WHO GOES THERE?

Through the outer limits of our solar system, two great ships flashed through the void. Light from distant Sol gleamed feebly on their dark hulls, paled to insignificance by the flare of pure energy that blasted each ship through space at inconceivable velocity. Sol's illumination was just enough to pick out the jagged gash near the base of the leading vessel where a force beam had struck a deadly blow.

As the interval between the spaceships lessened, a pale beam lanced out from the pursuing ship and caught the wounded Alarian cruiser on the flank. Mighty steel plates buckled inward and life-giving water spouted out through the torn side to freeze instantly in the terrible cold of the void. As the pressure dropped, razor-edged bulkhead doors shot automatically into place to seal off the stricken compartment.

Although badly damaged, the Alarian ship was not yet out of the fight. Number Five turret lashed back with a heat ray that glowed cherry-red, then white, on the upper forward turret of the pursuing ship of Ru'ukon. A cluster of atomic torpedoes darted from the far side of the Alarian ship and headed for the Ru'ukonian cruiser in an intricate series of zig-zag maneuvers, only to be caught half way by a force beam and exploded in a blinding flash. Another single torpedo, swinging wide through space in an arc hundreds of thousands of miles long, came up from behind the pursuing ship. For a moment it seemed that it might strike a vital blow, but the Ru'ukonian detection apparatus went into action at the last possible moment, and the single torpedo was caught by a force beam when it was but a scant hundred miles from its target.

Again the pale beam struck, and the Alarian ship staggered as the Number Two port engines exploded.

In the control room, a squid-like shape churned through the clear water to the vision screen where Ekrado, the ship's commander, floated.

"Yes, Ronaro," his thought was sharp and urgent, "what is it?"

"Number Two port engine out," telepathed his deputy. "Number One turret out."

"That is bad. Prepare our personal lifeboat for immediate use. It may become necessary to abandon ship."

"Right away," acknowledged Ronaro. But even as he turned to carry out the order, Ekrado caught the indication of a half-formed question in his mind.

"You have doubts, Ronaro," he challenged. "Out with them."

"If we abandon ship now, how can we carry our message?"

"We have no choice; this ship will never carry us to distant Alar. Our communication apparatus is wrecked beyond repair. We must contact a civilized race on one of the planets of this sun and win their cooperation—or Alar will never get our message."

"Never get our message!" echoed Ronaro, shocked.

"Don't float there thinking of failure. We must and will succeed. Now, off to the lifeboat. I'm going to try to dodge behind a planetary body of this system."

The Captain gave the orders for a change of course, and the speeding ship turned on a long arc as it swung its bow in towards the center of the planetary system. The maneuver gained them a brief respite, as the Ru'ukonian swept on past before the pilot could react to the change of course. The superior speed of the other cruiser soon told, however, and the Alarian ship rocked again as another beam struck it.

An excited subordinate swam up, waving his five tentacles frantically. "Captain," he telepathed, "the water-purifying plant has been hit. A beam went right through where Number Five turret used to be. The auxiliary plant was knocked out when Number Two engine exploded."

"We'll abandon ship," decided the Captain. "Some of the lifeboats should reach planets. Set the controls to plunge the ship into the sun of this system."

The junior officer made the necessary adjustments to the controls. With a flick of one tentacle he set the automatic alarm broadcaster into action and swam hastily after his Captain. The metallic command, "Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship!" rang through his mind as the device started functioning.

The Captain was already at the controls of the lifeboat. Ronaro dove after him. A moment later the lifeboat had slipped through the lock into space, darting away from the wounded giant at full speed.

"Several small planets held by this star, Captain," reported Ronaro.

"I see them," telepathed Ekrado. "You keep a watch on the enemy and look to see if any other lifeboats escape. I'll steer for the most likely planet."

As Ronaro watched through the rear-view vision screen, first one and then another darted away from the Alarian hulk until he could count a total of five.

"Rendezvous instructions?" asked Ronaro mentally.

"Third planet from the sun," ordered Ekrado. "We're in luck, Ronaro, the planet is mostly water—plenty of room to swim around in. I'll pick one of the ocean areas to land in and inform the other boats by beacon signals of our exact location."

Even as Ronaro adjusted the communication amplifier to direct his mental command to the scattered lifeboats behind them, a more ominous picture appeared on the screen. The bright red halo that warned of approaching atomic torpedoes blossomed forth on the image of the enemy cruiser. The single halo gradually broke into smaller red circles as the cluster spread apart in space.

They were next. Could they evade the atomic torpedoes?

"Space torpedoes coming," he reported tersely.

"Six, of course," replied the Captain.

"Right." It was the standard size cluster.

"How many lifeboats besides ourselves?"

"Five."

"Then we're the sixth."

"Right."

"Any of them driving toward the cruiser itself?"

"No, their guiding mechanisms must be set for small-sized craft. They'll track every one of us down."

"A torpedo is heading directly for us now," reported Ronaro.

"At least one boat must get through to carry our message," stated Ekrado flatly.

"What do you propose—a sacrifice?"

"Set the heat ray projector for a narrow fan beam and slice the nearest lifeboat into two parts," ordered the Captain.

Ronaro's tentacles fairly boiled the water as he made the necessary adjustments. A thousand miles behind them, the closest lifeboat from their stricken vessel glowed briefly around its equator and fell apart into two halves that gradually spread apart.

"Two hundred years ago, in the Second Gruon War, I saw my best friend die in just such a sacrifice," grated Ekrado. "I did not like it then and I do not like it now. It was not an easy order to give."

Without replying, Ronaro watched the vision screen anxiously. His eyes were on the bright red halo that warned of a torpedo speeding toward their own lifeboat. There was an additional, separate metal object in space now, toward which the sixth torpedo might automatically be guided by the mechanism in its nose. Blinding flashes lit up the vision screen as one lifeboat after another was destroyed. Now only two torpedoes were left, one heading toward them, and the other toward the lifeboat that had been split in half. At last, the torpedo bearing on them deviated from its course as its guiding mechanism sensed the nearer metal bulk of the nearer half of the lifeboat. The two flashes appeared as one as the two torpedoes blasted both halves of the sacrifice into nothingness.

"All six exploded," reported Ronaro. "The enemy cruiser is veering off to return to base. We are safe!"

The little boat sped on until finally it was screaming through the thin upper air of Earth. Ekrado sharply decreased their speed to prevent over-heating the hull, having no desire to be cooked alive in the water of his own lifeboat.

Below them, covering the horizon, was the vast expanse of the Atlantic. The two Alarians were joyous at the sight of such a planet. Here was no dried-up world, such as some they had seen where old age or the heat of a nearby sun had dried up the life-giving waters. Ekrado sent the little craft straight down toward the blue expanse below.

Water shot high into the air like a geyser as the alien lifeboat plunged into the ocean. Deep under the water's surface, the craft leveled off and slowed until it drifted idly.

"Take an instrument reading," ordered Ekrado. "Let us see what kind of a hydrosphere this planet has. It looks good enough."

"It is not as good as it looks," reported Ronaro grimly. "The temperature and pressure are satisfactory, but the chemical content of the water is poisonous. It would kill us in a few minutes."

"That means we must depend on our water-purifying plant as long as we are on this planet—or as long as it holds out. They aren't built to last forever."

"We must get word to Alar that the entire Ru'ukonian fleet is attacking without warning, while our fleet is at the other end of the galaxy holding maneuvers. Maneuvers! A yachting trip for the Lord Admiral Krukon, while Alar lies almost defenseless!"

"You stated before that our only hope was to contact a civilized race on one of these planets, in hopes that they might have interstellar communication apparatus?"

"Yes," responded Ekrado, "or any type of equipment for broadcasting radiation. We can rebuild it for our purpose. Have you forgotten that we served one hundred and sixty years together in the Communications Corps? We could rebuild anything, just so they have the power."

"I believe we could," replied Ronaro, caught by his Captain's enthusiasm.

"Right! Our first step must be to find intelligent life on one of the planets of this sun. We must start by searching the waters of this world."

Ekrado threw the throttle-lever forward slightly and the ship moved ever more rapidly through the water. Straight ahead he drove it while the two Alarians concentrated every attention on the vision screens in the hope of sighting intelligent life.

Life they saw aplenty in the next few hours, much of it strange but the greater part of it similar to that of their own world.

"Ronaro, look," telepathed Ekrado excitedly, "a being like an Alarian."

Across the vision plate floated a pointed body sprouting a tangle of flexible arms at one end. Hope surged high in them both.

"Wonderful," exulted Ronaro, "probably we've found intelligent life already. Probe his mind, Ekrado."

"No response yet," replied the Captain, "possibly they use some other method of communication."

"Such as signals or audible sounds," suggested Ronaro.

"Yes. In that case, it would be difficult to establish contact."

"Very difficult to transmit our thoughts, but not so difficult to read his."

"Well, it has been done before, with non-telepathic races."

"Like the giant rays of Ikraa."

"Let me concentrate, Ronaro."

The two Alarians drifted in telepathic silence, Ekrado closing his eyes and concentrating his mental efforts at reaching the alien mind. Ronaro studied the creature as it swam unconcernedly past searching for food.

"Hunts his food in primitive fashion," he reflected silently, careful not to destroy Ekrado's concentration. "Apparently his people do not have shellfish farms. Or possibly he is simply hunting for the fun of it or in order to be alone. He has twice as many tentacles as an Alarian, but mere physical difference proves nothing. He is wearing no harness or ornamentation of any kind, nor is he carrying a weapon. Obviously a low level of culture, if any."

"You try," ordered the Captain, relaxing. "I've concentrated until my braincase almost burst and achieved nothing."

"I'm afraid I'll have no better luck," said Ronaro. Swiftly, he reported his observations to his Captain.

Nonetheless, Ronaro also tried to contact the stranger. He had, perhaps, better luck than his Captain, but his mind found only primal impulses, not thoughts. There was hunger there, more like greed to the refined sensitiveness of the Alarian, and a great fear that at the moment lay dormant and formless. There wasn't even the faintest stirrings of curiosity toward their boat. In fact, his probing mind could not even find a specific identification of the lifeboat in the thing's mind.

"Ugh," he shuddered, "completely undeveloped. A beast."

Ekrado frowned mentally. "You must have done better than I, at least. I found only nothingness."

"You must have been looking solely for intelligence," Ronaro hastened to reassure his Captain. "There was none to find. Only primitive emotions."

Silently, Ekrado started the lifeboat on its long sweep through the waters. At the end of a hundred miles, he turned in a slow curve and headed back along a straight line parallel to the way they had come. Back and forth they combed through the blue-green water, systematically hunting some sign of intelligent life.

During this period, they several times encountered creatures similar to that which they had first thought might be like themselves. Each time hope rose again; and each time it came to nothing. Each such creature inspired in them a strange medley of emotions, a sense of kinship and yet of repugnance, a feeling at once of benevolence toward a more backward cousin mixed with exasperation.

After the futile search had gone on for several hours, Ronaro was struck with a sudden idea.

"Perhaps the intelligent races of this planet are deep-sea creatures," he suggested.

"It's possible," mused Ekrado. "So far I've been cruising pretty much at our own favorite depth."

"This lifeboat can stand tremendous pressure."

"We'll try it," decided Ekrado. The slender shape of the lifeboat wheeled over until it was pointing straight down toward the ocean bottom.

Soon there was a gradual change in the color of the water, fading from green to greenish blue and then to dark blue. Ronaro snapped on the searchlights at the Alarian equivalent of 700 feet and the yellow beams spread out into the dark blue waters on all sides. The pressure gauge showed them an ever increasing force pressing on all sides of their vessel, until, at 1700 feet, it had reached 770 pounds per square inch. At this level the water was as black as space itself. The beams from their searchlights had changed in color from yellow to a luminous gray bordered along each side with dark blue. Sprinkled through the blackness were the lights carried by many deep-sea fish. The two Alarians studied the vision screens with tense concentration. Fish swam through their light beams and were gone again in an instant in the surrounding blackness. Groups of lights moving through the darkness told them of large fish or schools of smaller fish, but they were unable to trace the outlines from the pattern of lights.

"We should be near bottom, by now, if this were Alar," commented Ronaro at 3000 feet.

"The waters of this planet may well be deeper than those of our home world," pointed out Ekrado.

Both of them looked at the pressure gauge. At the Alarian equivalent of 1358 pounds per square inch, it was not far from the red line that indicated the maximum pressure the lifeboat could stand. But still they kept going down through the ice-cold blackness.

"Look Ekrado!" clamored Ronaro. "The God Ka!"

It was not, indeed, the God Ka, but it might well have been. Its body alone was five times the size of their lifeboat and its tentacles stretched for an unknown distance, far beyond the rays of their feeble lights. It brooded motionless in the inconceivable pressure, as though watching them, although it had no trace of eyes.

Both Alarians concentrated their minds on the problem of communication with the tremendous mind they knew was contained within that mighty bulk. They both floated motionless, eyes closed, concentrating. But while the Alarians were motionless, the thing before them was not. A great tentacle wrapped itself around the hull. As the tentacle tightened in its body-crushing embrace, it encountered unexpected resistance in the hard metal of the hull. Even as the two Alarians were beginning to face their disappointment at what they had found, or what they had not found, that unexpected resistance registered within the brain of the giant squid. The dull surprise and heavy anger that flared within the primitive mind warned the two Alarians of their danger.

As they became aware once more of their immediate surroundings, one vision screen was completely covered by the width of one huge tentacle wrapped around their ship, while the other showed several more tentacles drawing near to enfold their lifeboat. The upper part of the hull, the roof of their cabin, bulged inwards, while the hull groaned and creaked as though every plate and bar was about to collapse.

"Quick, Ronaro, the heat cannon," snapped the Captain as he dove for the controls.

The motors hummed vainly as Ekrado sought to free the craft from the monster's grip. At the same time, Ronaro brought his sights to bear on the approaching tentacles. The tight beam sliced through them as fast as he could bring it to bear; one, two, three, four.... But not fast enough, for one more tentacle closed around the lifeboat. By chance, the monster had blotted out their vision screen with the second tentacle. Now Ronaro was fighting blind. He set the angle of fire in such a way that the cannon would fire close to the lifeboat's hull. He fired again and again, as fast as the weapon built up potential for another discharge, systematically combing the waters around them. The pressure on the hull relaxed almost visibly as the tentacles that held the ship were sliced in two at last by the heat ray. But since Ronaro could not set the weapon to actually graze the hull, the end of the severed tentacle remained wrapped around them to obscure the vision ports.

The monster was not defeated yet. Even with six tentacles gone, it had four left, and Ronaro was still fighting blind. His rays bombarded the water blindly in the hope of striking the body of the giant. At the same time, the lifeboat got slowly under way, rising sternwards toward the surface. As it gathered momentum, Ekrado spun it over, to travel bowfirst. The turn dislodged the severed tentacles and once again the two Alarians could see into the dark water as far as their light beams could illuminate it. There was no sign of the monster. Whether they had outrun it or outfought it, they did not know, but in any case they were safe.

"That idea did not turn out any too well, did it?" commented Ekrado wryly.

Ronaro did not reply, for the statement hardly called for an answer. The two Alarians floated in silence while the lifeboat climbed back toward the lighter surface waters once more.

High above them a United States destroyer was cutting through the ocean swells, part of a great convoy that spread over many miles of water. In the center of the convoy were the troop ships, surrounded by a screen of other destroyers.

On the bridge the captain and his executive officer were chatting desultorily. Their eyes scanned the waters constantly while they talked, a sea-borne custom that long antedated the ship's bristling radar screens. "If we put in anywhere along the Solomons," the captain said, "I'll bet we'll see the natives still wearing and using the old equipment—from forty-five."

"Yeah," grinned the exec. "They all say it was the Navy that ruined the Pacific."

"Huh," snorted the other. "We went ashore—but the Army stayed ashore. Whatever you find will be Government Issue."

The exec yawned. "Cripes, what a boring tour. I'd give my last bottle for just one sight of a good old Nip periscope."

"Or a Kamikaze," growled the captain sarcastically.

A radioman stepped out on the bridge, saluted, and handed the captain a flimsy. He read it, and frowned at the exec.

"Lead ship says we're about to pass over a submerged object—a derelict of some sort. The chief says to blast it. Menace to navigation and so forth."

The exec stepped to the squawk-box, and flicked the switch. "Attention. Attention. Y-gun crew report to stations—on the double. Y-gun—on deck."

As he stood there, waiting for the CPO commanding that detail to acknowledge and request orders, he let out a yawn, a prodigious mid-afternoon yawn that threatened to split his head.

The two Alarians floated motionless in the water of their lifeboat, each immersed in his own thoughts. Shaking off his lethargy, Ekrado began to make a routine check of the condition of the heat ray cannon. Mechanically, he went over the apparatus, his mind still on their problem. The cannon was, of course, in perfect condition.

"Clackety-clack-clack-clack," chattered the Konald detector.

"Metal!" exclaimed Ekrado in surprise.

"Large masses of it," echoed Ronaro.

"Here in the surface waters. That can only mean...."

"Intelligent life," the two minds chorused.

High at the top of the vision screen appeared the bottom of a long narrow metal hull. It was unmistakably a metal ship, the work of intelligent minds, an indication of culture and civilization.

"Only one of us will try to communicate this time," directed Ekrado. "You do it, Ronaro."

This contact was entirely different. Ronaro's questing mind at once encountered intelligence. There was purpose there, not the mindless urges of hunger and fear that they had met before, but rational purpose backed by planning. But there was something else Ronaro sensed beneath the surface, something alien.

"Ekrado!" he exclaimed, shocked. "These creatures are air breathers!"

"Air breathers!" snorted the Captain. "Have you drifted into fantasy Ronaro? Establish contact with them."

"I can't," Ronaro replied after a few moments of intense concentration. "Their minds cannot receive our thought impulses."

"We've got to attract their attention. After they have seen us we'll be able to work out some method of communication."

"It will be hard when we live in two different mediums—we in water and they in air."

"No matter; we will manage somehow after we have made contact with them. I'll start the engine and head for the surface."

Ronaro saw it first, a short cylinder-like object tumbling through the waters, directly toward their craft. Sensing danger instinctively, he cried out:

"Ekrado! Full speed ahead!"

He had barely gotten the thought out when it happened. A great explosion rocked the waters as the depth bomb went off. The lifeboat was smashed open, its alien water blending imperceptibly with the waters of the Atlantic.

The body of a squid appeared on the surface, its tentacles trailing aimlessly. The keen eyes of the men on the destroyer flickered past it, looking for the tell-tale oil slick of a broken submarine, in vain.

"Now just what the hell was that?" wondered the captain, scratching at his balding head.