Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 67: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

that ship. That takes care of our plan of action. It’s simple. They’re there, trapped. We're here, with a nice new ship. Solution: Go get them and bring them aboard.” Stan Owens’ chair hit the floor with a bang. “Beg pardon,” he said, “but that’s the one thing we can’t do.” Mark Langston turned and looked at him. Stan Owens picked up the empty bottle from the table and jabbed it in McConnell’s general direction. ‘Think a moment, all of you,” he said. This thing isn’t quite as simple as it looks and going off half-cocked isn’t going to get us anything but a nice soggy fizzle.” “O.K., ape-man,” McConnell sighed at the anthropologist. “Tl might have known that you would come up with something complicated. You guys wouldn't fix a bicycle without a field report and culture analysis.” “Look,” said Stan Owens patiently. “Let’s assume that everything Jim has said is true—if it isn’t, if the ship is dead inside as well as out, it doesn’t concern us. Let’s assume that there are people, human beings, still alive on the Viking — people who have lived their entire lives in the darkness, who have never known gravity, who have lived in a world as different from ours as hydrogen is from uranium, who have lived in a static world of death and decay, a world slowly running down—” A cold chill seemed to seep through the little room like an icy mist. The children of the Viking, Mark Langston thought with a feeling akin to awe, the strange children of the Viking “Let’s not have any romantic hogwash, now,” Stan Owens continued, waving the empty bottle. “We have no way of Knowing how long the Wiking has been a dead ship, nor do we know what happened to her. But the drive was automatic, wasn’t it, Jim?” McConnell nodded. ‘That’s right. An early atomic drive, kicking up a thrust about equal to a bit less than one-fifth CORniclooo SS CO