"I must look at it more closely," he went on. "It may not be fully armed, but I'd better disarm the detonating device if I can. If it's anything like ours, it wouldn't take much tinkering to set it off. There's probably enough explosive in the detonator alone to ruin the interior completely. We could be trapped inside, and blown apart." He paused, then added courageously, "I'll need light to get the plugs out quickly." "That looks like a button switch," the general volunteered, reaching into the port. Winthrop slapped his hand away. "Don't be a fool. The slightest touch might detonate it." "Guess you're right," the general conceded, turning away. "Montemur, run an extension over here." Winthrop crawled into the ship, arose, and stared in bitter indecision. He remembered a blockhouse at Bikini, another at Frenchman's Flat, voices harsh on loudspeakers counting the seconds away to zero. He remembered armed bombs on ghastly, towering frameworks of steel vibrating beneath his touch with the furious kiss of atomic death awaiting the slightest slipping of his fingers. _Get on with it!_ He did. The plugs were out. He was faint, drenched with perspiration. The general was peering intently through the port. "It's okay now, Bert." Cautiously the general entered, then turned back with an abrupt gesture. "Montemur," he cried to the Signal Corps major, "the equipment in here is still energized. Take shots of everything. We mustn't chance accidentally disarranging a single circuit. We've perhaps acquired a means of conquering space. We mustn't ruin it through carelessness." Major Montemur joined them with a camera. "The electronics boys will love this," Winthrop said, pointing sternward. Catwalks crisscrossed the complicated cluster of machinery. Everything was amazingly accessible, the ductwork transparent. "Strange, George," the general mused. "The science that constructed this must closely parallel ours. Can't you see the similarities?" Winthrop nodded. "I think so. Not that I'm qualified to judge--" Behind the bomb was a bulkhead shutting off the ship's forward portion in the middle of which was a great round door. Set securely in the door was a complicated instrument. The symbols on the dials and controls were utterly alien. Among the dials was what was apparently a timing device with twenty-eight subdivisions, a slowly sweeping hand. It was silent but Winthrop heard whispering in his mind the pounding time of the spinning planet of some other sun, and the urgency and great import of time returned to torment him. He had fought it while working on the bomb, and now he fought it again. "Bert," he said, "this part of the ship wasn't designed for entrance during space flight. In a pressure suit, maybe, yes. Otherwise we can only assume that the crew doesn't require an atmosphere. Life may have evolved quite differently _elsewhere_."