'Magnetism,' Doc offered.
'I tell you what Doc,' said Hutch. 'You stick to what little medicine you know and let me handle the mechanics.'
Frost dived in quick to head off an argument. 'That frictional idea might not be a bad one. But it would call for perfect machining and surface polish. Theoretically, if you place two perfectly polished surfaces together, the molecules will attract one another and you'll have permanent cohesion.'
I don't know where Frost got all that stuff. Mostly he seemed to be just like the rest of us, but occasionally he'd come out with something that would catch you by surprise. I never asked him anything about himself; questions like that were just plain bad manners.
We messed around some more and Hutch bashed another knuckle and I sat there thinking how we'd found two items in the silo and both of them had stopped us in our tracks. But that's the way it is. Some days you can't make a dime.
Frost moved around and pushed Hutch out of the way. 'Let me see what I can do.'
Hutch didn't protest any. He was licked.
Frost started pushing and pulling and twisting and fiddling away at that mess of parts and all at once there was a kind of whooshing sound, like someone had let out their breath sort of slow and easy, and all the parts fell in upon themselves. They came unstuck, in a kind of slow-motion manner, and they made a metallic thump along with tinkling sounds and they were just a heap inside the jacket that had protected them. 'Now see what you done!' howled Hutch.
'I didn't do a thing,' said Frost. 'I was just seeing if I could bust one loose and one did and the whole shebang caved in.' He held up his fingers to show us the piece that had come loose.
'You know what I think?' asked Pancake. 'I think whoever made that machine made it so it would fall apart if anyone tried to tinker with it. They didn't want no one to find out how it was put together.'
'That makes sense,' said Doc. 'No use getting peeved at it. After all, it was their machine.'
'Doc,' I said, 'you got a funny attitude. I never noticed you turning down your share of anything we find.'
'I don't mind when we confine ourselves to what you might call, in all politeness, natural resources. I can even stomach the pillaging of artforms. But when it comes to stealing brains?and this machine is brains…'
Frost let out a whoop.
He was hunkered down, with his head inside the jacket of the machine, and I thought at first he'd got caught and that we'd have to cut him out, but he could get out, all right.
'I see now how to get that dome off the top,' he said.
It was a complicated business, almost like a combination on a safe. The dome was locked in place by a lot of grooves and you had to know just how to turn it to lift it out of place.
Frost kept his head inside the jacket and called out directions to Hutch, who twisted the dome first this way and then that, sometimes having to pull up on it and other times press down to engage the slotted mechanism that held it locked in place.
Pancake wrote down the combinations as Frost called them off and finally the dome came loose in Hutch's hands.
Once it was off, there was no mystery to it. It was a helmet, all rigged out with adjustable features so it could be made to fit any type of head, just as the seat was adjustable to fit any sitting apparatus.
The helmet was attached to the machine with a retractable cable that reeled out far enough to reach someone sitting in the seat.
And that was fine, of course. But what was it? A portable electric chair? A permanent-wave machine? Or what?
So Frost and Hutch poked around some more and in the top of the machine, just under where the dome had nested, they found a swivel trap door and underneath it a hollow tube extending down into the mass of innards?only the innards weren't a mass any more, but just a basket of loose parts.
It didn't take any imagination to figure what that hollow tube was for. It was just the size to take one of the sticks of dynamite.
Doc went and got a bottle and passed it around as a sort of celebration and after a drink or two, he and Hutch shook hands and said there were no hard feelings. But I didn't pay much attention to that. They'd done it many times before and then been at one another's throats before the night was over.
Just why we were celebrating was hard to figure. Sure, we knew the machine fitted heads and that the dynamite fitted the machine?but we still had no idea what it was all about.
We were, to tell the truth, just a little scared, although you couldn't have gotten one of us to admit it. We did some guessing, naturally.
'It might be a mechanical doctor,' said Hutch. 'Just sit in that seat and put the helmet on your head and feed in the proper stick and you come out cured of whatever is wrong with you. It would be a blessing, I can tell you. You wouldn't ever need to worry if your doctor knew his business or not.'
I thought Doc was going to jump right down Hutch's throat, but he must have remembered how they had shaken hands and he didn't do it.
'As long as you're thinking along that line,' said Doc,'let's think a little bigger. Let's say it is a rejuvenation machine and the stick is crammed with vitamins and hormones and such that turn you young again. Just take the treatment every twenty years or so and you stay young forever.'
'It might be an educator,' Frost put in. 'Those sticks might be packed full of knowledge. Maybe a complete college subject inside of each of them.'
'Or it might be just the opposite,' said Pancake. 'Those sticks might soak up everything you know. Each of those sticks might be the story of one man's whole life.'
'Why record life stories?' asked Hutch. 'There aren't many men or aliens or what-not that have life stories important enough to rate all that trouble.'
'If you're thinking of it being some sort of communications deal,' I said, 'it might be anything. It might be propaganda or religion or maps or it might be no more than a file of business records.'
'And', said Hutch, 'it might kill you deader than a mackerel.'
'I don't think so,' Doc replied. 'There are easier ways to kill a person than to sit him in a chair and put a helmet on him. And it doesn't have to be a communicator.'
'There's one way to find out,' I said.
'I was afraid,' said Doc, 'we'd get around to that.'
'It's too complicated,' argued Hutch. 'No telling what trouble it may get us into. Why not drop it cold? We can blast off and hunt for something simple.'
'No!' shouted Frost. 'We can't do that!'
'I'd like to know why not,' said Hutch.
'Because we'd always wonder if we passed up the jackpot. We'd figure that maybe we gave up too quick?a day or two too quick. That we got scared out. That if we'd gone ahead, we'd be rolling in money.'
We knew Frost was right, but we batted it around some more before we would admit he was. All of us knew what we had to do, but there were no volunteers.
Finally we drew straws and Pancake was unlucky.
'Okay,' I said. 'First thing in the morning…'
'Morning, nothing!' wailed Pancake. 'I want to get it over with. I wouldn't sleep a wink.'
He was scared, all right, and he had a right to be. He felt just the way I would have if I'd drawn the shortest straw.
I didn't like barging around on an alien planet after dark, but we had to do it. It wouldn't have been fair to Pancake to have done otherwise. And, besides, we were all wrought up and we'd have no rest until we'd found out what we had.
So we got some flashes and went out to the silo. We tramped down the corridors for what seemed an endless time and came to the room where the machines were stored.
There didn't seem to be any difference in the machines, so we picked one at random. While Hutch got the helmet off, I adjusted the seat for Pancake and Doc went into an adjoining room to get a stick.
When we were all ready, Pancake sat down in the seat.
I had a sudden rush of imbecility. 'Look,' I said to Pancake, 'you don't need to do this.'
