"You’re the Intelligence Officer," said Grimes rather nastily.
"All right. I am. Also, I hold a Doctorate in Xenology. And I tell you, John, that what we’ve found in this ship, so far, doesn’t add up to any kind of sense at all."
"She hasn’t made any sense ever since she was first picked up by Station 3," admitted Grimes.
"That she hasn’t," said Pendeen. "And I don’t like her. Not one little bit."
"Why not, Mr. Pendeen?" asked Grimes, realizing that it was a foolish question to ask about a radioactive hull full of corpses.
"Because… because she’s wrong, sir. The proportions of all her controls and fittings—just wrong enough to be scary. And left-handed threads, and gauges calibrated from right to left."
"So they are," said Grimes. "So they are. But that’s odder still. Why don’t they write the same way? From Right to Left?"
"Perhaps they do," murmured Sonya. "But I don’t think so. I think that the only difference between their written language and ours is that they have an all-purpose I, or an all-purpose symbol that’s used for every vowel sound." She was prowling around the control room. Damn it all, there must be a Log Book…
"There should be a Log Book," amended Grimes.
"All right There should be a Log Book. Here’s an obvious Log Desk, complete with stylus, but empty. I begin to see how it must have been. The ship safe in port, all her papers landed for checking, and then her seizure by these people, by these unfortunate humans, whoever they were … H’m. The Chart Tank might tell us something…" She glared at the empty globe. "It would have told us something if it hadn’t been in close proximity to a nuclear blast. But there will be traces. Unfortunately we haven’t the facilities here to bring them out." She resumed her purposeful shuffle. "And what have we here? SIGNIL LIG? SIGNAL LOG? A black box that might well contain quite a few answers when we hook it up to a power supply. And that, I think, will lie within the capabilities of our Radio Officer back aboard Rim Mamelute."
The thing was secured by simple enough clips to the side of what was obviously a transceiver. Deftly, Sonya disengaged it, tucked it under her arm.
"Back to the Mamelute," said Grimes. It was more an order than a suggestion.
"Back to the Mamelute," she agreed.
The Commodore was last from the control room, watched first Pendeen and then Sonya vanish through the hatch into the axial shaft. He half-wished that enough air remained in their suit tanks for them to make a leisurely examination of the accommodation that must be situated abaft Control—and was more than half-relieved that circumstances did not permit such a course of action. He had seen his fill of corpses. In any case, the Signal Log might tell them far more than the inspection of decomposing corpses ever could.
He felt far easier in his mind when the three of them were standing, once more, in the plastic igloo that covered the breached airlock, and almost happy when, one by one, they had squeezed through the built-in sphincter valve back to the clean emptiness of Space. The harsh working lights of Rim Mamelute seemed soft somehow, mellow almost, suggested the lights of Home. And the cramped interior of the tug, when they were back on board, was comforting. If one has to be jostled, it is better to be jostled by the living than by dead men and women, part-cremated in a steel coffin tumbling aimlessly between the stars.
VIII
It was very quiet in the radio office of Rim Mamelute. Grimes and Sonya stood there, watching chubby little Bennett make the last connections to the black box that they had brought from the control room of the derelict. "Yes," the Electronic Radio Officer had told them, "it is a Signal Log, and it’s well shielded, so whatever records it may contain probably haven’t been wiped by radiation. Once I get it hooked up we’ll have the play-back."
And now it was hooked up. "Are you sure you won’t burn it out?" asked the Commodore, suddenly anxious.
"Almost sure, sir," answered Bennett cheerfully. "The thing is practically an exact copy of the Signal Logs that were in use in some ships of the Federation Survey Service all of fifty years ago. Before my time. Anyhow, my last employment before I came out to the Rim was in the Lyran Navy, and their wagons were all Survey Service cast-offs. In many of them the original communications gear was still in place, and still in working order. No, sir, this isn’t the first time that I’ve made one of these babies sing. Reminds me of when we picked up the wreck of the old Minstrel Boy; I was Chief Sparks of the Tara’s Hall at the time, and got the gen from her Signal Log that put us on the trail of Black Bart"—he added unnecessarily—"the pirate."
"I have heard of him," said Grimes coldly.
Sonya remarked, pointing towards the box, "But it doesn’t look old."
"No, Mrs. Grimes. It’s not old. Straight from the maker, I’d say. But there’s no maker’s name, which is odd…"
"Switch on, Mr. Bennett," ordered the Commodore.
Bennett switched on. The thing hummed quietly to itself, crackled briefly and thinly as the spool was rewound. It crackled again, more loudly, and the play-back began.
The voice that issued from the speaker spoke English—of a sort. But it was not human. It was a thin, high, alien squeaking—and yet, somehow, not alien enough. The consonants were ill-defined, and there was only one vowel sound.
"Eeveengeer tee Deestreeyeer. Eeveengeer tee Deestreeyeer. Heeve tee. Heeve tee!"
The voice that answered was not a very convincing imitation of that strange accent. "Deestreeyer tee Eeveenger. Reepeet, pleese. Reepeet…"
"A woman," whispered Sonya. "Human…"
"Heeve tee, Deestreeyeer. Heeve tee, eer wee eepeen feer!"
A pause, then the woman’s voice again, the imitation even less convincing, a certain desperation all too evident: "Deestreeyer tee Avenger. Deestreeyeer tee Eeveengeer… Eer Dreeve ceentreels eer eet eef eerdeer!"
Playing for time, thought Grimes. Playing for time, while clumsy hands fumble with unfamiliar armament. But they tried. They did their best…
"Dee!" screamed the inhuman voice. "Heemeen sceem, dee!"
"And that must have been it," muttered Grimes.
"It was," said Sonya flatly, and the almost inaudible whirring of what remained on the spool bore her out.
"That mistake she made," said Grimes softly, "is the clue. For Eeveengeer, read Avenger. For every E sound substitute the vowel that makes sense. But insofar as the written language is concerned, that fat I is really an E…"
"That seems to be the way of it," agreed Sonya.
" Die, " repeated the Commodore slowly. " Human scum, die! " He said, "Whoever those people are, they wouldn’t be at all nice to know."
"That’s what I’m afraid of," Sonya told him. "That we might get to know them. Whoever they are—and wherever, and whenever…"