No wonder he asked me! The wreckage was all so formless.
"Yes."
We climbed after Snap into the broken turret room. We passed the body
of that steward who just at the end had appealed to me and I had left
dying. The legs of the forward lookout still poked grotesquely up from
the wreckage of the observatory tower where it lay smashed down
against the roof of the chart room.
We shoved ourselves into the turret. What was this? No bodies here!
The giant Miko was gone! The pool of blood lay congealed into a frozen
dark splotch on the metal grid.
And Moa was gone! They had not been dead. Had dragged themselves out
of here, fighting desperately for life. We would find them somewhere
around here.
But we did not. Nor Coniston. I recalled what Anita had said: other
suits and helmets had been here in the nearby chart room. The brigands
had taken them, and food and water doubtless, and escaped from the
ship, following us through the lower admission ports only a few
minutes after we were gone.
We made careful search of the entire ship. Eight of the bodies which
should have been here were missing: Miko, Moa, Coniston and five of
the crew.
We did not find them outside. They were hiding near here, no doubt,
more willing to take their chances than to yield to us now. But how,
in all this Lunar desolation, could we hope to locate them?
"No use," said Grantline. "Let them go. If they want death, well, they
deserve it."
But we were saved. Then, as I stood there, realization leaped at me.
Saved? Were we not indeed fatuous fools?
In all these emotion-swept moments since we had encountered Grantline,
memory of that brigand ship coming from Mars had never once occurred
to Snap and me!