"I still can't understand what knocked you out. They used no weapons--that annoyed me--and if you didn't put a suit on yourself I don't see how you lived when they opened up your room. The air was gone before they started going over the ship."
"I think I get it," said Little slowly. "Geletane. Four cylinders of it. Did you broadcast a general landing warning when you cut the second-order to examine that phony Bonanza? You didn't, of course, since we weren't in a gravity field of any strength. And the 'meteor' was magnetic, which made no difference to our berylium hull, but made plenty to the steel geletane cylinders, one of which I had unclamped for a pressure test and had left in the tester. I went on about my business, and the field yanked the cylinder out of the tester and against the wall. It didn't make enough noise to attract my attention, because I was in the next room. With the door open. And the valve cracked just a trifle--just enough. I didn't need a suit when these starfish opened my room; I must have been as stiff as a frame member. I had all the symptoms of recovery from suspended animation when I woke up, too, but I never thought of interpreting them that way. The next ship I'm in, see if I don't get them to rig up an automatic alarm to tell what the second-order fields are doing--"
"You might also put your geletane cylinders back in the clamps when, and if, this happy state of affairs eventuates," remarked Goldthwaite, the gloomy technical sergeant. "May I ask what happens now, captain?"
"I'm afraid it isn't up to me, Goldy," returned Albee. "But I don't suppose they plan to keep us in this corner indefinitely."
Probably they didn't, but Albee was beginning to doubt his own statement before anything else happened. The sun had risen so that it was no longer shining directly into the port, and the great chamber had grown darker as the shadow of the vast interstellar flier crept down and away from its outer wall, when a new party came through the air lock from outside. Two of the pentapods came first, and came to a halt on either side of the inner door; after them crept painfully the long, many-legged, gorgeously furred body of a Vegan. Its antennae were laid along its back, blending with the black and yellow stripes: the tiny, heavily lidded eyes opened wide in the effort to see in what, to the native of the blue star, was nearly total darkness. The line of guards penning in the Earthmen opened and formed a double-walled lane between humans and Vegan.