It was readily apparent to all of us that she had never been built for inter-planetary flight. She was a starship. Origin unknown. An aura of mystery surrounded her like a shroud, protecting the world that gave her birth mutely but effectively. The distance she must have come was unthinkable. And the time it had taken...? Aeons. Millennia. For she was drifting, dead in space, slowly spinning end over end as she swung about Sol in a hyperbolic orbit that would soon take her out and away again into the inter-stellar deeps. Something had wounded her ... perhaps ten million years ago ... perhaps yesterday. She was gashed deeply from stem to stern with a jagged rip that bared her mangled innards. A wandering asteroid? A meteor? We would never know. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling of things beyond the ken of men as I looked at her through the port. I would never know what killed her, or where she was going, or whence she came. Yet she was mine. It made me feel like an upstart. And it made me afraid ... but of what? We should have reported her to the nearest EMV base, but that would have meant that we'd lose her. Scientists would be sent out. Men better equipped than we to investigate the first extrasolar artifact found by men. But I didn't report her. She was ours. She was money in the bank. Let the scientists take over after we'd put a prize crew aboard and brought her into Callisto for salvage.... That's the way I had things figured. The Maid hove to about a hundred yards from her and hung there, dwarfed by the mighty glistening ship. I called for volunteers and we prepared a boarding party. I was thinking that her drives alone would be worth millions. Cohn took charge and he and three of the men suited up and crossed to her. In an hour they were back, disappointment largely written on their faces. "There's nothing left of her, Captain," Cohn reported, "Whatever hit her tore up the innards so badly we couldn't even find the drives. She's a mess inside. Nothing left but the hull and a few storage compartments that are still unbroken." She was never built to carry humanoids he told us, and there was nothing that could give us a hint of where she had come from. The hull alone was left. He dropped two chunks of metal on my desk. "I brought back some samples of her pressure hull," he said, "The whole thing is made of this stuff...." "We'll still take her in," I said, hiding my disappointment. "The carcass will be worth money in Callisto. Have Mister Marvin and Zaleski assemble a spare pulse-jet. We'll jury-rig her and bring her down under her own power. You take charge of provisioning her. Check those compartments you found and install oxy-generators aboard. When it's done report to me in my quarters." I picked up the two samples of gleaming metal and called for a metallurgical testing kit. "I'm going to try and find out if this stuff is worth anything...."