was it?
Why had it been on that moon? Part of another ship, wrecked now ... a
ship that had been at home _here_? Was it some sort of drive?

Maulbow must know. He'd known enough to design the instruments required
to bring the battered monster back to life. On the other hand, he had
not foreseen in all detail what could happen once the thing was in
operation, because the _Queen's_ sudden buck-jumping act had surprised
him and knocked him out.

The first step, in any event, was to get Maulbow awake now. To tamper
with a device like this, before learning as much as one could about it,
would be lunatic foolhardiness. It looked like too good a bet that the
next serious mistake made by anybody would finish them all--

Perhaps it was only because Gefty's nerves were on edge that he grew
aware at that point in his reflections of two minor signals from his
senses. One was that the smell of ammonia, which he had almost stopped
noticing, was becoming appreciably stronger. The other was the faintest
of sounds--a whispering suggestion of motion somewhere behind him. But
here in the storage vault nothing should have moved, and Gefty's muscles
were tensing as his head came around. Almost in the same instant, he
flung himself wildly to one side, stumbling and regaining his balance as
something big and dark slapped heavily down on the floor at the point
where he had stood. Then he was darting up through the entrance passage,
turning, and knocking down the lock switches on the outside door panel.

It came flowing around the corner of the passage behind him as the vault
doors began to slide together. He was aware mainly of swift, smooth,
oiling motion like that of a big snake; then, for a fraction of a
second, a strip of brighter light from the outside passage showed a
long, heavy wedge of a head, a green metal-glint of staring eyes.

The doors closed silently into their frames and locked. The thing was
inside. But it was almost a minute then before Gefty could control his
shaking legs enough to start moving back towards the main deck. In the
half-dark of the vault, it had looked like a big coiled cable lying next
to the packing cases. Like Maulbow, it might have been battered around
and knocked out during the recent disturbance; and when it recovered, it
had found Gefty in the vault with it. But it might also have been awake
all the while, waiting cunningly until Gefty's attention seemed fixed
elsewhere before launching its attack. I