Contraband From Otherspace

IV

The strange vessel was a slowly expanding speck of light in the globular screen of the Mass Proximity Indicator; it was a gradually brightening blip on Mamelute’s radar display that seemed as though it were being drawn in towards the tug by the ever decreasing spiral of the range marker. Clearly it showed up on the instruments, although it was still too far distant for visual sighting, and it was obvious that the extrapolation of trajectory made by Station 3 was an accurate one. It was falling free, neither accelerating nor decelerating, its course determined only by the gravitational forces within the Lorn Star’s planetary system, and left to itself must inevitably fall into the sun. But long before its shell plating began to heat it would be overhauled by the salvage ship and dragged away and clear from its suicide orbit.

And it was silent. It made no reply to the signals beamed at it from Rim Mamelute’s powerful transmitter. Bennett, the Radio Officer, complained to Grimes, "I’ve tried every frequency known to civilized man, and a few that aren’t. But, so far, no joy."

"Keep on trying," Grimes told him, then went to the cabin that Mayhew, the telepath, shared with his organic amplifier.

The Psionic Radio Officer was slumped in his chair, staring vacantly at the glass tank in which, immersed in its cloudy nutrient fluid, floated the obscenely naked brain. The Commodore tried to ignore the thing. It made him uneasy. Every time that he saw one of the amplifiers he could not help wondering what it would be like to be, as it were, disembodied, to be deprived of all external stimuli but the stray thoughts of other, more fortunate (or less unfortunate) beings—and those thoughts, as like as not, on an incomprehensible level. What would a man do, were he so used, his brain removed from his skull and employed by some race of superior beings for their own fantastic purpose? Go mad, probably. And did the dogs sacrificed so that Man could communicate with his fellows over the light years ever go mad?

"Mr. Mayhew," he said.

"Sir?" muttered the telepath.

"As far as electronic radio is concerned, that ship is dead."

"Dead?" repeated Mayhew in a thin whisper.

"Then you think that there’s nobody alive on board her?"

"I… I don’t know. I told you before we started that Lassie’s not a well dog. She’s old, Commodore. She’s old, and she dreams most of the time, almost all of the time. She… she just ignores me…" His voice was louder as he defended his weird pet against the implied imputation that he had made himself. "It’s just that she’s old, and her mind is getting very dim. Just vague dreams and ghostly memories, and the past more real than the present, even so."

"What sort of dreams?" asked Grimes, stirred to pity for the naked canine brain in its glass cannister.

"Hunting dreams, mainly. She was a terrier, you know, before she was . . . conscripted. Hunting dreams. Chasing small animals, like rats. They’re good dreams, except when they turn to nightmares. And then I have to wake her up—but she’s in such a state of terror that she’s no good for anything."

"I didn’t think that dogs have nightmares," remarked Grimes.

"Oh, but they do, sir, they do. Poor Lassie always has the same one—about an enormous rat that’s just about to kill her. It must be some old memory of her puppy days, when she ran up against such an animal, a big one, bigger than she was…"

"H’m. And, meanwhile, nothing from the ship."

"Nothing at all, sir."

"Have you tried transmitting, as well as just maintaining a listening watch?"

"Of course, sir." Mayhew’s voice was pained. "During Lassie’s lucid moments I’ve been punching out a strong signal, strong enough even to be picked up by non-telepaths. You must have felt it yourself, sir. Help is on the way. But there’s been no indication of mental acknowledgement."

"All we know about the ship, Mayhew, is that she seems to be a derelict. We don’t know who built her. We don’t know who mans her—or manned her."

"Anybody who builds a ship, sir, must be able to think."

Grimes, remembering some of the unhandier vessels in which he had served in his youth, said, "Not necessarily."

Mayhew, not getting the point, insisted, "But they must be able to think. And, in order to think, you must have a brain to think with. And any brain at all, emits psionic radiation. Furthermore, sir, such radiation sets up secondary radiation in the inanimate surrounding of the brain. What is the average haunt but a psionic record on the walls of a house in which strong emotions have been let loose? A record that is played back given the right conditions."

"H’m. But you say that the derelict is psionically dead, that there’s not even a record left by her builders, or her crew, to be played back to you."

"The range is still extreme, sir. And as for this secondary psionic radiation, sir, sometimes it fades rapidly, sometimes it lingers for years. There must be laws governing it, but nobody has yet been able to work them out."

"So there could be something…"

"There could be, sir. And there could not."

"Just go on trying, Mr. Mayhew."

"Of course, sir. But with poor Lassie in her present state I can’t promise anything."

Grimes went along to the galley. He seated himself on the bench, accepted the cup of coffee that Sonya poured for him. He said, "It looks, my dear, as though we shall soon be needing an Intelligence Officer as well as a Catering Officer."

"Why?" she asked.

He told her of his conversation with Mayhew. He said, "I’d hoped that he’d be able to find us a few short cuts—but his crystal ball doesn’t seem to be functioning very well these days… If you could call that poodle’s brain in aspic a crystal ball."

"He’s told me all about it," she said. "He’s told everybody in the ship all about it. But once we get the derelict in tow, and opened up, we shall soon be able to find out what makes her tick. Or made her tick."

"I’m not so sure, Sonya. The way in which she suddenly appeared from nowhere, not even a trace on Station 3’s M.P.I. beforehand, makes me think that she could be very, very alien."

"The Survey Service is used to dealing with aliens," she told him. "The Intelligence Branch especially so."

"I know, I know."

"And now, as I’m still only the humble galley slave, can I presume to ask my lord and master the E.T.C.?"

"Unless something untoward fouls things up, E.T.C. should be in exactly five Lorn Standard Days from now."

"And then it will be Boarders Away!" she said, obviously relishing the prospect.

"Boarders Away!" he agreed. "And I, for one, shall be glad to get out of this spaceborne sardine can."

"Frankly," she said, "I shall be even gladder to get out of this bloody galley so that I can do the real work for which I was trained."