“All the same,” Quade told the girl uneasily, “I don’t like it. I wish you’d stay outside.”

“Ha!” Kathleen said in a sceptical voice and ducked her curly head under the torn wall to peer inside. “Nothing here. Don’t be such a sissy, Tony. What could possibly hurt me?”

“How can I tell? All I know is, wherever you go there’s trouble. Stand back now and let me take a look.”

But he found nothing. Even a careful search of the interior disclosed little to warrant that feeling that something more serious had happened here than a mere chance accident with a meteor. The only thing that puzzled him was the wreckage in the ship.

Bottles, instruments, gauges, seemed smashed more thoroughly than they should be, considering the impact of the meteor. Furniture was splintered, not only in the control room but in every other part of the vessel.

“I don’t get this,” Quade said slowly. “The meteor didn’t cause all this damage. It looks—” He hesitated. “It looks as though Udell and his men had gone on a spree. But there’s no sign of liquor on the ship.”

“Oxygen jag?” Von Zorn suggested.

Quade examined the tanks.

“No, it doesn’t look like it. They didn’t even use oxygen to try to save themselves. Look—they could have blocked off the control room with airtight panels and released oxygen. Or they might at least have got into their spacesuits. There must have been time for that. I’ve got a hunch—”

Von Zorn was examining the cans of film, the casings intact but the film itself spoiled by exposure.

“Eh?” he said. “You have a theory?”

“An idea, that’s all. If Udell and the navigator had been in their right minds, they needn’t have collided with the meteor. Look here—the automatic repulsors are smashed. That’s what caused the trouble.”

“In their right minds?” Von Zorn echoed slowly. “Space-cafard?”

“Hitting all of ’em? Hardly! Is a postmortem being done?”

Von Zorn nodded.

“The report ought to be ready by now if you want to check up.” He chewed his cigar savagely. “If only one man of the crew had lived! We’ve got a smash hit dumped on our laps and goodness knows if we can even film it.”

 Prev. P 6/30 next