And…

  Torrance returned to the yacht in an hour. When he came on the bridge, he found van Rijn seated by Jeri. The girl started to speak, took a closer look at the captain’s face, and clamped her teeth together.

  “Well?” snapped the merchant peevishly.

  Torrance cleared his throat. His voice sounded unfamiliar and faraway to him. “I think you’d better come have a look, sir.”

  “You found the crew wherever the sputtering hell they holed up? What are they like? What kind of ship is this we’ve gotten us, ha?”

  Torrance chose to answer the last question first. “It seems to be an interstellar animal collector’s transport vessel. The main hold is full of cages—environmentally controlled compartments, I should say—with the damnedest assortment of creatures I’ve ever seen outside Luna City Zoo.”

  “So what the pox is that to me? Where is the collector himself, and his fig-plucking friends?”

  “Well sir.” Torrance gulped. “We’re pretty sure by now they’re hiding from us. Among the other animals.”

  A tube was run between the yacht’s main lock and the entry cut into the other ship. Through this, air was pumped and electric lines were strung, to illuminate the prize. By some fancy juggling with the gravitic generator of the Hebe G.B., Yamamura supplied about one-fourth Earth-weight to the foreigner, though he couldn’t get the direction uniform and its decks felt canted in wildly varying degrees.

  Even under such conditions, van Rijn walked ponderously. He stood with a salami in one hand and a raw onion in the other, glaring around the captured bridge. It could only be that, though it was in the bows rather than the waist. The viewscreens were still in operation, smaller than human eyes found comfortable, but revealing the same pattern of stars, surely by the same kind of optical compensators. A control console made a semicircle at the forward bulkhead too big for a solitary human to operate. Yet presumably the designer had only had one pilot in mind, for a single seat had been placed in the middle of the arc.

  Had been. A short metal post rose from the deck. Similar structures stood at other points, and boltholes showed where chairs were once fastened to them. But the seats had been removed.

  “Pilot sat there at the center, I’d guess, when they weren’t simply running on automatic,” Torrance hazarded. “Navigator and communications officer…here and here? I’m not sure. Anyhow, they probably didn’t use a copilot, but that chair bollard at the aft end of the room suggests that an extra officer sat in reserve, ready to take over.”

  Van Rijn munched his onion and tugged his goatee. “Pestish big, this panel,” he said. “Must be a race of bloody-be-damned octopussies, ha? Look how complicated.”

  He waved the salami around the half circle. The console, which seemed to be of some fluorocarbon polymer, held very few switches or buttons, but scores of flat luminous plates, each about twenty centimeters square. Some of them were depressed. Evidently these were the controls. Cautious experiment had shown that a stiff push was needed to budge them. The experiment had ended then and there, for the ship’s cargo lock had opened and a good deal of air was lost before Torrance slapped the plate he had been testing hard enough to make the hull reseal itself. One should not tinker with the atomic-powered unknown, most especially not in galactic space.

  “They must be strong like horses, to steer by this system without getting exhausted,” went on van Rijn. “The size of everything tells likewise, nie?”

  “Well, not exactly, sir,” said Torrance. “The viewscreens seem made for dwarfs. The meters even more so.” He pointed to a bank of instruments, no larger than buttons, on each of which a single number glowed. (Or letter, or ideogram, or what? They looked vaguely Old Chinese.) Occasionally a symbol changed value. “A human couldn’t use these long without severe eyestrain. Of course, having eyes better adapted to close work than ours doesn’t prove they are not giants. Certainly that switch couldn’t be reached from here without long arms, and it seems meant for big hands.” By standing on tiptoe: he touched it himself, an outsize double-pole affair set overhead, Just above the pilot’s hypothetical seat.

  The switch fell open.

  A roar came from aft. Torrance lurched backward under a sudden force. He caught at a shelf on the after bulkhead to steady himself. Its thin metal buckled as he clutched. “Devilfish and dunderheads!” cried van Rijn. Bracing his columnar legs, he reached up and shoved the switch back into position. The noise ended. Normality returned. Torrance hastened to the bridge doorway, a tall arch, and shouted down the corridor beyond: “It’s okay! Don’t worry! We’ve got it under control!”

  “What the blue blinking blazes happened?” demanded van Rijn, in somewhat more high-powered words.

  Torrance mastered a slight case of the shakes. “Emergency switch, I’d say.” His tone wavered. “Turns on the gravitic field full speed ahead, not wasting any force on acceleration compensators. Of course, we being in hyperdrive, it wasn’t very effective. Only gave us a—uh—less than one-G push, intrinsic. In normal state we’d have accelerated several Gs, at least. It’s for quick getaways and…and…”

  “And you, with brains like fermented gravy and bananas for fingers, went ahead and yanked it open!”

  Torrance felt himself redden. “How was I to know, sir? I must’ve applied less than half a kilo of force. Emergency switches aren’t hair-triggered, after all. Considering how much it takes to move one of those control plates who’d have thought the switch would respond to so little?”

  Van Rijn took a closer look. “I see now there is a hook to secure it by,” he said. “Must be they use that when the ship’s on a high-gravity planet.” He peered down a hole near the center of the panel, about one centimeter in diameter and fifteen deep. At the bottom a small key projected. “This must be another special control, ha? Safer than that switch. You would need thin-nosed pliers to make a turning of it.” He scratched his pomaded curls. “But then, why is not the pliers hanging handy? I don’t see even a hook or bracket or drawer for them.”

  “I don’t care,” said Torrance. “When the whole interior’s been stripped—There’s nothing but a slagheap in the engine room, I tell you—fused metal, carbonized plastic…bedding, furniture, anything they thought might give us a clue to their identity, all melted down in a jury-rigged cauldron. They used their own converter to supply heat. That was the cause of the neutrino flux Yamamura observed. They must have worked like demons.”

  “But they did not destroy all needful tools and machines, surely? Simpler then they should blow, up their whole ship, and us with it. I was sweating like a hog, me, for fear they would do that. Not so good a way for a poor sinful old man to end his days, blown into radioactive stinks three hundred light-years from the vineyards of Earth.”

  “N-n-no. As far as we can tell from a cursory examination, they didn’t sabotage anything absolutely vital. We can’t be sure, of course. Yamamura’s gang would need weeks just to get a general idea of how this ship is put together, let alone the practical details of operating it. But I agree, the crew isn’t bent on suicide. They’ve got us more neatly trapped than they know, even. Bound helplessly through space—toward their home star, maybe. In any event, almost at right angles to the course we want.”

  Torrance led the way out. “Suppose we go have a more thorough look at the zoo, sir,” he went on. “Yamamura talked about setting up some equipment…to help us tell the crew from the animals!”

  The main hold comprised almost half the volume of the great ship. A corridor below, a catwalk above, ran through a double row of two-decker cubicles. These numbered ninety-six, and were identical. Each was about five meters on a side, with adjustable fluorescent plates in the ceiling and a springy, presumably inert, plastic on the floor. Shelves and parallel bars ran along the side walls, for the benefit of creatures that liked jumping or climbing. The rear wall was connected to well-shielded machines; Yamamura didn’t dare tamper with these, but said they obviously regulated atmosphere, temperature, gravity, sanitation, and other environmental factors within each “cage.” The front wall, facing on corridor and catwalk, was transparent. It held a stout air lock, almost as high as the cubicle itself, motorized but controlled by simple wheels inside and out. Only a few compartments were empty.

  The humans had not strung fluoros in this hold, for it wasn’t necessary. Torrance and Van Rijn walked through shadows, among monsters; the simulated light of a dozen different suns streamed around them: red, orange, yellow, greenish, and harsh electric blue.

  A thing like a giant shark, save that tendrils fluttered about its head, swam in a water-filled cubicle among fronded seaweeds. Next to it was a cageful of tiny flying reptiles, their scales aglitter in prismatic hues, weaving and dodging through the air. On the opposite side, four mammals crouched among yellow mists—beautiful creatures the size of a bear, vividly tiger-striped, walking mostly on all fours but occasionally standing up; then you noticed the retractable claws between stubby fingers, and the carnivore jaws on the massive heads. Farther on, the humans passed half a dozen sleek red beasts like six-legged otters, frolicking in a tank of water provided for them. The environmental machines must have decided this was their feeding time, for a hopper spewed chunks of proteinaceous material into a trough and the animals lolloped over to rip it with their fangs.

  “Automatic feeding,” Torrance observed. “I think probably the food is synthesized on the spot, according to the specifications of each individual species as determined by biochemical methods. For the crew, also. At least, we haven’t found anything like a galley.”

  Van Rijn shuddered. “Nothing but synthetics? Not even a little glass Genever before dinner?” He brightened. “Ha, maybe here we find a good new market. And until they learn the situation, we can charge them triple prices.”

  “First,” clipped Torrance, “we’ve got to find them.”

  Yamamura stood near the middle of the hold, focusing a set of instruments on a certain cage. Jeri stood by, handing him what he asked for, plugging and unplugging at a small powerpack. Van Rijn hove into view. “What goes on, anyhows?” he asked.

  The chief engineer turned a patient brown face to him “I’ve got the rest of the crew examining the shop in detail, sir,” he said. “I’ll join them as soon as I’ve gotten Freelady Kofoed trained at this particular job. She can handle the routine of it while the rest of us use our special skills to…” His words trailed off. He grinned ruefully. “To poke and prod gizmos we can’t possibly understand in less than a month of work, with our limited research tools.”

  “A month we have not got,” said van Rijn. “You are here checking conditions inside each individual cage?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re metered, of course, but we can’t read the meters, so we have to do the job ourselves. I’ve haywired this stuff together, to give an approximate value of gravity, atmospheric pressure and composition, temperature, illumination spectrum, and so forth. It’s slow work, mostly because of all the arithmetic needed to turn the dial readings into such data. Luckily, we don’t have to test every cubicle, or even most of them.”

  “No,” said van Rijn. “Even to a union organizer, obvious this ship was never made by fishes or birds. In fact, some kind of hands is always necessary.”

  “Or tentacles.” Yamamura nodded at the compartment before him. The light within was dim red. Several black creatures could be seen walking restlessly about. They had stumpy-legged quadrupedal bodies, from which torsos rose, centaur fashion, toward heads armored in some bony material. Below the faceless heads were six thick, ropy arms, set in triplets. Two of these ended in three boneless but probably strong fingers.

  “I suspect these are our coy friends,” said Yamamura. “If so, we’ll have a deuce of a time. They breathe hydrogen under high pressure and triple gravity, at a temperature of seventy below.”

  “Are they the only ones who like that kind of weather?” asked Torrance.

  Yamamura gave him a sharp look. “I see what you’re getting at, Skipper. No, they aren’t. In the course of putting this apparatus together and testing it, I’ve already found three other cubicles where conditions are similar. And in those, the animals are obviously just animals, snakes and so on, which couldn’t possibly have built this ship.”

  “But then these octopus-horses can’t be the crew, can they?” asked Jeri timidly. “I mean, if the crew were collecting animals from other planets, they wouldn’t take home animals along, would they?”

  “They might,” said van Rijn. “We have a cat and a couple parrots aboard the Hebe G.B., nie? Or, there are many planets with very similar conditions of the hydrogen sort, just like Earth and Freya are much-alike oxygen planets. So that proves nothings.” He turned toward Yamamura, rather like a rotating globe himself. “But see here, even if the crew did pump out the air before we boarded, why not check their reserve tanks? If we find air stored away just like these diddlers here are breathing…”

  “I thought of that,” said Yamamura. “In fact, it was almost the first thing I told the men to look for. They’ve located nothing. I don’t think they’ll have any success, either. Because what they did find was an adjustable catalytic manifold. At least, it looks as if it should be, though we’d need days to find out for certain. Anyhow, my guess is that it renews exhausted air and acts as a chemosynthesizer to replace losses from a charge of simple inorganic compounds. The crew probably bled the ship’s atmosphere into space before we boarded. When we go away, if we do, they’ll open the door of their particular cage a crack, so its air can trickle out. The environmental adjuster will automatically force the chemosynthesizer to replace this. Eventually the ship’ll be full of enough of their kind of gas for them to venture forth and adjust things more precisely.” He shrugged. “That’s assuming they even need to. Perhaps Earth-type conditions suit them perfectly well.”

  “Uh, yes,” said Torrance. “Suppose we look around some more, and line up the possibly intelligent species.”

  Van Rijn trundled along with him. “What sort intelligence they got, these bespattered aliens?” he grumbled. “Why try this stupid masquerade in the first places?”

  “It’s not too stupid to have worked so far,” said Torrance dryly. “We’re being carried along on a ship we don’t know how to stop. They must hope we’ll either give up and depart, or else that we’ll remain baffled until the ship enters their home region. At which time, quite probably a naval vessel—or whatever they’ve got—will detect us, close in, and board us to check up on what’s happened.”

  He paused before a compartment. “I wonder…”

  The quadruped within was the size of an elephant, though with a more slender build, indicating a lower gravity than Earth’s. Its skin was green and faintly scaled, a ruff of hair along the back. The eyes with which it looked out were alert and enigmatic. It had an elephantlike trunk, terminating in a ring of pseudodactyls which must be as strong and sensitive as human fingers.

  “How much could a one-armed race accomplish?” mused Torrance. “About as much as we, I imagine, if not quite as easily. And sheer strength would compensate. That trunk could bend an iron bar.”

  Van Rijn grunted and went past a cubicle of feathered ungulates. He stopped before the next. “Now here are some beasts might do,” he said. “We had one like them on Earth once. What they called it? Quintilla? No, gorilla. Or chimpanzee, better, of gorilla size.”

  Torrance felt his heart thud. Two adjoining sections each held four animals of a kind which looked extremely hopeful. They were bipedal, short-legged and long-armed. Standing two meters tall, with a three-meter arm span, one of them could certainly operate that control console alone. The wrists, thick as a man’s thighs, ended in proportionate hands, four-digited including a true thumb. The three-toed feet were specialized for walking, like man’s feet. Their bodies were covered with brown fleece. Their heads were comparatively small, rising almost to a point, with massive snouts and beady eyes under cavernous brow ridges. As they wandered aimlessly about, Torrance saw that they were divided among males and females. On the sides of each neck he noticed two lumens closed by sphincters. The light upon them was the familiar yellowish white of a Sol-type star.

  He forced himself to say, “I’m not sure. Those huge jaws must demand corresponding maxillary muscles, attaching to a ridge on top of the skull. Which’d restrict the cranial capacity.”

  “Suppose they got brains in their bellies,” said van Rijn.

  “Well some people do,” murmured Torrance. As the merchant choked, he added in haste, “No, actually, sir, that’s hardly believable. Neural paths would get too long and so forth. Every animal I know of, if it has a central nervous system at all, keeps the brain close to the principal sense organs, which are usually located in the head. To be sure, a relatively small brain, within limits, doesn’t mean these creatures are not intelligent. Their neurons might well be more efficient than ours.”

  “Humph and hassenpfeffer!” said van Rijn. “Might, might, might!” As they continued among strange shapes; “We can’t go too much by atmosphere or light, either. If hiding, the crew could vary conditions quite a bit from their norm without hurting themselves. Gravity, too, by twenty or thirty percent.”

  “I hope they breathe oxygen, though—hoy!” Torrance stopped. After a moment, he realized what was so eerie about the several forms under the orange glow. They were chitinous-armored, not much bigger than a squarish military helmet and about the same shape. Four stumpy legs projected from beneath to carry them awkwardly about on taloned feet, also a pair of short tentacles ending in a bush of cilia. There was nothing special about them, as extraterrestrial animals go, except the two eyes which gazed from beneath each helmet: as large and somehow human as—well—the eyes of an octopus.

  “Turtles,” snorted van Rijn. “Armadillos at most.”

  “There can’t be any harm in letting Jer—Freelady Kofoed check their environment too,” said Torrance.