Part 2

He nodded, then went on quickly. "Something, however, puzzles us. There's either a draftsman's error, or a technician's error. One circuit leading forward should be connected to a junction box on the main power dynamo. Instead, it's connected to one of the gyro assemblies. Its function was undoubtedly intended to transmit a pulse to activate some mechanism forward, probably to arouse the crew. It probably acted on the anti-gravity apparatus instead, slowing the ship practically to a standstill and letting it drift in with the crew unawakened.

"The circuit's forward connections are in the bulkhead instrument which is in part an autopilot/computer. We found a punched tape which we believe spelled _Destination: Earth_, and should also have led to activation of the awakening apparatus.

"Allan can work on the related math. I've identified it with the schematics. Then perhaps we'll be convinced that we must correct the wiring and arouse the crew."

General Hill snapped from the doorway, "Lizio, we can't be hasty. We must not only correlate everything you electronics men find and everything the computers reveal, but re-check our findings ten times over. Incidentally, copies of the book and details of our findings have been flown to the Bureau of Standards. They're busy on it, too.

"If the crew is dead, delay won't matter. If they've been in suspended animation across eight plus light years, delay shouldn't matter either--to them or to us! We can't try to be rescuers and wind up murderers by mistake!"

Three hours later Benton Allan came again from the computers.

"It's undoubtedly anti-gravity," he announced. "I've done considerable work on magnetic lines of force and theoretical work on possible creation of force fields for use as meteor screens. This math weaves in and out of mine like a pulse across a synchroscope. I'd been incredibly close to anti-gravity myself! That one blasted equation! Amazing!

"Lizio has been working with others on the autopilot computer. They suspected it was oriented off the galactic hub and the math verifies it. Doctor Englander from Palomar plotted courses to various star systems with the hub as reference point, and Lizio had the instrument punching tape from Englander's data.

"The unit not only plots courses to any star system in the galaxy, but apparently to any planet of any system! How could the memory bank have been developed? Have they better equipment for probing and photographing distant space? Have they known space travel for millennia and explored and catalogued the galaxy?

"Now, gentlemen, I hate to provoke a heated discussion but the computers back me up. The amount of anti-gravitational energy produced should drive the ship at over twenty times light-speed!"

"Wait, Al," Winthrop said. "Certainly Einstein's whole theory of--"

"You wait," Allan said with tired exasperation. "This math doesn't parallel Einstein's as we first thought! The differences I haven't determined. _The_ computers have done that. They do in minutes what it would take years for me to compute. Perhaps you're faster!"

General Hill said sharply, "No arguments, please! Standards will double check. All the computers won't err, if these do. Let's assume these haven't erred. What does it mean, then?"

"That the ship came from Sirius in about half an Earth year," Winthrop said. "That it may have departed after _they_ realized from visually observing our first atomic blast that there must be life here, probably a haven for _them_."

Englander laughed. "So they fled the beasties! Don't take your comics so seriously, George!"

"Are you sure it's a comic?" Winthrop snapped back. "Ask Rabin what _he_ thinks!"

And Rabin screamed--

Shocked, the memory of the little girl's hysteria strong in him, Winthrop spun toward Rabin, and found the man's dark face suddenly vacuous. Rabin's hands were spread out, clutching the table's edge. His eyes were blank, blind.

"_Rabin!_" Winthrop yelled. He slapped the man's face stingingly. The dark head rocked, but the expression did not change.

A doctor administered a sedative and took Rabin away, silent, stumbling in a trance provoked, it seemed, by concentrated study of pictures too vividly drawn in some extra-solar abyss of depravity.

Benton Allan returned to the computers. Winthrop followed. There was much in Winthrop's mind then that he had still to rationalize.

At length he whispered, "_Al_--" and it was urgent then. "There's more to the ship than we suspect. To the books, too. I'm not sure about Rabin. He may have been on the verge of a breakdown. The book may have simply contributed. I don't know. It's hard to be sure.

"I'm just getting over a breakdown myself. I studied the book, and I haven't had a decent moment's rest since the ship came. But I haven't cracked. Be that as it may, there's something wrong in all this, Al. Whatever you find from this point on, let me know about it first, _please_!"

Allan turned quickly from the computer, peering owlishly over his glasses. "Why, George?" He searched Winthrop's tense face.

"A crazy hunch, Al. Just let me know."

"I will," Allan promised. "But, damn it, man, stop giving me the creeps!"

V

It was nearly midnight but no one moved toward his cot. Most of those who had witnessed Rabin's collapse could not sleep. Winthrop himself felt he would never sleep again.

General Hill came from the telephone. "Rabin's resting comfortably," he said. "His personal physician confirms Doctor Vigderman's suspicion that he'd been receiving psychiatric treatment. The casualty, then, is a normal one. It might have happened anywhere, any time. We can't attribute it to some baleful, alien influence."

_What about the little girl?_ Winthrop was tempted to ask. _Surely there was no imbalance there?_

"Now," the general said, dismissing the tragedy of Rabin from his mind, "let's sum up. We've progressed beautifully. We have anti-gravity here, and proof that the speed of light _can_ be exceeded. Standards fully verifies Allan's findings.

"Tomorrow, those most eminently qualified should try to determine how the bulkhead door may be opened. The General Staff has just ordered that it must be opened within forty-eight hours. All precautions will of course be taken to obviate damage to the ship."

"How about to _us_?" Winthrop asked sharply.

The general ignored him. "Now let's call it a day. You all must be as tired as I am."

"Stick with me, Al," Winthrop whispered urgently. Aloud he said, "Doctor Allan and I would like to go over the data now. We believe we've found the key to the door and that--"

The general laughed. "If you're that close, George, it can wait until morning."

"I disagree," Winthrop cut in sharply. "Time may be of the essence. How do we know whether the occupants are of the pastoral race or the other race depicted in that ghastly comic book? If they've anti-gravity and fission bombs, what else may they have up forward?"

"Let's not be pessimistic," General Hill said. "If they had come meaning harm, they'd have set their awakening apparatus properly. They'd not have erred if they'd come with evil intent. Let's not drag in a monstrous hint of invasion. If you wish to keep on, well and good. I'm for the cot. Goodnight, gentlemen!"

VI

"Why can't it wait, George?" Benton Allan asked tiredly.

"You'd better let me ask the questions!" Winthrop urged. "You said you understood that autopilot/computer. Do you think we could send the ship back?"

"Yes," Allan said. "The tape can be reversed. The computer would compensate for elapsed time and orbital factors."

"Will you help me?"

Slowly Allan removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "That would be the height of stupidity. We've a workable spaceship here. If we sent it back without awaiting the awakening of its occupants we'd be acting like congenital idiots!"

"Put your glasses back on!" Winthrop said irritably. His right forefinger stabbed at the schematics, drawings, translated math. "Add it up, Mister Computer!"

For a long moment Allan stared in silence. Then, suddenly, realization blanched his face. "The trees for the forest," he murmured. "Let's go, George!"

The sentry halted them at the ship's port, but passed them quickly when they told him their mission was urgent. But as they entered the ship they heard him calling for the officer-of-the-day.

Allan attacked the autopilot/ computer, inserting the reversed tape carefully. Winthrop with utmost care rearranged the wiring in accordance with the construction charts, and replaced everything else as it had been on the ship's arrival.

"Agreed?" Winthrop asked.

"Agreed!" said Benton Allan.

They left the ship hurriedly, fastening the port securely behind them. A moment later their triumph came. It was not a triumph to the general. In stunned horror and desperation, he watched the gleaming ship lift silently, slowly into the cool night air over Flushing Meadow Park, a monstrous silver gourd stippled with starlight.

"What have you done, man?" he cried.

"We sent it back, Bert," Winthrop said with a calmness he had not felt in years.

"But why? _Why?_ What in God's name shall I tell the General Staff?"

"The simple truth," Winthrop told him. "We reviewed the data and reached an inescapable conclusion. Bert, when it came, the disarranged circuitry cut into the anti-gravity mechanism and landed it safely, as we suspected. Had it been wired properly, something forward would have been awakened. I'm sure of that!

"The math explained the autopilot/computer, the anti-gravity mechanism, the reactor, the fission bomb--and _something sinister_!

"The history book--not comic book--showed where the ship originated, and it also showed clearly who launched it. The math is based on fourteen symbols. The invaders in the history book have seven-fingered hands, the pastoral folk five!"

Steadily Winthrop returned the general's stare. "I shouldn't have said 'ship'! It wasn't designed for passengers or crew. We thought the forward portion wasn't described. But it was--in the same equations that explained the reactor and the fission bomb!

"We use fission bombs to detonate fusion bombs. The _missile's_ warhead contains a fusion bomb which the math proves would have caused a spontaneous carbon chain reaction which would almost instantaneously have wiped out the Earth! Through a technician's error it came to Earth a dud. Its launchers will never know that. It will be _back where it belongs_ twenty times quicker than the light now leaving Sol--and it's no longer a dud!"

They all were silent then.

_You licked it_, Winthrop told himself, _when you armed the greatest bomb_.

Verification of classification came almost nine years later. Then a flareup of near-nova intensity was noted in Sirius, the finest photographs being obtained by Englander in New Palomar Observatory on Pluto.