Then the dust cleared and the two men stared. The ship was a derelict, a piece of space flotsam. There was no question about that. It was also a Cyblla-style coach, one of the first Earth-made passenger freighters to utilize a power-pile drive, designed when streamlining was thought to mean following the shape of a cigar. On her bow was a name but meteorite shrapnel had partially obliterated the letters.
"Jingoes," said Raine, "I never saw a ship like this before. She must be old—really old!"
The hatches were badly fused and oxidized, and it was evident that without a blaster it would be impossible to get in. Cap shrugged.
"Let her stay there," he said. "I can make a dog-leg out of the fifteenth, and keep the course fairly playable. And if I get tired of seeing that big hulk out of my dining room window I can always plant some python vines around the nearside of her."
Raine shook his head quickly. "There's no telling what we may find inside. We've got to find an opening."
He went over the ship like a squirrel looking for a nut. Back under her stern quarter, just abaft her implosion plates, he found a small refuse scuttle which seemed movable. He took drills and went to work on it.
Three hours later the two men were inside. There was nothing unusual about the crew quarters or the adjoining storage space. But when they reached the control cabin they stood and gaped.
It was like entering a museum. The bulkheads were covered with queer glass dials, and several panels of manual operating switches. The power-pile conduits were shielded with lead—lead mind you—and the lighting was apparently done with some kind of fluorescent tubes bracketed to the ceiling. It brought Cap back to the time he was a kid and his grandfather told him stories and legends of the past.
Just above the pilot's old-fashioned cosmoscope was a fancy metal plate with the ship's name stamped on it. Perseus!
"Do you know what ship this is?" demanded Cap, excitedly.