Crash-clang! The double jolt ran up the shaft of the ax, through his gauntlets and into his arm; but he was making progress, he could see the plastic—or whatever it was—of the door. It was chipping out. Not easily, very reluctantly; but flaking out in chips that left a white powdery residue.
At this rate, he thought grimly, he would be an hour getting through it. Did he have an hour?
But it did not take an hour. One blow was luckier than the rest; it must have snapped the lock mechanism. The door shook and slid ajar. McCray got the thin of the blade into the crack and pried it wide.
He was in another room, maybe a hall, large and bare.
McCray put the broad of his back against the broken door and pressed it as nearly closed as he could; it might not keep the gas and heat out, but it would retard them.
The room was again unlighted—at least to McCray’s eyes. There was not even that pink pseudo-light that had baffled him; here was nothing but the beam of his suit lamp. What it showed was cryptic. There were evidences of use: shelves, boxy contraptions that might have been cupboards, crude level surfaces attached to the walls that might have been workbenches. Yet they were queerly contrived, for it was not possible to guess from them much about the creatures who used them. Some were near the floor, some at waist height, some even suspended from the ceiling itself. A man would need a ladder to work at these benches and McCray, staring, thought briefly of many-armed blind giants or shapeless huge intelligent amoebae, and felt the skin prickle at the back of his neck.
He tapped halfheartedly at one of the closed cupboards, and was not surprised when it proved as refractory as the door. Undoubtedly he could batter it open, but it was not likely that much would be left of its contents when he was through; and there was the question of time.
But his attention was diverted by a gleam from one of the benches. Metallic parts lay heaped in a pile. He poked at them with a stiff-fingered gauntlet; they were oddly familiar. They were, he thought, very much like the parts of a bullet-gun.
In fact, they were. He could recognize barrel, chamber, trigger, even a couple of cartridges, neatly opened and the grains of powder stacked beside them. It was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen in survival locker, on the Jodrell Bank—and abruptly wished he were carrying now—but it was a pistol. Another trophy, like the strange assortment in the other room? He could not guess. But the others had been more familiar; they all have come from his own ship. He was prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard.
The drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals all along:
“Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is Jodrell Bank calling Herrell McCray. …”
And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the A.V.C. circuits toned the signal down, another voice. A woman’s voice, crying out in panic and fear: “Jodrell Bank! Where are you? Help!”
IV
Hatcher’s second in command said: “He has got through the first survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?”
“Wait!” Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and seemed to be in pain; but it was not the pain that disturbed Hatcher, it was something far more immediate to his interests.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that they are in contact.”
His assistant vibrated startlement.
“I know,” Hatcher said, “but watch. Do you see? He is going straight toward her.”
Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions; but he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was cause to be afraid. These specimens, obtained with so much difficulty, needed so badly, were his responsibility. He knew the issues involved much better than any of his helpers. They could only be surprised at the queer antics of the aliens with attached limbs and strange powers. Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and death. He said, musing:
“This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this female is perhaps not quite mute.”
“Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?”
Hatcher hesitated. “No,” he said at last. “The male is responding well. Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died; he is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can’t quite communicate with the female—”
“But?”
“But I’m not sure that others can’t.”
The woman’s voice was at such close range that McCray’s suit radio made a useful R.D.F. set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while she begged him to hurry. Her voice was heavily accented, with some words in a language he did not recognize. She seemed to be in shock.
McCray was hardly surprised at that; he had been close enough to shock himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped.
He hesitated, hefting the ax, glancing back at the way he had come. There
