“Lasers of different frequencies, all in one tool!” Mark exclaimed.
“Yeah, and it’s got red too!”
“Lots of possibilities with this,” said Zip. “I’ll bet it can be used to open the spacecraft. The doors can’t be only voice-activated, or they couldn’t open the door in a vacuum. What else is there? Heat, magnetism, light? They used heat, body heat, on the panel back in the room where we were kept prisoner. Heat won’t work in deep space. Let’s try light. We’ve got the tool here.”
The Starmen went back over to the spacecraft. Joe set the laser for blue light and ran the beam over the surface of the ship. For several minutes he tried various colors and intensities. When he set the laser for yellow light, there was a change in the surface of the ship.
“Ah!” said all three Starmen at once. The outline of a door appeared, with markings in several places. Joe experimented a little more, placing different intensities on the markings. In a moment he was rewarded. The door recessed a few inches into the ship, and slid aside with quiet efficiency. Joe immediately stepped through the portal.
The furnishings of the alien spacecraft were similar to what the Starmen were familiar with, but the control panel was more challenging. Some controls were obvious, since they were necessary for any spacecraft; others were completely unfamiliar.
After about an hour of looking around, Joe sighed, “Gonna need more time, Zip.”
“I know. We’ll just have to dedicate ourselves to it until we feel confident enough to take the ship into space.”
“I’m making some progress here,” announced Mark. He was at a side panel near the navigation station. As he worked the keyboard, various schemata appeared in quick sequence. “I can’t read anything, but it’s obvious that these are engines. I can’t recognize everything that’s coming up, but most of it I can. See, here is a circuit diagram, and this part here can only be a reaction chamber. I think this ship might use cold fusion for power, but I can’t know for sure until I can read this stuff, or see it in action.”
“You figure it out, Mark, and I’ll fly it,” said Joe confidently.