“How do you get in?” asked Zip, looking for a door. He was running his hands over the surface. There was no sign of a doorway, no seal or join anywhere he could see or feel. He could see his reflection in the side of the spacecraft as if he were looking into a still pool in a forest. “So close, yet so far,” said Mark. “Here are ships, there is an airlock, but we’re not any closer to escaping than we were before.” “This’ll take some time,” said Joe, with a grimace. “It’s probably voice-activated, like the computer screens below.” The company had passed large computer screens regularly on their trek through the power plant. “All we need to do is learn the language of an alien race we don’t know, have never met, and whose language we can’t read. Then we can break free of here.” “Let’s get busy,” said Zip. “I like a challenge. We were led here by our hosts. There has to be a way.” Zip went back to George St. George and his men. “We’ll be working on getting into one of the spacecraft and learning how to use it. You can help by exploring this place and finding out what’s here. George, would you please take an inventory of what we’ve got in the way of food and drink and make a plan for making it last as long as you can. We’ll also need spacesuits. We can probably fly without them if we have to, but it’s a bad risk.” “Okay, Zip. We’ll do our part,” responded George. His men scattered throughout the hangar. There was a lot to investigate. It was only about 200 yards long and 50 yards wide, but was lined with cabinets. There were shelves and racks with equipment of various kinds, some recognizable and some decidedly not. More than a dozen doors opened into the hangar. Zip went back to the spacecraft the Starmen had chosen for their escape vehicle. Joe and Mark were at the closest work station, where there were tools of curious manufacture. “What can you guess about the alien race that built this place?” asked Joe as he ran his hands across a set of tools, picking one up and putting it back down. “What do we know about them?” “They’re humanoid, definitely,” replied Mark as he gazed at a rack of instruments. “We’ve already agreed on that. I assume that the two figures I saw last night are from the people who constructed this amazing facility. Can’t guess why they’re not out in force here, unless there are only a few of them aboard. Can’t guess why they don’t show themselves. Don’t know how old this asteroid is or what it is for. But they’re definitely humanoid. Even if I hadn’t seen them, we could tell that by the shape of the tools and everything else we’ve seen.”