Marlin regretted afterward that he had not attempted to offer Norma
some antidote for her moody thoughts on her visit to his observation
point. He might have tried to put in words his own fatalistic point of
view. Possibly it would have helped to sustain her. If only he had been
less preoccupied--
But it was useless to regret, when they found the girl stretched out on
her sleeping pallet with eyes rigidly staring upward.
They gathered in silence around the inert form. Death had been their
constant companion from the start, but this was the first time it had
shown its grim face.
Maw Barstow began a low wailing. Sally also wept. McGruder moistened
his lips and looked furtively around, cowering slightly as he saw the
eerie features of Link peering from the shadows above. DuChane stood
stricken but expressionless. Pearl alone, of those who looked down at
the still face, was seemingly unmoved.
"I seen her pokin' around in the medicine cabinet," McGruder recalled.
"She musta swallowed some kinda dope."
They searched through the cabinet, but there was no clue as to what the
girl had taken. Several bottles contained drugs which could have caused
death.
"Oughta be given a decent burial," McGruder commented.
No move was made at the time to carry out his suggestion. The only
burial possible was through the locks provided for eliminating waste
products. The thought was abhorrent.
"She talked kind of wild about ending it all," gulped Sally. "Said she
could almost hate me for being the one to save her for this. Gosh! I
even came back at her with a wisecrack--something about its being a
good idea. To end it all, I mean."
DuChane spoke for the first time. "Moody sort of kid," he commented
hesitantly. "Didn't seem to have a real interest in life."
"You tried hard enough to give her one!" Sally retorted with pent-up
bitterness. "Too bad she wouldn't tumble."
DuChane opened his lips as if to reply, swallowed, then, with a
lingering glance at the dead girl, turned away.
Eli was not among the silent group. No one bothered to tell him that
his passenger list had been reduced by one.
The event seemed to do something to the morale of the
survivors--something beyond producing the inevitable shock that follows
in the wake of death.
Marlin felt it keenly. Until now--though he had imagined himself to
be impersonal and philosophical about the whole matter--he had been
sustained by a feeling that they were being carried on this strange
journey for a purpose. There had been Pearl's predictions and their
apparent realization--the uncanny fortuitousness of natural forces
which had preserved them thus far. It had seemed to presage intention
of some kind--suggesting that they bore charmed lives.
Now, it seemed, the charm was not inviolate. They were no longer the
favorites of some mysterious destiny. One had been snuffed out--the
others could be. There was no purpose back of it--none, at any rate,
which concerned them. As Norma had said, they were like insects caught
up in the mud-ball. It was merely by chance that any had survived thus
far.
The question of what to do with the dead girl's body was settled by the
decision to cremate it. The waste incinerator was electrically heated
and connected with a lock, originally intended to open into space,
through which ashes and solid residue could be forced into the clay
outer coating.
Though Maw Barstow protested and wailed, she had no counter suggestion
to offer. DuChane held aloof from the discussion, but when Marlin
called on McGruder to pick up one end of the blanket-swathed figure,
DuChane thrust himself between them and gathered the body in his arms.
"I'll take care of this," he said gruffly.
* * * * *
A sense of bleak desolation swept over Marlin, as he watched the
other man, with his somber burden, slowly ascend the ramp toward the
blackened door of the incinerator.
At this moment the blow struck.
The concussion was so terrific that it sent Marlin sprawling the full
length of the ramp. He brought up against a hard surface, dazed and
gasping, and lay inert for a period that might have been minutes,
vaguely aware of the darkness, of shrieks, and the crash of falling
bodies.
Painfully, at length, he picked himself up.
As the sphere continued to heave and vibrate from the impact,
someone fell against him. Clutching arms caught at him and a
voice--Sally's--sobbed convulsively in his ears.
He disengaged the clinging arms.
"Cut it out!" he said gruffly. "We're still alive--I don't know why.
Let's see if we can find any lights."
Half dragging the girl after him, he made his way to the storeroom. He
remembered a drawer containing flashlights. Several were broken, but he
located a couple in working order.
Above the general clamor, the howls of someone apparently in agony
rose with monotonous regularity. With the aid of the flashlights,
he stumbled toward the sound, Sally following. Overhead the girders
groaned and clanked with metallic reverberations. Several of them must
have been fractured.
By the feeble radiance of the torches, he located the source of the
agonized howls. Above the level of the observation scaffold--now a
mass of tumbled wreckage--the gummy substance of the outer coating was
issuing inexorably through a rent in the shell. Trapped in the deluge
was Slinky Link--his face distorted with animal-like terror, one free
arm pawing helplessly at the engulfing tide.
Marlin hastily sought a way of reaching him, but before he could
salvage a ladder the demented creature was beyond help. His howls
abruptly ended in a gurgle as the eruption relentlessly closed over him.
Sally was suddenly very sick.
McGruder, and then DuChane stumbled toward the light.
"Wha--what happened?" came the befuddled question.
"We were struck, of course. Help me get Sally back to her bunk. The
stuff--swallowed up Link. Where are the others?"
They found Pearl sitting in a corner with Maw's head in her lap. She
was gently smoothing the older woman's brow, which bore an ugly welt.
Maw was groaning, but apparently more in fright than pain.
* * * * *
Marlin swept his flashlight over them, decided they were in need of no
immediate attention. "Let's see whether we can restore the lights."
In the control room, they came upon Eli's body wedged between two banks
of coils, his head twisted in a ghastly fashion. He must have died
instantly, his neck broken by the concussion.
Tentative efforts to restore electrical current were without avail.
They located a few more undamaged flashlights and inspected the vessel.
The first assumption had been that the dent knocked in their hull by
impact with the asteroid occurred at the point where Link had been
overtaken by the flood. It became apparent, however, that the blow
had struck on the opposite side of the vessel, where a much greater
inundation had occurred--was, in fact, still in process of spreading
over the interior surface like a great blister.
Link must have been flung against the hull from the girders on which he
was roosting. His body broke through the weakened shell, and once the
ooze had him it closed over him with implacable greed.
The utter hopelessness of their position weighed on the three men like
a pall.
Any lingering faith that they were protected by a special providence
was shattered. Already, three of their number had proved that death
could strike as aimlessly and without warning in the space vessel as
elsewhere.
The ooze was working in through innumerable cracks in the rotten shell.
From serving as their protection against the cold of outer space and
the burning heat of the sun's rays, the covering had assumed the guise
of a soulless monster, spreading its ravening tentacles to smother and
devour them.
DuChane's memory of the concussion was vague. The dead girl's body,
wrested from his arms, must have hurtled against the shell, breaking
through and being swallowed up in the same manner as Link's.
"Probably better that way," he observed gruffly. "More like a human
burial. Wonder if any of that hooch escaped."
There had been an unwritten law that the small stock of liquor
among the stores should be preserved for emergencies. Surreptitious
violations there might have been, particularly by Maw Barstow, but no
open drinking. Marlin shrugged.
"I guess we all feel pretty shaky and exhausted," he acknowledged.
The bottled items in the larder had been packed to withstand shocks.
While there was some breakage, most of the liquor had survived.
The three downed a couple of rounds in gloomy silence; then, with
scarcely a word, they stumbled to their bunks.