Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Space ships -- Fiction
"No," said his father, slowly. "I don't remember when or where I heard
it, but there's some reason why you couldn't have an intelligent race
much smaller than a good sized dog. It has something to do with the
fact that they grow in size as their developing intelligence gives them
an increasing advantage over their environment."
"Here's the evidence," Jeff answered, tapping the film with one finger.
"No," Pete was bending over the picture fragments again. "Look at these
things in the corridor. They're obviously controls."
Jeff looked.
"I see what you mean," he said at last. "If there's any similarity
between their mechanical system and ours, these controls are built for
somebody pretty big. But look how they're scattered all over the ship.
There's a good fifteen or twenty different groups of instruments and
other things. That means a number of crew members; and you simply can't
put a number of large crew members in those little corridors."
"There's a large amount of total space," Pete began. Then, suddenly a
faint tremor ran through the ship. Jeff leaped for the screen and his
father moved over to stand behind him.
"Good Lord," said Jeff, "look at her."
* * * * *
The other ship shook suddenly and rolled slightly to one side. Some
unseen center of gravity pulled her back to her original position. She
hesitated a moment, and then tried again, with the same results. She
lay quiescent.
Jeff pounced on his radiation drum graph.
"What does it say?" Peter asked.
Jeff shook his head in astonishment. "Nothing," he answered, "just
nothing at all."
"Nothing?" Peter came over to take a look at the graph himself. It was
as Jeff had said. The line tracing the white surface of the graph was
straight and undisturbed.
"But that's impossible," Peter frowned.
The two men turned back to the screen. As they watched, one final
shudder shook the strange ship, and then, like a stranded whale who has
given up hope, it lay still.
"My God!" said Pete, and Jeff turned to him in astonishment. It was the
closest to profanity his father had come in twenty years. "Jeff, do you
know what I think? I think that ship is manned by just one great big
creature--like a giant squid. That's why no radiation registered. He
was trying to move his ship by sheer strength."
Jeff stared at his father.
"You're crazy," was all he could manage to say. "Why, something big
enough to shake that ship would have to fill every inch of space inside
it. You can't live in a space ship that way."
"That's right," Pete answered. He clamped his hand on Jeff's shoulder
excitedly and led him back to the jigsaw puzzle on the table.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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