deck. They had come upon the remains of a ship of
some sort, that had been literally broken down to its basic elements.
Strangely, there was no radioactive material. As a matter of fact, any
radioactive material in the vicinity were strangely absent.
10 As they neared the planetoid the Communications Officer suddenly
bent to his panel and began to work feverishly. "Very very faint
signal," he announced, "somewhat like our distress beacons, sending out
a pattern in several wavelengths."
11 Tracking the signal they took up orbit under the debris and a scout
from each vessel descended to the source of the transmission. Donning
their space suits they came out on a landing field. Off to the left
were large units of purified metal. To their right, hatchways ....
three large ones, obviously meant to handle considerable size vessels,
and in each side of these, six small ones.
12 The markings on the hatches were like nothing they had seen before.
But the equipment was strangely familiar. There was no power, but the
atmosphere inside was warm, so there must have been heaters working
somewhere.
13 They worked the hatches with the manual controls and entered the
installation. "Mining operations," commented North. "The equipment's
almost identical to ours, almost the same technology. These units look
like they could roll out and start boring immediately, yet they've
probably been sitting here for thousands of years!"
14 "They're nuclear powered," explained an Engineer, "but the systems
are drained. The radioactive material in the chambers is gone. The
whole assembly is open as if somebody carefully opened it and took the
material out."
15 "No sign of bodies," continued North, "no sign of forced entry. The
whole installation seems to be intact. It doesn't make sense."
16 One of the Officers was standing by a panel, and