The Starmen went back over to the spacecraft. Joe set the laser for blue light and ran the beam over the surface of the ship. For several minutes he tried various colors and intensities. When he set the laser for yellow light, there was a change in the surface of the ship. “Ah!” said all three Starmen at once. The outline of a door appeared, with markings in several places. Joe experimented a little more, placing different intensities on the markings. In a moment he was rewarded. The door recessed a few inches into the ship, and slid aside with quiet efficiency. Joe immediately stepped through the portal. The furnishings of the alien spacecraft were similar to what the Starmen were familiar with, but the control panel was more challenging. Some controls were obvious, since they were necessary for any spacecraft; others were completely unfamiliar. After about an hour of looking around, Joe sighed, “Gonna need more time, Zip.” “I know. We’ll just have to dedicate ourselves to it until we feel confident enough to take the ship into space.” “I’m making some progress here,” announced Mark. He was at a side panel near the navigation station. As he worked the keyboard, various schemata appeared in quick sequence. “I can’t read anything, but it’s obvious that these are engines. I can’t recognize everything that’s coming up, but most of it I can. See, here is a circuit diagram, and this part here can only be a reaction chamber. I think this ship might use cold fusion for power, but I can’t know for sure until I can read this stuff, or see it in action.” “You figure it out, Mark, and I’ll fly it,” said Joe confidently. “Well, this stuff is you boys’ specialty,” said Zip. “I’ve got to think ahead to the next problem. Assuming we can get this rig to fly, and assuming we can open the airlock, we’ve still got to escape the pirates. I doubt this ship is one of the invisible ones, and they’ll have us spotted and speared in less then three minutes if we just fly out of here, saying, ‘Thanks for the hospitality, sorry we have to leave so soon.’” “You can figure it out, Zip! We’ll get this grand machine ready!” Joe was enjoying the challenge. It was hard to keep him down. * * * * * After eight hours of work on the spacecraft and with dinner behind them, Joe said to Mark, “Let’s go back into the power plant and see if we can’t find some way to sabotage the system so that the pirates can’t find us when we take off. You can bring up some files on those huge screens. Maybe we can even find some way to close down their whole operation.” “Sounds good to me,” said Mark, picking up a glass of water. He took a sip and swished his mouth with it, then swallowed. “Best we can do without toothbrushes, I guess.” “If it were that easy,” said Zip, “our hosts would probably have shut down the pirates long before this. After all, it’s their plant and they know it better than anyone.”