Chapter III

After a few short bursts which lifted the satellite up into a higher orbit, the jets stopped. The artificial moon went on coasting innocently around the Earth.

"Well--I'll--be--damned!" said MacIlheny softly. The others, either silently or verbally, agreed with him.

"Get a reading on that new orbit!" MacIlheny snapped after a moment. Blake was already on the telephone.

MacIlheny turned to Major Hamacher. "Be ready to take that bird up as soon as we get orbital readings and bearings. There's something screwy as hell going on up there, and I want to find out what it is! Those jets shouldn't be working at all. What could have turned them on at exactly the right moment?" He was talking more to himself than to the major, who was busily making last-minute adjustments on the instruments.

The computations on the new orbit came in, were run through the computers, and then fed into the autopilot section of the remote controls for the RJ-37.

"Any time you're ready, Major," MacIlheny said.

The major adjusted his controls, threw a switch, and pressed a stud.

Over two thousand miles away, in White Sands Spaceport, New Mexico, the atomic-powered, fully armed RJ-37 squirted a tongue of white-hot flame out of her rocket motors, climbed into the air, and launched herself toward space.

Over Major Hamacher's shoulder, MacIlheny and Blake watched the screen that showed the scene from the forward port of the space rocket.

For a while, there was nothing to see. As the ship gained altitude, it burst through a layer of low-hanging clouds, then there was nothing but the blue sky overhead. Gradually, as the air thinned, the sky became darker, more purplish. Stars began to appear, and finally the ship was in the blackness of space.

The major's hands glided smoothly over the controls, guiding the ship along its precalculated orbit, slowly overtaking the runaway satellite.

At first there was nothing to see--only the distant, fixed stars, glittering like tiny shards of diamond against a spread of blackest velvet. Then it became apparent that one of the shards was moving with relationship to the others. It became brighter, bigger. Then it was no longer a point of light, but a globe of metal floating in the infinite darkness of space.

Under the careful manipulation of Major Hamacher, the remote-controlled RJ-37 moved cautiously up to Satellite Number Four. As the details of the globe came into focus, every man in the room gasped involuntarily.

"What the hell is _that_?" asked Blake.

No one answered. It was obvious to everyone there that whatever it was that had crashed into Number Four and driven it off course, it was most certainly _not_ a meteorite.

* * * * *

At last, MacIlheny said: "I'll be willing to bet my last dollar that that's a spaceship of some kind."

From a gaping hole in the side of the satellite, there protruded a long, cigar-shaped shaft of bluish metal. It looked almost as though someone had shoved a fat blue cigar halfway into a silver tennis ball.

Major Hamacher said softly: "I wonder what kind of metal that ship is made of?"

"Yeah," said MacIlheny, "I wonder."

It was a good question. The steel hull of the Number Four had crumpled and torn like cardboard around the hole where the impact of the ship had melted and volatalized the metal. But the hull of the alien spaceship wasn't even dented.

"What now?" asked the major.

"Take the RJ-37 in carefully, and lock on with magnetic grapples," MacIlheny ordered.

Blake glanced at him. "What if the pilot or crew of that ship is still alive?"

"They probably are," MacIlheny said. "But we've got an H-bomb in our ship; if they try anything funny...."

"What makes you think they're alive?" the major asked as he eased the ship in.

"Somebody set off the atom jets when Number Four approached perigee," MacIlheny reminded him.

The RJ-37 approached Number Four closely, then the magnetic grapples were turned on, and the ship stuck to the hull of the battered space station with a metallic clank. The RJ-37 was only a few yards from the edge of the gaping hole that had been torn in the hull of the satellite. In front of them loomed the queer blue shaft of the alien ship.

"Okay, hold it," said MacIlheny. "Let's see what happens next. Surely they felt the jar when the ship landed." Forcing himself to be calm, MacIlheny struck a match and fired the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe.

* * * * *

They didn't have to wait long. From the edge of the hole, there suddenly appeared a moving shape. It was a manlike figure clad in a brilliant crimson spacesuit. The helmet was a dark purple, and it was difficult to see the head within.

"Looks like a man," said Blake.

"Not quite," MacIlheny said. "Look at the joints in the arms and legs. He's got two knees and two elbows."

"What's that he's holding cradled in his arms?" Blake wondered.

The major grunted. "Weapon of some sort. Look how he's pointing it straight at us."

For a full minute, the figure stood there, for all the world as though he were on the surface of a planet instead of on the outer hull of a space station. Then, slowly, it lowered the thing in its hands. When nothing happened, the figure put the weapon down on the steel hull at its feet and held its oddly double-jointed arms out from its body.

"Wild Bill Hickok," breathed Blake softly.

"Huh?" said the major.

"Hickok used to say: 'I'm a peaceable man.' I guess that's what this guy's trying to say."

"Looks like it," agreed MacIlheny. "I wish there were some way of signaling him."

"We've got the spotlights," suggested the major.

MacIlheny shook his head. "Leave 'em alone. We couldn't make any sense with them, and our friend out there might think they were weapons of some kind. I don't know what that thing he laid down will do, but I don't want to find out just yet."

The alien, his hands still out from his sides, walked slowly toward the RJ-37, his legs moving with a strange, loose suppleness. He came right up to the forward window and peered inside--at least, the attitude of his head suggested peering; within the dark purple helmet, the features could not be distinguished clearly.

At last, the figure stepped back and started making wigwag signs with his arms.

"Smart boy," said MacIlheny. "He recognizes that the ship is remote controlled. Wonder what he's trying to say."

The alien waved his hands and made gestures, but there was no recognizable pattern. None of the hand-signals meant anything to the Earthmen.

Blake leaned over and whispered into MacIlheny's ear. "Hadn't we better call the President, Mac? He'll want to know."

MacIlheny considered for a moment, then nodded. "Give him a direct beam on what's coming over this screen. Then give me a pair of earphones connected to his office. I want to be able to hear what he says, but I don't want him countermanding my orders to Major Hamacher."

* * * * *

The alien was still making his meaningless signals when Blake brought in a pair of earphones and clamped them on MacIlheny's head. A throat mike around his neck completed the communication circuit. "Can you hear me, Mr. President?" MacIlheny asked.

"Yes. Your man Blake explained everything to me."

"Got any advice?"

"Not yet. Let's see what happens. By the way, I've given the impression to the rest of the world that it was through your efforts that Number Four avoided crashing; I don't think we'd better let this leak out just yet."

"Right. Meantime, I'm going to try to capture that lad."

"How?" asked the President.

"Invite him into the ship and bring him back with it."

"All right," said the President, "but be careful."

"He's given up," said Blake, gesturing toward the screen.

The alien had given up his incomprehensible gesticulating and stood with his odd arms folded in an uncomfortable-looking knot.

"Major," said MacIlheny, "open the cargo hold."

The officer looked puzzled, but did as he was told. After all, the President himself had ordered him to obey MacIlheny. He touched a button on one side of the control panel. After four or five seconds, a light came on above it, indicating that the cargo hold of the RJ-37 was open. The alien evidently saw the door swing inward; he hesitated for a moment, then went around to the side of the ship, out of range of the TV camera.

But he didn't go inside immediately. MacIlheny hadn't expected him to; the alien couldn't be _that_ stupid. After perhaps half a minute, the alien figure reappeared and strode deliberately back to his own ship. He opened a port in the side and disappeared within.

Then, quite suddenly, the screen went blank.

"What happened?" snapped MacIlheny.

Blake, who had been watching the beam control instruments, said: "I don't know how he's done it, but he's managed to jam our radio beam! We're not getting any signal through!"

The President's voice crackled in MacIlheny's ears.

"Fitz! Detonate that bomb! We can't take any chances!"

MacIlheny half grinned. "Major," he said, "set off the H-bomb."

The major pressed a red button on the control panel.

* * * * *

Twenty minutes later, the screen came on again, showing the same scene as before. No one was surprised. By then, reports had come in that the satellite was still visible, still in its orbit. The H-bomb had failed to go off; the signal had never reached the detonation device.

The alien was standing in front of the camera, holding a large piece of mechanism in his hands. On Earth, the thing would have been almost too heavy to lift, but the gravitational pull of Satellite Number Four was almost negligible.

"_He's got the H-bomb!_"

MacIlheny recognized the President's voice in his ears.

The alien bowed toward the camera, then straightened and went back to his own ship. He clambered up the side of it with magnetic soles as easily as he had walked on the hull of the space station. Near the end of his ship, he opened a small door in the hull. Within was utter blackness.

Working slowly and deliberately, he pushed the H-bomb into the blackness. It wasn't just ordinary darkness; it seemed to be an actual, solid wall, painted deep black. As the bomb went in, it looked as though it were cut off abruptly at the black wall. Finally, there was nothing outside except the two detonating wires, which had been clipped off from inside the Earth ship. The alien took the wires in his hands.

"My God!" said the major. "He's going to blow up his own ship! Is he crazy?"

"I don't think so," said MacIlheny slowly. "Let's see what happens."

As the two wires came in contact, the black wall inside the small door became lighter, a pearly gray in color. There was no other result.

"Well I'll be damned," said Blake in a low, shocked voice.

The alien closed the door in the side of his ship and came back down to the camera. He bowed again. Then he pointed to the weapon that he had been carrying and waved his hands. He picked it up and brought it around the RJ-37. From the microphones inside the ship came a faint scraping sound. Then the alien reappeared in front of the ship. His arms were empty; he had put the weapon inside the open cargo hold.

"A fair trade is no robbery," Blake said softly.

The alien bowed once more, then turned on his heel and walked back to his ship. This time, he got inside and closed the door. Then the blue ship moved.

Slowly, like a car backing out of a garage, it pulled out of the hole in the satellite. Nowhere on its surface was there a mark or a scratch. When it was finally free of the satellite, it turned a little, its nose pointing off into space. A pale, rose-colored glow appeared at the tail of the ship, and the cigar of blue metal leaped forward. To all intents and purposes, it simply vanished.

"That," said the major in awe, "is what I call acceleration."

* * * * *

"Here's the way I see it, Mr. President," said MacIlheny several hours later. "When he cracked up by accidentally plowing into Number Four, something happened to his energy supply. Maybe he was already low, I don't know. Anyway, he was out of fuel."

"What do you think he used for fuel?"

"The most efficient there is," said MacIlheny. "Pure energy. Imagine some sort of force field that will let energy in, but won't let it out. It would be dead black on the outside, just like that whatever-it-was in the alien's ship. He just set off the H-bomb inside that field; what little radiation did get out made the field look gray--and that's a damned small loss in comparison with the total energy of that bomb."

"You know, Fitz, I'm going to have a hell of a job explaining where that bomb went," said the President.

"Yeah, but we've got his gun or whatever in exchange."

"But how do you know our technicians will be able to figure it out?"

"I think they will," MacIlheny said. "Their technology must be similar to ours or he wouldn't have been able to figure out how to fire the jets on the satellite or how to set off that bomb. He wouldn't have even known what the bomb was unless he was familiar with something similar. And he wouldn't have been able to blank out our controls unless he had a good idea of how they operated. They may be a little ahead of us, but not too much, and I'll bet we have some things they haven't."

"The trouble is," the President said worriedly, "that we don't know where he came from. He knows where we are, but we don't have any idea where his home planet is."

"That's true. On the other hand, we know something about his physical characteristics, while he doesn't know anything about ours. For instance, I doubt if he'd be happy here on Earth; judging by the helmet he wore, he can't stand too much light. He had it polarized almost black. Probably comes from a planet with a dim, red sun."

"Well, Fitz, when they do come, I hope it's for trade and not for war."

MacIlheny grinned. "It won't be war. Don't you remember? We've started trading already!"