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At least, that's what it looks like." He shrugged, checked his watch, climbed out of the chair. "Well," he said, "the ten minutes I gave the Queen to turn the power back on are up. Looks like the old girl couldn't do it. So I'll " The indirect lighting system in the instrument room went on silently. The emergency light flickered and went out. Gefty's head came around.
A heavy thump on the floor below the locks followed, then a hard click as the lock closed and complete darkness returned. The silence resumed. Seconds dragged on. Gefty's imagination pictured the thing waiting, its great, wedge-shaped head raised as its senses probed the dark about it for a sign of the two human beings.
Then the odor was in Gefty's nostrils, too, and the back of his neck turned to ice as he recognized it. He glanced up at the ventilation outlet, looked back at Kerim. He took her arm, said softly, "Come this way. Keep very quiet! I don't know how it happened, but the janandra's on the main deck now. That's what it smells like.
Maulbow, one of the explorers, had met disaster a million light-years from the home of his kind, centuries behind them, his vehicle wrecked on an airless moon with damaged control unit and shattered instruments. He had made his way to a human civilization to obtain the equipment he needed, and returned at last with the Silver Queen to where the time-sailer lay buried. Gefty's lip curled.
To tamper with a device like this, before learning as much as one could about it, would be lunatic foolhardiness. It looked like too good a bet that the next serious mistake made by anybody would finish them all Perhaps it was only because Gefty's nerves were on edge that he grew aware at that point in his reflections of two minor signals from his senses.
The cutter was plucked from Gefty's grasp; then he was picked up, suit and all, and slammed up towards the vault ceiling. He had a feeling that inaudible thunders were shaking the ship. He seemed to be rolling over and over along the ceiling. At last, the suit crashed into something which showed a total disinclination to yield, and Gefty blacked out.
It seemed clear that Maulbow had reverted mentally to his own time, and for some seconds he remained unaware that Gefty had entered the room. Then, surprisingly, the slitted blue eyes opened wider and focused on Gefty's face. And Maulbow screamed with rage. Gefty felt somewhat disconcerted. For the reason alone that he was under anesthetic, Maulbow should not have been conscious. But he was.
Then there was the janandra the big, snakish thing in the storage which Maulbow had brought back up from the moon along with the battered machine. It had been, he said, his shipboard companion on another voyage. It wasn't ordinarily aggressive Gefty's sudden appearance in the vault must have startled it into making an attack. It was not exactly a pet.
They are not life but show characteristics of life even of intelligent life. If you can imagine radiant energy being capable of conscious hostility...." There was a chill at the back of Gefty's neck. "A big, fast-moving light?" "Yes!" Sharp concern showed suddenly in the voice from the passage. "You ... when did you see that?" Gefty glanced at the screens. "Twice since you've been talking.
Like Maulbow, it might have been battered around and knocked out during the recent disturbance; and when it recovered, it had found Gefty in the vault with it. But it might also have been awake all the while, waiting cunningly until Gefty's attention seemed fixed elsewhere before launching its attack.
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