"I'm still about fifty miles out," he said automatically, and then cold
fear, real fear, gripped him. _Is that you, Ralph?_
"Ralph, is that--oh, Ralph. Ralph--" she screamed, and was silent.
"Diane! Diane, answer me."
Silence. She had seen someone--something. Alive? It hardly seemed
possible. He tried to notch his rocket controls further toward full
power, but they were straining already--
The dead ships flashed by, scores of them, hundreds, with dead men and
dead dreams inside, waiting through eternity, in no hurry to give up
their corpses and corpses of dreams.
He heard Diane again then, a single agonized scream. Then there was
silence, absolute silence.
Time seemed frozen, frozen like the faces of the dead men inside the
ships, suspended, unmoving, not dropping into the well of the past. The
ships crawled by now, crawled. And from a long way off he saw the
Gormann eighty-five. He knew it was the right ship because the outer
airlock door had swung open again. It hung there in space, the lock
gaping--
But it was a long way off.
He hardly seemed to be approaching it at all. Every few seconds he
called Diane's name, but there was no answer. No answer. Time crawled
with the fear icy now, as cold as death, in the pit of his stomach, with
the fear making his heart pound rapidly, with the fear making it
impossible for him to think. Fear--for Diane. I love you, Di, he
thought. I love you. I never stopped loving you. We were wrong. We were
crazy wrong. It was like a sargasso, inside of us, an emptiness which
needed filling--but we were wrong. Diane--
* * * * *
He reached the Gormann and plunged inside the airlock, swinging the
outer door shut behind him. He waited. Would the pressure build up
again, as it had built up for Diane? He did not know. He could only
wait--
A red light blinked over his head, on and off, on and off as pressure
was built. Then it stopped.
Fifteen pounds of pressure in the airlock, which meant that the inner
door should open. He ran forward, rammed his shoulder against it,
tumbled through. He entered a narrow companionway and clomped awkwardly
toward the front of the ship, where the radarscope would be located.
He passed a skeleton in the companionway, like the one he had seen in
another ship. For the same reason, he thought. He had time to think
that. And then he saw them.
Diane. On the floor, her spacesuit off her now, a great bruise,
blue-ugly bruise across her temple. Unconscious.
And the thing which hovered over her.
At first he did not know what it was, but he leaped at it. It turned,
snarling. There was air in the ship and he wondered about that. He did
not have time to wonder. The thing was like some monstrous, misshapen
creature, a man--yes, but a man to give you nightmares. Bent and
misshapen, gnarled, twisted like the roots of an ancient tree, with a
wild growth of beard, white beard, heavy across the chest, with bent
limbs powerfully muscled and a gaunt face, like a death's head. And the
eyes--the eyes were wild, staring vacantly, almost glazed as in death.
The eyes stared at him and through him and then he closed with this
thing which had felled Diane.
It had incredible strength. The strength of the insane. It drove Ralph
back across the cabin and Ralph, encumbered by his spacesuit, could only
fight awkwardly. It drove him back and it found something on the floor,
the metal leg of what once had been a chair, and slammed it down across
the faceplate of Ralph's spacesuit.
Ralph staggered, fell to his knees. He had absorbed the blow on the
crown of his skull through the helmet of the suit, and it dazed him. The
thing struck again, and Ralph felt himself falling....
Somehow, he climbed to his feet again. The thing was back over Diane's
still form again, looking at her, its eyes staring and vacant. Spittle
drooled from the lips--
Then Ralph was wrestling with it again. The thing was almost protean. It
all but seemed to change its shape and writhe from Ralph's grasp as they
struggled across the cabin, but this time there was no weapon for it to
grab and use with stunning force.
Half-crazed himself now, Ralph got his fingers gauntleted in rubberized
metal, about the sinewy throat under the tattered beard. His fingers
closed there and the wild eyes went big and he held it that way a long
time, then finally thrust it away from him.
The thing fell but sprang to its feet. It looked at Ralph and the mouth
opened and closed, but he heard no sound. The teeth were yellow and
black, broken, like fangs.
Then the thing turned and ran.
Ralph followed it as far as the airlock. The inner door was slammed
between them. A light blinked over the door.
Ralph ran to a port hole and watched.
The thing which once had been a man floated out into space, turning,
spinning slowly. The gnarled twisted body expanded outward, became fat
and swollen, balloon-like. It came quite close to the porthole, thudding
against the ship's hull, the face--dead now--like a melon.
Then, after he was sick for a moment there beside the airlock, he went
back for Diane.
* * * * *
They were back aboard the Gormann '87 now, their own ship. Ralph had
revived Diane and brought her back--along with the other Gormann's
radarscope--to their battered tub. The bruise on her temple was badly
discolored and she was still weak, but she would be all right.
"But what was it?" Diane asked. She had hardly seen her attacker.
"A man," Ralph said. "God knows how long that ship was in here. Years,
maybe. Years, alone in space, here in the sargasso, with dead men and
dead ships for company. He used up all the food. His shipmates died.
Maybe he killed them. He needed more food--"
"Oh, no. You don't mean--"
Ralph nodded. "He became a cannibal. Maybe he had a spacesuit and raided
some of the other ships too. It doesn't matter. He's dead now."
"He must have been insane like that for years, waiting here, never
seeing another living thing...."
"Don't talk about it," Ralph said, then smiled. "Ship's ready to go,
Diane."
"Yes," she said.