Space Gypsies by Murray Leinster Page B

alive.
    Ketch raged. It seemed almost as if he’d have preferred to be killed than to have Howell save his life, as Howell had certainly done.
    “Why the devil did you do that?” he demanded furiously. “That was my shot!”
    “This is no sporting excursion,” Howell told him. “It’s business! And a nasty business, at that! There are only four of us, and none of us can be spared.”
    “But that was my shot!” repeated Ketch angrily. “And you took it!”
    Howell shrugged. He had too much on his mind to engage in argument now. He said, “There could be another beast around. It’s yours. If you see it aiming at me, I won’t mind a bit if you kill it. We probably ought to check the slug-ship, though. They thought we were all dead, so they shouldn’t have put on spacesuits except for a landing party. But it might be standard for them to have all hands suit up when any kind of action is in prospect. Against another ship, it’d make sense.”
    He turned away to the slug-ship. He moved in its direction, using his eyes with a desperate intentness. Ketch followed, still resentful. Howell made a mental note to try to think of some way to placate him. He’d been touchy because he didn’t see their situation as Howell did. His whole life had assumed his safety under any and all conditions. His hunting had been of animals that couldn’t fight back. Now that a dangerous opponent had appeared, he still had the viewpoint of a hunter for sport, and even their present situation hadn’t made him into a practical man in a very bad spot.
    They approached the shattered slug-ship, weapons ready. There was silence except for the cracklings and snappings of the dying-out fire. There was the smell of chlorine.
    The slug-ship was eighty feet long—twenty more than the Marintha . The smell of chlorine grew stronger as they drew near. It was made of white metal—beautifully white metal, like steel that has never been in contact with oxygen. And every particle of it was coated with transparent plastic. Where the plates were ripped by the internal explosion, they were half an inch thick, and already the totally reflecting broken surface was dulling where the air touched it.
    “Aluminum! ” Howell grunted. “How did they ever work it, much less smelt it?”
    His mind worked busily, but his eyes searched fiercely for anything that might possibly be alive in the slug-ship. He saw two shapes which he had to force himself to look at. They were crew-members of this ship. They were dead. It was not easy to believe that such creatures could make a ship like this. But, looking into it through a great gash, the ship was itself almost inconceivable.
    There was no bare metal in sight. The whole ship was molded in plastic, with metal imbedded here and there for strength. There were differences in the plastic colours. There was a space where instruments were obviously to be read. The generators of lightning-bolts were in the bow, and both had exploded with devastating effect. With some idea of how they must work, Howell could see how an alien psychology had used principles familiar to humans to make devices that were almost unrecognizable. For example, there were no knobs or handles for controls. They were obviously sliding plates instead, with holes in the slides for digits to fit into. There were moulded recesses in the now-shattered walls which could have been bunks for repose, but it could be only a guess to say so. And nothing could be seen of the ship’s working mechanisms. They seemed to be buried deep in opaque plastic, and they wouldn’t be arranged as human equipment was placed at all.
    Ketch coughed, stranglingly. Presently he said, “Chlorine, eh?”
    “Chlorine,” agreed Howell. “They breathed it. Try to figure out how they’d build a civilization! With any moisture at all—and how could they avoid that?—any metal would be eaten up by the atmosphere they breathed! They had to coat all their metals with plastic to seal out