As the ship flashed silently on its journey, the men explored. The hull was of a metal unknown on Earth. They were able to groove deep scratches in its surface with an ordinary penknife, but within two minutes the scratch would vanish. It felt almost soft to the touch, but was obviously of great strength. They began to understand its purpose, if not its structure, when a section of the wall suddenly bulged inward more than a foot, then slowly smoothed out.
"Good heavens," exclaimed Courtland Stokes, as they stared at the retreating bulge, "that must have been a small meteorite! Imagine the uses of a metal with the strength to resist such a force. Why if we'd had this metal—"
He broke off, but the thought was there. This was a metal which might have resisted even the atom bomb.
Two of the men translated his remarks into the other languages.
"Djen shi dje yang dy mo?" Wang Chin asked dryly.
There was no need to translate the comment. They all understood the ironic tones. Stokes' thought had reminded them that if they and their kind had used atomic energy for the benefit of the world there would have been no need for a defense against it. They turned to other things within the ship in order to forget the thought.
Light for the interior of the ship came from shoulder-high recesses around the wall. They looked into them, expecting an improved lighting system, surprised at finding only small steady-burning flames. The flames seemed to be coming from the center of a small green plant. One of the men stretched a hand toward a small flame only to withdraw it quickly with an exclamation of pain. The heat was intense for several inches around the flame, but then it dissipated quickly.
The remainder of the ship was just as strange. The seating arrangements around the interior of the ship seemed to be made of broad thick leaves, somehow fused together, yet still feeling alive. In the small compartment, where each of them had originally gone to listen to the recordings, they discovered a number of fibrous cones which were apparently the records. One was still in a position which indicated that it had not yet been used, while the others were dropped to one side. But they were unable to examine them, for there was some sort of energy belt which kept them at a distance.
There was another small compartment which was apparently the engine room, or what would have corresponded to it in an Earth ship. But there were no mighty motors, as might have been indicated by the power of the ship—only a small hopper into which another hopper fed a continuous stream of crimson pellets. Except for their color, these looked like large seeds. The men guessed that in some way the second hopper broke down the atomic structure of the pellets to convert them into power, but again they were frustrated in their attempts at closer examination by an invisible belt of energy.