"Lieutenant Southard calls Command from Servogroup 4." The youngster's voice sounded tight, excited. Now what the hell--"Request task mission. Request task mission. Position--" Joel quickly jacked in the ship's armory circuit. An alarm klaxon would be electrifying the entire complement of combat personnel stationed in that quarter of the ship even as armory communications was taking down the co-ordinates Southard was dictating. And within one minute and forty-five seconds after that, combat units would be assembling in machine-like precision, deploying into advance order at the ship's stern. And as the two huge sections between the _White Whale's_ slender atmosphere fins opened like hungry steel mouths, disgorging flat, thick-bodied machines with their grim burdens of armed men and destroyer-artillery. Ship's Guard would be taking up defense positions, manning gun stations which commanded an energy potential sufficient to destroy a minor planet in a single, searing second of blue-white heat. All this was automatic. A dispatch-unit request for task mission was an order, momentarily transcending even Command authority. It worked that way because the men who travelled space had learned that with the first foot they rose off the surface of Earth, theirs was no longer the privilege of living, but the task of survival. Space was emergency. And if you regarded it otherwise, it would kill you. Joel waited. He watched only the sweep second hand on his desk chronometer; he did not need his screens, for he knew too well what was transpiring three hundred and twelve feet below him. He had seen it too many times. And too many times had he waited the necessary two minutes, listened to the taut silence of the waiting communicator. "Command to Southard. Task mission dispatched and advancing. Now describe your situation." "As follows--" The young lieutenant's voice was still taut, but it was not at the edge of panic. Of that Joel was certain. It was just that this was the first time, and it wasn't a field exercise, and it hadn't just been learned the night before from an Academy manual.... "Servounit 4, sample tapping with four facilities at two hundred feet. Metal encountered; processed. Object depth-screened; fabricated. Extends from minus two zero zero to minus five two seven. Diameter three zero feet. Further investigation withheld pending arrival of task mission. Over for Command." _Over for Command_, the young voice said. So many, many times.... He was not exactly the same Nicholas Joel, now. He was Command.... "All right, boy, sit easy and try to relax. What the hell is it you've got holed up out there?" "It's a--a space ship, sir." "What class?" "I don't know, sir. It isn't Terrestrial." "All right, what do the counters tell you?" "It's about a thousand years old, sir. That's as close as the counters can come, working off a screen. Perhaps, sir, you'd--"