Gordon R. Dickson

“ He sat back and lit a cigarette, but his eyes continued to watch the other ship as a man might watch a dud bomb which has not yet been disarmed. After a while, he noticed his fingers were shaking, and he laid the cigarette carefully down in the ashtray.
When he comes back, thought Jeff, it'll be time. We'll have this thing out then. He's become some sort of a religious fanatic, and he doesn't know it. How a man who's been all over hell and seen the worst sides of fifty different races in as many years can think of them all as lovable human children, I don't know. ”

“ You can't live in a space ship that way."
"That's right," Pete answered. He clamped his hand on Jeff's shoulder excitedly and led him back to the jigsaw puzzle on the table.
"If I'm right," he said, "that's no ship at all as we understand it, but some sort of a space-going suit for something terrifically large. Something like a giant squid, as I said, or some other long-tentacled creature. His body would lie here—in this space you said was about the size of a closet—and his tentacles or whatever they are, would reach out in these corridors to the various groups of instruments." ”

“ Jeff's lips parted, closed and opened again.
"You know how we stand," he said, dully. "I've heard what you said from other men, but never from an alien. Most of the ones we know hit first, and talk afterward. You know that once this ship is on its feet we're at his mercy. Just his rocket blasts alone could kill us; and there won't be time to get back to the Girl."
The alien was now at an angle of forty-five degrees. The little jacks stretched steadily, pushing their thin, stiff arms against the strange hull. Sand dripped from the rising ship.
"Yes, Jeff," Pete said. "I know. ”

“ If not, I'm taking two jacks out the airlock and you can fire the motors and take off and be damned to you."
Between the two big men the tension built and strained and broke. Jeff let out a ragged sigh.
"All right," he said. "I'm with you."
"Good," said the older man, and there was new life in his voice. "Get your suit on. I'll explain as we dress."
"The trouble with our friend there is that he's fallen over. I see you don't understand, Jeff. Well, this ship of ours lands on her belly. We've got booster rockets all over the hull to correct our landing angle. But ships weren't always that way. ”

“ And the two men stood there, side by side, looking into the blackness of space where an odd-shaped spacecraft had vanished. It, they felt, was on its way home.
And they were right. Moreover, It was hurrying. ”

“ They're obviously controls."
Jeff looked.
"I see what you mean," he said at last. "If there's any similarity between their mechanical system and ours, these controls are built for somebody pretty big. But look how they're scattered all over the ship. There's a good fifteen or twenty different groups of instruments and other things. That means a number of crew members; and you simply can't put a number of large crew members in those little corridors."
"There's a large amount of total space," Pete began. Then, suddenly a faint tremor ran through the ship. ”

“ They reached the alien hull, paused a moment to get their breath and then attached the magnetic grapples to the skin of the ship at two points on opposite sides of the hull and roughly a fourth of the way up from the rocket tubes.
It was hard to anchor the jacks in the soft sand. They finally found it necessary to dig them in some three or four feet to a layer of rock that underlay the sand. Then, when everything was ready, they took their stations, each at a jack, and Pete called to Jeff on the helmet set.
"All ready? Start your motor." ”