First Contact

Adventures in time and space transcribed in future tents. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with street and smith publishers of astounding science fiction, bring you Dimension X. Tonight's story, first contact by Murray Leimster.

They had been in space six months now, moving with the incredibly faster than light speed of the overdrive. In six months, they had gone from Earth outward and outward to the crab-like nebula with the twin stars.

A routine flight of exploration and scientific research. Solid object about 90,000 miles away, sir. Located the door to exactly identify it. A small object, sir. Captain, I've never seen anything like this before. Whatever it is out there is coming tortoise at an incredible speed and retreating to zero just as rapidly.

What's the mass of the object, Dort? Well, it varies with the distance from us, sir. Step up the scanners. Nothing, sir. Absolutely nothing shows out there. And yet there must be something. Those alarms are foolproof.

Action stations, man, all weapons, condition of extreme alert, and all departments immediately. Captain, what is it? Dort, I ran into the same thing once before on the Earth Mars run. We were being located by another ship, and their locator beam was the same frequency as ours.

Every time it hit, it registered to something solid and monstrous. But, Captain, we're the only Earth ship in 18 light years around. How? Now, I didn't say it was another Earth ship out there, Dork.

Another race? That's right. There's a spaceship out there, all right? There's not a man by human beings. It had been contemplated and speculated upon. Mathematically, it was almost a certainty that such a race existed.