Dabrowsky said: “Did Dave tell you it wasn’t made of glass?”
“No? What was it?”
“Metal. A transparent metal. We’ve put the segment in the decontamination chamber, but it doesn’t seem to be radioactive. And there’s no radioactivity in the tomb. It’s a shield against radioactivity.”
“How did you get in?”
“The heat laser sliced straight through it.”
Carlsen said irritably: “Next time, you wait for my orders.” He brushed aside an interruption. “I meant to contact moonbase and suggest we leave the tombs untouched for a later expedition. Suppose that thing was in a state of suspended animation? And suppose you’ve now killed it?”
“There’s twenty-nine more,” Murchison said.
“That’s not the point. You’ve thrown away a life, just because the damn fools back on earth don’t know the meaning of the word patience. It’d take a few months to get a fully equipped expedition here. They could tow this thing into earth orbit, and spend the next ten years learning all about it. Instead –”
Dabrowsky interrupted firmly: “Excuse my saying so, Skip, but this is your fault. You got them into this state by talking about giants.”
“Giants?” Carlsen had forgotten what he said.
“You said it looked as if it had been built by giants. That’s the story that went out on the television news last night: EXPLORERS DISCOVER SPACESHIP BUILT BY GIANTS.”
Carlsen said: “Oh, shit.”
“You can imagine the result. Everyone’s been waiting to hear about the giants. A spaceship fifty miles long built by creatures a mile high. . . They’re all dying for the next instalment.”
Carlsen stared gloomily through the port. He picked up a mug of coffee from the table and absent-mindedly took a sip. “I suppose I’d better go and look. . .”
Ten minutes later he was standing beside the bed, looking down at the naked man. He had removed the canvas blanket by cutting it. Now he could see that the man was held by metal bands. The flesh looked shrunken and cold; when he touched it, it moved under his gloved fingers like jelly. The glassy stare made him uncomfortable. He tried to close an eyelid, but it sprang open again.
“That’s strange.”
Craigie, back in the ship said: “What?”
“The skin’s still elastic.” He looked down at the thin legs, the sinewy feet. Blue veins showed through the marble-coloured flesh. “Any idea how we get these bands off?”
“Burn them with the laser,” said Murchison, who was standing behind him.
“Okay. Try it.”
The wine-red beam stabbed from the end of the portable laser, but before Murchison could raise it, the metal bands retracted, sliding into holes in the bed.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I wasn’t even touching it.” Carlsen placed his hand under the feet and raised them. They floated into the air. The body remained at an angle, the head now floating clear of the canvas roll that served as a pillow.
Carlsen turned to Steinberg and Ives, who were waiting outside. “Come and get him.”
The body was placed in a grey metal shell. It was cigar-shaped and had two handles in the middle, giving it the appearance of an overlong carpetbag. In the ship’s inventory, this was known as a “specimen collector”; but all knew they were intended to serve as coffins in the event of a death in space. Dixon’s body now lay in a similar shell.
When Steinberg and Ives had left with the body, Carlsen examined every inch of the surface of the bed. It was in fact little more than a metal slab, and when he removed the canvas underlay, there was no sign of buttons or levers. He crawled underneath, but the underside was also smooth and unbroken.
Murchison said: “Perhaps it responded to your thought.”
“We’ll find out with the others.”
They spent half an hour examining and photographing the chamber; nothing of importance was revealed. Everything appeared to be purely functional.
He watched with interest as the laser cut through the wall of the next room. The spectroanalyser showed it to be of some unknown alloy; at least, the molecular patterns were typically metallic. In every other way, it resembled glass. It was about three inches thick. He had wondered why Murchison had carved a comparatively small entrance in the other chamber; now he saw why. The metal resisted a beam that could normally slice Corsham steel like soft cheese. It took twenty minutes to cut out a segment four feet high by two feet wide.
This was the room containing the dark-haired girl. After testing for space virus and radioactivity, Carlsen stepped over the threshold. He crossed to the bed, unsheathed the scoring knife, and sliced through the canvas where it vanished into the metal. He threw back the sheet. She lay as if on a mortuary slab, the feet together. The breasts, unflattened by gravity, stood out as if they had been supported by a brassiere.
“Incredible,” Murchison said. “She looks alive.”
It was true; the flesh of the body had none of the flabbiness associated with death.
“Could be blood pressure. If she was placed in here immediately after death, there’d be enough pressure to make the body swell slightly in the vacuum.”
“Shall I start with the laser?” The eagerness in his voice made Carlsen smile. Without taking his eyes off the girl, he said: “Okay. Go ahead.” As he spoke, the metal bands slid back, leaving marks on the naked flesh of the belly and thighs.
“It must be some form of thought control. Let’s see if I can make them go back.” He stared at the bed, concentrating, but nothing happened. He turned and beckoned to Steinberg and Ives. “Okay. Take her back to the freezer.”
Steinberg said: “If there’s no room in the freezer, she can share my bed till we get back to earth.”
Carlsen grinned. “I don’t think you’d find her very responsive.” He turned to Murchison. “Let’s get back.”
“Is that all we’re taking?” Murchison sounded disappointed.
“Two’s enough, don’t you think?”
“There’s plenty of room for more in the freezer.”
Carlsen laughed. “All right. Just one more.”
He let Murchison lead the way. As he expected, Murchison went to the chamber containing the blonde girl. He stood and watched while the laser turned the metal-glass into red-hot globules that splashed on the floor. When the last link had been cut through, the segment fell inward; Murchison stumbled forward and the laser bounced against the floor, searing a small crater.
“Hey, careful. Are you all right?”
“Sorry, Skip.” His voice sounded laboured. “I’m suddenly damn tired.”
Carlsen peered through the glass of the space helmet; Murchison looked exhausted and pinched. “You go on back to the Hermes, Bill. Tell Dave and Lloyd to get back here with another shell.”
He moved to the bedside. This time, instead of using the scoring knife, he tried an experiment. He stared hard at the canvas sheet and mentally ordered it to retract. For a moment nothing happened; then the metal bands under the sheet slid away. A moment later, the sheet itself slid across the body and into a gap that opened in the edge of the slab. He said: “Of course.”
“What’s of course?” Craigie had overheard him in the Hermes.
“I just made the bands retract by willing them to move. You realise what that means?”
“High-power technology.”
“I don’t mean that. It means these creatures are probably still alive. The bands are made to respond to their thought-pressure when they wake up. I wonder if I can. . .” He stared at the table, mentally ordering the bands to go back, but nothing happened. He said: “No. That makes sense. They wouldn’t need to make the bands go back, once they’d awakened. But how the hell were they supposed to get out of here?”
“Out of the ship?”
“No. Out of this glass chamber.” As he said this, he stared at the end wall and mentally ordered a door to open. Instead, the whole wall slid smoothly aside. At that moment, he saw Ives and Steinberg floating along the hallway, carrying the coffin shell. He said: “You don’t have to squeeze in through the door. Come on through the wall.”
“How the hell’d you do that?”
“Like this.” As he stared at the wall, he knew it would move. As he concentrated, it clicked into place. “This whole thing’s designed to respond to telepathic orders. But only from inside.”
“How do you know?”
“Look.” He walked to the wall, willing it to open; it slid aside to let him past. Outside, he ordered it to close. Nothing happened. “You see. It was designed only to be operated from the inside.”
The men were staring down at the body of the blonde. She was slimmer than the other girl, and a few years older; but the flesh was as firm and unwrinkled.
“Come on. Let’s get back to the Hermes.”
As they removed their spacesuits in the airlock, he observed that Ives and Steinberg looked ill. Ives massaged his eyes with his hand. “I think I need a sleep.”