"Let’s not kid ourselves..." Nike Quinto spoke in such low tones that hardly anybody could understand him.

"That question about a true life form can only mean one thing..." When Ron Landry stared at him questioningly, he finished his statement: "It means that the questioner is a robot!"

Ron thought this over. Lofty, Larry and Meech hadn’t heard a word of the half-whispered declaration so they waited.

He could be right thought Ron. According to its programming it could record either its own "life" or the life of an organic being as the "true life form."

So the question could have two meanings. Either: Are you robots like we are? Or: Are you organic life in contrast to ourselves?

It sounded logical, Ron thought, but in the same moment it occurred to him that he had been warned not to think too logically in relation to extra-galactic intelligences.

Anyway, Nike Quinto was probably right.

If that was so and if their previous hypothesis was right, that the explosions out there in the abyss were the signs-of a battle, then it meant that robots were in conflict with other beings, probably organic intelligences.

Ron found that not to be so strange. Ever since galactic civilisation had brought robots into use there had been robot insurrections. There was always somebody who figured he could use robots for his own purposes. All he had to do was change the program of one machine creature so that it would change others of its kind in the same manner. At first the people who were used to having their robots obey their commands would be surprised when this condition changed. Usually their first thought would be to look for some defect but while they were looking for it the revolt would be spreading. Robot wars were the most dangerous type of conflict which the races of the galaxy had ever experienced.

And out there in the gulf between the galaxies, this is what seemed to be happening. Ron felt sorry for the people who were involved in the terrible battle yet he found it strangely reassuring that they were evidently faced with the same problem that others who were less alien had faced before them.

It had been more than 11 hours now since the BOB 21 had reported the appearance of the alien ship. Nike Quinto as well as Lofty Patterson had managed to sleep a few hours. In the imminence of events, Ron and Larry had not been able to rest. They had kept a vigil in the small conference room next to the small control Central while following the reports from the observation station.

By his nature Meech Hannigan didn’t know such a thing as fatigue. He could only know weariness when one of his plastic-metal inner organs ceased functioning, which under normal demands might be in 5000 years. Aside from that he was the most perfect robot that anyone could wish for. That is, if you overlooked his slight speech impediment which made it difficult for him to pronounce his actual first name, which was Mitchell.

At 10:00, Nike Quinto and Lofty Patterson appeared on the scene again. Nike had tried to send Ron and Larry to their bunks but they had explained that all that would do for them was to give them nightmares. Quinto had ordered breakfast for five men and even Meech obediently consumed his portion. He had this special ability because cause only the smallest possible number of people were supposed to know he was actually a robot. However trustworthy the crew of the Joann might be, they were not included in that number.

Shortly before 18:00 in the "afternoon"—an almost meaningless term way out here in this timeless abyss, 5000 light years beyond the rim of the Milky Way—Nike Quinto hit upon the idea that the aliens might be robots. And 15 minutes after he had mentioned it to Ron the BOB 21 reported that shortly after it had fired a warning shot at the alien ship the latter’s propulsion system had failed, and now a collision was imminent.

It took Ron Landry 5 seconds to comprehend exactly what had happened. He sprang to his feet with a dozen thoughts in his head all at once. But the primary thought was that they must get to the station immediately. He didn’t concern himself about any order from Nike Quinto but Quinto concerned himself about him... As the hatch door slid to one side, Ron heard the other’s sharp tone of voice.

"Where are you going, Major?"

Ron turned swiftly to face him. "To the BOB 21!" he retorted tensely. "We can’t leave them on their own—they have no manoeuvrability! We have to help them!"

Quinto signalled him to come back. "You will remain here, Major!" he said, and his voice rose in pitch. "That is an order!"

At that moment Ron almost hated the colonel. How could he forbid him to go to the aid of those 25 men out there 200 light years away who were facing death and unable to do anything about it? But he obeyed. His military training was deeply enough ingrained in him so that he knew disobeying a command was sheerly absurd. Quinto wasn’t demanding anything immoral of him. He had only told him to stay put. He glanced at the chronometer.

Quinto noticed it and pointed to the time. "They only have about 10 SECONDS, Landry. How were you planning to get there before then?"

10 seconds, thought Ron as he clamped his jaws together. Nine... eight... seven...

*

It is remarkable how swiftly the subconscious mind can take over mental control in a moment of crisis. Almost instantly, Eric Furchtbar decided that he couldn’t avert disaster by blasting the alien out of the ether. New trajectory calculations would take at least 20 to 30 seconds and even a direct hit would only convert the menace into a mass of wreckage which would still collide with the station. And at an impact velocity of 1500 km per second nobody would know the difference.

His fingers raced instinctively over the control keys—his only last hope. The station’s navigation engines were small and almost negligible in such a situation but they were the only means of locomotion. Eric had no idea of the alien ship’s true course. On the tracking screen he saw it coming at him from the right, so he fed in a nav correction that would shift the station to the left. In desperation he depressed buttons, flipped switches and turned adjustment knobs while glancing at the screen every second.

But the threatening bogie blip kept creeping toward the centre of the scanner. He hadn’t moved a millimetre out of its way. sweat dripped from his forehead. There was nothing more he could do now. The engines were putting out every ounce of thrust that was in them. The only thing left was hope.

Eric clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles were white. He stared at the screen as if to avert the danger by an act of will. If wishing could do it there could be nothing more to fear—because never in his life had he wished as hard as he did now in this moment of ultimate crisis.

Remotely the thought had occurred to him he might be able to send his men through hyperspace to the Joann by means of the transmitter that could connect the two vessels in an emergency but he rejected the idea as quickly as it came. Both transmitter stations were not operating at the moment and just warming up the power piles would take three times longer than the time they had left.

They were lost if the nav engines couldn’t cut it. 10 seconds left!

Ed Hynes’ wild shout reverberated in the large control room. "The viewscreen! There it is!"

Startled, Eric turned swiftly toward the receiver screen of the optical system. Out of the darkness emerged a dim point of light. It grew swiftly and more discernible. The alien ship!

For the first time they could see it directly before them. And for the last time!

Eric stared, spellbound, as the swift object changed from a little disc to a large ball, until in the final seconds it more than filled the screen. God!—he thought. It’s coming head on!

Then came the impact.

In a blast of thunder the world seemed to dissolve. The last thing Eric was aware of was that his seat wasn’t there anymore. Then something struck his skull like a piledriver and he lost consciousness.

*

Ron Landry pressed his hands to his face just before the second-counter on the chronometer reached the 10th second. He tried to think of the men on the BOB 21 but in spite of himself he envisioned the dimly lighted disc-shape of the observation station, the plunging sphere of the alien ship—had he mentally witnessed the moment when they crashed together and were obliterated in a blinding explosion.

Silence reigned in the small conference room. No one seemed to be breathing. Almost unconsciously, Ron counted the seconds after the catastrophe. One... two... three... four...

Somewhere to his left he heard a sudden scraping noise as a chair was shoved back. Ron knew it as Quinto. At first he heard him gasp aloud; then he heard him shout.

"They survived it! The instruments are still responding!"

That brought Ron back to himself. His widened eyes stared at the visiscreen of the hyper-telecom which had been maintaining contact between the Joann and the BOB 21. Although there was no picture just now, the raster showed the repeated sawtooth flash of the interval signal. There would be no such signal if the transmitter at the other end had ceased to exist.

That was it! At least the station’s hyper-telecom was working, and since it was a complex and sensitive piece of equipment there must be other things that had also survived the collision with the alien ship.

Nike Quinto took the telecom mike and shouted into it. "BOB 21, come in! BOB 21, please answer! This is the Joann calling!"

He didn’t take his eyes from the telecom screen. The sawtooth pattern was still there. At the other end there was no one to answer the call. Although the hyperbeam connection existed the BOB 21’s receiver wasn’t on.

"Probably they have a big mess on their hands just now." Quinto suggested. "The regular posts may not be manned."

Ron doubted it, and he knew that Nike himself didn’t believe it. They both knew Eric Furchtbar. On board any vessel commanded by Eric the important stations would be manned—no matter how great the commotion.

Quinto continued his calls but after another 15 minutes without an answer he knew there could only be one other explanation. The hyper-telecom of the BOB 21 was still operatable but there didn’t seem to be an able-bodied man left in the crew.

*

It must have been the sense of responsibility anchored in his blood and bones that caused Eric Furchtbar to be the first one to open his eyes.

At first he didn’t know where he was. Before his eyes was the blurred image of a room that seemed terribly strange. He felt sick. He moved cautiously and strained to clear his vision. In some surprise he finally recognised the main control room of the BOB 21, and in that moment he remembered what had happened.

The alien ship! He had seen it rushing directly at the station. Where was it?

He pulled himself together with an effort. Fortunately, when he got to his feet it was next to a high console cabinet, because suddenly he needed a support. He had never felt so awful in his life. Maybe a brain concussion, he thought dully. It didn’t matter to him. He’d stay in bed a few days when there was time for it. First he had to find out the status of his station.

He took in his surroundings again. On the other side of the room, two dark forms were stretched out flat on the desk. Lt. Hynes and the duty corporal. Eric dragged his feet over to them. For the moment he couldn’t do anything but make sure they were still breathing. That was the most important. Partially reassured, he turned and went back to his chair.

The hyper-tracking system was still working. With benumbed hands he turned several dials to sharpen the focus, and it was more luck than skill that helped him. Within a minute he had the alien ship on the screen again. It was receding from the BOB 21 but at the moment Eric felt too miserable to even be elated. However, he tried to judge the stranger’s present course by its movement on the screen. After some time he had an idea of it although it wasn’t too accurate. It was quite evident that the unknown ship had picked up a sharply angular course after passing the position of the BOB 21.

In Eric’s brain thoughts and pain danced in confusion but he gradually began to comprehend. The nav engines of the station hadn’t moved it completely out of the path of the alien but they had prevented a head-on collision. The other ship had sideswiped their defence screen and the alien vessel and the station had both been more or less "bounced" away from each other. The screen had transferred the mechanical shock into the interior of the station, which had caused the shakeup. Eric breathed a sigh of relief. It could all have been much worse. He glanced at the panel clock. It was 14:35 ship time. He had been lying unconscious a good hour. He thought of the Joann. Quinto must have been going out of his mind wondering what their status was and even if they were alive.

He turned to the intercom and called through to each station on board, one after the other. Although the equipment was in order there was no reply from anybody. This filled him with new concern. The glancing collision had been violent enough to kill someone if they had been caught of balance somewhere at the precise moment of impact. He would have to find out but above all he had to get Doc Johannesson back on his feet so that he could look after the wounded. Because more or less everyone on board would have been wounded to some degree.

He made his way along the wall to the hatch door. He kept thinking of Johannesson and the need for getting him going. What came after that he didn’t care. He didn’t even feel responsible just now for advising the Joann. The danger was past. He was sure that he himself had actually averted a total disaster. Quinto would have to take that into consideration.

When the bulkhead door slid to one side he stepped out into the corridor. The interior of the station was alarmingly quiet. Nevertheless he sensed that somewhere close by someone was moving.

*

In the Com Room, Art Cavanaugh was just opening his eyes when Eric Furchtbar found him. Here the impact of the glancing collision had been stronger than in the main control room. Shattered glassite was lying around on the floor and some of the meters had been knocked about. But in a glance Eric could tell that the most important instruments and equipment were still in operating condition.

Ken Lodge and Warren Lee were lying unconscious in front of the space telecom console. An open wound on Ken’s forehead had bled profusely.

Warren didn’t seem to have any visible injuries. He was breathing and that was the main thing.

Art Cavanaugh was lying just about in the middle of the room. Eric figured he must have been thrown against the wall, knocked unconscious, and then fallen forward due to the impact. When Art came to, he oriented himself quite rapidly. He recognized Eric and raised his head but the sudden movement appeared to unsteady him. For a few seconds he closed his eyes and grimaced in pain.

"Take it easy, lad," Eric admonished. "Give yourself time. We’re not under pressure anymore.

Art got to his knees. "Thank you, sir—I’ll be able to make it." He finally stood up and although he swayed slightly he could maintain his balance without assistance.

"How do you feel?" asked Eric.

Art managed a weak smile. "Lousy, sir, to be honest with you. What happened?"

Eric explained briefly. He only said that the nav engines had saved the day. He didn’t mention who had managed to bring the jets to full power in 2 minutes, in addition to choosing the right direction.

"Right now there are two things we have to take care of," he decided. "First we have to find the doctor so he can look after the men, and secondly we have to advise the Joann. You get in touch with the Joann and I’ll go look for Johannesson."

"Will do, sir," said Art, and he turned to the hyper-telecom.

Eric went toward the hatch door but before he was close enough for it to open automatically for him he heard Art call after him.

"What did you say. sir?"

Eric turned in some surprise. "I said—we have two things to take care of now. First, to go and find Johannesson—second, to get in touch with—"

"Pardon me, sir," Art interrupted him against all regulations. "I didn’t mean that. Didn’t you just say something else?"

Eric shook his head in puzzlement. "No... not a word."

Art seemed to be at a loss to explain it. "I—I’m sorry, sir." He grinned in embarrassment and motioned toward his head. "Maybe I haven’t got all my marbles in order."

Eric smiled back. "That’s alright, sergeant. We’re all pretty shaken up." He finally went through the hatchway.

When he stepped into the corridor he could have sworn that somebody touched his shoulder. He stopped and looked around him. There was nobody there. The passage was empty. He shook his head and continued onward, remembering what Cavanaugh had just said. In some wonderment he realized that his own "marbles" might not be in any better order than the sergeant’s.

Unfortunately the collision had been especially rough on Dr. Johannesson. Since men on board the BOB stations were trained to do double duty, Johannesson’s other assignment was to perform gunnery service. When Eric found him in gun position 1 his face was so scratched and bloody that Eric hardly recognized him except for his service insignia.

He tried to bring him to but before he succeeded half of the other men had recovered on their own. Johannesson took a long while to even regain comprehension of what had actually happened. When he finally collected himself he voluntarily went to work although his own pains must have been worse than those of most of the other men. The impact jolt had thrown him against the ray cannon’s breech-lock cap and the radiation meter sticking out of it had left its imprint in his face.

When Johannesson looked at himself in a mirror he calmly remarked: "That’ll take plastic surgery later. There’ll be some hefty scars from that one!" Then he reached for his instrument case and went to work again.

He was able to report that no one on board had suffered severe injuries, other than a compound leg fracture—but that was the worst case discovered. The crewmen could consider themselves lucky that they had a commander who had acted so quickly and accurately in their highest moment of crisis.

Meanwhile the Joann had been contacted. Art Cavanaugh reported that he had even heard Nike Quinto sigh with relief. Eric couldn’t believe that Quinto was capable of such a human reaction but Ken Lodge and Warren Lee had since gotten back on their feet and they were witnesses to it.

"That can only mean two things," said Eric, still unmoved. "Either we’ve been reading him wrong all this time or the strain of suspense made him lose his mind."

Eric himself didn’t feel as miserable now as he had felt during the first few minutes. When he returned to the main control room he came across Johannesson again, who was putting Lt. Hynes’ arm in splints. Ed Hynes was sitting up in a chair and when he saw Eric he smiled in greeting.

"I guess at that last moment I lost control of my nerves," he said apologetically. "I hope you’ll overlook it, sir."

Eric nodded good­naturedly. "It’s forgotten already, Ed. We were all a little off our balance. You feel any pain?"

Hynes laughed cheerfully. "Nary a trace. Doc stuck hall a dozen hypos into me and one of them must have been ‘spiked’ because just now I feel like I’m on my 5th snifter."

Eric chuckled and went to his chair. As he did so, Hynes watched him, thinking of his German name, "Furchtbar," which meant terrible or formidable. He felt that the old boy wasn’t all that formidable, after all.

Eric adjusted the hyper-scanner focus again. At the moment he was left to himself. On doctor’s orders most of the men were in the process of resting up and tending to their wounds. The main observation posts were only covered by limited emergency crews. Eric had hesitated to give his permission for this but since at present there didn’t seem to be the slightest hint of danger he had finally agreed. He fooled with the adjustment knobs long enough to finally pick up the waning blip of the alien ship again.

At first he was startled when he saw the green light point wavering and jerking about on the screen but in a sense it came to him as a relief to realise now that the alien ship out there was definitely no longer a menace. It had evidently gotten completely out of control only the end velocity it had had when he gave it a warning shot was still giving it a favourable vector of motion—namely, away from the BOB 21. But the semi-collision had obviously slowed it down some or it would have been much farther away by now.

Eric experienced something akin to guilt for a few moments. He recalled that the stranger’s propulsion system had failed when gun position 1 had fired its warning salvo. The powerful thermo cannons generated wide-ranging interference fields which may have been too much for the alien’s weakened control navionics. The vessel lost its retropulsion capability then. And if anybody had been alive on board before the collision, they certainly weren't alive now. Not even an alien life form would be able to survive the terrible inertial punishment from all that jumping around out of control—what with its antigrav system having apparently gone wild.

But he soon recovered from this direction of self-recrimination. If the same thing happened all over again he probably would react in the same manner. Anybody coming straight at him like that without answering any calls deserved a warning shot. Eric would have been irresponsible if he had not fired under the circumstances. It was vital to let the stranger know that the station was ready to defend itself.

Eric watched the erratic blip of the ship reflectively. Just for a fraction of a second before the crash he had seen the actual vessel on the optical screen. Like most interstellar ships used in the galaxy, it was spherical in shape—but there were certain features about it that were alien to any of the known configurations. Where he was concerned, that said a lot. Eric Furchtbar was an expert in extra-terrestrial ship types. If he couldn’t recognise a vessel and classify it, it was fairly certain that it was not a known type. So this had to be an alien—out of an unknown part of the galaxy, or from even another island universe.

What must the beings have looked like on board that ship? Where had they come from? And why had they come? Moreover, whom had they been slugging it out with out there?

Eric sat there lost in thought. The knobs and levers on the control panel before him were a momentary other reality as he seemed to stare through them. But he tensed suddenly when he became aware that something had just moved there. Alarmed, he focussed his attention on the controls. He made a visual check of them, one after another, and found them to be at their proper settings. He calmed down quickly again. He had to remember that he had probably suffered a concussion. Heaven only knew what tricks of impression might be the result of such a jolt to the brain.

He was about to lean back and have his first cigarette since the emergency but then he was aware of the movement again. This time he happened to be looking in the right spot. It was the main dial for power to the hyper-telecom!

Eric jumped up. He reached out wildly with his hand and grasped the knob, preparing to turn it back to zero. But he felt resistance. Angrily, he used both hands on the dial but even though his knuckles whitened under the strain the

thing didn’t move.

He climbed halfway onto the control panel to get into a better position. He made a third attempt and succeeded in bringing the dial a few degrees back toward its zero setting. But before he could be completely successful something very strange happened.

Suddenly a bloody welt appeared on the backs of his hands as if someone had sliced him with a sharp knife. It all happened so fast that he failed to note whether the scratch had come from right or left. But he felt the throbbing, burning pain and released the knob with an angry cry.

*

Eric Furchtbar was not one to burden himself with premature judgments. Yet he suddenly recalled that when he went out of the Com Room an hour before he had felt something touch his shoulder. And also how Art Cavanaugh had thought that he had said something to him.

Something was there.

It was a something that made others believe they were hearing voices—something that touched strangers, shoulders and sliced people’s hands with sharp knives and turned power dials on telecom transmitter consoles.

Eric turned around. Doc Johannesson was still busy with Ed Hynes. The duty corporal was off to one side, pale and weak, lying in a more comfortable form chair. No help to be expected from any of these. However—

A wild idea came to him. If somebody was trying to get power to the space telecom it could only mean that they wanted to operate the transmitter. The major part of the telecom circuitry was located below in the Com Room.

With a few deft movements over the panel, Eric made an intercom connection. He didn’t have much hope that anyone would answer because the receivers had switched automatically to the main control room and the three communications men were attending to their injuries. Nevertheless the small visiscreen lit up to reveal the drawn face of Art Cavanaugh.

Eric sighed with relief. "Check over your telecom, Sergeant! on the double!"

Art’s eyes narrowed slightly with sudden purpose as he jumped up at once. For half a minute, all Eric saw on the screen was the chair where Cavanaugh had been sitting. Then he was back.

"Everything ship-shape, sir," he reported. "Power off—all instruments intact."

"Power off...?"

Incredulously, Eric glanced at the power dial on his own panel. He had seen it turned on—and he had two painful gashes on the backs of his hands to prove that he had sought to turn it off against an unseen resistance. But now Cavanaugh was saying—

Then it came to him that his own power dial was back at zero. He drew a deep breath and held it. Had he really lost his mind? But when he looked at the backs of his hands he let out the air from his lungs again. The welts were still there and blood still oozed from them—not to mention the fact that they were still paining him.

No, he was not crazy. Somebody had sliced him. The same one who had first turned on the power and then while he was talking to Cavanaugh, had turned the dial back to zero again:

He barked another order: "check out the activity of the transmitter during the last 10 minutes, sergeant!"

Art Cavanaugh had served too long in the spacefleet to contradict any order from a superior officer. He confirmed the instruction and disappeared from in from the pickup’s range of vision. Eric knew he’d need at least 10 minutes to study the transmitter’s automatic recordings and find out what had happened. In the meantime, Eric had another idea. He switched the open line to Cavanaugh into the automatic call circuit and then contacted the instrument section.

In his excitement he momentarily forgot that the emergency schedule did not provide for any coverage of this section. This he finally remembered when there was no answer. He was about to shut off the connection impatiently when the screen lit up at the last moment and the pain-wracked face of one of the duty techs stared at him.

Eric was the "old Man" again. Faced with the possible presence of danger in the BOB 21 again, he had no time for considering the other man’s pained condition. His voice was as hard as everyone one was accustomed to hearing it before the collision episode. "Check out the oxygen consumption on board during the past two hours!"

"Yes, sir," answered the technician. He turned his head to read some indicators. "At the moment the atmospheric composition on board—" He broke off in the middle of the sentence.

"Well, what is it?" asked Eric impatiently. "You were going to say normal, weren’t you?"

"I was going to, yes, sir... " The man stared at him helplessly.

"But...?"

"we’ve lost some oxygen, sir—maybe a leak!"

"Don't jump to conclusions!" interrupted Eric. "Check the nitrogen content."

"Normal, sir," the tech man answered unhesitatingly.

Eric’s next question was slightly sarcastic. "So what kind of a leak would that be?—that leaks only oxygen out and not the nitrogen?"

The man was nonplussed. Eric knew it and gave him a new order.

"Make a carbon-dioxide analysis—and hurry!"

The screen was empty again. The analysis wouldn’t take long. All the tech man had to do was press a key and read a certain indicator. The CO² content of the station’s atmosphere was not constantly indicated. Unlike oxygen and nitrogen, the constant was minimal and not an ordinarily important.

But now... ?

When the technician came back his face was flushed with excitement. Sweat had appeared on his forehead. "Above normal, sir," he cried out. "The build-up rate..."

While the man went on with his technical jargon, Eric’s mind raced. His first reaction was one of sudden calm. His suspicions had confirmed. For one or two seconds it was a feeling of satisfaction but then he realised that it was much more reasonable for him to be concerned with this new danger than to triumph over a mere confirmation of his theory.

"I told you—didn’t jump to any hasty conclusions," he warned the technician calmly. "Does the CO² increase compare with our extra loss of oxygen?"

The tech operator only needed a moment to think this over. "Yes, sir—almost to 1/10th of a percent."

"Thank you. That is all for the moment."

He cut off but in the next breath it occurred to him that perhaps a precise analysis of all data might be strategic, after all. Exactly how much oxygen had been consumed? If he assumed an approximate time period of 2 hours and considered the air consumption per man, then he could figure out how many...

He rejected the idea. Two hours was guesswork, and the oxygen-consumption rate per average man would be still more arbitrary. There wasn’t a reliable point of reference.

He wondered if the life-support system had been damaged. He was thoroughly familiar with the recycling setup. It was based on the fact that oxygen was consumed in human lungs and carbon dioxide was exhaled. Over a period of time, the oxygen was consumed in non-regenerating atmosphere; without replacement there could be nothing but carbon dioxide. The BOB 21’s recycling system—through a number of processing phases—separated the carbon dioxide and broke it into pure oxygen and graphite. The resulting oxygen was returned to the station’s atmosphere and the graphite was stored so that every 3 months it could be transferred to the supply ships. It was only unnecessary ballast for a space vessel but on Earth there was a high demand for pure-grade graphite.

Anyway, the recycling system was one of the least sensitive installations on board. If the sensitive circuits of the hyper-telecom had withstood the shock of the sideswipe then it was a guaranteed certainly that nothing had happened to the recycler setup. In which case, of course, there was only one explanation for the remarkable present state of the local atmosphere.

The auto-call again opened a channel on the intercom with the Com Room. Art Cavanaugh was ordinarily a person who had good self-control but just now his expression revealed that something very unusual had happened.

"Sir...!" he said excitedly. "I found that a message has been beamed out!"

He seemed surprised when Eric only nodded calmly. "The code?" asked the commander curtly.

"Not recognisable, sir." He opened his mouth as if to add something but then remained silent.

Eric noted it. "Go ahead and say what’s on your mind," he urged.

"It’s only a suspicion," Art blurted out, "and it would have to be really checked out first. But the modulation seems to be the same as we registered for that other illegible signal that we were getting for hours before."

Eric also nodded calmly to that. "How long is the whole message?"

"12 to 13 seconds, sir."

"Did you see any repeat patterns in it?"

"No, sir."

"Did you notice anything else unusual?"

Art hesitated a moment. "No, sir..." This time he was hesitant again. "I—I’ve been getting the feeling, more and more often now, that somebody is close to me. Each time it happens I look around but everything looks normal. You remember about an hour ago I thought you had spoken to me when you didn’t. Must be some kind of lingering hallucination."

Eric shook his head. "You need have no fear on that score, Art. It’s no hallucination."

Then he cut off the intercom mike. He had a strange urge to swing around in his chair and scan the long control room behind him. This he did suddenly, taking in the walls and the central area critically. He saw Doc Johannesson putting the final bandage on Ed Hynes. There was nothing else going on.

Nonetheless, Eric knew very well that they were there!

He turned back to the console again and made an input to the positronics, programming the computer to encode an emergency dispatch to the Joann. Since the message only contained a few words, it only took a hundredth of a second for the equipment to handle the assignment. However, the input and output phases took longer. Eric had to wait 3 seconds for the punched strip to come out. Then he shoved it into the transmitter.

Moments later a very unusual message left the hyperantenna of the observation station. Not without a grim touch of amusement, Eric tried to imagine Nike Quinto’s expression when he read the dispatch:

"Invisible aliens on board the BOB 21!"