Page:Astounding Science Fiction (1950-01).djvu/93

 rang "underweigh" so that Hippocrates would have warning to grab something and, without seating himself in the control chair, shot the Morgue toward the only hole in the towering jungle trees, a thousand yards from her former location. Lights flashed as the force screen went out and then re-adjusted itself to the natural contour of the landscape, and obstacles. Ole Doc dusted his hands. The ship was safe for a moment. Now if that battle cruiser wanted to come low enough to prowl it would get a most frightening surprise. Leaving the fire panel tuned to shoot down anything which did not clip back a friendly recognition signal, Ole Doc moved toward the salon.

But as he passed a port something caught his eye. And it also caught the eye of the alert autoturret on the starboard side. He heard the wheels spinning over his head as the single gun came down to bear on an object in the jungle and he only just made the battle panel to isolate the quadrant from fire.

There was a dead spaceship in there.

Ole Doc checked both blasters and jumped out of the air lock. He went up to his boot tops in muck but floundered ahead toward the grisly thing.

It was crashed and well sunk in the mud and over it had grown a thick coating of slime from which fed countless creepers and vines. It was not only dead. It was being buried by greedy life.

His space boots clung magnetically to the hull as he pushed his way up through the slimy growths and then he was standing at a broken port which stared up at him like an eyeless socket. He stabbed a light into it. What had been an Earthman was tangled amongst the stanchions of a bunk. What had been another was crushed against a bulkhead. Small, furry things scuttled out of these homes as Ole Doc dropped down.

The ship had been there, probably, a year. It had ended its life from heavy explosive and had been skewered through and through by five charges.

Ole Doc burned through a jammed door, going forward to get to the control room. He stumbled over some litters of boxes and his playing light showed up their mildewed lettering:

Department of Agriculture. Perishable. Keep under Preservative Rays. Horses.

Ole Doc frowned and picked his way through this decaying litter. In the control room he found what seepage and bacteria had left of the log. The ship was the Wanderho out of Boston, a tramp under charter to the government, delivering perishables, supplies and mail to Department of Agriculture Experimental Stations.

With sudden decision Ole Doc OLE MOTHER METHUSELAH