Crashlander

That explained why there was so much corridor between the doors and why the chambers we saw were so big. Some rooms were storage areas, Angel said; not worth opening. Others were tool rooms, life-support systems, a garden, a fair-sized computer, a sizable fusion plant. A mess room built to hold thirty actually held about ten, all men, who looked at us curiously before they went back to eating. A hangar, bigger than need be and open to the sky, housed taxis and powered suits with specialized tools and three identical circular cradles, all empty.

I gambled. Carefully casual, I asked, «You use mining tugs?»

Angel didn't hesitate. «Sure. We can ship water and metals up from the inner system, but it's cheaper to hunt them down ourselves. In an emergency the tugs could probably get us back to the inner system.»

We moved back into the tunnels. Angel said, «Speaking of ships, I don't think I've ever seen one like yours. Were those bombs lined up along the ventral surface?»

«Some of them,» I said.

Carlos laughed. «Bey won't tell me how he got it.»

«Pick, pick, pick. All right, I stole it. I don't think anyone is going to complain.»

Angel, frankly curious before, was frankly fascinated as I told the story of how I had been hired to fly a cargo ship in the Wunderland system. «I didn't much like the looks of the guy who hired me, but what do I know about Wunderlanders? Besides, I needed the money.» I told of my surprise at the proportions of the ship: the solid wall behind the cabin, the passenger section that was only holographs in blind portholes. By then I was already afraid that if I tried to back out, I'd be made to disappear.

But when I learned my destination, I got really worried. «It was in the Serpent Stream — you know, the crescent of asteroids in Wunderland system? It's common knowledge that the Free Wunderland Conspiracy is all through those rocks. When they gave me my course, I just took off and aimed for Sirius.»

«Strange they left you with a working hyperdrive.»

«Man, they didn't. They'd ripped out the relays. I had to fix them myself. It's lucky I looked, because they had the relays wired to a little bomb under the control chair.» I stopped, then, «Maybe I fixed it wrong. You heard what happened? My hyperdrive motor just plain vanished. It must have set off some explosive bolts, because the belly of the ship blew off. It was a dummy. What's left looks to be a pocket bomber.»

«That's what I thought.»

«I guess I'll have to turn it in to the goldskin cops when we reach the inner system. Pity.»

Carlos was smiling and shaking his head. He covered by saying, «It only goes to prove that you can run away from your problems.»

The next tunnel ended in a great hemispherical chamber lidded by a bulging transparent dome. A man-thick pillar rose through the rock floor to a seal in the center of the dome. Above the seal, gleaming against night and stars, a multi-jointed metal arm reached out blindly into space. The arm ended in what might have been a tremendous iron puppy dish.

Forward was in a horseshoe-shaped control console near the pillar. I hardly noticed him. I'd seen this arm-and-bucket thing before, coming in from space, but I hadn't grasped its size.

Forward caught me gaping. «The Grabber,» he said.

He approached us in a bouncing walk, comical but effective. «Pleased to meet you, Carlos Wu. Beowulf Shaeffer.» His handshake was not crippling, because he was being careful. He had a wide, engaging smile. «The Grabber is our main exhibit here. After the Grabber there's nothing to see.

I asked, «What does it do?»

Carlos laughed. «It's beautiful! Why does it have to do anything?»

Forward acknowledged the compliment. «I've been thinking of entering it in a junk-sculpture show. What it does is manipulate large, dense masses. The cradle at the end of the arm is a complex of electromagnets. I can actually vibrate masses in there to produce polarized giaivity waves.»

Six massive arcs of girder divided the dome into pie sections. Now I noticed that they and the seal at their center gleamed like mirrors. They were reinforced by stasis fields.

More bracing for the Grabber? I tried to imagine forces that would require such strength.

«What do you vibrate in there? A megaton of lead?»

«Lead sheathed in soft iron was our test mass. But that was three years ago. I haven't worked with the Grabber lately, but we had some satisfactory runs with a sphere of neutronium enclosed in a stasis field. Ten billion metric tons.»

I said, «What's the point?»

From Carlos I got a dirty look. Forward seemed to think it was a wholly reasonable question. «Communication, for one thing. There must be intelligent species all through the galaxy, most of them too far away for our ships. Gravity waves are probably the best way to reach them.»

«Gravity waves travel at lightspeed, don't they? Wouldn't hyperwave be better?»