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Another ship, small and conical, had appeared behind the silvery sphere. Its hull was green, with darker green markings.
II
"Damn," said Louis. He didn't recognize the make. It was no human ship. "Well, it could be worse. They could have been people." He used the comm laser.
The other ship braked to a stop. In courtesy, so did Louis.
"Would you believe it?" be demanded of himself. "Three years total time I've spent looking for stasis boxes. I finally find one, and now something else wants it too!"
The bright blue spark of another laser glowed in the tip of the alien cone. Louis listened to the autopilot-computer chuckling to itself as it tried to untangle the signals in an unknown laser beam. At least they did use lasers, not telepathy or tentacle-waving or rapid changes in skin color.
A face appeared on Louis's screen.
It was not the first alien he had seen. This, like some others, had a recognizable head: a cluster of sense organs grouped around a mouth, with room for a brain. Trinocular vision, he noted; the eyes set deep in sockets, well protected, but restricted in range of vision. Triangular mouth, too, with yellow, serrated bone knives showing their edges behind three gristle lips.
Definately, this was an unknown species.
"Boy, are you ugly," Louis refrained from saying. The alien's translator might be working by now.
His own autopilot finished translating the alien's first message. It said, "Go away. This object belongs to me."
"Remarkable," Louis sent back.
"Are you a Slaver?" The being did not in the least resemble a Slaver, and the Slavers had been extinct for eons.
"That word was not translated," said the alien. "I reached the artifact before you did. I will fight to keep it."
Louis scratched at his chin, at two week's growth of bristly beard. His ship had very little to fight with. Even the fusion plant which powered the thruster was designed with safety in mind. A laser battle, fought with comm lasers turned to maximum, would be a mere endurance test; and he'd lose, for the alien ship had more mass to absorb more heat. He had no weapons per se. Presumably the alien did.
But the stasis box was a big one.
The Tnuctipun-Slaver war had wiped out most of the intelligent species of the galaxy, a billion and a half years ago. Countless minor battles must have occurred before a Slaver-developed final weapon was used. Often the Slavers, losing a battle, had stored valuables in a stasis box, and hidden it against the day they would again be of use. No time passed inside a closed stasis box. Alien meat a billion and a half years old had emerged still fresh from its hiding place. Weapons and tools showed no trace of rust. Once a stasis box had disgorged a small, tarsierlike sentiment being, still alive. That former slave had lived a strange life before the aging process claimed her, the last of her species.
Slaver stasis boxes were beyond value. It was known that the Tnuctipun, at least, had known the secret of direct conversion of matter. Perhaps their enemies had too. Someday, in a stasis box somewhere outside known space, such a device would be found. Then fusion power would be as obsolete as internal combustion.
And this, a sphere ten feet in diameter, must be the largest stasis box ever found.
"I too will fight to keep the artifacts" said Louis. "But consider this. Our species has met once, and will meet again regardless of who takes the artifact now. We can be friends or enemies. Why should we risk this relationship by killing?"
The alien sense-cluster gave away nothing. "What do you propose?"
"A game of chance, with the risks even on both sides. Do you play games of chance?"
"Emphatically yes. The process of living is a game of chance. To avoid chance is insanity."
"That it is. Hmmm." Louis regarded the alien head that seemed to be all triangles. He saw it abruptly whip around, flick, to face straight backward, and snap back in the same instant. The sight did something to the pit of his stomach.
"Did you speak?" the alien asked.
"No. Won't you break your neck that way?"
"Your question is interesting. Later we must discuss anatomy. I have a proposal."
"Fine."
"We shall land on the world below us. We will meet between our ships. I will do you the courtesy of emerging first. Can you bring your translator?"
He could co
"We will meet between our ships and play some simple game, familiar to neither of us, depending solely on chance. Agreed?"
"Provisionally. What game?"
The image on the screen rippled with diagonal lines. Something interfering with the signal? It cleared quickly. "There is a mathematics game," said the alien. Our mathematics will certainly be similar."
"True." Though Louis had heard of some decidedly peculiar twists in alien mathematics.
"The game involves a screee--" Some word that the autopilot couldn't translate. The alien raised a threeclawed hand, holding a lens-shaped object. The alien's mutually opposed fingers turned it so that Louis could see the different markings on each side. "This is a screee. You and I will throw it upward six times each. I will choose one of the symbols, you will choose the other. If my symbol falls looking upward more often than yours, the artifact is mine. The risks are even."
The image rippled, then cleared.
"Agreed," said Louis. He was a bit disappointed in the simplicity of the game.
"We shall both accelerate away from the artifact. Will you follow me down?"
"I will," said Louis.
The image disappeared.
III
Louis Wu scratched at a week's growth of beard. What a way to greet an alien ambassador! In the worlds of men Louis Wu dressed impeccably; but out here he felt free to look like death warmed over, all the time.
But how was a Trinoc supposed to know that he should have shaved? No, that wasn't the problem.
Was he fool or genius?
He had friends, many of them, with habits like his own. Two had disappeared decades ago; he no longer remembered their names. He remembered only that each had gone hunting stasis boxes in this direction and that each had neglected to come back.
Had they met alien ships?
There were any number of other explanations. Half a year or more spent alone in a single ship was a good way to find out whether you liked yourself. If you decided you didn't, there was no point in returning to the worlds of men.
But there were aliens out here. Armed. One rested in orbit five hundred miles ahead of his ship, with a valuable artifact halfway between.
Still, gambling was safer than fighting. Louis Wu waited for the alien's next move.
That move was to drop like a rock. The alien ship must have used at least twenty gees of push. After a moment of shock, Louis followed under the same acceleration, protected by his cabin gravity. Was the alien testing his maneuverability?
Possibly not. He seemed contemptuous of tricks. Louis, trailing the alien at a goodly distance, was now much closer to the silver sphere. Suppose he just turned ship, ran for the artifact, strapped it to his hull and kept ru
Actually, that wouldn't work. He'd have to slow to reach the spere the alien wouldn't have to slow to attack. Twenty gees was close to his ship's limit.
Ru
That risk could be minimized. His pressure suit had sensors to monitor his body functions. Louis set the autopilot to blow the fusion plant if his heart stopped. He rigged a signal button on his suit to blow the plant manually.