Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (28 page)

He found the second officer out in the starboard wing, staring through his
binoculars at a pulsing luminosity on the dark horizon. It could have been
the loom of a shore light, a lighthouse, but the period was too irregular.
It could have been the glare of the bright working lights of a fishing
vessel, dipping at intervals as the craft lifted and fell in the swell. It
was nothing to get excited about.

"Is that it, Mr. Garwood?" asked Lessing.

The second officer started. Then, "Yes, sir," he replied. "That's it. Big,
it was, and all lit up. There seemed to be jets or rockets working—but
I don't think it was an airplane. It looked … wrong, somehow—"

"There are so many experimental aircraft these days," said the captain,
"to say nothing of the artificial satellites that everybody seems to be
throwing about—" Then, half to himself, "I wonder what the salvage
on one of those things would be?"

"Plenty, I should imagine," said the second mate.

"I'd imagine the same," said Lessing. "You'd better notify the engine
room, Mr. Garwood. The mate'll be up in a few minutes so he can see about
clearing a boat away."

"So you're going to take it in tow, sir?" asked the second officer.

"Not so fast!" laughed Lessing. "We don't even know what the thing is yet.
Come to that—I don't even know if it is any sort of aircraft. Those
lights out there could be … anything."

"You can ask the lookout," said Garwood huffily, "or the man at the
wheel."

"I prefer not to doubt the word of my officers," replied the captain
stiffly. "But whether or not we tow the thing depends largely upon what it
is." He stared ahead. Bright lights were becoming visible now instead of
the diffused glare. "And that," he added, "we shall soon find out."

He left the bridge and went down to his cabin, putting on a uniform over a
heavy woollen jersey. He returned to the bridge. The ship had come alive
during his brief absence. Shadowy forms were at work on the boat deck,
electric torches were flashing, and there was the sound of low-voiced
orders and replies, the thud and clatter as equipment not needed in the
boat was passed out and stowed well clear of the winch.

The chief officer clattered up the ladder from the boat deck to the
starboard cab of the bridge.

"I'll take it you'll be sending away the Fleming boat, sir?"

"Yes, Mr. Kennedy. It'll be the handiest, especially in this swell.
There'll be no catching of crabs when there are no oars out." He pointed
ahead to the bright lights that lay on the heaving surface of the sea.
"What do
you
make of it?"

Kennedy lifted the ship's binoculars from their box, put them to his eyes.
"I don't know," he said slowly. "It's an odd-looking brute, whatever it
is. All those vanes and wings or whatever they are. It's like no aircraft
that I've ever seen."

"It could be American," said the second mate.

"Or Russian," said Kennedy. "I suppose it
is
manned—"

"Sparks has been trying to raise it on all the frequencies he can muster,"
said the second mate, "but there's no reply."

"Perhaps," ventured the third officer diffidently, "it's a flying saucer—"

"All the way from Alpha Centauri or Rigil Kentaurus," laughed the mate,
pointing to where Cross and Centaur hung in the dark sky directly over the
mystery of gleaming lights and shining metal. "Perhaps we can ask 'em
which of the two names for their home sun
they
prefer. I'm an Alpha
Centauri man myself—"

"But it
could
be," insisted the third mate.

Lessing listened, faintly amused. He neither believed nor disbelieved in
flying saucers but thought that they were things that he would prefer not
to see—they carried with them a greater aura of disreputability than
did sea serpents. But this thing ahead, this affair of lights and metallic
surfaces that they were rapidly closing in on, wasn't a flying saucer. It
couldn't be. Only cranks saw the things, and then in circumstances
remarkable for a paucity of reliable witnesses.

He said, "There's no wind. I'll keep the thing on my starboard side. Who's
going away in the boat? You, Mr. Kennedy? Good. Take a torch with you—you
might save time by flashing back to us what you find." To Garwood he said,
"Put her on standby."

"Standby, sir."

The jangling of the engine room telegraph was startlingly loud.

"Stop her. Full astern."

Lessing looked down from the window of the starboard cab, saw the creamy
turbulence created by the reversed screw creep slowly from aft until it
was abreast of the bridge.

"Stop her. Switch on the floodlights."

Kennedy ran down to the boat deck. The starboard boat was already turned
out. Six men were sitting at the handles of the Fleming gear, a seventh
sitting in the bows. The mate caught hold of a lifeline, swung himself
from the boat deck into the stern sheets.

"Lower away!" he shouted.

"Lower away, sir," replied the man at the winch. It was, the captain
noted, big Tom Green, the bos'n. Tom Green, who was a pure-blooded
Polynesian and proud of it. Good officers are not rare—good bos'ns
are rare and precious. Tom Green was a good bos'n.

He lifted the brake. The wire falls whispered from the drum of the winch,
through and around the lead blocks. They hummed softly through the
purchase blocks, and the boat dropped swiftly from sight. Lessing went
again to the starboard cab window, saw the boat hit the water, saw the
blocks unhooked and pulled up and clear by the light lines bent to them.

"Give way!" came Kennedy's order. The men at the handles swayed back and
forth in the untidy rhythm unavoidable with a Fleming boat; the
hand-driven propeller began to spin. The boat pulled slowly away from the
ship. Lessing called the bos'n up to the bridge.

"Tom," he said, "I suppose the chief officer's told you what all this is
about."

"Yes, Captain. We are ready for all eventualities. The reel of the after
towing wire works freely, and we have a good supply of shackles and wire
snotters."

Lessing looked at the big dark face that hung over his own and wondered,
as he had often wondered, what this man was doing as bos'n of an
Australian coaster. Fo'c's'le—and saloon—rumor had it that he
had been educated at Oxford, that he was the son of a chief. Certain it
was that he spoke impeccable—although pedantic—English and
possessed in no mean degree the power of command.

"Tom," said Lessing, "what do you make of it?"

A white grin split the dark face. "It is like no aircraft that I have ever
seen, sir, either in actuality or in photographs. It's too big for a
satellite—as you know,
they
are only little balls or
cylinders, at the largest big enough to house only a small dog—"

"Well?"

"It happened to us," said the bos'n. "It happened to us. Your ancestral
navigators found our islands by chance, putting in to replenish their
supplies. Sooner or later it had to happen to you."

"What do you mean, Tom?" asked Lessing.

"What I said, Captain. That it's happening to you."

"Rubbish," said Lessing, after a long pause. "That thing's just some
experimental aircraft that's come to grief."

"Is it?" asked the bos'n.

"The chief officer's flashing us!" shouted the second. He came out to the
wing of the bridge, carrying the Aldis lamp.

Lessing looked to the enigmatic bulk of the thing in the water and saw a
little light, feeble in comparison with the glaring illumination that was
streaming from the aircraft—if it was an aircraft—making a
succession of short and long flashes. The beam of the Aldis stabbed out
into the darkness.

"'Returning with passenger,'" read Lessing. He said, "So the thing is
manned—"

"Of course," said the bos'n. "Your ships were manned, weren't they?"

"You'd better get down to the boat deck, Tom," said Lessing.

He picked up his glasses, watched the tiny shape of the lifeboat detach
itself from the floating enigma. He watched it as it crept across the
water. As it pulled alongside, he could see that there was another figure
sitting in the stern with Kennedy. In the glare of the boat floodlights he
saw that it was wearing a uniform of some kind—an overall suit of
silvery gray with what could have been marks of rank gleaming on the
shoulders. He saw Kennedy's bowman catch the painter and make it fast. He
saw the gray-clad man coming up the pilot ladder with what was almost, but
not quite, the ease of long practice. He saw the chief officer following
him.

After a short lapse of time, they were on the bridge.

"Captain," said Kennedy, "this is Malvar Korring vis Korring, chief
officer of the
Starlady.
Mr. Korring, this is Captain Lessing,
master of the
Woollabra.
"

Automatically, Lessing put out his hand. The stranger grasped it, said in
a voice that was metallic and expressionless, "I hope, sir, that this
first meeting of our two races proves auspicious."

"Kennedy," demanded Lessing, "what sort of hoax is this?"

"Sir," replied the chief officer, "this is no hoax. I'm quite convinced
that these men are from Space."

"Come down to my room," said Lessing. "Both of you."

In his cabin, with the bright deck-head lights switched on, Lessing
studied the man from the … the spaceship. The stranger sat on the
settee, almost insolently at ease. His body, beneath his tightly fitting
uniform, seemed human enough, as did his lean, deeply tanned face. The
eyes, however, were a disconcerting golden color, and there was a faint
tinge of green to his fair hair, which was worn far too long for the
exacting standards of any earthly service. His voice came not from his
mouth but from a small square box that was strapped around his waist.

"We developed a leak in our water tanks," the stranger was saying. "It was
necessary for us to replenish our supplies. This planet was the handiest
to our trajectory. We had no idea that it was inhabited."

"You know that this is salt water," said Lessing, rather stupidly.

"We know. The minerals dissolved in the water will be very useful to us."

"I can't believe this," said Lessing, getting up out of his armchair. "It
must be a hoax."

"I was inside their ship, sir," said Kennedy. "I didn't see much—but
I saw enough to convince me that she was never built on Earth. She's a
cargo vessel, like ourselves, and she's on a voyage from some planet
around the Southern Cross—it may be one of the planets revolving
around Acrux—to somewhere in the Great Bear."

"That's what they told you," said Lessing.

"That's what I told him, Captain," said the spaceman. "And it's true."

"I should report this," said Lessing. "It's my duty to report this. But
they'll think I'm mad if I do."

"We'll back you up," said the chief officer.

"Then they'll think that you're mad too."

"Perhaps," suggested Korring, "I could leave proof with you."

From one pocket of his clothing he produced a slim tube, metallic, the
size of a pencil. "This," he said, "is a torch—similar to the one
that Mr. Kennedy is carrying but rather more efficient. Leave it in bright
sunlight for one … hour, I think is the word. Or leave it in
artificial light such as this for double the period, and it will burn
continuously, if so desired, for all of the night." He handed the torch to
Lessing, produced from another pocket a packet of little brown cylinders.
"You put this end in your mouth," he said, "and inhale sharply. The other
end starts to smolder. You suck in the smoke. It is most refreshing—"

"We smoke too," said Lessing. "Which reminds me—I'm not being a very
good host." He produced whisky, and glasses, and opened the cigarette box
on his desk. "You do drink, I suppose? This is one of our alcoholic
liquors. You might like to try it."

"Thank you," said the spaceman.

Lessing splashed whisky into each of the three glasses. He passed the
cigarettes around, struck a match to light them.

"The most interesting thing you have," he said, "is that box you talk
through. What is it?"

"A psionic translator. It picks up my thoughts and converts them into your
speech. It picks up your thoughts, as you speak, and converts them into my
language. A simple device …" He drew on his cigarette, sipped his
drink. "You know, you people are quite far advanced. This liquor of yours.
These smoking tubes. And those little wooden sticks that burst into flame
when you rub them against the box … I know that I am being very
primitive, but I wonder if we could barter? This electric torch of mine
and a packet of my smoking tubes for, say, a bottle of this subtly
flavored alcohol and a packet of your smoking tubes?"

"It'd be a fair trade," said Lessing.
And it'll be proof,
he
thought.
Proof I must have. I can't swear the whole ship to silence.
"It'll be a fair trade—"

The box at Korring's belt squawked then uttered a few syllables in an
unknown language.

"They want me back," said the spaceman. "We must be on our way."

A few minutes later, when he was ferried back to the spaceship, he was
carrying a carton of cigarettes, a packet of matches, and a bottle of
whisky. A few minutes later still Lessing stood on his bridge and watched
the alien vessel take off. There was no flare of rockets, no noise, no
bother. There was a flickering luminosity under the vast hull as she
lifted up and clear of the water, that was all. She rose slowly at first,
then with increasing speed. For a short time she was a waning star among
the stars, and then she was gone.

Lessing said to the mate, "We have to make a report on this—but what
shall we say?"

"The truth," replied Kennedy. "But we shall never live it down."

It was, Lessing was to realize, very fortunate that he had made the trade
with the alien spaceman. Had it not been for that highly efficient—and
absolutely mysterious—torch, he and his crew would have been branded
as picturesque liars. They were so regarded at first. Pressmen are
justifiably skeptical of flying-saucer stories. Eventually—after it
was obvious that
Woollabra
's entire crew had either suffered a mass
hallucination or actually seen something out of the ordinary—the
Navy condescended to take an interest in the case. Lessing had returned on
board from a rather stormy interview with the company's branch manager and
local marine superintendent when he found a young, keen lieutenant
commander waiting for him.