"Right away," Hayter acknowledged.

"Any other points from anybody?" Shannon asked the assembly.

"Do you want sidearms issued," one of the officers inquired.

"No. Anything else?"

"Just one thing." The speaker was Hunt. "A request. I'd like to go too." Shannon looked at him and hesitated, as if the question, had taken him by surprise. "I was sent here specifically to investigate the Ganymeans. That's my official assignment. What better way could there be of helping me do it?"

"Well, I really don't know." Shannon screwed up his face and scratched the back of his head as he sought for possible objections. "There's no reason why not, I suppose. Yeah--I guess that'd be okay." He turned to Danchekker. "How about you, Professor?"

Danchekker held up his hands in protest. "You are most kind to offer, but thank you, no. I'm afraid I've already had quite enough excitement for one day. And besides that, it has taken me more than a year to feel safe inside this contraption. What an alien one must be like, I dread to think."

Hayter grinned and shook his head, but said nothing.

"Fine then." Shannon cast his gaze around one more time to invite further comments. "That's it. Let's get back to our man out front." He walked back to the screen and drew toward him the microphone that connected him with Storrel. "How's it going down there, Gordon?"

"Okay. I'm teaching them to count."

"Good. But get one of the others to take over, would you? We're sending you out on a little trip. Captain Hayter will provide the details in a second. You're going to be an ambassador for Earth."

"What do they pay one of those?"

"Give us time, Gordon. We're still working on the matter." Shannon smiled. It was the first time he had felt relaxed for what seemed like a very long while.

Chapter Six

The bus--a small personnel carrier normally used for ferrying passengers between satellites or orbiting spacecraft--was drawing near to the Ganymean ship. From where he was sitting, squeezed between the bulky shapes of two other spacesuited figures on one of the benches that ran along the sides of the cabin, Hunt could see the ship closing in toward them on the small viewscreen set into the end wall.

From close range, the impression of age and wear was even more vivid than it had been previously. The patterns of discoloration covering the ship from nose to tail, not fully resolved from J5 even under quite high magnification, were now distinct and in places suggested camouflage patterns reminiscent of movies. The outer skin was peppered irregularly with round holes of various sizes, none of them very large, each of which was surrounded by a raised rim of rounded grayish metal and looked like a miniature Lunar crater; it was as if the ship had been bombarded by thousands of tiny particles moving at enormous speed--sufficient to puncture the skin and dissipate enough energy to melt the surrounding material. Either the ship had traveled an enormous distance, Hunt told himself, or there were conditions outside the Solar System that UNSA had yet to encounter.

A rectangular aperture, easily large enough to admit the bus, had opened in the side of the Shapieron , as they now knew the Ganymean ship to be called. A soft orange glow illuminated the inside and a white beacon flashed near the center of one of the longer sides.

As the bus turned gently to home in on it, the pilot's voice came over the intercom. "Hold on to your seats back there. We're going in without any docking radar so it's gonna have to be a purely visual approach. Leave all helmets in their racks until after touchdown."

With its maneuvering jets nudging delicately, the bus inched its way through the opening. Inside the bay a bulbous craft with a blue-black sheen was secured against the inner bulkhead, taking up most of the available space. Two large and sturdy-looking platforms, constructed perpendicular to the main axis of the ship, projected into the volume that remained; a pair of silver eggs lay side by side on one of them but the other was clear except for a beacon that had been positioned well over to one side to allow ample unobstructed landing space. The bus lined itself up, moved in to hover ten feet or so above the platform, eased itself gingerly downward and came to rest.

Hunt knew immediately that there was something strange about the situation but it took him a few seconds to realize just what it was. There were puzzled expressions on a couple of the faces around him too.

The seat was pressing up against him. He was experiencing an approximately normal weight, but he had seen no evidence of any mechanism whereby such an effect could have been achieved. Jupiter Five had sections that simulated normal gravity by means of continual rotation, although some parts of the ship were designated zero-G areas for special purposes. Instruments that needed to be trained on fixed objects, for example the camera that had been holding the Shapieron for the previous few hours, were mounted on projecting booms which could be counterrotated to compensate--similar in principle to ground-based astronomic telescopes. But the view of the Ganymean ship presented on the screens back at J5 had given no suggestion that the vessel, or any part of it, was rotating. Furthermore, as the bus had positioned itself for its final approach into the landing bay, thus maintaining a fixed position relative to the door, the background stars had been stationary; this meant that the pilot had not been obliged to synchronize his approach run with any rotational motion of his target. Thus, the sensation of weight could only mean that the Ganymeans were employing some revolutionary technology to produce an artificial gravity effect. Intriguing.

The pilot spoke again to confirm this conclusion.

"Well, I guess I'm having one of my lucky days. We made it." The slow Southern drawl was a godsend. "Some of you people have probably noticed the gravity. Don't ask me how they do it but it sure ain't centrifugal. The outer hatch has closed and we're reading a pressure buildup outside, so it looks like they're turning on the air or whatever they use. I'll tell you if you need helmets or not when we've done some tests. Won't take more'n a minute. We still have contact with J5 here. Guess our friends are picking up our transmissions and relaying them on. J5 says the emergency status has been relaxed and communications have been resumed with other locations. Message from J4 reads: Tell'em we waved as they went past. "

The air was breathable--almost normal. Hunt had expected as much; the ship's atmosphere would probably resemble that of Minerva, and terrestrial life had flourished there. The figures in the cabin stayed outwardly calm, but here and there fidgeting and last-minute fiddling with pieces of equipment betrayed the rising air of impatience and expectancy.

The honor of placing the first human foot on an alien spacecraft was to be Storrel's. He rose from his seat near the rear of the cabin and waited for the inner door of the lock to swing aside; then he moved through into the chamber and peered through the transparent port of the outer door.

After a short wait he reported his findings to the rest of the party. "A door is opening in the wall at the edge of the platform we're on. There are guys standing inside it--the big guys. They're coming out. . . one, two, three. . . five of them. Now they're coming across . . ." Heads in the cabin turned instinctively toward the wall screen, but it was showing another part of the structure.

"Can't get a scanner on them," the pilot said, as if reading their thoughts. "It's a blind spot. You're in command now, sir." Storrel continued looking out of the port but said nothing further for a while. Then he turned back to face the cabin and took a deep breath.