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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Stranger, by Gordon R. Dickson

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you

-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before

-using this eBook.

-

-Title: The Stranger

-

-Author: Gordon R. Dickson

-

-Release Date: July 14, 2021 [eBook #65839]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

-             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

-

-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGER ***

-

-

-

-

-                             THE STRANGER

-

-                         By Gordon R. Dickson

-

-               If the alien space craft was not a rocket

-            ship, what was it? And an even bigger question:

-           should they investigate--or run for their lives!

-

-           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

-              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy

-                               May 1952

-         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

-         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

-

-

-We will not consider the odds involved in their finding the stranger,

-for the odds were impossible.

-

-They came down to rest their tubes on an unnamed planet of a

-little-known star in the Buckhorn Cluster. Because they were tired from

-weeks in space, they came in without looking. They circled the planet

-once and spiraled down to an open patch of sand between two rocky

-cliffs. Only then did they see the other ship.

-

-Jeff Wadley was at the controls and his eyes widened when he saw it.

-But his fingers did not hesitate on the controls, for a deep-space

-starship is not the kind of vehicle that can change its mind about

-landing once it is within half a mile of the ground. He brought the

-Emerald Girl in smoothly to a stop not five hundred feet from the

-stranger. Then he sat back.

-

-"Dad," he said flatly, into the intercom, "swing the turret!"

-

-Peter Wadley, up in the instrument room, had already seen the strange

-ship, and the heavy twin barrels of the automatic rifles were

-depressing to cover. Jeff leaned forward to the communicator.

-

-"_Identify yourself!_" The tight beam in Common Code snapped across

-the little stretch of open sand to the cliff against which the other

-seemed to nestle. "We are the mining ship Emerald Girl, Earth license,

-five hundred and eighty-two days out of Arcturus Station. _Identify

-yourself!_"

-

-There were steps behind Jeff, and Peter Wadley came to stand behind his

-son's tense back.

-

-"Do they answer, Jeff?"

-

-"No."

-

-"_Identify yourself. Identify yourself! Identify yourself!_"

-

-The angry demand crackled and arced invisibly across the space between

-both vessels. And there was no answer.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Jeff sat back from the communicator. The palms of his hands were wet

-and he wiped them on the cloth of his breeches.

-

-"Let's get out of here," he said nervously.

-

-"And leave _him_?" his father's lean forefinger indicated the strange

-silent ship.

-

-"Why not?" Jeff jerked his face up. "We're no salvage outfit or

-Government exploration unit."

-

-There was a moment of tenseness between them. The older man's face

-tightened.

-

-"We'd better look into it," he said.

-

-"Are you crazy?" blazed Jeff. "It was here when we came. It'll be here

-if we leave. Let's get going. We can report it if you want. Let the

-Federal ships investigate."

-

-"Maybe it just landed," his father said evenly. "Maybe it's in trouble."

-

-"What if it is?" Jeff insisted. "Don't you realize we're a sitting

-target here? And what do you think it is--Aunt Susie's runabout? Look

-at it!" And with a savage flip of his hand he shoved the magnification

-of the viewing screen up so that the other ship seemed to loom up a

-handbreadth beyond their walls.

-

-It was an unnecessary gesture. There was no mistaking that the lines

-of the other ship were foreign to any they had ever seen. It was big:

-not outlandishly big, but bigger than the Emerald Girl, and bulb-shaped

-with most of its bulk in front. There was no sign of ports or

-airlocks, only a few stubby fins, which projected forlornly from the

-body at an angle of some thirty degrees.

-

-And from its silence and immobility, its strange inhuman lines, a cold

-air of alien menace seemed to reach out to chill the two watching men.

-

-"Well?" challenged Jeff. But the older man was not listening.

-

-"The radarcamera," he said, half to himself. He turned on his heel and

-stalked off. Jeff, sitting tensely in his chair, heard his father's

-footsteps die away, to be succeeded seconds later by the distant clumsy

-sounds of a man getting into a spacesuit. Jeff swore, and jumping to

-his feet, ran to the airlock. His father, radarcamera at his feet, was

-already half-dressed to go outside.

-

-"You aren't going out there?" he asked incredulously.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The older man nodded and picked up his fishbowl helmet. Jeff's face

-twisted in dismay.

-

-"I won't let you!" he half-shouted. "You're risking your life and I

-can't navigate the ship without you."

-

-Helmet in hand, his father paused, the deep-graved lines of his face

-stiffening.

-

-"I'm still master of this ship!" he said curtly. "Alien or not that

-other ship may need assistance. By intraspace law I'm obliged to give

-it. If you're worried, cover me from the gun-turret." He dropped the

-helmet over his head, cutting Jeff off from further protest.

-

-Seething with mixed fear and anger, Jeff turned abruptly and climbed

-hurriedly to the gun-turret. The twin barrels of the rifles were

-already centered on their target, which the aiming screen showed,

-together with the area between the two vessels and a portion of the

-Emerald Girl's airlock, which projected from her side. As Jeff watched,

-the outer lock swung open and a grey, space-suited figure raced for

-the protection of the bow. It was a dash of no more than five seconds'

-duration, but to Jeff it seemed that his father took an eternity to

-reach safety.

-

-He reached for the microphone on the ship's circuit and pulled it to

-him.

-

-"All right, Dad?" In spite of himself, Jeff's voice was still ragged

-with anger.

-

-"Fine, Jeff," his father's voice came back in unperturbed tones. "I'm

-well shielded and I can get good, clean shots at every part of her."

-

-"Let me know when you're ready to start back," said Jeff, and shoved

-the microphone away from him.

-

-He sat back and lit a cigarette, but his eyes continued to watch the

-other ship as a man might watch a dud bomb which has not yet been

-disarmed. After a while, he noticed his fingers were shaking, and he

-laid the cigarette carefully down in the ashtray.

-

-When he comes back, thought Jeff, it'll be time. We'll have this thing

-out then. He's become some sort of a religious fanatic, and he doesn't

-know it. How a man who's been all over hell and seen the worst sides

-of fifty different races in as many years can think of them all as

-lovable human children, I don't know. But, know it or not, this taking

-of chances has got to stop someplace; and right here is the best place

-of all. When he gets back--if he gets back, we're taking off. And if he

-doesn't get back ... I'll blow that bloody bastard over there into so

-many bits....

-

-"Coming in, Jeff," his father's voice on the speaker interrupted him.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Jeff leaned forward, his hands on the trips of the rifles; the small

-grey figure suddenly shot back to the protection of the airlock,

-which snapped shut behind it. Then, he took a deep breath, stood up,

-and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He went down to the

-instrument room.

-

-Peter Wadley was already out of his suit and developing the pictures.

-Jeff picked them up as they came off the roll, damp and soft to the

-touch.

-

-"I can't tell much," he said, holding them up to the light.

-

-"There's a great deal of overlap," his father answered. "We're going

-to have to section and fit the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle.

-Wait'll I'm through here."

-

-For about five minutes more, pictures continued to come off the roll.

-Then Peter picked up a pair of scissors and arranged the prints in

-their proper sequence.

-

-"Clear the table," he told Jeff, "and fit these together as I hand them

-to you."

-

-For a little while longer, they worked in silence. Then Peter laid down

-his scissors.

-

-"That's all," he said. "Now, what have we got?"

-

-"I don't know," answered Jeff, bewilderment in his voice. "It looks

-like nothing I've ever seen."

-

-Peter stepped up to the table and squinted at the shadowy films with

-eyes practiced in reading rock formations. He shook his head.

-

-"It is strange," he said, finally.

-

-"Do you see what I see?" demanded Jeff. "There's no real crew

-space. There's this one spot--up front--" he indicated it with his

-finger--"that's about as big as a good sized closet. And nothing more

-than that--except corridors about twenty inches in diameter running

-from it to points all over the ship. She must be flown by a crew of

-midgets."

-

-"Midgets," echoed the older man, thoughtfully. "I never heard of an

-intelligent race that small."

-

-"Then they're something new," said Jeff, with a shrug of his shoulders.

-

-"No," said his father, slowly. "I don't remember when or where I heard

-it, but there's some reason why you couldn't have an intelligent race

-much smaller than a good sized dog. It has something to do with the

-fact that they grow in size as their developing intelligence gives them

-an increasing advantage over their environment."

-

-"Here's the evidence," Jeff answered, tapping the film with one finger.

-

-"No," Pete was bending over the picture fragments again. "Look at these

-things in the corridor. They're obviously controls."

-

-Jeff looked.

-

-"I see what you mean," he said at last. "If there's any similarity

-between their mechanical system and ours, these controls are built for

-somebody pretty big. But look how they're scattered all over the ship.

-There's a good fifteen or twenty different groups of instruments and

-other things. That means a number of crew members; and you simply can't

-put a number of large crew members in those little corridors."

-

-"There's a large amount of total space," Pete began. Then, suddenly a

-faint tremor ran through the ship. Jeff leaped for the screen and his

-father moved over to stand behind him.

-

-"Good Lord," said Jeff, "look at her."

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The other ship shook suddenly and rolled slightly to one side. Some

-unseen center of gravity pulled her back to her original position. She

-hesitated a moment, and then tried again, with the same results. She

-lay quiescent.

-

-Jeff pounced on his radiation drum graph.

-

-"What does it say?" Peter asked.

-

-Jeff shook his head in astonishment. "Nothing," he answered, "just

-nothing at all."

-

-"Nothing?" Peter came over to take a look at the graph himself. It was

-as Jeff had said. The line tracing the white surface of the graph was

-straight and undisturbed.

-

-"But that's impossible," Peter frowned.

-

-The two men turned back to the screen. As they watched, one final

-shudder shook the strange ship, and then, like a stranded whale who has

-given up hope, it lay still.

-

-"My God!" said Pete, and Jeff turned to him in astonishment. It was the

-closest to profanity his father had come in twenty years. "Jeff, do you

-know what I think? I think that ship is manned by just one great big

-creature--like a giant squid. That's why no radiation registered. He

-was trying to move his ship by sheer strength."

-

-Jeff stared at his father.

-

-"You're crazy," was all he could manage to say. "Why, something big

-enough to shake that ship would have to fill every inch of space inside

-it. You can't live in a space ship that way."

-

-"That's right," Pete answered. He clamped his hand on Jeff's shoulder

-excitedly and led him back to the jigsaw puzzle on the table.

-

-"If I'm right," he said, "that's no ship at all as we understand it,

-but some sort of a space-going suit for something terrifically large.

-Something like a giant squid, as I said, or some other long-tentacled

-creature. His body would lie here--in this space you said was about the

-size of a closet--and his tentacles or whatever they are, would reach

-out in these corridors to the various groups of instruments."

-

-Jeff frowned.

-

-"It sounds sensible," he muttered. "And in any case, he wouldn't be

-able to get outside his ship to fix anything that went wrong. And I

-take it there is something wrong, or else he wouldn't be jumping around

-inside."

-

-"Jeff," Pete said, "I'm going outside to take a close look at him."

-

-Jeff's head snapped up from the jigsaw puzzle. The old, sick fear had

-come back. It washed over him like a wave.

-

-"Why?" he demanded harshly.

-

-"To see if I can find out what's wrong with his ship," said Pete over

-his shoulder as he went to the airlock. "Coming?"

-

-"Wait!" cried Jeff. He stood up and followed his father. For a moment

-there, they stood facing each other, two tall men with less apparent

-physical difference between them than their ages might indicate, poised

-on the brink of an open break.

-

-"Wait," said Jeff again, and now his voice was lower, more under

-control. "Dad, there's no point in playing around any longer. You

-aren't going to be satisfied just to look around out there and then

-leave. You're going to do something. And if that's it I want to know

-now."

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-There was a moment's silence; then Pete turned back to Jeff, his face

-set.

-

-"That's right," he said. "I don't have to look. I know what's wrong.

-And I know what I'm going to do about it. There's a living intelligence

-trapped in that space-thing as you and I might be trapped. I can set it

-free with two of our motor jacks. If you've got one inkling of what it

-means to be ignored when you're caught like that, you'll help me. If

-not, I'm taking two jacks out the airlock and you can fire the motors

-and take off and be damned to you."

-

-Between the two big men the tension built and strained and broke. Jeff

-let out a ragged sigh.

-

-"All right," he said. "I'm with you."

-

-"Good," said the older man, and there was new life in his voice. "Get

-your suit on. I'll explain as we dress."

-

-"The trouble with our friend there is that he's fallen over. I see you

-don't understand, Jeff. Well, this ship of ours lands on her belly.

-We've got booster rockets all over the hull to correct our landing

-angle. But ships weren't always that way. They used to have to sit

-down on their tail. There's no furrow where that ship landed, only a

-circular blasted spot, so it figures. Maybe some of his mechanism went

-wrong at the last minute.

-

-"At any rate, I'm betting that if we get him upright again, he can take

-care of himself from there on out. So you and I are going to go out

-there with a couple of jacks and see if we can't jack him back up into

-position."

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The sand was thick and heavy. The walk over to the other ship was

-tedious, with the heavy jacks weighing them down. They reached the

-alien hull, paused a moment to get their breath and then attached the

-magnetic grapples to the skin of the ship at two points on opposite

-sides of the hull and roughly a fourth of the way up from the rocket

-tubes.

-

-It was hard to anchor the jacks in the soft sand. They finally found

-it necessary to dig them in some three or four feet to a layer of rock

-that underlay the sand. Then, when everything was ready, they took

-their stations, each at a jack, and Pete called to Jeff on the helmet

-set.

-

-"All ready? Start your motor."

-

-Jeff reached down and flicked a switch. The tiny, powerful jack motor

-began to spin, and the jack base settled more solidly against its rocky

-bed. When he was sure that it would not slip, he left it, and went

-around the rockets to stand by his father.

-

-His face was grey.

-

-"Well," said Pete tensely, "up she goes."

-

-The nose of the alien ship was raising slowly from the sand. It

-quivered softly from some motion inside the ship.

-

-"Yes," said Jeff, "up she goes." His words were flat and dull. Pete

-turned to look at him.

-

-"Scared, son?" he asked. Jeff's lips parted, closed and opened again.

-

-"You know how we stand," he said, dully. "I've heard what you said from

-other men, but never from an alien. Most of the ones we know hit first,

-and talk afterward. You know that once this ship is on its feet we're

-at his mercy. Just his rocket blasts alone could kill us; and there

-won't be time to get back to the Girl."

-

-The alien was now at an angle of forty-five degrees. The little jacks

-stretched steadily, pushing their thin, stiff arms against the strange

-hull. Sand dripped from the rising ship.

-

-"Yes, Jeff," Pete said. "I know. But the important thing isn't what he

-does, but what we do. The fact that we've helped him--can't you see it

-that way, son?"

-

-Jeff shook his head in bewilderment.

-

-"I don't know," he said helplessly. "I just don't know."

-

-The ship was now nearly upright. Suddenly, with an abruptness that

-startled both men, it shook itself free of the jacks and teetered free

-for a second, before coming to rest, its nose pointing straight up.

-

-"Here it goes," said Pete, a tinge of excitement in his voice. They

-moved back some yards to be out of the way of the takeoff blast.

-Suddenly the ground trembled under their feet. Pete put his hand on the

-younger man's shoulder.

-

-"Here it goes," he repeated, in a whisper.

-

-Flame burst abruptly from the base of the ship. It was warming up its

-tubes. Slowly the flame puffed out from its base and it began to rise.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Jeff shook suddenly with an uncontrollable shudder. His voice came to

-Pete through the earphones, starkly afraid.

-

-"Now what?" he cried. "What'll he do now?"

-

-Pete's grip tightened on his shoulder.

-

-"Steady boy."

-

-The ship was rising. Up it went, and up, until it was the size of a

-man's little finger, a tiny sliver of silver against the black backdrop

-of the sky. Then, inexplicably, it halted and began to reverse itself.

-

-Slowly it turned, until the blunt nose pointed toward them. Jeff's

-hoarse breathing was loud in his helmet. _Now it comes_, he thought,

-and his muscles tensed.

-

-A long minute flowed by and still the alien hung there. Then, abruptly

-it went into a series of idiotic gyrations; it twisted and turned, and

-spun around, swinging its fiery trail of rocket gases like a luminous

-tail in the darkness. Then, just as abruptly, it reversed once more,

-so that its head was away from them; in the twinkling of a moment it

-was gone.

-

-Pete sighed, a deep, ragged sigh.

-

-"Did you see it, boy?" he cried. "Did you see it?"

-

-"I saw," Jeff's voice was filled with a new awe. "Now I get it. He

-wasn't sure--he didn't know we were really trying to help him until we

-let him get all the way out there by himself. Then he knew he was free.

-That's why he wouldn't answer before."

-

-"Sure, Jeff, sure," said the older man, a note of triumph in his voice.

-"But that's not what I mean. Did you notice all those contortions he

-was going through up there? What did they remind you of?"

-

-There was a moment of silence, then the words came, at first slowly,

-then in a rush from Jeff's lips.

-

-"Like a puppy," he said, haltingly, stumbling over the wonder of it.

-"Like a puppy wagging its tail."

-

-And the light of a new understanding broke suddenly in his eyes.

-

-"Dad!" said Jeff, turning to his father. "Dad! Do you know what I

-think? I think we've made a friend."

-

-And the two men stood there, side by side, looking into the blackness

-of space where an odd-shaped spacecraft had vanished. It, they felt,

-was on its way home.

-

-And they were right. Moreover, It was hurrying.

-

-For It had a story to tell.

-

-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGER ***

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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 65839 ***
+
+                             THE STRANGER
+
+                         By Gordon R. Dickson
+
+               If the alien space craft was not a rocket
+            ship, what was it? And an even bigger question:
+           should they investigate--or run for their lives!
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
+                               May 1952
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+We will not consider the odds involved in their finding the stranger,
+for the odds were impossible.
+
+They came down to rest their tubes on an unnamed planet of a
+little-known star in the Buckhorn Cluster. Because they were tired from
+weeks in space, they came in without looking. They circled the planet
+once and spiraled down to an open patch of sand between two rocky
+cliffs. Only then did they see the other ship.
+
+Jeff Wadley was at the controls and his eyes widened when he saw it.
+But his fingers did not hesitate on the controls, for a deep-space
+starship is not the kind of vehicle that can change its mind about
+landing once it is within half a mile of the ground. He brought the
+Emerald Girl in smoothly to a stop not five hundred feet from the
+stranger. Then he sat back.
+
+"Dad," he said flatly, into the intercom, "swing the turret!"
+
+Peter Wadley, up in the instrument room, had already seen the strange
+ship, and the heavy twin barrels of the automatic rifles were
+depressing to cover. Jeff leaned forward to the communicator.
+
+"_Identify yourself!_" The tight beam in Common Code snapped across
+the little stretch of open sand to the cliff against which the other
+seemed to nestle. "We are the mining ship Emerald Girl, Earth license,
+five hundred and eighty-two days out of Arcturus Station. _Identify
+yourself!_"
+
+There were steps behind Jeff, and Peter Wadley came to stand behind his
+son's tense back.
+
+"Do they answer, Jeff?"
+
+"No."
+
+"_Identify yourself. Identify yourself! Identify yourself!_"
+
+The angry demand crackled and arced invisibly across the space between
+both vessels. And there was no answer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jeff sat back from the communicator. The palms of his hands were wet
+and he wiped them on the cloth of his breeches.
+
+"Let's get out of here," he said nervously.
+
+"And leave _him_?" his father's lean forefinger indicated the strange
+silent ship.
+
+"Why not?" Jeff jerked his face up. "We're no salvage outfit or
+Government exploration unit."
+
+There was a moment of tenseness between them. The older man's face
+tightened.
+
+"We'd better look into it," he said.
+
+"Are you crazy?" blazed Jeff. "It was here when we came. It'll be here
+if we leave. Let's get going. We can report it if you want. Let the
+Federal ships investigate."
+
+"Maybe it just landed," his father said evenly. "Maybe it's in trouble."
+
+"What if it is?" Jeff insisted. "Don't you realize we're a sitting
+target here? And what do you think it is--Aunt Susie's runabout? Look
+at it!" And with a savage flip of his hand he shoved the magnification
+of the viewing screen up so that the other ship seemed to loom up a
+handbreadth beyond their walls.
+
+It was an unnecessary gesture. There was no mistaking that the lines
+of the other ship were foreign to any they had ever seen. It was big:
+not outlandishly big, but bigger than the Emerald Girl, and bulb-shaped
+with most of its bulk in front. There was no sign of ports or
+airlocks, only a few stubby fins, which projected forlornly from the
+body at an angle of some thirty degrees.
+
+And from its silence and immobility, its strange inhuman lines, a cold
+air of alien menace seemed to reach out to chill the two watching men.
+
+"Well?" challenged Jeff. But the older man was not listening.
+
+"The radarcamera," he said, half to himself. He turned on his heel and
+stalked off. Jeff, sitting tensely in his chair, heard his father's
+footsteps die away, to be succeeded seconds later by the distant clumsy
+sounds of a man getting into a spacesuit. Jeff swore, and jumping to
+his feet, ran to the airlock. His father, radarcamera at his feet, was
+already half-dressed to go outside.
+
+"You aren't going out there?" he asked incredulously.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The older man nodded and picked up his fishbowl helmet. Jeff's face
+twisted in dismay.
+
+"I won't let you!" he half-shouted. "You're risking your life and I
+can't navigate the ship without you."
+
+Helmet in hand, his father paused, the deep-graved lines of his face
+stiffening.
+
+"I'm still master of this ship!" he said curtly. "Alien or not that
+other ship may need assistance. By intraspace law I'm obliged to give
+it. If you're worried, cover me from the gun-turret." He dropped the
+helmet over his head, cutting Jeff off from further protest.
+
+Seething with mixed fear and anger, Jeff turned abruptly and climbed
+hurriedly to the gun-turret. The twin barrels of the rifles were
+already centered on their target, which the aiming screen showed,
+together with the area between the two vessels and a portion of the
+Emerald Girl's airlock, which projected from her side. As Jeff watched,
+the outer lock swung open and a grey, space-suited figure raced for
+the protection of the bow. It was a dash of no more than five seconds'
+duration, but to Jeff it seemed that his father took an eternity to
+reach safety.
+
+He reached for the microphone on the ship's circuit and pulled it to
+him.
+
+"All right, Dad?" In spite of himself, Jeff's voice was still ragged
+with anger.
+
+"Fine, Jeff," his father's voice came back in unperturbed tones. "I'm
+well shielded and I can get good, clean shots at every part of her."
+
+"Let me know when you're ready to start back," said Jeff, and shoved
+the microphone away from him.
+
+He sat back and lit a cigarette, but his eyes continued to watch the
+other ship as a man might watch a dud bomb which has not yet been
+disarmed. After a while, he noticed his fingers were shaking, and he
+laid the cigarette carefully down in the ashtray.
+
+When he comes back, thought Jeff, it'll be time. We'll have this thing
+out then. He's become some sort of a religious fanatic, and he doesn't
+know it. How a man who's been all over hell and seen the worst sides
+of fifty different races in as many years can think of them all as
+lovable human children, I don't know. But, know it or not, this taking
+of chances has got to stop someplace; and right here is the best place
+of all. When he gets back--if he gets back, we're taking off. And if he
+doesn't get back ... I'll blow that bloody bastard over there into so
+many bits....
+
+"Coming in, Jeff," his father's voice on the speaker interrupted him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jeff leaned forward, his hands on the trips of the rifles; the small
+grey figure suddenly shot back to the protection of the airlock,
+which snapped shut behind it. Then, he took a deep breath, stood up,
+and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He went down to the
+instrument room.
+
+Peter Wadley was already out of his suit and developing the pictures.
+Jeff picked them up as they came off the roll, damp and soft to the
+touch.
+
+"I can't tell much," he said, holding them up to the light.
+
+"There's a great deal of overlap," his father answered. "We're going
+to have to section and fit the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle.
+Wait'll I'm through here."
+
+For about five minutes more, pictures continued to come off the roll.
+Then Peter picked up a pair of scissors and arranged the prints in
+their proper sequence.
+
+"Clear the table," he told Jeff, "and fit these together as I hand them
+to you."
+
+For a little while longer, they worked in silence. Then Peter laid down
+his scissors.
+
+"That's all," he said. "Now, what have we got?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Jeff, bewilderment in his voice. "It looks
+like nothing I've ever seen."
+
+Peter stepped up to the table and squinted at the shadowy films with
+eyes practiced in reading rock formations. He shook his head.
+
+"It is strange," he said, finally.
+
+"Do you see what I see?" demanded Jeff. "There's no real crew
+space. There's this one spot--up front--" he indicated it with his
+finger--"that's about as big as a good sized closet. And nothing more
+than that--except corridors about twenty inches in diameter running
+from it to points all over the ship. She must be flown by a crew of
+midgets."
+
+"Midgets," echoed the older man, thoughtfully. "I never heard of an
+intelligent race that small."
+
+"Then they're something new," said Jeff, with a shrug of his shoulders.
+
+"No," said his father, slowly. "I don't remember when or where I heard
+it, but there's some reason why you couldn't have an intelligent race
+much smaller than a good sized dog. It has something to do with the
+fact that they grow in size as their developing intelligence gives them
+an increasing advantage over their environment."
+
+"Here's the evidence," Jeff answered, tapping the film with one finger.
+
+"No," Pete was bending over the picture fragments again. "Look at these
+things in the corridor. They're obviously controls."
+
+Jeff looked.
+
+"I see what you mean," he said at last. "If there's any similarity
+between their mechanical system and ours, these controls are built for
+somebody pretty big. But look how they're scattered all over the ship.
+There's a good fifteen or twenty different groups of instruments and
+other things. That means a number of crew members; and you simply can't
+put a number of large crew members in those little corridors."
+
+"There's a large amount of total space," Pete began. Then, suddenly a
+faint tremor ran through the ship. Jeff leaped for the screen and his
+father moved over to stand behind him.
+
+"Good Lord," said Jeff, "look at her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other ship shook suddenly and rolled slightly to one side. Some
+unseen center of gravity pulled her back to her original position. She
+hesitated a moment, and then tried again, with the same results. She
+lay quiescent.
+
+Jeff pounced on his radiation drum graph.
+
+"What does it say?" Peter asked.
+
+Jeff shook his head in astonishment. "Nothing," he answered, "just
+nothing at all."
+
+"Nothing?" Peter came over to take a look at the graph himself. It was
+as Jeff had said. The line tracing the white surface of the graph was
+straight and undisturbed.
+
+"But that's impossible," Peter frowned.
+
+The two men turned back to the screen. As they watched, one final
+shudder shook the strange ship, and then, like a stranded whale who has
+given up hope, it lay still.
+
+"My God!" said Pete, and Jeff turned to him in astonishment. It was the
+closest to profanity his father had come in twenty years. "Jeff, do you
+know what I think? I think that ship is manned by just one great big
+creature--like a giant squid. That's why no radiation registered. He
+was trying to move his ship by sheer strength."
+
+Jeff stared at his father.
+
+"You're crazy," was all he could manage to say. "Why, something big
+enough to shake that ship would have to fill every inch of space inside
+it. You can't live in a space ship that way."
+
+"That's right," Pete answered. He clamped his hand on Jeff's shoulder
+excitedly and led him back to the jigsaw puzzle on the table.
+
+"If I'm right," he said, "that's no ship at all as we understand it,
+but some sort of a space-going suit for something terrifically large.
+Something like a giant squid, as I said, or some other long-tentacled
+creature. His body would lie here--in this space you said was about the
+size of a closet--and his tentacles or whatever they are, would reach
+out in these corridors to the various groups of instruments."
+
+Jeff frowned.
+
+"It sounds sensible," he muttered. "And in any case, he wouldn't be
+able to get outside his ship to fix anything that went wrong. And I
+take it there is something wrong, or else he wouldn't be jumping around
+inside."
+
+"Jeff," Pete said, "I'm going outside to take a close look at him."
+
+Jeff's head snapped up from the jigsaw puzzle. The old, sick fear had
+come back. It washed over him like a wave.
+
+"Why?" he demanded harshly.
+
+"To see if I can find out what's wrong with his ship," said Pete over
+his shoulder as he went to the airlock. "Coming?"
+
+"Wait!" cried Jeff. He stood up and followed his father. For a moment
+there, they stood facing each other, two tall men with less apparent
+physical difference between them than their ages might indicate, poised
+on the brink of an open break.
+
+"Wait," said Jeff again, and now his voice was lower, more under
+control. "Dad, there's no point in playing around any longer. You
+aren't going to be satisfied just to look around out there and then
+leave. You're going to do something. And if that's it I want to know
+now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a moment's silence; then Pete turned back to Jeff, his face
+set.
+
+"That's right," he said. "I don't have to look. I know what's wrong.
+And I know what I'm going to do about it. There's a living intelligence
+trapped in that space-thing as you and I might be trapped. I can set it
+free with two of our motor jacks. If you've got one inkling of what it
+means to be ignored when you're caught like that, you'll help me. If
+not, I'm taking two jacks out the airlock and you can fire the motors
+and take off and be damned to you."
+
+Between the two big men the tension built and strained and broke. Jeff
+let out a ragged sigh.
+
+"All right," he said. "I'm with you."
+
+"Good," said the older man, and there was new life in his voice. "Get
+your suit on. I'll explain as we dress."
+
+"The trouble with our friend there is that he's fallen over. I see you
+don't understand, Jeff. Well, this ship of ours lands on her belly.
+We've got booster rockets all over the hull to correct our landing
+angle. But ships weren't always that way. They used to have to sit
+down on their tail. There's no furrow where that ship landed, only a
+circular blasted spot, so it figures. Maybe some of his mechanism went
+wrong at the last minute.
+
+"At any rate, I'm betting that if we get him upright again, he can take
+care of himself from there on out. So you and I are going to go out
+there with a couple of jacks and see if we can't jack him back up into
+position."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sand was thick and heavy. The walk over to the other ship was
+tedious, with the heavy jacks weighing them down. They reached the
+alien hull, paused a moment to get their breath and then attached the
+magnetic grapples to the skin of the ship at two points on opposite
+sides of the hull and roughly a fourth of the way up from the rocket
+tubes.
+
+It was hard to anchor the jacks in the soft sand. They finally found
+it necessary to dig them in some three or four feet to a layer of rock
+that underlay the sand. Then, when everything was ready, they took
+their stations, each at a jack, and Pete called to Jeff on the helmet
+set.
+
+"All ready? Start your motor."
+
+Jeff reached down and flicked a switch. The tiny, powerful jack motor
+began to spin, and the jack base settled more solidly against its rocky
+bed. When he was sure that it would not slip, he left it, and went
+around the rockets to stand by his father.
+
+His face was grey.
+
+"Well," said Pete tensely, "up she goes."
+
+The nose of the alien ship was raising slowly from the sand. It
+quivered softly from some motion inside the ship.
+
+"Yes," said Jeff, "up she goes." His words were flat and dull. Pete
+turned to look at him.
+
+"Scared, son?" he asked. Jeff's lips parted, closed and opened again.
+
+"You know how we stand," he said, dully. "I've heard what you said from
+other men, but never from an alien. Most of the ones we know hit first,
+and talk afterward. You know that once this ship is on its feet we're
+at his mercy. Just his rocket blasts alone could kill us; and there
+won't be time to get back to the Girl."
+
+The alien was now at an angle of forty-five degrees. The little jacks
+stretched steadily, pushing their thin, stiff arms against the strange
+hull. Sand dripped from the rising ship.
+
+"Yes, Jeff," Pete said. "I know. But the important thing isn't what he
+does, but what we do. The fact that we've helped him--can't you see it
+that way, son?"
+
+Jeff shook his head in bewilderment.
+
+"I don't know," he said helplessly. "I just don't know."
+
+The ship was now nearly upright. Suddenly, with an abruptness that
+startled both men, it shook itself free of the jacks and teetered free
+for a second, before coming to rest, its nose pointing straight up.
+
+"Here it goes," said Pete, a tinge of excitement in his voice. They
+moved back some yards to be out of the way of the takeoff blast.
+Suddenly the ground trembled under their feet. Pete put his hand on the
+younger man's shoulder.
+
+"Here it goes," he repeated, in a whisper.
+
+Flame burst abruptly from the base of the ship. It was warming up its
+tubes. Slowly the flame puffed out from its base and it began to rise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jeff shook suddenly with an uncontrollable shudder. His voice came to
+Pete through the earphones, starkly afraid.
+
+"Now what?" he cried. "What'll he do now?"
+
+Pete's grip tightened on his shoulder.
+
+"Steady boy."
+
+The ship was rising. Up it went, and up, until it was the size of a
+man's little finger, a tiny sliver of silver against the black backdrop
+of the sky. Then, inexplicably, it halted and began to reverse itself.
+
+Slowly it turned, until the blunt nose pointed toward them. Jeff's
+hoarse breathing was loud in his helmet. _Now it comes_, he thought,
+and his muscles tensed.
+
+A long minute flowed by and still the alien hung there. Then, abruptly
+it went into a series of idiotic gyrations; it twisted and turned, and
+spun around, swinging its fiery trail of rocket gases like a luminous
+tail in the darkness. Then, just as abruptly, it reversed once more,
+so that its head was away from them; in the twinkling of a moment it
+was gone.
+
+Pete sighed, a deep, ragged sigh.
+
+"Did you see it, boy?" he cried. "Did you see it?"
+
+"I saw," Jeff's voice was filled with a new awe. "Now I get it. He
+wasn't sure--he didn't know we were really trying to help him until we
+let him get all the way out there by himself. Then he knew he was free.
+That's why he wouldn't answer before."
+
+"Sure, Jeff, sure," said the older man, a note of triumph in his voice.
+"But that's not what I mean. Did you notice all those contortions he
+was going through up there? What did they remind you of?"
+
+There was a moment of silence, then the words came, at first slowly,
+then in a rush from Jeff's lips.
+
+"Like a puppy," he said, haltingly, stumbling over the wonder of it.
+"Like a puppy wagging its tail."
+
+And the light of a new understanding broke suddenly in his eyes.
+
+"Dad!" said Jeff, turning to his father. "Dad! Do you know what I
+think? I think we've made a friend."
+
+And the two men stood there, side by side, looking into the blackness
+of space where an odd-shaped spacecraft had vanished. It, they felt,
+was on its way home.
+
+And they were right. Moreover, It was hurrying.
+
+For It had a story to tell.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 65839 ***
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-<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Stranger, by Gordon R. Dickson</div>

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-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Stranger</p>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Gordon R. Dickson</div>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 14, 2021 [eBook #65839]</div>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>

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-

-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGER ***</div>

-

-<div class="titlepage">

-

-<h1>THE STRANGER</h1>

-

-<h2>By Gordon R. Dickson</h2>

-

-<p>If the alien space craft was not a rocket<br />

-ship, what was it? And an even bigger question:<br />

-should they investigate&mdash;or run for their lives!</p>

-

-<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />

-Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy<br />

-May 1952<br />

-Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br />

-the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-

-<div class="figcenter">

-  <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap" />

-

-<p>We will not consider the odds involved in their finding the stranger,

-for the odds were impossible.</p>

-

-<p>They came down to rest their tubes on an unnamed planet of a

-little-known star in the Buckhorn Cluster. Because they were tired from

-weeks in space, they came in without looking. They circled the planet

-once and spiraled down to an open patch of sand between two rocky

-cliffs. Only then did they see the other ship.</p>

-

-<p>Jeff Wadley was at the controls and his eyes widened when he saw it.

-But his fingers did not hesitate on the controls, for a deep-space

-starship is not the kind of vehicle that can change its mind about

-landing once it is within half a mile of the ground. He brought the

-Emerald Girl in smoothly to a stop not five hundred feet from the

-stranger. Then he sat back.</p>

-

-<p>"Dad," he said flatly, into the intercom, "swing the turret!"</p>

-

-<p>Peter Wadley, up in the instrument room, had already seen the strange

-ship, and the heavy twin barrels of the automatic rifles were

-depressing to cover. Jeff leaned forward to the communicator.</p>

-

-<p>"<i>Identify yourself!</i>" The tight beam in Common Code snapped across

-the little stretch of open sand to the cliff against which the other

-seemed to nestle. "We are the mining ship Emerald Girl, Earth license,

-five hundred and eighty-two days out of Arcturus Station. <i>Identify

-yourself!</i>"</p>

-

-<p>There were steps behind Jeff, and Peter Wadley came to stand behind his

-son's tense back.</p>

-

-<p>"Do they answer, Jeff?"</p>

-

-<p>"No."</p>

-

-<p>"<i>Identify yourself. Identify yourself! Identify yourself!</i>"</p>

-

-<p>The angry demand crackled and arced invisibly across the space between

-both vessels. And there was no answer.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb" />

-

-<p>Jeff sat back from the communicator. The palms of his hands were wet

-and he wiped them on the cloth of his breeches.</p>

-

-<p>"Let's get out of here," he said nervously.</p>

-

-<p>"And leave <i>him</i>?" his father's lean forefinger indicated the strange

-silent ship.</p>

-

-<p>"Why not?" Jeff jerked his face up. "We're no salvage outfit or

-Government exploration unit."</p>

-

-<p>There was a moment of tenseness between them. The older man's face

-tightened.</p>

-

-<p>"We'd better look into it," he said.</p>

-

-<p>"Are you crazy?" blazed Jeff. "It was here when we came. It'll be here

-if we leave. Let's get going. We can report it if you want. Let the

-Federal ships investigate."</p>

-

-<p>"Maybe it just landed," his father said evenly. "Maybe it's in trouble."</p>

-

-<p>"What if it is?" Jeff insisted. "Don't you realize we're a sitting

-target here? And what do you think it is&mdash;Aunt Susie's runabout? Look

-at it!" And with a savage flip of his hand he shoved the magnification

-of the viewing screen up so that the other ship seemed to loom up a

-handbreadth beyond their walls.</p>

-

-<p>It was an unnecessary gesture. There was no mistaking that the lines

-of the other ship were foreign to any they had ever seen. It was big:

-not outlandishly big, but bigger than the Emerald Girl, and bulb-shaped

-with most of its bulk in front. There was no sign of ports or

-airlocks, only a few stubby fins, which projected forlornly from the

-body at an angle of some thirty degrees.</p>

-

-<p>And from its silence and immobility, its strange inhuman lines, a cold

-air of alien menace seemed to reach out to chill the two watching men.</p>

-

-<p>"Well?" challenged Jeff. But the older man was not listening.</p>

-

-<p>"The radarcamera," he said, half to himself. He turned on his heel and

-stalked off. Jeff, sitting tensely in his chair, heard his father's

-footsteps die away, to be succeeded seconds later by the distant clumsy

-sounds of a man getting into a spacesuit. Jeff swore, and jumping to

-his feet, ran to the airlock. His father, radarcamera at his feet, was

-already half-dressed to go outside.</p>

-

-<p>"You aren't going out there?" he asked incredulously.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb" />

-

-<p>The older man nodded and picked up his fishbowl helmet. Jeff's face

-twisted in dismay.</p>

-

-<p>"I won't let you!" he half-shouted. "You're risking your life and I

-can't navigate the ship without you."</p>

-

-<p>Helmet in hand, his father paused, the deep-graved lines of his face

-stiffening.</p>

-

-<p>"I'm still master of this ship!" he said curtly. "Alien or not that

-other ship may need assistance. By intraspace law I'm obliged to give

-it. If you're worried, cover me from the gun-turret." He dropped the

-helmet over his head, cutting Jeff off from further protest.</p>

-

-<p>Seething with mixed fear and anger, Jeff turned abruptly and climbed

-hurriedly to the gun-turret. The twin barrels of the rifles were

-already centered on their target, which the aiming screen showed,

-together with the area between the two vessels and a portion of the

-Emerald Girl's airlock, which projected from her side. As Jeff watched,

-the outer lock swung open and a grey, space-suited figure raced for

-the protection of the bow. It was a dash of no more than five seconds'

-duration, but to Jeff it seemed that his father took an eternity to

-reach safety.</p>

-

-<p>He reached for the microphone on the ship's circuit and pulled it to

-him.</p>

-

-<p>"All right, Dad?" In spite of himself, Jeff's voice was still ragged

-with anger.</p>

-

-<p>"Fine, Jeff," his father's voice came back in unperturbed tones. "I'm

-well shielded and I can get good, clean shots at every part of her."</p>

-

-<p>"Let me know when you're ready to start back," said Jeff, and shoved

-the microphone away from him.</p>

-

-<p>He sat back and lit a cigarette, but his eyes continued to watch the

-other ship as a man might watch a dud bomb which has not yet been

-disarmed. After a while, he noticed his fingers were shaking, and he

-laid the cigarette carefully down in the ashtray.</p>

-

-<p>When he comes back, thought Jeff, it'll be time. We'll have this thing

-out then. He's become some sort of a religious fanatic, and he doesn't

-know it. How a man who's been all over hell and seen the worst sides

-of fifty different races in as many years can think of them all as

-lovable human children, I don't know. But, know it or not, this taking

-of chances has got to stop someplace; and right here is the best place

-of all. When he gets back&mdash;if he gets back, we're taking off. And if he

-doesn't get back ... I'll blow that bloody bastard over there into so

-many bits....</p>

-

-<p>"Coming in, Jeff," his father's voice on the speaker interrupted him.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb" />

-

-<p>Jeff leaned forward, his hands on the trips of the rifles; the small

-grey figure suddenly shot back to the protection of the airlock,

-which snapped shut behind it. Then, he took a deep breath, stood up,

-and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He went down to the

-instrument room.</p>

-

-<p>Peter Wadley was already out of his suit and developing the pictures.

-Jeff picked them up as they came off the roll, damp and soft to the

-touch.</p>

-

-<p>"I can't tell much," he said, holding them up to the light.</p>

-

-<p>"There's a great deal of overlap," his father answered. "We're going

-to have to section and fit the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle.

-Wait'll I'm through here."</p>

-

-<p>For about five minutes more, pictures continued to come off the roll.

-Then Peter picked up a pair of scissors and arranged the prints in

-their proper sequence.</p>

-

-<p>"Clear the table," he told Jeff, "and fit these together as I hand them

-to you."</p>

-

-<p>For a little while longer, they worked in silence. Then Peter laid down

-his scissors.</p>

-

-<p>"That's all," he said. "Now, what have we got?"</p>

-

-<p>"I don't know," answered Jeff, bewilderment in his voice. "It looks

-like nothing I've ever seen."</p>

-

-<p>Peter stepped up to the table and squinted at the shadowy films with

-eyes practiced in reading rock formations. He shook his head.</p>

-

-<p>"It is strange," he said, finally.</p>

-

-<p>"Do you see what I see?" demanded Jeff. "There's no real crew

-space. There's this one spot&mdash;up front&mdash;" he indicated it with his

-finger&mdash;"that's about as big as a good sized closet. And nothing more

-than that&mdash;except corridors about twenty inches in diameter running

-from it to points all over the ship. She must be flown by a crew of

-midgets."</p>

-

-<p>"Midgets," echoed the older man, thoughtfully. "I never heard of an

-intelligent race that small."</p>

-

-<p>"Then they're something new," said Jeff, with a shrug of his shoulders.</p>

-

-<p>"No," said his father, slowly. "I don't remember when or where I heard

-it, but there's some reason why you couldn't have an intelligent race

-much smaller than a good sized dog. It has something to do with the

-fact that they grow in size as their developing intelligence gives them

-an increasing advantage over their environment."</p>

-

-<p>"Here's the evidence," Jeff answered, tapping the film with one finger.</p>

-

-<p>"No," Pete was bending over the picture fragments again. "Look at these

-things in the corridor. They're obviously controls."</p>

-

-<p>Jeff looked.</p>

-

-<p>"I see what you mean," he said at last. "If there's any similarity

-between their mechanical system and ours, these controls are built for

-somebody pretty big. But look how they're scattered all over the ship.

-There's a good fifteen or twenty different groups of instruments and

-other things. That means a number of crew members; and you simply can't

-put a number of large crew members in those little corridors."</p>

-

-<p>"There's a large amount of total space," Pete began. Then, suddenly a

-faint tremor ran through the ship. Jeff leaped for the screen and his

-father moved over to stand behind him.</p>

-

-<p>"Good Lord," said Jeff, "look at her."</p>

-

-<hr class="tb" />

-

-<p>The other ship shook suddenly and rolled slightly to one side. Some

-unseen center of gravity pulled her back to her original position. She

-hesitated a moment, and then tried again, with the same results. She

-lay quiescent.</p>

-

-<p>Jeff pounced on his radiation drum graph.</p>

-

-<p>"What does it say?" Peter asked.</p>

-

-<p>Jeff shook his head in astonishment. "Nothing," he answered, "just

-nothing at all."</p>

-

-<p>"Nothing?" Peter came over to take a look at the graph himself. It was

-as Jeff had said. The line tracing the white surface of the graph was

-straight and undisturbed.</p>

-

-<p>"But that's impossible," Peter frowned.</p>

-

-<p>The two men turned back to the screen. As they watched, one final

-shudder shook the strange ship, and then, like a stranded whale who has

-given up hope, it lay still.</p>

-

-<p>"My God!" said Pete, and Jeff turned to him in astonishment. It was the

-closest to profanity his father had come in twenty years. "Jeff, do you

-know what I think? I think that ship is manned by just one great big

-creature&mdash;like a giant squid. That's why no radiation registered. He

-was trying to move his ship by sheer strength."</p>

-

-<p>Jeff stared at his father.</p>

-

-<p>"You're crazy," was all he could manage to say. "Why, something big

-enough to shake that ship would have to fill every inch of space inside

-it. You can't live in a space ship that way."</p>

-

-<p>"That's right," Pete answered. He clamped his hand on Jeff's shoulder

-excitedly and led him back to the jigsaw puzzle on the table.</p>

-

-<p>"If I'm right," he said, "that's no ship at all as we understand it,

-but some sort of a space-going suit for something terrifically large.

-Something like a giant squid, as I said, or some other long-tentacled

-creature. His body would lie here&mdash;in this space you said was about the

-size of a closet&mdash;and his tentacles or whatever they are, would reach

-out in these corridors to the various groups of instruments."</p>

-

-<p>Jeff frowned.</p>

-

-<p>"It sounds sensible," he muttered. "And in any case, he wouldn't be

-able to get outside his ship to fix anything that went wrong. And I

-take it there is something wrong, or else he wouldn't be jumping around

-inside."</p>

-

-<p>"Jeff," Pete said, "I'm going outside to take a close look at him."</p>

-

-<p>Jeff's head snapped up from the jigsaw puzzle. The old, sick fear had

-come back. It washed over him like a wave.</p>

-

-<p>"Why?" he demanded harshly.</p>

-

-<p>"To see if I can find out what's wrong with his ship," said Pete over

-his shoulder as he went to the airlock. "Coming?"</p>

-

-<p>"Wait!" cried Jeff. He stood up and followed his father. For a moment

-there, they stood facing each other, two tall men with less apparent

-physical difference between them than their ages might indicate, poised

-on the brink of an open break.</p>

-

-<p>"Wait," said Jeff again, and now his voice was lower, more under

-control. "Dad, there's no point in playing around any longer. You

-aren't going to be satisfied just to look around out there and then

-leave. You're going to do something. And if that's it I want to know

-now."</p>

-

-<hr class="tb" />

-

-<p>There was a moment's silence; then Pete turned back to Jeff, his face

-set.</p>

-

-<p>"That's right," he said. "I don't have to look. I know what's wrong.

-And I know what I'm going to do about it. There's a living intelligence

-trapped in that space-thing as you and I might be trapped. I can set it

-free with two of our motor jacks. If you've got one inkling of what it

-means to be ignored when you're caught like that, you'll help me. If

-not, I'm taking two jacks out the airlock and you can fire the motors

-and take off and be damned to you."</p>

-

-<p>Between the two big men the tension built and strained and broke. Jeff

-let out a ragged sigh.</p>

-

-<p>"All right," he said. "I'm with you."</p>

-

-<p>"Good," said the older man, and there was new life in his voice. "Get

-your suit on. I'll explain as we dress."</p>

-

-<p>"The trouble with our friend there is that he's fallen over. I see you

-don't understand, Jeff. Well, this ship of ours lands on her belly.

-We've got booster rockets all over the hull to correct our landing

-angle. But ships weren't always that way. They used to have to sit

-down on their tail. There's no furrow where that ship landed, only a

-circular blasted spot, so it figures. Maybe some of his mechanism went

-wrong at the last minute.</p>

-

-<p>"At any rate, I'm betting that if we get him upright again, he can take

-care of himself from there on out. So you and I are going to go out

-there with a couple of jacks and see if we can't jack him back up into

-position."</p>

-

-<hr class="tb" />

-

-<p>The sand was thick and heavy. The walk over to the other ship was

-tedious, with the heavy jacks weighing them down. They reached the

-alien hull, paused a moment to get their breath and then attached the

-magnetic grapples to the skin of the ship at two points on opposite

-sides of the hull and roughly a fourth of the way up from the rocket

-tubes.</p>

-

-<p>It was hard to anchor the jacks in the soft sand. They finally found

-it necessary to dig them in some three or four feet to a layer of rock

-that underlay the sand. Then, when everything was ready, they took

-their stations, each at a jack, and Pete called to Jeff on the helmet

-set.</p>

-

-<p>"All ready? Start your motor."</p>

-

-<p>Jeff reached down and flicked a switch. The tiny, powerful jack motor

-began to spin, and the jack base settled more solidly against its rocky

-bed. When he was sure that it would not slip, he left it, and went

-around the rockets to stand by his father.</p>

-

-<p>His face was grey.</p>

-

-<p>"Well," said Pete tensely, "up she goes."</p>

-

-<p>The nose of the alien ship was raising slowly from the sand. It

-quivered softly from some motion inside the ship.</p>

-

-<p>"Yes," said Jeff, "up she goes." His words were flat and dull. Pete

-turned to look at him.</p>

-

-<p>"Scared, son?" he asked. Jeff's lips parted, closed and opened again.</p>

-

-<p>"You know how we stand," he said, dully. "I've heard what you said from

-other men, but never from an alien. Most of the ones we know hit first,

-and talk afterward. You know that once this ship is on its feet we're

-at his mercy. Just his rocket blasts alone could kill us; and there

-won't be time to get back to the Girl."</p>

-

-<p>The alien was now at an angle of forty-five degrees. The little jacks

-stretched steadily, pushing their thin, stiff arms against the strange

-hull. Sand dripped from the rising ship.</p>

-

-<p>"Yes, Jeff," Pete said. "I know. But the important thing isn't what he

-does, but what we do. The fact that we've helped him&mdash;can't you see it

-that way, son?"</p>

-

-<p>Jeff shook his head in bewilderment.</p>

-

-<p>"I don't know," he said helplessly. "I just don't know."</p>

-

-<p>The ship was now nearly upright. Suddenly, with an abruptness that

-startled both men, it shook itself free of the jacks and teetered free

-for a second, before coming to rest, its nose pointing straight up.</p>

-

-<p>"Here it goes," said Pete, a tinge of excitement in his voice. They

-moved back some yards to be out of the way of the takeoff blast.

-Suddenly the ground trembled under their feet. Pete put his hand on the

-younger man's shoulder.</p>

-

-<p>"Here it goes," he repeated, in a whisper.</p>

-

-<p>Flame burst abruptly from the base of the ship. It was warming up its

-tubes. Slowly the flame puffed out from its base and it began to rise.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb" />

-

-<p>Jeff shook suddenly with an uncontrollable shudder. His voice came to

-Pete through the earphones, starkly afraid.</p>

-

-<p>"Now what?" he cried. "What'll he do now?"</p>

-

-<p>Pete's grip tightened on his shoulder.</p>

-

-<p>"Steady boy."</p>

-

-<p>The ship was rising. Up it went, and up, until it was the size of a

-man's little finger, a tiny sliver of silver against the black backdrop

-of the sky. Then, inexplicably, it halted and began to reverse itself.</p>

-

-<p>Slowly it turned, until the blunt nose pointed toward them. Jeff's

-hoarse breathing was loud in his helmet. <i>Now it comes</i>, he thought,

-and his muscles tensed.</p>

-

-<p>A long minute flowed by and still the alien hung there. Then, abruptly

-it went into a series of idiotic gyrations; it twisted and turned, and

-spun around, swinging its fiery trail of rocket gases like a luminous

-tail in the darkness. Then, just as abruptly, it reversed once more,

-so that its head was away from them; in the twinkling of a moment it

-was gone.</p>

-

-<p>Pete sighed, a deep, ragged sigh.</p>

-

-<p>"Did you see it, boy?" he cried. "Did you see it?"</p>

-

-<p>"I saw," Jeff's voice was filled with a new awe. "Now I get it. He

-wasn't sure&mdash;he didn't know we were really trying to help him until we

-let him get all the way out there by himself. Then he knew he was free.

-That's why he wouldn't answer before."</p>

-

-<p>"Sure, Jeff, sure," said the older man, a note of triumph in his voice.

-"But that's not what I mean. Did you notice all those contortions he

-was going through up there? What did they remind you of?"</p>

-

-<p>There was a moment of silence, then the words came, at first slowly,

-then in a rush from Jeff's lips.</p>

-

-<p>"Like a puppy," he said, haltingly, stumbling over the wonder of it.

-"Like a puppy wagging its tail."</p>

-

-<p>And the light of a new understanding broke suddenly in his eyes.</p>

-

-<p>"Dad!" said Jeff, turning to his father. "Dad! Do you know what I

-think? I think we've made a friend."</p>

-

-<p>And the two men stood there, side by side, looking into the blackness

-of space where an odd-shaped spacecraft had vanished. It, they felt,

-was on its way home.</p>

-

-<p>And they were right. Moreover, It was hurrying.</p>

-

-<p>For It had a story to tell.</p>

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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Stranger, by Gordon R. Dickson.
+    </title>
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 65839 ***</div>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>THE STRANGER</h1>
+
+<h2>By Gordon R. Dickson</h2>
+
+<p>If the alien space craft was not a rocket<br />
+ship, what was it? And an even bigger question:<br />
+should they investigate&mdash;or run for their lives!</p>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />
+Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy<br />
+May 1952<br />
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br />
+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+  <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p>We will not consider the odds involved in their finding the stranger,
+for the odds were impossible.</p>
+
+<p>They came down to rest their tubes on an unnamed planet of a
+little-known star in the Buckhorn Cluster. Because they were tired from
+weeks in space, they came in without looking. They circled the planet
+once and spiraled down to an open patch of sand between two rocky
+cliffs. Only then did they see the other ship.</p>
+
+<p>Jeff Wadley was at the controls and his eyes widened when he saw it.
+But his fingers did not hesitate on the controls, for a deep-space
+starship is not the kind of vehicle that can change its mind about
+landing once it is within half a mile of the ground. He brought the
+Emerald Girl in smoothly to a stop not five hundred feet from the
+stranger. Then he sat back.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad," he said flatly, into the intercom, "swing the turret!"</p>
+
+<p>Peter Wadley, up in the instrument room, had already seen the strange
+ship, and the heavy twin barrels of the automatic rifles were
+depressing to cover. Jeff leaned forward to the communicator.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Identify yourself!</i>" The tight beam in Common Code snapped across
+the little stretch of open sand to the cliff against which the other
+seemed to nestle. "We are the mining ship Emerald Girl, Earth license,
+five hundred and eighty-two days out of Arcturus Station. <i>Identify
+yourself!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>There were steps behind Jeff, and Peter Wadley came to stand behind his
+son's tense back.</p>
+
+<p>"Do they answer, Jeff?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Identify yourself. Identify yourself! Identify yourself!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The angry demand crackled and arced invisibly across the space between
+both vessels. And there was no answer.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Jeff sat back from the communicator. The palms of his hands were wet
+and he wiped them on the cloth of his breeches.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's get out of here," he said nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"And leave <i>him</i>?" his father's lean forefinger indicated the strange
+silent ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" Jeff jerked his face up. "We're no salvage outfit or
+Government exploration unit."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of tenseness between them. The older man's face
+tightened.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better look into it," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you crazy?" blazed Jeff. "It was here when we came. It'll be here
+if we leave. Let's get going. We can report it if you want. Let the
+Federal ships investigate."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe it just landed," his father said evenly. "Maybe it's in trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"What if it is?" Jeff insisted. "Don't you realize we're a sitting
+target here? And what do you think it is&mdash;Aunt Susie's runabout? Look
+at it!" And with a savage flip of his hand he shoved the magnification
+of the viewing screen up so that the other ship seemed to loom up a
+handbreadth beyond their walls.</p>
+
+<p>It was an unnecessary gesture. There was no mistaking that the lines
+of the other ship were foreign to any they had ever seen. It was big:
+not outlandishly big, but bigger than the Emerald Girl, and bulb-shaped
+with most of its bulk in front. There was no sign of ports or
+airlocks, only a few stubby fins, which projected forlornly from the
+body at an angle of some thirty degrees.</p>
+
+<p>And from its silence and immobility, its strange inhuman lines, a cold
+air of alien menace seemed to reach out to chill the two watching men.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" challenged Jeff. But the older man was not listening.</p>
+
+<p>"The radarcamera," he said, half to himself. He turned on his heel and
+stalked off. Jeff, sitting tensely in his chair, heard his father's
+footsteps die away, to be succeeded seconds later by the distant clumsy
+sounds of a man getting into a spacesuit. Jeff swore, and jumping to
+his feet, ran to the airlock. His father, radarcamera at his feet, was
+already half-dressed to go outside.</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't going out there?" he asked incredulously.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The older man nodded and picked up his fishbowl helmet. Jeff's face
+twisted in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't let you!" he half-shouted. "You're risking your life and I
+can't navigate the ship without you."</p>
+
+<p>Helmet in hand, his father paused, the deep-graved lines of his face
+stiffening.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm still master of this ship!" he said curtly. "Alien or not that
+other ship may need assistance. By intraspace law I'm obliged to give
+it. If you're worried, cover me from the gun-turret." He dropped the
+helmet over his head, cutting Jeff off from further protest.</p>
+
+<p>Seething with mixed fear and anger, Jeff turned abruptly and climbed
+hurriedly to the gun-turret. The twin barrels of the rifles were
+already centered on their target, which the aiming screen showed,
+together with the area between the two vessels and a portion of the
+Emerald Girl's airlock, which projected from her side. As Jeff watched,
+the outer lock swung open and a grey, space-suited figure raced for
+the protection of the bow. It was a dash of no more than five seconds'
+duration, but to Jeff it seemed that his father took an eternity to
+reach safety.</p>
+
+<p>He reached for the microphone on the ship's circuit and pulled it to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Dad?" In spite of himself, Jeff's voice was still ragged
+with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine, Jeff," his father's voice came back in unperturbed tones. "I'm
+well shielded and I can get good, clean shots at every part of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me know when you're ready to start back," said Jeff, and shoved
+the microphone away from him.</p>
+
+<p>He sat back and lit a cigarette, but his eyes continued to watch the
+other ship as a man might watch a dud bomb which has not yet been
+disarmed. After a while, he noticed his fingers were shaking, and he
+laid the cigarette carefully down in the ashtray.</p>
+
+<p>When he comes back, thought Jeff, it'll be time. We'll have this thing
+out then. He's become some sort of a religious fanatic, and he doesn't
+know it. How a man who's been all over hell and seen the worst sides
+of fifty different races in as many years can think of them all as
+lovable human children, I don't know. But, know it or not, this taking
+of chances has got to stop someplace; and right here is the best place
+of all. When he gets back&mdash;if he gets back, we're taking off. And if he
+doesn't get back ... I'll blow that bloody bastard over there into so
+many bits....</p>
+
+<p>"Coming in, Jeff," his father's voice on the speaker interrupted him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Jeff leaned forward, his hands on the trips of the rifles; the small
+grey figure suddenly shot back to the protection of the airlock,
+which snapped shut behind it. Then, he took a deep breath, stood up,
+and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He went down to the
+instrument room.</p>
+
+<p>Peter Wadley was already out of his suit and developing the pictures.
+Jeff picked them up as they came off the roll, damp and soft to the
+touch.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell much," he said, holding them up to the light.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a great deal of overlap," his father answered. "We're going
+to have to section and fit the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle.
+Wait'll I'm through here."</p>
+
+<p>For about five minutes more, pictures continued to come off the roll.
+Then Peter picked up a pair of scissors and arranged the prints in
+their proper sequence.</p>
+
+<p>"Clear the table," he told Jeff, "and fit these together as I hand them
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>For a little while longer, they worked in silence. Then Peter laid down
+his scissors.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all," he said. "Now, what have we got?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," answered Jeff, bewilderment in his voice. "It looks
+like nothing I've ever seen."</p>
+
+<p>Peter stepped up to the table and squinted at the shadowy films with
+eyes practiced in reading rock formations. He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It is strange," he said, finally.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see what I see?" demanded Jeff. "There's no real crew
+space. There's this one spot&mdash;up front&mdash;" he indicated it with his
+finger&mdash;"that's about as big as a good sized closet. And nothing more
+than that&mdash;except corridors about twenty inches in diameter running
+from it to points all over the ship. She must be flown by a crew of
+midgets."</p>
+
+<p>"Midgets," echoed the older man, thoughtfully. "I never heard of an
+intelligent race that small."</p>
+
+<p>"Then they're something new," said Jeff, with a shrug of his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said his father, slowly. "I don't remember when or where I heard
+it, but there's some reason why you couldn't have an intelligent race
+much smaller than a good sized dog. It has something to do with the
+fact that they grow in size as their developing intelligence gives them
+an increasing advantage over their environment."</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the evidence," Jeff answered, tapping the film with one finger.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Pete was bending over the picture fragments again. "Look at these
+things in the corridor. They're obviously controls."</p>
+
+<p>Jeff looked.</p>
+
+<p>"I see what you mean," he said at last. "If there's any similarity
+between their mechanical system and ours, these controls are built for
+somebody pretty big. But look how they're scattered all over the ship.
+There's a good fifteen or twenty different groups of instruments and
+other things. That means a number of crew members; and you simply can't
+put a number of large crew members in those little corridors."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a large amount of total space," Pete began. Then, suddenly a
+faint tremor ran through the ship. Jeff leaped for the screen and his
+father moved over to stand behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord," said Jeff, "look at her."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The other ship shook suddenly and rolled slightly to one side. Some
+unseen center of gravity pulled her back to her original position. She
+hesitated a moment, and then tried again, with the same results. She
+lay quiescent.</p>
+
+<p>Jeff pounced on his radiation drum graph.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it say?" Peter asked.</p>
+
+<p>Jeff shook his head in astonishment. "Nothing," he answered, "just
+nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing?" Peter came over to take a look at the graph himself. It was
+as Jeff had said. The line tracing the white surface of the graph was
+straight and undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"But that's impossible," Peter frowned.</p>
+
+<p>The two men turned back to the screen. As they watched, one final
+shudder shook the strange ship, and then, like a stranded whale who has
+given up hope, it lay still.</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" said Pete, and Jeff turned to him in astonishment. It was the
+closest to profanity his father had come in twenty years. "Jeff, do you
+know what I think? I think that ship is manned by just one great big
+creature&mdash;like a giant squid. That's why no radiation registered. He
+was trying to move his ship by sheer strength."</p>
+
+<p>Jeff stared at his father.</p>
+
+<p>"You're crazy," was all he could manage to say. "Why, something big
+enough to shake that ship would have to fill every inch of space inside
+it. You can't live in a space ship that way."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Pete answered. He clamped his hand on Jeff's shoulder
+excitedly and led him back to the jigsaw puzzle on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'm right," he said, "that's no ship at all as we understand it,
+but some sort of a space-going suit for something terrifically large.
+Something like a giant squid, as I said, or some other long-tentacled
+creature. His body would lie here&mdash;in this space you said was about the
+size of a closet&mdash;and his tentacles or whatever they are, would reach
+out in these corridors to the various groups of instruments."</p>
+
+<p>Jeff frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"It sounds sensible," he muttered. "And in any case, he wouldn't be
+able to get outside his ship to fix anything that went wrong. And I
+take it there is something wrong, or else he wouldn't be jumping around
+inside."</p>
+
+<p>"Jeff," Pete said, "I'm going outside to take a close look at him."</p>
+
+<p>Jeff's head snapped up from the jigsaw puzzle. The old, sick fear had
+come back. It washed over him like a wave.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he demanded harshly.</p>
+
+<p>"To see if I can find out what's wrong with his ship," said Pete over
+his shoulder as he went to the airlock. "Coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" cried Jeff. He stood up and followed his father. For a moment
+there, they stood facing each other, two tall men with less apparent
+physical difference between them than their ages might indicate, poised
+on the brink of an open break.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," said Jeff again, and now his voice was lower, more under
+control. "Dad, there's no point in playing around any longer. You
+aren't going to be satisfied just to look around out there and then
+leave. You're going to do something. And if that's it I want to know
+now."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence; then Pete turned back to Jeff, his face
+set.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," he said. "I don't have to look. I know what's wrong.
+And I know what I'm going to do about it. There's a living intelligence
+trapped in that space-thing as you and I might be trapped. I can set it
+free with two of our motor jacks. If you've got one inkling of what it
+means to be ignored when you're caught like that, you'll help me. If
+not, I'm taking two jacks out the airlock and you can fire the motors
+and take off and be damned to you."</p>
+
+<p>Between the two big men the tension built and strained and broke. Jeff
+let out a ragged sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said. "I'm with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Good," said the older man, and there was new life in his voice. "Get
+your suit on. I'll explain as we dress."</p>
+
+<p>"The trouble with our friend there is that he's fallen over. I see you
+don't understand, Jeff. Well, this ship of ours lands on her belly.
+We've got booster rockets all over the hull to correct our landing
+angle. But ships weren't always that way. They used to have to sit
+down on their tail. There's no furrow where that ship landed, only a
+circular blasted spot, so it figures. Maybe some of his mechanism went
+wrong at the last minute.</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate, I'm betting that if we get him upright again, he can take
+care of himself from there on out. So you and I are going to go out
+there with a couple of jacks and see if we can't jack him back up into
+position."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The sand was thick and heavy. The walk over to the other ship was
+tedious, with the heavy jacks weighing them down. They reached the
+alien hull, paused a moment to get their breath and then attached the
+magnetic grapples to the skin of the ship at two points on opposite
+sides of the hull and roughly a fourth of the way up from the rocket
+tubes.</p>
+
+<p>It was hard to anchor the jacks in the soft sand. They finally found
+it necessary to dig them in some three or four feet to a layer of rock
+that underlay the sand. Then, when everything was ready, they took
+their stations, each at a jack, and Pete called to Jeff on the helmet
+set.</p>
+
+<p>"All ready? Start your motor."</p>
+
+<p>Jeff reached down and flicked a switch. The tiny, powerful jack motor
+began to spin, and the jack base settled more solidly against its rocky
+bed. When he was sure that it would not slip, he left it, and went
+around the rockets to stand by his father.</p>
+
+<p>His face was grey.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Pete tensely, "up she goes."</p>
+
+<p>The nose of the alien ship was raising slowly from the sand. It
+quivered softly from some motion inside the ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Jeff, "up she goes." His words were flat and dull. Pete
+turned to look at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Scared, son?" he asked. Jeff's lips parted, closed and opened again.</p>
+
+<p>"You know how we stand," he said, dully. "I've heard what you said from
+other men, but never from an alien. Most of the ones we know hit first,
+and talk afterward. You know that once this ship is on its feet we're
+at his mercy. Just his rocket blasts alone could kill us; and there
+won't be time to get back to the Girl."</p>
+
+<p>The alien was now at an angle of forty-five degrees. The little jacks
+stretched steadily, pushing their thin, stiff arms against the strange
+hull. Sand dripped from the rising ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Jeff," Pete said. "I know. But the important thing isn't what he
+does, but what we do. The fact that we've helped him&mdash;can't you see it
+that way, son?"</p>
+
+<p>Jeff shook his head in bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he said helplessly. "I just don't know."</p>
+
+<p>The ship was now nearly upright. Suddenly, with an abruptness that
+startled both men, it shook itself free of the jacks and teetered free
+for a second, before coming to rest, its nose pointing straight up.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it goes," said Pete, a tinge of excitement in his voice. They
+moved back some yards to be out of the way of the takeoff blast.
+Suddenly the ground trembled under their feet. Pete put his hand on the
+younger man's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it goes," he repeated, in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Flame burst abruptly from the base of the ship. It was warming up its
+tubes. Slowly the flame puffed out from its base and it began to rise.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Jeff shook suddenly with an uncontrollable shudder. His voice came to
+Pete through the earphones, starkly afraid.</p>
+
+<p>"Now what?" he cried. "What'll he do now?"</p>
+
+<p>Pete's grip tightened on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Steady boy."</p>
+
+<p>The ship was rising. Up it went, and up, until it was the size of a
+man's little finger, a tiny sliver of silver against the black backdrop
+of the sky. Then, inexplicably, it halted and began to reverse itself.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly it turned, until the blunt nose pointed toward them. Jeff's
+hoarse breathing was loud in his helmet. <i>Now it comes</i>, he thought,
+and his muscles tensed.</p>
+
+<p>A long minute flowed by and still the alien hung there. Then, abruptly
+it went into a series of idiotic gyrations; it twisted and turned, and
+spun around, swinging its fiery trail of rocket gases like a luminous
+tail in the darkness. Then, just as abruptly, it reversed once more,
+so that its head was away from them; in the twinkling of a moment it
+was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Pete sighed, a deep, ragged sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see it, boy?" he cried. "Did you see it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I saw," Jeff's voice was filled with a new awe. "Now I get it. He
+wasn't sure&mdash;he didn't know we were really trying to help him until we
+let him get all the way out there by himself. Then he knew he was free.
+That's why he wouldn't answer before."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, Jeff, sure," said the older man, a note of triumph in his voice.
+"But that's not what I mean. Did you notice all those contortions he
+was going through up there? What did they remind you of?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of silence, then the words came, at first slowly,
+then in a rush from Jeff's lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a puppy," he said, haltingly, stumbling over the wonder of it.
+"Like a puppy wagging its tail."</p>
+
+<p>And the light of a new understanding broke suddenly in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad!" said Jeff, turning to his father. "Dad! Do you know what I
+think? I think we've made a friend."</p>
+
+<p>And the two men stood there, side by side, looking into the blackness
+of space where an odd-shaped spacecraft had vanished. It, they felt,
+was on its way home.</p>
+
+<p>And they were right. Moreover, It was hurrying.</p>
+
+<p>For It had a story to tell.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 65839 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Stranger, by Gordon R. Dickson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Stranger
+
+Author: Gordon R. Dickson
+
+Release Date: July 14, 2021 [eBook #65839]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGER ***
+
+
+
+
+                             THE STRANGER
+
+                         By Gordon R. Dickson
+
+               If the alien space craft was not a rocket
+            ship, what was it? And an even bigger question:
+           should they investigate--or run for their lives!
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
+                               May 1952
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+We will not consider the odds involved in their finding the stranger,
+for the odds were impossible.
+
+They came down to rest their tubes on an unnamed planet of a
+little-known star in the Buckhorn Cluster. Because they were tired from
+weeks in space, they came in without looking. They circled the planet
+once and spiraled down to an open patch of sand between two rocky
+cliffs. Only then did they see the other ship.
+
+Jeff Wadley was at the controls and his eyes widened when he saw it.
+But his fingers did not hesitate on the controls, for a deep-space
+starship is not the kind of vehicle that can change its mind about
+landing once it is within half a mile of the ground. He brought the
+Emerald Girl in smoothly to a stop not five hundred feet from the
+stranger. Then he sat back.
+
+"Dad," he said flatly, into the intercom, "swing the turret!"
+
+Peter Wadley, up in the instrument room, had already seen the strange
+ship, and the heavy twin barrels of the automatic rifles were
+depressing to cover. Jeff leaned forward to the communicator.
+
+"_Identify yourself!_" The tight beam in Common Code snapped across
+the little stretch of open sand to the cliff against which the other
+seemed to nestle. "We are the mining ship Emerald Girl, Earth license,
+five hundred and eighty-two days out of Arcturus Station. _Identify
+yourself!_"
+
+There were steps behind Jeff, and Peter Wadley came to stand behind his
+son's tense back.
+
+"Do they answer, Jeff?"
+
+"No."
+
+"_Identify yourself. Identify yourself! Identify yourself!_"
+
+The angry demand crackled and arced invisibly across the space between
+both vessels. And there was no answer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jeff sat back from the communicator. The palms of his hands were wet
+and he wiped them on the cloth of his breeches.
+
+"Let's get out of here," he said nervously.
+
+"And leave _him_?" his father's lean forefinger indicated the strange
+silent ship.
+
+"Why not?" Jeff jerked his face up. "We're no salvage outfit or
+Government exploration unit."
+
+There was a moment of tenseness between them. The older man's face
+tightened.
+
+"We'd better look into it," he said.
+
+"Are you crazy?" blazed Jeff. "It was here when we came. It'll be here
+if we leave. Let's get going. We can report it if you want. Let the
+Federal ships investigate."
+
+"Maybe it just landed," his father said evenly. "Maybe it's in trouble."
+
+"What if it is?" Jeff insisted. "Don't you realize we're a sitting
+target here? And what do you think it is--Aunt Susie's runabout? Look
+at it!" And with a savage flip of his hand he shoved the magnification
+of the viewing screen up so that the other ship seemed to loom up a
+handbreadth beyond their walls.
+
+It was an unnecessary gesture. There was no mistaking that the lines
+of the other ship were foreign to any they had ever seen. It was big:
+not outlandishly big, but bigger than the Emerald Girl, and bulb-shaped
+with most of its bulk in front. There was no sign of ports or
+airlocks, only a few stubby fins, which projected forlornly from the
+body at an angle of some thirty degrees.
+
+And from its silence and immobility, its strange inhuman lines, a cold
+air of alien menace seemed to reach out to chill the two watching men.
+
+"Well?" challenged Jeff. But the older man was not listening.
+
+"The radarcamera," he said, half to himself. He turned on his heel and
+stalked off. Jeff, sitting tensely in his chair, heard his father's
+footsteps die away, to be succeeded seconds later by the distant clumsy
+sounds of a man getting into a spacesuit. Jeff swore, and jumping to
+his feet, ran to the airlock. His father, radarcamera at his feet, was
+already half-dressed to go outside.
+
+"You aren't going out there?" he asked incredulously.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The older man nodded and picked up his fishbowl helmet. Jeff's face
+twisted in dismay.
+
+"I won't let you!" he half-shouted. "You're risking your life and I
+can't navigate the ship without you."
+
+Helmet in hand, his father paused, the deep-graved lines of his face
+stiffening.
+
+"I'm still master of this ship!" he said curtly. "Alien or not that
+other ship may need assistance. By intraspace law I'm obliged to give
+it. If you're worried, cover me from the gun-turret." He dropped the
+helmet over his head, cutting Jeff off from further protest.
+
+Seething with mixed fear and anger, Jeff turned abruptly and climbed
+hurriedly to the gun-turret. The twin barrels of the rifles were
+already centered on their target, which the aiming screen showed,
+together with the area between the two vessels and a portion of the
+Emerald Girl's airlock, which projected from her side. As Jeff watched,
+the outer lock swung open and a grey, space-suited figure raced for
+the protection of the bow. It was a dash of no more than five seconds'
+duration, but to Jeff it seemed that his father took an eternity to
+reach safety.
+
+He reached for the microphone on the ship's circuit and pulled it to
+him.
+
+"All right, Dad?" In spite of himself, Jeff's voice was still ragged
+with anger.
+
+"Fine, Jeff," his father's voice came back in unperturbed tones. "I'm
+well shielded and I can get good, clean shots at every part of her."
+
+"Let me know when you're ready to start back," said Jeff, and shoved
+the microphone away from him.
+
+He sat back and lit a cigarette, but his eyes continued to watch the
+other ship as a man might watch a dud bomb which has not yet been
+disarmed. After a while, he noticed his fingers were shaking, and he
+laid the cigarette carefully down in the ashtray.
+
+When he comes back, thought Jeff, it'll be time. We'll have this thing
+out then. He's become some sort of a religious fanatic, and he doesn't
+know it. How a man who's been all over hell and seen the worst sides
+of fifty different races in as many years can think of them all as
+lovable human children, I don't know. But, know it or not, this taking
+of chances has got to stop someplace; and right here is the best place
+of all. When he gets back--if he gets back, we're taking off. And if he
+doesn't get back ... I'll blow that bloody bastard over there into so
+many bits....
+
+"Coming in, Jeff," his father's voice on the speaker interrupted him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jeff leaned forward, his hands on the trips of the rifles; the small
+grey figure suddenly shot back to the protection of the airlock,
+which snapped shut behind it. Then, he took a deep breath, stood up,
+and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He went down to the
+instrument room.
+
+Peter Wadley was already out of his suit and developing the pictures.
+Jeff picked them up as they came off the roll, damp and soft to the
+touch.
+
+"I can't tell much," he said, holding them up to the light.
+
+"There's a great deal of overlap," his father answered. "We're going
+to have to section and fit the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle.
+Wait'll I'm through here."
+
+For about five minutes more, pictures continued to come off the roll.
+Then Peter picked up a pair of scissors and arranged the prints in
+their proper sequence.
+
+"Clear the table," he told Jeff, "and fit these together as I hand them
+to you."
+
+For a little while longer, they worked in silence. Then Peter laid down
+his scissors.
+
+"That's all," he said. "Now, what have we got?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Jeff, bewilderment in his voice. "It looks
+like nothing I've ever seen."
+
+Peter stepped up to the table and squinted at the shadowy films with
+eyes practiced in reading rock formations. He shook his head.
+
+"It is strange," he said, finally.
+
+"Do you see what I see?" demanded Jeff. "There's no real crew
+space. There's this one spot--up front--" he indicated it with his
+finger--"that's about as big as a good sized closet. And nothing more
+than that--except corridors about twenty inches in diameter running
+from it to points all over the ship. She must be flown by a crew of
+midgets."
+
+"Midgets," echoed the older man, thoughtfully. "I never heard of an
+intelligent race that small."
+
+"Then they're something new," said Jeff, with a shrug of his shoulders.
+
+"No," said his father, slowly. "I don't remember when or where I heard
+it, but there's some reason why you couldn't have an intelligent race
+much smaller than a good sized dog. It has something to do with the
+fact that they grow in size as their developing intelligence gives them
+an increasing advantage over their environment."
+
+"Here's the evidence," Jeff answered, tapping the film with one finger.
+
+"No," Pete was bending over the picture fragments again. "Look at these
+things in the corridor. They're obviously controls."
+
+Jeff looked.
+
+"I see what you mean," he said at last. "If there's any similarity
+between their mechanical system and ours, these controls are built for
+somebody pretty big. But look how they're scattered all over the ship.
+There's a good fifteen or twenty different groups of instruments and
+other things. That means a number of crew members; and you simply can't
+put a number of large crew members in those little corridors."
+
+"There's a large amount of total space," Pete began. Then, suddenly a
+faint tremor ran through the ship. Jeff leaped for the screen and his
+father moved over to stand behind him.
+
+"Good Lord," said Jeff, "look at her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other ship shook suddenly and rolled slightly to one side. Some
+unseen center of gravity pulled her back to her original position. She
+hesitated a moment, and then tried again, with the same results. She
+lay quiescent.
+
+Jeff pounced on his radiation drum graph.
+
+"What does it say?" Peter asked.
+
+Jeff shook his head in astonishment. "Nothing," he answered, "just
+nothing at all."
+
+"Nothing?" Peter came over to take a look at the graph himself. It was
+as Jeff had said. The line tracing the white surface of the graph was
+straight and undisturbed.
+
+"But that's impossible," Peter frowned.
+
+The two men turned back to the screen. As they watched, one final
+shudder shook the strange ship, and then, like a stranded whale who has
+given up hope, it lay still.
+
+"My God!" said Pete, and Jeff turned to him in astonishment. It was the
+closest to profanity his father had come in twenty years. "Jeff, do you
+know what I think? I think that ship is manned by just one great big
+creature--like a giant squid. That's why no radiation registered. He
+was trying to move his ship by sheer strength."
+
+Jeff stared at his father.
+
+"You're crazy," was all he could manage to say. "Why, something big
+enough to shake that ship would have to fill every inch of space inside
+it. You can't live in a space ship that way."
+
+"That's right," Pete answered. He clamped his hand on Jeff's shoulder
+excitedly and led him back to the jigsaw puzzle on the table.
+
+"If I'm right," he said, "that's no ship at all as we understand it,
+but some sort of a space-going suit for something terrifically large.
+Something like a giant squid, as I said, or some other long-tentacled
+creature. His body would lie here--in this space you said was about the
+size of a closet--and his tentacles or whatever they are, would reach
+out in these corridors to the various groups of instruments."
+
+Jeff frowned.
+
+"It sounds sensible," he muttered. "And in any case, he wouldn't be
+able to get outside his ship to fix anything that went wrong. And I
+take it there is something wrong, or else he wouldn't be jumping around
+inside."
+
+"Jeff," Pete said, "I'm going outside to take a close look at him."
+
+Jeff's head snapped up from the jigsaw puzzle. The old, sick fear had
+come back. It washed over him like a wave.
+
+"Why?" he demanded harshly.
+
+"To see if I can find out what's wrong with his ship," said Pete over
+his shoulder as he went to the airlock. "Coming?"
+
+"Wait!" cried Jeff. He stood up and followed his father. For a moment
+there, they stood facing each other, two tall men with less apparent
+physical difference between them than their ages might indicate, poised
+on the brink of an open break.
+
+"Wait," said Jeff again, and now his voice was lower, more under
+control. "Dad, there's no point in playing around any longer. You
+aren't going to be satisfied just to look around out there and then
+leave. You're going to do something. And if that's it I want to know
+now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a moment's silence; then Pete turned back to Jeff, his face
+set.
+
+"That's right," he said. "I don't have to look. I know what's wrong.
+And I know what I'm going to do about it. There's a living intelligence
+trapped in that space-thing as you and I might be trapped. I can set it
+free with two of our motor jacks. If you've got one inkling of what it
+means to be ignored when you're caught like that, you'll help me. If
+not, I'm taking two jacks out the airlock and you can fire the motors
+and take off and be damned to you."
+
+Between the two big men the tension built and strained and broke. Jeff
+let out a ragged sigh.
+
+"All right," he said. "I'm with you."
+
+"Good," said the older man, and there was new life in his voice. "Get
+your suit on. I'll explain as we dress."
+
+"The trouble with our friend there is that he's fallen over. I see you
+don't understand, Jeff. Well, this ship of ours lands on her belly.
+We've got booster rockets all over the hull to correct our landing
+angle. But ships weren't always that way. They used to have to sit
+down on their tail. There's no furrow where that ship landed, only a
+circular blasted spot, so it figures. Maybe some of his mechanism went
+wrong at the last minute.
+
+"At any rate, I'm betting that if we get him upright again, he can take
+care of himself from there on out. So you and I are going to go out
+there with a couple of jacks and see if we can't jack him back up into
+position."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sand was thick and heavy. The walk over to the other ship was
+tedious, with the heavy jacks weighing them down. They reached the
+alien hull, paused a moment to get their breath and then attached the
+magnetic grapples to the skin of the ship at two points on opposite
+sides of the hull and roughly a fourth of the way up from the rocket
+tubes.
+
+It was hard to anchor the jacks in the soft sand. They finally found
+it necessary to dig them in some three or four feet to a layer of rock
+that underlay the sand. Then, when everything was ready, they took
+their stations, each at a jack, and Pete called to Jeff on the helmet
+set.
+
+"All ready? Start your motor."
+
+Jeff reached down and flicked a switch. The tiny, powerful jack motor
+began to spin, and the jack base settled more solidly against its rocky
+bed. When he was sure that it would not slip, he left it, and went
+around the rockets to stand by his father.
+
+His face was grey.
+
+"Well," said Pete tensely, "up she goes."
+
+The nose of the alien ship was raising slowly from the sand. It
+quivered softly from some motion inside the ship.
+
+"Yes," said Jeff, "up she goes." His words were flat and dull. Pete
+turned to look at him.
+
+"Scared, son?" he asked. Jeff's lips parted, closed and opened again.
+
+"You know how we stand," he said, dully. "I've heard what you said from
+other men, but never from an alien. Most of the ones we know hit first,
+and talk afterward. You know that once this ship is on its feet we're
+at his mercy. Just his rocket blasts alone could kill us; and there
+won't be time to get back to the Girl."
+
+The alien was now at an angle of forty-five degrees. The little jacks
+stretched steadily, pushing their thin, stiff arms against the strange
+hull. Sand dripped from the rising ship.
+
+"Yes, Jeff," Pete said. "I know. But the important thing isn't what he
+does, but what we do. The fact that we've helped him--can't you see it
+that way, son?"
+
+Jeff shook his head in bewilderment.
+
+"I don't know," he said helplessly. "I just don't know."
+
+The ship was now nearly upright. Suddenly, with an abruptness that
+startled both men, it shook itself free of the jacks and teetered free
+for a second, before coming to rest, its nose pointing straight up.
+
+"Here it goes," said Pete, a tinge of excitement in his voice. They
+moved back some yards to be out of the way of the takeoff blast.
+Suddenly the ground trembled under their feet. Pete put his hand on the
+younger man's shoulder.
+
+"Here it goes," he repeated, in a whisper.
+
+Flame burst abruptly from the base of the ship. It was warming up its
+tubes. Slowly the flame puffed out from its base and it began to rise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jeff shook suddenly with an uncontrollable shudder. His voice came to
+Pete through the earphones, starkly afraid.
+
+"Now what?" he cried. "What'll he do now?"
+
+Pete's grip tightened on his shoulder.
+
+"Steady boy."
+
+The ship was rising. Up it went, and up, until it was the size of a
+man's little finger, a tiny sliver of silver against the black backdrop
+of the sky. Then, inexplicably, it halted and began to reverse itself.
+
+Slowly it turned, until the blunt nose pointed toward them. Jeff's
+hoarse breathing was loud in his helmet. _Now it comes_, he thought,
+and his muscles tensed.
+
+A long minute flowed by and still the alien hung there. Then, abruptly
+it went into a series of idiotic gyrations; it twisted and turned, and
+spun around, swinging its fiery trail of rocket gases like a luminous
+tail in the darkness. Then, just as abruptly, it reversed once more,
+so that its head was away from them; in the twinkling of a moment it
+was gone.
+
+Pete sighed, a deep, ragged sigh.
+
+"Did you see it, boy?" he cried. "Did you see it?"
+
+"I saw," Jeff's voice was filled with a new awe. "Now I get it. He
+wasn't sure--he didn't know we were really trying to help him until we
+let him get all the way out there by himself. Then he knew he was free.
+That's why he wouldn't answer before."
+
+"Sure, Jeff, sure," said the older man, a note of triumph in his voice.
+"But that's not what I mean. Did you notice all those contortions he
+was going through up there? What did they remind you of?"
+
+There was a moment of silence, then the words came, at first slowly,
+then in a rush from Jeff's lips.
+
+"Like a puppy," he said, haltingly, stumbling over the wonder of it.
+"Like a puppy wagging its tail."
+
+And the light of a new understanding broke suddenly in his eyes.
+
+"Dad!" said Jeff, turning to his father. "Dad! Do you know what I
+think? I think we've made a friend."
+
+And the two men stood there, side by side, looking into the blackness
+of space where an odd-shaped spacecraft had vanished. It, they felt,
+was on its way home.
+
+And they were right. Moreover, It was hurrying.
+
+For It had a story to tell.
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Stranger, by Gordon R. Dickson</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
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+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Stranger</p>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Gordon R. Dickson</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 14, 2021 [eBook #65839]</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net</div>
+
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGER ***</div>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>THE STRANGER</h1>
+
+<h2>By Gordon R. Dickson</h2>
+
+<p>If the alien space craft was not a rocket<br />
+ship, what was it? And an even bigger question:<br />
+should they investigate&mdash;or run for their lives!</p>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />
+Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy<br />
+May 1952<br />
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br />
+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+  <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p>We will not consider the odds involved in their finding the stranger,
+for the odds were impossible.</p>
+
+<p>They came down to rest their tubes on an unnamed planet of a
+little-known star in the Buckhorn Cluster. Because they were tired from
+weeks in space, they came in without looking. They circled the planet
+once and spiraled down to an open patch of sand between two rocky
+cliffs. Only then did they see the other ship.</p>
+
+<p>Jeff Wadley was at the controls and his eyes widened when he saw it.
+But his fingers did not hesitate on the controls, for a deep-space
+starship is not the kind of vehicle that can change its mind about
+landing once it is within half a mile of the ground. He brought the
+Emerald Girl in smoothly to a stop not five hundred feet from the
+stranger. Then he sat back.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad," he said flatly, into the intercom, "swing the turret!"</p>
+
+<p>Peter Wadley, up in the instrument room, had already seen the strange
+ship, and the heavy twin barrels of the automatic rifles were
+depressing to cover. Jeff leaned forward to the communicator.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Identify yourself!</i>" The tight beam in Common Code snapped across
+the little stretch of open sand to the cliff against which the other
+seemed to nestle. "We are the mining ship Emerald Girl, Earth license,
+five hundred and eighty-two days out of Arcturus Station. <i>Identify
+yourself!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>There were steps behind Jeff, and Peter Wadley came to stand behind his
+son's tense back.</p>
+
+<p>"Do they answer, Jeff?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Identify yourself. Identify yourself! Identify yourself!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The angry demand crackled and arced invisibly across the space between
+both vessels. And there was no answer.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Jeff sat back from the communicator. The palms of his hands were wet
+and he wiped them on the cloth of his breeches.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's get out of here," he said nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"And leave <i>him</i>?" his father's lean forefinger indicated the strange
+silent ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" Jeff jerked his face up. "We're no salvage outfit or
+Government exploration unit."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of tenseness between them. The older man's face
+tightened.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better look into it," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you crazy?" blazed Jeff. "It was here when we came. It'll be here
+if we leave. Let's get going. We can report it if you want. Let the
+Federal ships investigate."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe it just landed," his father said evenly. "Maybe it's in trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"What if it is?" Jeff insisted. "Don't you realize we're a sitting
+target here? And what do you think it is&mdash;Aunt Susie's runabout? Look
+at it!" And with a savage flip of his hand he shoved the magnification
+of the viewing screen up so that the other ship seemed to loom up a
+handbreadth beyond their walls.</p>
+
+<p>It was an unnecessary gesture. There was no mistaking that the lines
+of the other ship were foreign to any they had ever seen. It was big:
+not outlandishly big, but bigger than the Emerald Girl, and bulb-shaped
+with most of its bulk in front. There was no sign of ports or
+airlocks, only a few stubby fins, which projected forlornly from the
+body at an angle of some thirty degrees.</p>
+
+<p>And from its silence and immobility, its strange inhuman lines, a cold
+air of alien menace seemed to reach out to chill the two watching men.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" challenged Jeff. But the older man was not listening.</p>
+
+<p>"The radarcamera," he said, half to himself. He turned on his heel and
+stalked off. Jeff, sitting tensely in his chair, heard his father's
+footsteps die away, to be succeeded seconds later by the distant clumsy
+sounds of a man getting into a spacesuit. Jeff swore, and jumping to
+his feet, ran to the airlock. His father, radarcamera at his feet, was
+already half-dressed to go outside.</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't going out there?" he asked incredulously.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The older man nodded and picked up his fishbowl helmet. Jeff's face
+twisted in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't let you!" he half-shouted. "You're risking your life and I
+can't navigate the ship without you."</p>
+
+<p>Helmet in hand, his father paused, the deep-graved lines of his face
+stiffening.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm still master of this ship!" he said curtly. "Alien or not that
+other ship may need assistance. By intraspace law I'm obliged to give
+it. If you're worried, cover me from the gun-turret." He dropped the
+helmet over his head, cutting Jeff off from further protest.</p>
+
+<p>Seething with mixed fear and anger, Jeff turned abruptly and climbed
+hurriedly to the gun-turret. The twin barrels of the rifles were
+already centered on their target, which the aiming screen showed,
+together with the area between the two vessels and a portion of the
+Emerald Girl's airlock, which projected from her side. As Jeff watched,
+the outer lock swung open and a grey, space-suited figure raced for
+the protection of the bow. It was a dash of no more than five seconds'
+duration, but to Jeff it seemed that his father took an eternity to
+reach safety.</p>
+
+<p>He reached for the microphone on the ship's circuit and pulled it to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Dad?" In spite of himself, Jeff's voice was still ragged
+with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine, Jeff," his father's voice came back in unperturbed tones. "I'm
+well shielded and I can get good, clean shots at every part of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me know when you're ready to start back," said Jeff, and shoved
+the microphone away from him.</p>
+
+<p>He sat back and lit a cigarette, but his eyes continued to watch the
+other ship as a man might watch a dud bomb which has not yet been
+disarmed. After a while, he noticed his fingers were shaking, and he
+laid the cigarette carefully down in the ashtray.</p>
+
+<p>When he comes back, thought Jeff, it'll be time. We'll have this thing
+out then. He's become some sort of a religious fanatic, and he doesn't
+know it. How a man who's been all over hell and seen the worst sides
+of fifty different races in as many years can think of them all as
+lovable human children, I don't know. But, know it or not, this taking
+of chances has got to stop someplace; and right here is the best place
+of all. When he gets back&mdash;if he gets back, we're taking off. And if he
+doesn't get back ... I'll blow that bloody bastard over there into so
+many bits....</p>
+
+<p>"Coming in, Jeff," his father's voice on the speaker interrupted him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Jeff leaned forward, his hands on the trips of the rifles; the small
+grey figure suddenly shot back to the protection of the airlock,
+which snapped shut behind it. Then, he took a deep breath, stood up,
+and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He went down to the
+instrument room.</p>
+
+<p>Peter Wadley was already out of his suit and developing the pictures.
+Jeff picked them up as they came off the roll, damp and soft to the
+touch.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell much," he said, holding them up to the light.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a great deal of overlap," his father answered. "We're going
+to have to section and fit the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle.
+Wait'll I'm through here."</p>
+
+<p>For about five minutes more, pictures continued to come off the roll.
+Then Peter picked up a pair of scissors and arranged the prints in
+their proper sequence.</p>
+
+<p>"Clear the table," he told Jeff, "and fit these together as I hand them
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>For a little while longer, they worked in silence. Then Peter laid down
+his scissors.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all," he said. "Now, what have we got?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," answered Jeff, bewilderment in his voice. "It looks
+like nothing I've ever seen."</p>
+
+<p>Peter stepped up to the table and squinted at the shadowy films with
+eyes practiced in reading rock formations. He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"It is strange," he said, finally.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see what I see?" demanded Jeff. "There's no real crew
+space. There's this one spot&mdash;up front&mdash;" he indicated it with his
+finger&mdash;"that's about as big as a good sized closet. And nothing more
+than that&mdash;except corridors about twenty inches in diameter running
+from it to points all over the ship. She must be flown by a crew of
+midgets."</p>
+
+<p>"Midgets," echoed the older man, thoughtfully. "I never heard of an
+intelligent race that small."</p>
+
+<p>"Then they're something new," said Jeff, with a shrug of his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said his father, slowly. "I don't remember when or where I heard
+it, but there's some reason why you couldn't have an intelligent race
+much smaller than a good sized dog. It has something to do with the
+fact that they grow in size as their developing intelligence gives them
+an increasing advantage over their environment."</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the evidence," Jeff answered, tapping the film with one finger.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Pete was bending over the picture fragments again. "Look at these
+things in the corridor. They're obviously controls."</p>
+
+<p>Jeff looked.</p>
+
+<p>"I see what you mean," he said at last. "If there's any similarity
+between their mechanical system and ours, these controls are built for
+somebody pretty big. But look how they're scattered all over the ship.
+There's a good fifteen or twenty different groups of instruments and
+other things. That means a number of crew members; and you simply can't
+put a number of large crew members in those little corridors."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a large amount of total space," Pete began. Then, suddenly a
+faint tremor ran through the ship. Jeff leaped for the screen and his
+father moved over to stand behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord," said Jeff, "look at her."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The other ship shook suddenly and rolled slightly to one side. Some
+unseen center of gravity pulled her back to her original position. She
+hesitated a moment, and then tried again, with the same results. She
+lay quiescent.</p>
+
+<p>Jeff pounced on his radiation drum graph.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it say?" Peter asked.</p>
+
+<p>Jeff shook his head in astonishment. "Nothing," he answered, "just
+nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing?" Peter came over to take a look at the graph himself. It was
+as Jeff had said. The line tracing the white surface of the graph was
+straight and undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"But that's impossible," Peter frowned.</p>
+
+<p>The two men turned back to the screen. As they watched, one final
+shudder shook the strange ship, and then, like a stranded whale who has
+given up hope, it lay still.</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" said Pete, and Jeff turned to him in astonishment. It was the
+closest to profanity his father had come in twenty years. "Jeff, do you
+know what I think? I think that ship is manned by just one great big
+creature&mdash;like a giant squid. That's why no radiation registered. He
+was trying to move his ship by sheer strength."</p>
+
+<p>Jeff stared at his father.</p>
+
+<p>"You're crazy," was all he could manage to say. "Why, something big
+enough to shake that ship would have to fill every inch of space inside
+it. You can't live in a space ship that way."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," Pete answered. He clamped his hand on Jeff's shoulder
+excitedly and led him back to the jigsaw puzzle on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'm right," he said, "that's no ship at all as we understand it,
+but some sort of a space-going suit for something terrifically large.
+Something like a giant squid, as I said, or some other long-tentacled
+creature. His body would lie here&mdash;in this space you said was about the
+size of a closet&mdash;and his tentacles or whatever they are, would reach
+out in these corridors to the various groups of instruments."</p>
+
+<p>Jeff frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"It sounds sensible," he muttered. "And in any case, he wouldn't be
+able to get outside his ship to fix anything that went wrong. And I
+take it there is something wrong, or else he wouldn't be jumping around
+inside."</p>
+
+<p>"Jeff," Pete said, "I'm going outside to take a close look at him."</p>
+
+<p>Jeff's head snapped up from the jigsaw puzzle. The old, sick fear had
+come back. It washed over him like a wave.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he demanded harshly.</p>
+
+<p>"To see if I can find out what's wrong with his ship," said Pete over
+his shoulder as he went to the airlock. "Coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" cried Jeff. He stood up and followed his father. For a moment
+there, they stood facing each other, two tall men with less apparent
+physical difference between them than their ages might indicate, poised
+on the brink of an open break.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," said Jeff again, and now his voice was lower, more under
+control. "Dad, there's no point in playing around any longer. You
+aren't going to be satisfied just to look around out there and then
+leave. You're going to do something. And if that's it I want to know
+now."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence; then Pete turned back to Jeff, his face
+set.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," he said. "I don't have to look. I know what's wrong.
+And I know what I'm going to do about it. There's a living intelligence
+trapped in that space-thing as you and I might be trapped. I can set it
+free with two of our motor jacks. If you've got one inkling of what it
+means to be ignored when you're caught like that, you'll help me. If
+not, I'm taking two jacks out the airlock and you can fire the motors
+and take off and be damned to you."</p>
+
+<p>Between the two big men the tension built and strained and broke. Jeff
+let out a ragged sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said. "I'm with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Good," said the older man, and there was new life in his voice. "Get
+your suit on. I'll explain as we dress."</p>
+
+<p>"The trouble with our friend there is that he's fallen over. I see you
+don't understand, Jeff. Well, this ship of ours lands on her belly.
+We've got booster rockets all over the hull to correct our landing
+angle. But ships weren't always that way. They used to have to sit
+down on their tail. There's no furrow where that ship landed, only a
+circular blasted spot, so it figures. Maybe some of his mechanism went
+wrong at the last minute.</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate, I'm betting that if we get him upright again, he can take
+care of himself from there on out. So you and I are going to go out
+there with a couple of jacks and see if we can't jack him back up into
+position."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The sand was thick and heavy. The walk over to the other ship was
+tedious, with the heavy jacks weighing them down. They reached the
+alien hull, paused a moment to get their breath and then attached the
+magnetic grapples to the skin of the ship at two points on opposite
+sides of the hull and roughly a fourth of the way up from the rocket
+tubes.</p>
+
+<p>It was hard to anchor the jacks in the soft sand. They finally found
+it necessary to dig them in some three or four feet to a layer of rock
+that underlay the sand. Then, when everything was ready, they took
+their stations, each at a jack, and Pete called to Jeff on the helmet
+set.</p>
+
+<p>"All ready? Start your motor."</p>
+
+<p>Jeff reached down and flicked a switch. The tiny, powerful jack motor
+began to spin, and the jack base settled more solidly against its rocky
+bed. When he was sure that it would not slip, he left it, and went
+around the rockets to stand by his father.</p>
+
+<p>His face was grey.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Pete tensely, "up she goes."</p>
+
+<p>The nose of the alien ship was raising slowly from the sand. It
+quivered softly from some motion inside the ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Jeff, "up she goes." His words were flat and dull. Pete
+turned to look at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Scared, son?" he asked. Jeff's lips parted, closed and opened again.</p>
+
+<p>"You know how we stand," he said, dully. "I've heard what you said from
+other men, but never from an alien. Most of the ones we know hit first,
+and talk afterward. You know that once this ship is on its feet we're
+at his mercy. Just his rocket blasts alone could kill us; and there
+won't be time to get back to the Girl."</p>
+
+<p>The alien was now at an angle of forty-five degrees. The little jacks
+stretched steadily, pushing their thin, stiff arms against the strange
+hull. Sand dripped from the rising ship.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Jeff," Pete said. "I know. But the important thing isn't what he
+does, but what we do. The fact that we've helped him&mdash;can't you see it
+that way, son?"</p>
+
+<p>Jeff shook his head in bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he said helplessly. "I just don't know."</p>
+
+<p>The ship was now nearly upright. Suddenly, with an abruptness that
+startled both men, it shook itself free of the jacks and teetered free
+for a second, before coming to rest, its nose pointing straight up.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it goes," said Pete, a tinge of excitement in his voice. They
+moved back some yards to be out of the way of the takeoff blast.
+Suddenly the ground trembled under their feet. Pete put his hand on the
+younger man's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it goes," he repeated, in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Flame burst abruptly from the base of the ship. It was warming up its
+tubes. Slowly the flame puffed out from its base and it began to rise.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Jeff shook suddenly with an uncontrollable shudder. His voice came to
+Pete through the earphones, starkly afraid.</p>
+
+<p>"Now what?" he cried. "What'll he do now?"</p>
+
+<p>Pete's grip tightened on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Steady boy."</p>
+
+<p>The ship was rising. Up it went, and up, until it was the size of a
+man's little finger, a tiny sliver of silver against the black backdrop
+of the sky. Then, inexplicably, it halted and began to reverse itself.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly it turned, until the blunt nose pointed toward them. Jeff's
+hoarse breathing was loud in his helmet. <i>Now it comes</i>, he thought,
+and his muscles tensed.</p>
+
+<p>A long minute flowed by and still the alien hung there. Then, abruptly
+it went into a series of idiotic gyrations; it twisted and turned, and
+spun around, swinging its fiery trail of rocket gases like a luminous
+tail in the darkness. Then, just as abruptly, it reversed once more,
+so that its head was away from them; in the twinkling of a moment it
+was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Pete sighed, a deep, ragged sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see it, boy?" he cried. "Did you see it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I saw," Jeff's voice was filled with a new awe. "Now I get it. He
+wasn't sure&mdash;he didn't know we were really trying to help him until we
+let him get all the way out there by himself. Then he knew he was free.
+That's why he wouldn't answer before."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, Jeff, sure," said the older man, a note of triumph in his voice.
+"But that's not what I mean. Did you notice all those contortions he
+was going through up there? What did they remind you of?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of silence, then the words came, at first slowly,
+then in a rush from Jeff's lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a puppy," he said, haltingly, stumbling over the wonder of it.
+"Like a puppy wagging its tail."</p>
+
+<p>And the light of a new understanding broke suddenly in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad!" said Jeff, turning to his father. "Dad! Do you know what I
+think? I think we've made a friend."</p>
+
+<p>And the two men stood there, side by side, looking into the blackness
+of space where an odd-shaped spacecraft had vanished. It, they felt,
+was on its way home.</p>
+
+<p>And they were right. Moreover, It was hurrying.</p>
+
+<p>For It had a story to tell.</p>
+
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