Free All Judgment Fled by James White Page A

second alien

clung to the opposite wall net like a great, fleshy spider, giving him a

perfect view of the starfish body with its thick tentacles and leathery

tegument. The tentacles ended in bony pincers, like white, miniature

elephant tusks. McCullough estimated its physical mass to be approximately

half that of a man, with the tentacle length between four and five feet.
     
     
The third alien was of the same species as number Two. It covered part

of the window with its body so that McCullough and his camera had a

perfect view of its underbelly, which was soft and pinkish-brown and

convoluted into folds and openings which were evidently mouths or gills

or sensory equipment of some kind, all grouped around a large, sharp,

centrally placed horn or sting . . .
     
     
McCullough swallowed hard. He thought that on the purely physical evidence

these were not nice people.
     
     
Then suddenly the aliens began to move. McCullough still wasn't sure where

their eyes were, but somehow he knew that their focus of attention had

changed. Something was approaching along the corridor. He could not get

his eyes close enough to the window to see, although he could hear low,

gobbling sounds being transmitted through the metal of the door to his

helmet. Quickly he stopped down his lens and aimed it along the dark

corridor. It had a wider angle of view and might see more than he could.
     
     
The first three aliens were leaving.
     
     
Walters opened the outer seal at that moment and the rush of escaping air

drew him away from the door, spinning him slowly end over end. But not

before he had a glimpse of something covered with white fur, or perhaps

clothing, which flicked past the window.
     
     
     
     
chapter nine
     
     
"I feel an awful fool," said McCullough, looking apologetically at Walters.

"I should have realized it in the Ship. At very least I should have suspected

it when I examined him here . . ."
     
     
"Granted that changing suits in the corridor would have been easier

on Walters' throat and eyes, I doubt if you would have been allowed to

complete the operation when the aliens arrived. So you have nothing

to reproach yourself with, and those photographs you took -- well,

altogether it was a very nice job."
     
     
"And I'm not complaining," said Walters.
     
     
For the analysis of the air sample taken in the corridor had shown that

the alien atmosphere was not harmful to human beings and was, in fact,

much less toxic than the air of an average city. But the sample taken in

the lock chamber contained a quantity of vaporized liquid which could

only have come from the leak in the hydraulic system. Apparently the

stuff Walters had breathed was about as damaging as a similar quantity

of tear gas.
     
     
But McCullough had conducted his examination of the hapless pilot as if

he had been engaged on a slightly premature post-mortem . . .
     
     
"Now we must decide what to do next. I'd like the doctor and Major

Walters to put forward any suggestions they may have. After all, you

two have more Ship experience than anyone else. How do you see the

situation now?"
     
     
"I can't see anything," Walters said hoarsely. "My throat is too sore . . ."
     
     
There was an irritated, overamplified sigh from the speaker grill.

McCullough nodded quickly to Walters, thought for a moment, then began

to speak.
     
     
So far as he was concerned, the trip inside the alien vessel had not answered

any of the major questions regarding its origin and purpose. It remained

a hulking brute of a ship nearly half a mile long, orbiting the sun

at a distance of one hundred and sixty million miles, seemingly in a

powered-down condition and refusing to acknowledge all signals. The

precision with which it had been inserted into orbit, together with the

reactions of what must have been a damage-control party of its crew,

seemed to rule out the earlier theory that the Ship was in a derelict

or distressed