The Giants From Outer Space Part 3

"How big?"

"I can't tell and hate to make a guess--but at least a thousand feet. Of course I hadn't anything to compare him with."

"Wait a minute," said Randy Kinkare, the a.s.sistant pilot, voice reeking with unbelief. "How could you see through an opaque face plate?"

"It's not opaque," said Joe Silver officiously. "It's translucent from without and transparent from within. I took a look at it this afternoon."

"s.p.a.ce giants," groaned someone. "Oh, Lord!"

"We can't discount it," said Pink, realizing that he was doing just that, but refusing to disbelieve Circe. Illusion? Not a lie, surely?

"She wasn't drugged, after all. She was in full control of senses that were merely slowed down."

There was a discomfortable silence.

Intercom, s.p.a.ce drive, life-scanner. Maybe other machinery by this time.

Sabotage in such a clever way that no one of the highly skilled officers and technicians could discover how it was done, what was wrong. s.p.a.ce giants? Ah, come on, Pink!

Ynohp. Something wrong with him, some flaw in his looks? No, he was Martian in every oversize pore. Some anachronism?

Hey! Anachronism. Pink's mind fished up the dictionary definition. An error in chronology by which events are misplaced in regard to each other....

He had it.

He got to his feet, motioned Jerry and Wash Daley to go with him. They congregated outside the door, as further talk broke out inside his quarters. He said urgently, "Remember what Ynohp said about his cataleptic state? 'Moth and rust do not corrupt.' He said it as if it were a quotation."

"It is," said Daley. "More or less word for word it's from the King James version of the Bible."

"Dated, if I remember correctly, about 1611 A.D.?"

"Yes."

"At which date the Martians had been without s.p.a.ce flight for about 3,600 years. At which date, further, Ynohp claims to have been sitting on an asteroid for about 4,000-plus years."

"Coincidence?" asked Jerry.

Pink asked, "Do you think so?"

"h.e.l.l," said Jerry, "no."

"Let's go look at his s.p.a.ce suit," said Daley urgently. They ran down the corridor, shoving for the lead.

Ten minutes later they sat back on their heels and stared at the interior of the suit.

Rust had corrupted here, or at any rate decay; the Martian steel, ancient and harder than any known metal, was worn to a papery sh.e.l.l, and in many places tiny holes had eroded clear through the suit.

"No man or Martian or anything I know except the s.p.a.ce-eating bacteria of Pallas could have lived in that suit, cataleptic state or not." Pink looked around at his friends. "_What in the name of heaven have we brought into the s.h.i.+p?_"

Then the three were racing for the "Martian's" stateroom. They burst in, and found that now it was empty of life.

They stood, indecisive, just outside. Pinkham's gaze went to the door, on which, as was the custom, a hastily-printed card had been placed with the officer's name upon it. He read it. Then he blinked.

"Look," he said, gesturing.

"What about it?"

The card blared its secret, its pun, at them.

Y N O H P.

"Read it backwards," said Pinkham....

CHAPTER V

"None of you thought to look at the Martian s.p.a.cesuit when we'd removed it?" asked Pink. The others shook their heads. They were all in his quarters again.

"Neither did you, Captain," said Joe Silver. "You were as busy looking at the Martian as we were."

"True enough," admitted Pinkham. "Well, the thing to do first is radio the _Diogenes_ and the _Cottabus_ to stand by for trouble." He lit a cigarette. "If the radio hasn't been tampered with," he said. "Silver, go tell Sparks to start sending to them. _Diogenes_ is down by Planet Five, and _Cottabus_ heading for Four. Tell them to look for us somewhere in the planetoid orbit. They'll have to come in on the radio beam. I don't suppose we can expect them for a day." Joe Silver gave Circe's arm an encouraging squeeze--they'd got on together pretty d.a.m.n fast--and started out. "And instruct them not to pick up anybody, off asteroids or planets or out of the ether. I don't care if they see their grandmothers floating outside a s.p.a.ceport."

The thought of his armada joining him made Pink feel more at ease. No sense to that, of course, but three s.h.i.+ps are better than one, if only for moral support. "Daley," he said then, "lower the Mutiny Gates."

"You think it's wise?"

"If I didn't, I wouldn't do it," he snapped. It would be the first time that a mutiny gate had been used in more than forty years. All the large s.h.i.+ps were equipped with them, great plastikoid barriers which operated from the captain's room, sealing off the officer's sector from the rest of the s.h.i.+p. They had been made standard equipment in the old days, before screenings became really effective and the danger of psychopathic trouble in the crew grew negligible. Now they were of theoretical use in case of boarding by alien life, or of damage to a large segment of the hull ... but they had never actually been brought into play in Pinkham's lifetime. "Drop 'em," he repeated.

Daley pulled open a drawer, tugged at an unused switch, which creaked protestingly; then the brief alarm clang that heralded the fall of the forty gates sounded in the distance. "If he's beyond the gates," the senior lieutenant said heavily, "the crew may be done for."

"No more than if the gates were up," Pink told him impatiently.

"You're projecting," said Daley. "How do we know the nature of the beast? He may mop 'em up in a fit of pique at being shut out there."

"The chances are he's on our side of the walls," said Bill Calico.

"Nothing out there of much importance to him. The hydroponics farm, history room, library, and so on."

"We don't know what's important to him," said Daley. "We don't know what in blazes he wants aboard. We don't know a doggone thing!"

Silver returned. "I heard the mutiny gates go," he said questioningly.

"Are you all armed?" asked Pink. They nodded. "Then let's sweep the place," he said, glancing from one grim face to another. "Pick up the other officers as we go, and make a chain of inspection that he can't bust through. We'll corner him sooner or later. Then we'll see if atomic pistols will settle his hash." He looked at Circe. "You'd better stay here," he said.

"I agree," said Randy Kinkare suddenly. "And you'd best lock her in--from the outside."

"Why?" blazed the girl.

"We picked you up on an asteroid too," said the a.s.sistant pilot.