Swiftly, but carefully, he made his way over the nose of the ship and up to the vision plate.
Squatting in front of the plate, he peered down into the control cabin. But it wasn't a control cabin. It was a laboratory. In the tiny room which at one time must have housed the instruments of navigation, there was now no trace of control panel or calculator or telescopic screen. Rather, there were work tables, piled with scientific apparatus, banks and rows of chemical containers. All the paraphernalia of the scientist's workshop.
The door into the living quarters, where he had seen the large oblong box was closed. All the apparatus and the bottles in the laboratory were carefully arranged, neatly put away, as if someone had tidied up before they walked off and left the place.
He puzzled for a moment. That lack of rocket tubes, the indications that the ship was centuries old, the scrawled acid-etched line by the lock, the laboratory in the control room… what did it all add up to? He shook his head. It didn't make much sense.
Bracing himself against the curving steel hide of the shell, he pushed at the vision-plate. But he could exert little effort. Lack of gravity, inability to brace himself securely, made the task a hard one. Rising to his feet, he stamped his heavy boots against the glass, but the plate refused to budge.
As a last desperate effort, he might use his guns, blast his way into the shell. But that would be long, tedious work… and there would be a certain danger. There should be, he told himself, an easier and a safer way.
Suddenly the way came to him, but he hesitated, for there lay danger, too.
He could lie down on the plate, turn on the rocket tubes of his suit and use his body as a battering ram, as a lever, to force the stubborn hinges.
But it would be an easy matter to turn on too much power, so much power that his body would be pounded to a pulp against the heavy quartz.
Shrugging at the thought, he stretched flat on the plate, hands folded under him with fingers on the tube controls. Slowly he turned the buttons.