Repair Job by E. C. Tubb

Author:E. C. Tubb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Authentic
Published: 1955-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

"Aliens," said Belcher, and swore with concentrated bitterness as he stared at the mocking grin engraved on the white bone. It was night and the two men huddled in the . cramped living cabin, the lights full on and the doors fast-sealed. Fenson shuddered as he stared at what they had found.

"It all adds up," continued Belcher. "I've tested the skull for age and radioactivity. It's radioactive, but not dangerously so; about what we could expect had it been in a force field, and it hasn't been here long." He swallowed. "My guess is ten years."

"Need he have died here?" Fenson sounded desperately hopeful. "Some ship could have landed and buried him."

"Just his head?" Belcher scowled at his partner. "No. Anyway that thing was never in sight when we landed. Someone or something took the multiple and left the skull in exchange. I call them aliens because that, to us, is what they are. Bat to them, of course, we're the aliens."

"I didn't see anything." Fenson toyed with a piece from his jig-saw. "I was watching all the time and I'd have seen anything move."

"If you could see them at all." Belcher shifted restlessly on his seat. "They don't have to be like we are, remember. Perhaps they're vibrating at a different rate than us, or maybe they're just entities of pure force, or invisible in some way. That doesn't matter." He touched the skull. "I don't know if this was left as a warning or not, but one thing I'm sure of. The quicker we get away from here the better."

"Without the multiple?" Fenson looked hopeful. "Can we?"

"We could seal the hull, I suppose," said B richer. "But we'd still have to wear the suits until we could make planetfall. We could do it if we had to, but it wouldn't be nice."

"What else can we do?" Fenson flung down the piece of metal and faced his partner. "The multiple has gone. We can't repair the air-conditioner without it and we're surrounded by some form of life which threatens our own. I..."

"No," said Belcher. "I think that you're wrong. I don't think that the aliens really wish us harm. They might be warning us, or then again they might just be curious. If extra-terrestrial life landed in a field on Earth wouldn't we have been curious? We'd have watched them, picked up some of their tools, perhaps, and, if we'd had a rigid code of ethics, we would have replaced them with something of our own." He touched the skull. "My guess is that this poor devil starved to death. Maybe he landed for the same reason we did, or perhaps he thought the planet valuable. Whatever the reason, he stayed too long. I don't think that the aliens consciously killed him."

"Why not?"

"We're still alive, aren't we? We've worked outside for almost two days now; plenty of time for them to have killed us if they'd wanted to. Instead of that they've just annoyed us. If it wasn't for the multiple we could take off now.

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