The Broken Cycle - A. Bertram Chandler [22]
Una was still talking softly into the microphone. "We mean you no harm. We need help. Tarfelet."
The use of that final word brought an excited gabble in reply.
Three point five kilometers, holding. Three point five . . . Three point six.
Grimes stopped the inertial drive.
"Go on talking," he said. "Get them used to your voice. Maybe they'll send a boat out to us."
"You're not going in?"
"Not yet. Not until I'm sure of a friendly reception, as the wise fly said to the spider."
"And what happened to him in the end? The fly, I mean."
"I can't remember," said Grimes. There are so many ways in which flies die, and most of them unconnected with spiders.
Chapter 12
They hung there, maintaining their distance off the two conical spaceships. Grimes was almost convinced that they were friendly. Almost. The boat was within easy range of any of the weapons with which he was familiar. It would be foolish to assume that a spacefaring race did not possess arms at least as good as those mounted by the warships of the Federation. Of course, the strange ships could be merchantmen. Their crews might have at their disposal nothing better (or worse) than hand weapons. They might just be waiting for Grimes and Una to board one of the vessels, when they would overpower them by force of numbers.
If only, thought Grimes, they could get some sort of a picture on the vision screen of the Carlotti transceiver, things would be very much easier. Or, better still, if Una or himself were a graduate of the Rhine Institute, a licensed telepath . . . . He had often, in the past, relied heavily on the services of Psionic Communications Officers. It was a great pity that he did not have one along now.
Una said, "I'm sure that it would be safe to go in."
"Sure? How can you be sure?"
"Training," she told him. "In my job we soon pick up the knack of being able to know if the other person is lying . . . I've been listening to their voices. There've been at least three of them talking to us. I bet you anything you like that they're our sort of 'people'."
"And that makes them just wonderful, doesn't it?"
"Don't be so bloody cynical."
"In any case, what experience have you had with dealing with aliens?"
"Very little. Why?"
"Because very often facial expressions, and verbal intonations, can be misleading. What we take for a friendly grin could very well be a snarl of hatred. And so on."
"Even so, I think we should go in. We've nothing to lose."
"All right, then."
Grimes restarted the inertial drive. While he was watching the pilot lights on the control panel he heard Una cry out. He looked up, and out through the control cabin ports. They—the lifeboat and the two spaceships—were no longer alone. Shimmering into full visibility were at least a dozen of the weird, skeletal spheres, latticework globes containing odd, spinning bulks of machinery. They were big, far bigger than the one that had attacked them on the devastated world.
The conical ships were armed after all.
From the nearer of them shot a salvo of missiles, none of which reached their target. All of them exploded harmlessly well short of the sphere at which they had been aimed. Both ships were firing now—and both ineffectually. It wasn't Grimes' fight, but he deeply regretted not being able to take sides. He regarded the spherical ships as the enemy. He had to sit there, watching helplessly. But there was something odd about the battle. Apart from the way in which they were closing in, with mathematical precision, to completely surround the conical vessels, they were not attacking. They were using whatever armament they possessed—laser, or something similar?—only to detonate the warheads of the rockets before they hit.
"Isn't it time we were getting out of here?" demanded Una.
Yes, it was time, and more than time. Once the mini-Mannschenn was restarted the boat would slip out of the normal dimensions of space, would be untouchable unless any enemy succeeded in synchronizing temporal precession rates. But Grimes could not bring himself to flee until he knew how it all came