Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
He snarled: "Why doesn't this Plumie take off its helmet? It lands on oxygen planets! Does it think it's too good to breathe our air?" Baird caught the Plumie's eye. He made a gesture suggesting the removal of the space helmet. The Plumie gestured, in return, to a tiny vent in the suit. He opened something and gas whistled out. He cut it off.
They took Baird through the ship's entire fabric. And their purpose, when it became clear, was startling. The Plumie ship had no rocket tubes. It had no beam-projectors except small-sized objects which were which must be their projectors of tractor and pressor beams. They were elaborately grounded to the ship's substance. But they were not originally designed for ultra-heavy service.
And then it hurled itself at the human ship as if bent upon a suicidal crash which would destroy both ships together. But Baird, in the radar room, and the skipper in navigation, knew that it would plunge brilliantly past at the last instant And then they knew that it would not. Because, very suddenly and very abruptly, there was something the matter with the Plumie ship. The life went out of it.
"When the Plumies understood what we were doing, and why, they drew diagrams. They hadn't thought of cutting free, out in space, without the spinning saws they use to cut bronze with. But they asked for a scanner and a screen. They checked on its use. I want to see " He flipped on the screen. And there was instantly a Plumie looking eagerly out of it, for some sign of communication established.
So far, the best course I can get means we graze the sun's photosphere in fourteen days six hours, allowing for acceleration by the sun's gravity." "And you and I," said Baird wryly, "have been acting as professional associates only, when " "Don't say it!" said Diane shakily. "It's terrible!" He put the communicator back in his pocket. The Plumie had watched him.
The crunching, grunting sound of rockets leaving their launching tubes came before his first syllable was complete. Then there was silence while the skipper gathered breath for a masterpiece of profanity. But Taine snapped: "That dance was a sneak-up! The Plumie came four miles nearer while we watched!" Baird jerked his eyes from watching the Plumie. He looked at the master radar.
To destroy the Plumie ship within twice that would endanger the Niccola and leave nothing of the Plumie to examine afterward. The Plumie ship must have seen the rocket flares, but it continued to dance, coming nearer and ever nearer in seemingly heedless and purposeless plungings and spinnings in star-speckled space. But suddenly there were racing, rushing trails of swirling vapor.
When the Plumie escort removed his helmet, on his own ship, the reason for the helmet's high crest was apparent. He had a high crest of what looked remarkably like feathers and it was not artificial. It grew there. The reason for conventionalized plumes on bronze survey plates was clear.
"It will be a Plumie ship, sir," said Baird very steadily. "At a guess, they picked up our mapping beam and shot a single pulse at us to find out who and what we were. For another guess, by now they've picked up and analyzed our information-beam and know what we've found out about them." The skipper scowled. "How many of them?" he demanded. "Have we run into a fleet?"
Only one man remained, cutting at the last sliver of metal that held the two ships together. It parted. The Plumie ship swept swiftly away, moved by the centrifugal force of the rotary motion the joined vessels had possessed. It dwindled and dwindled. It was a half mile away. A mile. The last man on the outside of the Niccola's hull thriftily brought his torch to the air lock and came in.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking