The Space Trilogy by Arthur C. Clarke

goes the outer door now.'

Five
STAR TURN
    For a moment no one could think of anything to say. Then Tim, still whispering, breathed into the microphone: 'Keep calm! If you tell them that you're in radio contact with us, they won't dare touch you.'
    This, I couldn't help thinking, was being rather optimistic. Still, it might be good for our companions' morale, which was probably at a pretty low ebb.
    'I'm going to grab one of those guns,' Peter called. 'I don't know how they work, but it may scare them. Karl, you take one as well.'
    'For heaven's sake be careful!' warned Tim, now looking very worried. He turned to Ronnie.
    'Ron, call the Commander and tell him what's happening—quickly! And get a telescope on the Cygnus to see what ship's over there.'
    We should have thought of this before, of course, but it had been forgotten in the general excitement.
    They're in the control room now,' reported Peter, 'I can see them. They're not wearing space-suits, and they aren't carrying guns. That gives us quite an advantage.'
    I suspected that Peter was beginning to feel a little happier, wondering if he might yet be a hero.
    'I'm going out to meet them,' he announced suddenly. 'It's better than waiting in here, where they're bound to find us. Come on, Karl.'
    We waited breathlessly. I don't know what we expected—anything, I imagine, from a salvo of shots to the hissing or crackling of whatever mysterious weapons our friends were carrying. The one thing we didn't anticipate was what actually happened.
    We heard Peter say (and I give him full credit for sounding quite calm): 'What are you doing here, and who are you?'
    There was silence for what seemed an age. I could picture the scene as clearly as if I'd been present—Peter and Karl standing at bay behind their weapons, the men they had challenged wondering whether to surrender or to make a fight for it.
    Then, unbelievably, someone laughed. There were a few words we couldn't catch, in what seemed to be English, but they were swept away by a roar of merriment. It sounded as if three or four people were all laughing simultaneously, at the tops of their voices.
    We could do nothing but wait and wonder until the tumult had finished. Then a new voice, sounding amused and quite friendly, came from the speaker.
    'O.K., boys—you might as well put those gadgets down. You couldn't kill a mouse with them unless you swatted it over the head. I guess you're from the Station. If you want to know who we are, this is Twenty-First Century Films, at your service. I'm Lee Thomson, assistant producer. And those ferocious weapons you've got are the ones that Props made for our new interstellar epic. I'm glad to know they've convinced somebody —they always looked quite phoney to me.'
    No doubt the reaction had something to do with it, for we all dissolved in laughter then. When the Commander arrived, it was quite a while before anyone could tell him just what had happened.
    The funny thing was that, though Peter and Karl had made such fools of themselves, they really had the last laugh. The film people made quite a fuss of them and took them over to their ship, where they had a good deal to eat and drink that wasn't on the Station's normal menu.
    When we got to the bottom of it, the whole mystery had an absurdly simple explanation. Twenty-First Century were going all out to make a real epic—the first interstellar and not merely interplanetary film. And it was going to be the first feature film to be shot entirely in space, without any studio faking.
    All this explained the secrecy. As soon as the other companies knew what was going on, they'd all be climbing aboard the bandwagon. Twenty-First Century wanted to get as big a start as possible. They'd shipped up one load of props to await the arrival of the main unit with its cameras and equipment. Besides the 'ray-guns' that Peter and Karl had encountered, the crates in the hold contained some weird four-legged space-suits for the beings who were