“I’d give my right arm for one,” said Mannon, then added, grinning, “My right leg, anyway.”
The Lieutenant returned his smile. He said, “As I remember the place, Doctor, there was no shortage of raw meat.”
O’Mara, who had been unusually silent until then, said very seriously, “Normally I am not a covetous man. But consider the things this hospital could do with just ten of those things, or even five. We have one and, if we were doing the right thing, we would put it back where we found it- obviously a tool like this is of enormous value. This means that we will have to buy or conduct some form of trade for them, and to do this we must first learn to communicate with their owners.”
He looked at each of them in turn, then went on sardonically. “One hesitates to mention such sordid commercial matters to pure-minded, dedicated medical men like yourselves, but I must do so to explain why, when Descartes eventually makes contact with the beings who use the tools, I want Conway and whoever else he may select to investigate the medical situation on Meatball.
“Our interest will not be entirely commercial, however,” he added quickly, “but it seems to me that if we have to go in for the practice of barter and exchange, the only thing we have to trade is our medical knowledge and facilities.”
VERTIGO
It was perhaps inevitable that when the long-awaited indication of intelligent life at last appeared the majority of the ship’s observers were looking somewhere else, that it did not appear in the batteries of telescopes that were being trained on the surface or on the still and cine films being taken by Descartes’ planetary probes, but on the vessel’s close approach radar screens.
In Descartes’ control room the Captain jabbed a button on his console and said sharply, “Communications…
“We have it, sir,” came the reply. “A telescope locked onto the radar bearing-the image is on your repeater screen Five. It is a two- or three stage chemically fueled vehicle with the second stage still firing. This means we will be able to reconstruct its flight path and pinpoint the launch area with fair accuracy. It is emitting complex patterns of radio frequency radiation indicative of high-speed telemetry channels. The second stage has just cut out and is falling away. The third stage, if it is a third stage, has not ignited. . . It’s in trouble!”
The alien spacecraft, a slim, shining cylinder pointed at one end and thickened and blunt at the other, had begun to tumble. Slowly at first but with steadily increasing speed it swung and whirled end over end.
“Ordnance?” asked the Captain.
“Apart from the tumbling action,” said a slower, more precise voice, “the vessel seems to have been inserted into a very neat circular orbit. It is most unlikely that this orbit was taken up by accident. The lack of sophistication-relative, that is-in the vehicle’s design and the fact that its nearest approach to us will be a little under two hundred miles all point to the conclusion that it is either an artificial satellite or a manned orbiting vehicle rather than a missile directed at this ship.
“If it is manned,” the voice added with more feeling, “the crew must be in serious trouble . .
“Yes,” said the Captain, who treated words like nuggets of some rare and precious metal. He went on, “Astrogation, prepare intersecting and matching orbits, please. Power Room, stand by.”
As the tremendous bulk of Descartes closed with the tiny alien craft it became apparent that, as well as tumbling dizzily end over end, the other vessel was leaking. The rapid spin made it impossible to say with certainty whether it was a fuel leak from the unfired third stage or air escaping from the command module if it was, in fact, a manned vehicle.
The obvious procedure was to check the spin with tractor beams as gently as possible so as to avoid straining the hull structure, then defuel the unfired third stage to remove the fire hazard before bringing the craft alongside. If the vessel was manned and the leak was of air rather than fuel, it could then be taken into Descartes’ cargo hold where rescue and first contact proceedings would be possible-at leisure since Meatball’s air was suited to human beings and the reverse, presumably, also held true.