Chapter III

Lunch was over and General Hill had taken the floor.

"Gentlemen, while we're awaiting the occupants' awakening or until we decide we've waited long enough, we must learn all we can. If they awake and decide to leave, we'll at least have obtained specific knowledge of how _one_ spaceship works!

"We've only a vague suspicion of how the propulsion mechanism operates. But fortunately we've found equipment very similar to ours. Simpler in some respects. Probably worked _from_ transistors instead of _to_ them.

"The electronics men may have a free hand except for the bulkhead instrument. We'd better not tinker there until we're reasonably sure we know what we're doing. It may spell life or death to the crew. Some may prefer to study the books which we found," he added thoughtfully. "If so, speak up!"

"I would," Winthrop cut in. "I'd like Rabin and Norris to join me."

"An electronics engineer should round out the group," General Hill said. "Okay, Lizio. Now, gentlemen, shall we go?"

Rabin was a practicing psychologist with a strong background in semantics, linguistics, astronomy and a half-dozen other curiously diversified sciences. Yet, as Winthrop looked at him again, there was doubt--not as to Rabin's capability, but as to his _dependability_?

Was it some sense of inward nervousness, something contained in himself which he could not tolerate in others?

Rabin was studying the horribly graphic pictures as though each were a major work of art. Winthrop saw in the man's dark eyes something that had been in the little girl's eyes. He looked away.

The other men he felt more sure of. Norris--a top physicist at White Sands, thoroughly familiar with man's attempts at space flight. Lizio, an electronics engineer, with an alert, intelligent face, and excellent reputation.

Reassured by their competence he joined them as they bent over the larger volume. They found upon each drawing what certainly indicated a scale. Preceding the last, persistently identical symbol was a tailless arrow pointing left. They quickly named the last symbol "scale" and the arrow "equals."

"I'll do some measuring," Lizio said, and left. Winthrop and Norris began listing the various symbols, noting their frequency of appearance and relative positions.

An hour later Lizio returned, and began comparing his measurements with symbols on the drawings.

"They're definitely drawn to different scales," he said. "The symbols and measurements are not alike. That means different identifiable numbers. Lads, we can crack the math!"

They arrived at a unit, found that one hundred ninety-six units equaled slightly less than one meter, and from the precisely-marked drawings managed to label the symbols from one to fourteen. The fifteen symbol proved to be a fourteen followed by a one.

They were interrupted then as the book was taken to the Astoria signal center for photostating. They talked, while General Hill telephonically cut red tape to have computers rushed to them.

Suddenly Rabin cried, "I know the ship's point of origin!"

He displayed the book's center-spread, a beautiful skyscape from the plundered planet's surface. The stars and constellations seemed unfamiliar at first, but as Rabin remarked their luminosities and relative positions Norris exclaimed, "Of course--_Sirius_!"

Winthrop's troubled mind soared. Sirius! Over two and a half parsecs, eight and a half light years from the Solar System. Small wonder the crew was in a big sleep!

Knowledge of the ship's apparent point of origin kindled a deeper fire--the necessity to find out what they could _while_ they could. Even if the ship's occupants proved friendly they just might be firmly reticent.

The computers came, and an intense Benton Allan and his associates--a young man who immediately buried his thin, bespectacled nose in the math, and bent his thin frame to the instruments.

The ship swarmed with technicians. Engineers examined the gyros and swore without hesitation that they could be duplicated. Others studied the electronics computer tied into the bulkhead instrument and its related schematics, or huddled excitedly with astronomers and spatiologists.

One by one they tied the schematics and drawings to the instruments and equipment, at length realizing that nothing in the volume related to the ship forward of the bulkhead.

They'd been talking it over.

"If you were in a spaceship," Winthrop said, "you'd certainly keep on hand the mechanics of what keeps your living quarters livable. There'll be another book up forward."

They left it at that.

Winthrop realized that with men here to whom math was sustenance, the sought-after answers might well be attained more quickly if he did not try to help further. As he went out, his gaze swept Rabin. The man's face was still drawn and pale in silent, fascinated study of the picture book.

The ship again. In the bright sunlight Winthrop asked questions while study of the stern went on apace. The bow retained its mystery. The many electronic listening devices attached forward had not recorded one decibel of sound.

In his mind the thought raced again: _Was there something lurking in the bow--something the little girl and Rabin had sensed--some unspeakable horror from the stars?_

He sought the general.

"Bert, what about the bulkhead door?" he asked. "Are we going to open it?"

"Not immediately," General Hill replied. "The occupants will, if alive, probably come out in their own way and time. If we try to break in prematurely we may bring on their deaths."

His face grew somber. "It's a problem. The ship drifted down as if with a dead man's hand at the helm. It didn't come at that speed from origin. Someone or something cut its speed when it hit our atmosphere. Had it come in fast the hull would have heated, and the occupants would have been roasted alive.

"Let's not force the issue. If alive they'll come out eventually. Meanwhile we're learning."

_But can we wait?_ Winthrop thought. _Are we sensible in waiting?_