Their somber faces looked out of the screen at him. "Let us in, Captain," pleaded one big repairman. "We'll mob the critter." "No use, Jackson. Stand by." He turned the dial of the visiograph into the officers' section, scanned one room after another. No alien being appeared. "I wonder if he's in here with us?" said Pink half-aloud. Jerry came to him. "I have an idea," he said quietly. Then he whispered at length into Pinkham's ear. "It won't work. He knows what he's doing." "How do we know that? If he needs us, he's ignorant of spaceships. Look at the intercom--he turned it off, by some means, then turned it on when he found out what it was. The space drive must have been easy to guess at; likewise the life-scanner. But the intercom's a lot of complex machinery that only adds up to a television-telephone communication system. However he snarls the stuff, it's instantaneous and simple for him to do. I think he just took a crack at everything that looked important. Now he's experimenting, learning the ship, finding out what he threw out of joint. Obviously he doesn't give a damn if we talk to the crew!" "You could be right." "So if I do what I want to, it'll confuse hell out of him. It may give us an advantage. And we'll certainly learn something." "It's worth a try." Pink looked at Jerry, his closest friend. "I'll send Silver to do it," he said. Jerry shook his lean head. "This is my baby, Pink." Then he opened the door and went out, closing it behind him. Pinkham said levelly, "Daley, come here." He whispered the plan into his lieutenant's ear. Daley said admiringly, "Good deal. And I think that's sense--he can't know much about the ship. I'll bet he was hiding in that bottle, casing Sparks's equipment and learning how to operate it. The quick look he got at the rest of us on our jobs before he started playing hob must have given him the barest, scantiest idea of things. So Jerry's notion could work." "Or it could blow up," said Pink dismally. "Go tell the others. Whisper it, in case our guest is in here." He struggled briefly with his deepest feelings. "Don't tell Circe. We can't be sure of her yet." "Roger." Daley left him alone at the intercom. Pinkham set the dial to show the large room toward which Jerry was making his way.... Somewhere beyond their ken, the incredible beast from the void made another decision, or tried another experiment; and the life-scanner flickered into working order again. Joe Silver saw it first. Its screen blinked, then its alarm buttons glowed vividly. Without the ship, at a vast distance but approaching rapidly, were an untold number of organic entities, life-sources that reacted upon the scanner like approaching aircraft on a radar set. They could be spaceships, slugjet suits, or anything that contained the intangible thing called life. And the sister ships of the _Elephant's Child_ were still too far away to register. "Great Jupiter!" bellowed Joe Silver, pointing. "What now?" CHAPTER VIII