Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 101: what you’re looking at

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

GIMMICK bell began to jangle quietly, meaning that the Furry cruiser that was waiting for him had come within range and was opening fire, slicing at the speed- ster with its beams, finding the range. The accident was ready. And it would be plausible. He stood up half out of the pilot’s chair and swung the wheel a sharp turn to the right. The craft bucked and surged to the side with an obedi- ent roar of side jets and as the jolt began to throw him to one side he grabbed at a bundle of wiring neatly cased in a transparent cable case, grabbing as if to save himself. He hung on for a moment against the rocket roar and the sidewise surge of the ship and then the wiring began to rip loose from its connections. There was a series of sharp sputters, a spat- tering of blue flashes, and a jolting spat which he could hear transmitted through the hull, as outside, in the helix around the ship, half of the tub- ing flared up to overburdened bright- ness and blew up with a lovely display of far-flung sparks, while the remain- der went dead. The color player coruscated in flashes of spattering pinks and greens and then the cabin went black as its wires pulled loose and Calland pitched across to the opposite wall with a handful of wires and landed against a shielded tessla coil. The tessla coil sparked but did not blow out, and he lay comfortably in the dark a moment watching ripples of harmless high-tension surface elec- tricity run across one spacesuited hand in brilliant blue fire, until the cabin fell apart in two neat halves on either side of him like a cleaved egg. . Then he was drifting, but it was not dark. He was floating in space surrounded by stars with the two halves of the speedster drifting away from him. He thought he saw another small section come away from one 99 half and wondered if they were still slicing with the beam. The rueful thought came that with a slicer beam an extremely cautious Furry could take very small pieces of anything he distrusted, with few problems in reassembling the pieces for informa- tion afterward. However, he thought as he watched one half section of the cabin definitely separate into two smaller slices, they wouldn’t get much information by reassembling me. He decided that he did not like the suspense. It would be better to pre- tend to be knocked out and close his eyes. After a moment it was not pretend- ing. Bob Calland had been overwork- ing for days, had had a fever for which he usually forgot to take antifever tablets, he was tired, frightened, and had just gotten a good jolt on the head. Now suddenly there was nothing to do but wait with his eyes closed. He fell asleep. He remained asleep until the Fur- ries had him inside their ship and stretched out on a table. When he woke up they were talking all around him with great excitement, and noticing he was awake, they began crowding one who was obvi- ously the interpreter to interpret their questions. “What did you try to do?” the in- terpreter asked. The engineers or tech men were not in the crowd, probably they were out bringing in the parts of the speedster and its strange equip- ment. Perhaps they were assuming that the prisoner had nothing to do with the design of his weapon, and. would not be able to explain it. “What was the thing for?” asked the interpreter. Calland decided that the easiest way to give the impression he had secrets to keep was to look like he was. connicloooks.c© im