movement with their suit thrusters, it felt as if they were tiny insects sandwiched between the vast white wall that was the ambulance ship’s hull and the silvery surface of the alien vessel, with a broad, circular band that was divided into star-sprinkled space above and the mottled carpet of the planetary cloud blanket below them.
They used their suit thrusters to bring themselves to a halt within three meters of the open hatch cover. After a moment’s hesitation, Fletcher edged closer and one of its hands made fleeting contact with the metal projection, then gripped it firmly in both.
“No harmful effects noted,” it said for the benefit of the recorders.
“The mechanism projecting from the small compartment behind the hatch cover,” it went on, “appears to be a simple, extendible metal arm with a hinged outer section that is capable of rotation horizontally and vertically through one hundred and eighty degrees, and there is a gripping mechanism at its extremity. It has the appearance of being an unsophisticated device used for placing in position on, or removing objects from, the external hull. There is evidence of scorch damage….”
While the captain continued to describe in meticulous detail everything it was seeing and thinking, Prilicla waited until the slow, rolling motion of the vessel caused them to move close to the cratered area. With small, precisely timed bursts of thruster power he maintained position about two meters above them. He was not a forensics expert, but his visual acuity was exceptionally good and the type of damage he was seeing, although probably caused by the same agency, displayed a major inconsistency in its effect.
The first crater showed a normal, circular depression whose depth was approximately half of its diameter and with the interior and lip edges compressed and fused by the explosive pressure of a high-temperature blast of some kind, but the second one was entirely different. It had a shallower, ringlike formation with an area at its center that showed pressure but minimal heat damage. Deep scratches covering the area with what looked like small traces of silvery metal were adhering to some of them. Even though he was trusting to visual observation alone, Prilicla was sure that the metals of the hull and of that adhering to the scratches were markedly dissimilar. He edged closer to make absolutely sure before he spoke. “Friend Fletcher,” he said, “there is something very odd here that I would like you to see.”
“The compartment behind this access hatch looks very odd, too,” said the captain. It moved to join him and looked in the direction of his pointing digit for a moment before it added, “But you first, Doctor. What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“The difference in the extent and depth of the damage at this and the other crater,” he said. “You can see that this crater is shallower than the first one and, while the perimeter of this one has been fused by intense heat, the central area has been depressed but is not as badly burned. There is deep scratching that contains small traces of a brighter metal that is foreign to the surrounding hull. It looks as if a large, fairly smooth metal object made heavy contact at this spot. Friend Fletcher, the size and outline of the unburned area are suggestive.”