Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition, December 1955 — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

46 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION Looking them over Leigh readily conceded that no matter how sluggish they might be they were not dopey. Their outlandishly colored features held intelligence of a fairly high order. That was already self-evident from the tools they made and used, such as this train, but it showed in their faces, too. The Grand Council, he decided, had good cause for alarm in a way not yet thought of by its members. If the bunch standing before him were truly representative of their planet, then they were completely innocuous. They embodied no danger whatsoever to Terran interests anywhere in the cosmos. Yet, at the same time, they implied a major menace of which he hated to think. With their easily comprehensive charts laid out on the ground the three communicators prepared to explain their origin, presence and purposes by an effective sign-and-gesture technique basic for all first contacts. The fidgety Pascoe speeded up the job by arranging Waitabits in a circle around the charts, picking them up like so many lethargic dolls and placing them in position. Leigh and Walterson went to have a look at the train. If any of its owners objected to this inspection, they didn’t have enough minutes in which to do something about it. The roofs of all four cars were of pale yellow, transparent plastic ex- tending down the sides to a line flush with the door-tops. Beneath the plastic lay countless numbers of carefully arranged silicon wafers. Inside the cars, beneath plates forming the center aisles, were arrays of tiny cylinders rather like nickel-alloy cells. The motors could not be seen, they were hidden beneath small driving-cabs of which there was one to each car. “Sun power,” said Leigh. ‘““The prime motive force is derived from those solar batteries built into the roofs.” He paced out the length of a car, made an estimate. ““Four feet by twenty apiece. Including the side-strips, that’s six-forty square feet of pickup area.”’ “Nothing marvelous about it,’’ ventured Walterson, unimpressed. “They use better ones in the tropical zones of Earth and have similar gadgets on Dramonia and Werth.” “I know. But here the nighttime lasts six months. What sort of storage batteries will last that long without draining? How do they manage to get around on the night-side? Or does all transport cease while they snore in bed?” *““Pascoe could make a better guess at their boudoir habits. For what it’s worth, I’d say they sleep, six months being to them no more than a night is to us. Anyway, why should we speculate about the matter? We’ll be exploring the night-side sooner or later, won’t we?’’ “Yes, sure. But I’d like to know whether this contraption is more advanced in any single respect than anything we’ve got.” “To discover that much we’d have to pull it to pieces,” Walterson objected. “Putting Shallom and his boys on a wrecking job would be a lousy way of maintaining friendship. These Waitabits wouldn’t like it even though they can’t stop us.” ‘“T’m not that hamhanded,” Leigh reproved. “Apart from the fact that destruction of property belonging to nonhostile aliens could gain me a court-martial, why should I invite trouble if we can get the information COMIC DOOKS.cOnn