‘Doing my best, Captain.’

The captain’s last remark was harsh enough to abash even Vemadsky. He worked awhile in silence, then got to his feet. ‘You’ve got a gamma-fogged semirefl.ector. Every time the positron beam circles round to its position the drive flickers out for a second. You’ll have to replace it.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘Several hours. Maybe twelve.’

‘What? I’m behind schedule.’

‘Can’t help it.’ Vemadsky remained cheerful. ‘There’s only so much I can do. The system has to be flushed for three hours with helium before I can get inside. And then I have to calibrate the new semirefl.ector and that takes time. I could get it almost right in minutes, but that’s only almost right. You’d break down before you reach the orbit of Mars.’

The captain glowered. ‘Go ahead. Get started.’

Vemadsky carefully maneuvered the tank of helium on board the ship. With ship’s pseudo-grav generators shut off, it weighed virtually nothing, but it had its full mass and inertia. That meant careful handling if it were to make turns correctly. The maneuvers were all the more difficult since Vemadsky himself was without weight.

It was because his attention was concentrated entirely on the cylinder that he took a wrong tum in the crowded quarters and found himself momentarily in a strange and darkened room.

He had time for one startled shout and then two men were upon him, hustling his cylinder, closing the door behind him.

He said nothing, while he hooked the cylinder to the intake valve of the motor and listened to the soft, soughing noise as the helium flushed the interior, slowly washing absorbed radioactive gases into the all-accepting emptiness of space.

Then curiosity overcame prudence and he said, ‘You’ve got a silicony aboard ship, Captain. A big one.’

The captain turned to face Vemadsky slowly. He said in a voice from which all expression had been removed, ‘Is that right?’

‘I saw it. How about a better look?’

‘Why?’

Vemadsky grew imploring. ‘Oh, look, Captain, I’ve been on this rock over half a year. I’ve read everything I could get hold of on the asteroids, which means all sorts of things about the siliconies. And I’ve never seen even a little one. Have a heart.’

‘I believe there’s a job here to do.’

‘Just helium-flushing for hours. There’s nothing else to be done till that’s over. How come you carry a silicony about, anyway, Captain?’

‘A pet. Some people like dogs. I like siliconies.’

‘Have you got it talking?’

The captain flushed. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Some of them have talked. Some of them read minds, even.’

‘What are you? An expert on these damn things?’

‘I’ve been reading about them. I told you. Come on, Captain. Let’s have a look.’

Vernadsky tried not to show that he noticed that there was the captain facmg him and a crewman on either side of him. Each of the three was larger than he was, each weightier, each – he felt sure – was armed.

Vemadsky said, ‘Well, what’s wrong? I’m not going to steal the thing. I Just want to see it.’

It may have been the unfinished repair job that kept him alive at that moment. Even more so, perhaps, it was his look of cheerful and almost moronic innocence that stood him in good stead.

The captain said, ‘Well, then, come on.’

And Vemadsky followed, his agile mind working and his pulse defimtely quickened.

Vemadsky stared with considerable awe and just a little revulsion at gray creature before him. It was quite true that he had never seen a silicony, but he had seen trimensional photographs and read descriptions. Yet there 1s somethmg in a real presence for which neither words nor photographs are substitutes.

Its skin was of an oily smooth grayness. Its motions were slow as became a creature who burrowed in stone and was more than half st ne itself. There was no writhing of muscles beneath that skin· instead it moved in slabs as thin layers of stone slid greasily over one ‘another.

It had a general ovoid shape, rounded above, flattened below, with o sets of appendages. elow were the ‘legs,’ set radially. They totaled six and ended m sharp flmty edges, reinforced by metal deposits. Those edges could cut through rock, breaking it into edible portions.

On the creature’s flat undersurface, hidden from view unless the s1hcony were overturned, was the one opening into its interior. Shredded rocks entered that interior. Within, limestone and hydrated silicates reacted to form the silicones out of which the creature’s tissues were built. xcess silica re-emerged from the opening as hard white pebbly excretions.

How e raterrologists had puzzled over the smooth pebbles that lay scattered m small hollows within the rocky structure of the asteroids until the siliconies were first discovered. And how they marveled at the mannerm :’hich the creatures made silicones – those silicone-oxygen olymers with ydrocarbon siqe chains – perform so many of the functions that protems performed in terrestrial life.

From the high st point on the creature’s back came the remaining ppendages: two mverse cones hollowed in opposing directions and fittmg snugly mto parallel recesses running down the back, yet capable of lifting upward a short way. When the silicony burrowed through rock, the ‘ears’ were retracted for streamlining. When it rested in a hollowed-out cavern, they could lift for better and more sensitive reception. Their vague resemblance to a rabbit’s ears made the name silicony inevitable. The more serious extraterrologists, who referred to such creatures habitually as Siliconeus asteroidea, thought the ‘ears’ might have something to do with the rudimentary telepathic powers the beasts possessed. A minority had other notions.

The silicony was flowing slowly over an oil-smeared rock. Other such rocks lay scattered in one comer of the room and represented, Vemadsky knew, the creature’s food supply. Or at least it was its tissue-building supply. For sheer energy, he had read, that alone would not do.

Vemadsky marveled. ‘It’s a monster. It’s more than a foot across.’

The captain grunted noncommittally.

‘Where did you get it?’ asked Vemadsky.

‘One of the rocks.’

‘Well, listen, two inches is about the biggest anyone’s found. You could sell this to some museum or university on Earth for a couple of thousand dollars, maybe.’

The captain shrugged. ‘Well, you’ve seen it. Let’s get back to the hyperatomics.’

His hard grip was on Vemadsky’s elbow and he was turning away, when there was an interruption in the form of a slow and slurring voice, a hollow and gritty one.

It was made by the carefully modulated friction of rock against rock and Vemadsky stared in near horror at the speaker.

It was the silicony, suddenly becoming a talking stone. It said, ‘The man wonders if this thing can talk.’

Vernadsky whispered, ‘For the love of space. It does!’

‘All right,’ said the captain impatiently, ‘you’ve seen it and heard it, too. Let’s go now.’

‘And it reads minds,’ said Vemadsky.

The silicony said, ‘Mars rotates in two four hours three seven and one half minutes. Jupiter’s density is one point two two. Uranus was discovered in the year one seven eight one. Pluto is the planet which is most far. Sun is heaviest with a mass of o zero zero zero zero zero zero . . . ’

The captain pulled Vemadsky away. Vemadsky, half-walking backward, half-stumbling, listened with fascination to the fading bumbling of zeroes.