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* * * * *

Farrell, himself appalled by the information, still found himself able to chuckle at Stryker’s bellow of consternation.

” Continuous fission? Good God, only madmen would deliberately run a risk like that!”

Farrell prodded him with cheerful malice. “Why say mad men ? Maybe they’re humanoid aliens who thrive on hard radiation and look on the danger of being blown to hell in the middle of the night as a satisfactory risk.”

“They’re not alien,” Gibson said positively. “Their architecture is Terran, and so is their ship. The ship is incredibly primitive, though; those batteries of tubes at either end–“

“Are thrust reaction jets,” Stryker finished in an awed voice. “Primitive isn’t the word, Gib–the thing is prehistoric! Rocket propulsion hasn’t been used in spacecraft since–how long, Xav?”

Xavier supplied the information with mechanical infallibility. “Since the year 2100 when the Ringwave propulsion-communication principle was discovered. That principle has served men since.”

Farrell stared in blank disbelief at the anomalous craft on the screen. Primitive, as Stryker had said, was not the word for it: clumsily ovoid, studded with torpedo domes and turrets and bristling at either end with propulsion tubes, it lay at the center of its square like a rusted relic of a past largely destroyed and all but forgotten. What a magnificent disregard its builders must have had, he thought, for their lives and the genetic purity of their posterity! The sullen atomic fires banked in that oxidizing hulk–

Stryker said plaintively, “If you’re right, Gib, then we’re more in the dark than ever. How could a Terran-built ship eleven hundred years old get here ?”

Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player’s contemplation of alternatives, seemed hardly to hear him.

“Logic or not-logic,” Gibson said. “If it’s a Terran artifact, we can discover the reason for its presence. If not–“

” Any problem posed by one group of human beings,” Stryker quoted his Handbook, ” can be resolved by any other group, regardless of ideology or conditioning, because the basic perceptive abilities of both must be the same through identical heredity.”

“If it’s an imitation, and this is another Hymenop experiment in condition ecology, then we’re stumped to begin with,” Gibson finished. “Because we’re not equipped to evaluate the psychology of alien motivation. We’ve got to determine first which case applies here.”

* * * * *

He waited for Farrell’s expected irony, and when the navigator forestalled him by remaining grimly quiet, continued.

“The obvious premise is that a Terran ship must have been built by Terrans. Question: Was it flown here, or built here?”

“It couldn’t have been built here,” Stryker said. “Alphard Six was surveyed just before the Bees took over in 3025, and there was nothing of the sort here then. It couldn’t have been built during the two and a quarter centuries since; it’s obviously much older than that. It was flown here.”

“We progress,” Farrell said dryly. “Now if you’ll tell us how, we’re ready to move.”

“I think the ship was built on Terra during the Twenty-second Century,” Gibson said calmly. “The atomic wars during that period destroyed practically all historical records along with the technology of the time, but I’ve read well-authenticated reports of atomic-driven ships leaving Terra before then for the nearer stars. The human race climbed out of its pit again during the Twenty-third Century and developed the technology that gave us the Ringwave. Certainly no atomic-powered ships were built after the wars–our records are complete from that time.”

Farrell shook his head at the inference. “I’ve read any number of fanciful romances on the theme, Gib, but it won’t stand up in practice. No shipboard society could last through a thousand-year space voyage. It’s a physical and psychological impossibility. There’s got to be some other explanation.”