He woke with a stifling sense of oppression. In that indefinite period between sleeping and waking, he struggled with a terrified conviction that the whole mass of the enclosing sphere was caving in on him, smothering, crushing his chest, grinding him against the floor. For some minutes, he seemed unable to move. Eventually, his head clearing somewhat, he struggled up, gasping for breath and fighting a surge of nausea. The crushing sensation had been so vivid that it was several minutes before he could overcome it.
From an adjoining cubicle, the moans of the wounded outlaw penetrated his consciousness. He rose painfully, mindful of sore and stiffened muscles, and stumbled out onto the ramp.
Overhead, the scattered lights which gave a faint illumination to the network of girders, were casting weird, swaying shadows, as they did after every lurch of the sphere. It was such a lurch, Marlin realized, that probably woke him. The floor, he noticed, had returned more nearly to level.
Maw Barstow had spread her pallet across the bare opening of the outlaw's room, and lay there like a watchdog—anything but a lovely sight with her upturned face and open mouth. She was making hard work of sleep and did not stir when Marlin stepped over her and knelt beside the suffering figure inside.
A rag was immersed in a pan of water at the side of the pallet. Surmising its purpose, he squeezed a little between the feverish lips and then wiped off the drawn face. The muddy stuff of the poultice had oozed out around the neck wound. Marlin wiped some of it away and adjusted the bandage, then pulled down the cover to see if other bandages needed similar attention.
The outlaw, though wiry, seemed to have a rather frail physique. His face was smooth and boylike, almost sensitive, despite the hard set of the mouth. A tight bandage swathed the chest, but as Marlin's fingers felt along its edge he was struck by the soft, pliable texture of the flesh beneath.
For a minute, he paused, considering the faintly moaning figure. For some strange reason, chills raced up his spine.
Deliberately, he drew down the cover, until he could view the outstretched body. Then, very carefully, he restored the blanket to its place, tucking it carefully around the sleeping figure. The figure that was not a man—but a girl ...
When he rose to leave a moment later, Pearl was framed in the doorway, her lips parted in the enigmatic smile which belied the innocent vacuity of her eyes.
Marlin stepped over Maw Barstow's sleeping body and took the white-gowned girl gently by the arm.
"Better get back to your covers," he advised; then, softly: "Girl, oh girl! Maybe you've got something after all!"
When Marlin next awakened, it was to the rude shock of rough hands shaking him excitedly. He struggled up, his first impulse to strike out in resentment. It was DuChane.
"Wake up, Dave! For God's sake, wake up! I've got something to show you!"
Still half asleep, Marlin followed the other toward the ladder which led to the scaffold by which they had first entered. He felt strangely lightheaded, nauseated, wobbly on his feet, and his muscles ached. Unsteadily, he followed the other up to the scaffold.
DuChane applied his eye to the periscope, then gestured.
"Look!" His voice was scarcely more than a whisper.
Marlin crouched before the eyepiece. He peered through it with vague bewilderment at first, then with growing interest—concern—amazement.
He spoke at last—His voice strained and unfamiliar.
"There's nothing out there! No ground—no hillside—no crater—no scaffolding—nothing! Nothing but stars. Stars and blackness."
DuChane moistened his lips.
"It's an illusion," whispered Marlin. "We can't be—"
He glanced up at the girders. The shadows were still shifting in a weird dance to the cadence of swaying lights.
"I know when it happened," he breathed hoarsely. "I woke up—a little past midnight—with a terrible sense of oppression. Felt as if I were being crushed. It must have been the acceleration."
DuChane swallowed. "Nothing like that now. In fact, it's just the opposite—a touch of weightlessness. We'd better find Eli—have it out with him."
The bearded scientist was snoring furiously on his pallet in the control room. They woke him without ceremony.
DuChane interrupted the diatribe that trembled on the older man's lips.
"What right had you to do this?" he accused. "How do you know you can get us back safely? Damn it all!" DuChane's anger rose as the full enormity of the situation broke over him. "How do you expect to steer the crazy thing—find your way back—land it? That dinky periscope is about as useful for guidance as a cigarette lighter in a blizzard!"
Eli stiffened. "If you gentlemen will kindly explain what you are talking about!"
"Why, you—!" DuChane broke off. "Mean to tell us you don't know?"
The scientist's blank stare continued.
"We're in space," Marlin informed him tersely.
The older man seemed unable to comprehend. A momentary triumph lighted in his eyes, then faded into suspicion.
"Go away!" he ordered gruffly. "I have no mood for silly jokes."
Still, he submitted as they assisted him to his feet and hustled him toward the periscope.
A few moments later, racing back to the control room, he began a feverish examination of instruments and dials.
"I understand now. Yes—it is clear. I should have known, but in dealing with new forces—one lacks the guidance of experience. Lamberton—that imbecile? How I shall laugh. Charlatan eh! Yes, yes. It was necessary to build up a sufficient potential—to do that naturally took a great deal longer—"
"Look here," interrupted DuChane. "Isn't it possible that the coating on the sphere somehow acted as a storage reservoir into which your current poured until it built up this—this terrific potential you've mentioned? I mean—well, perhaps this storing up of power multiplied the current generated by your dynamos, until they overcame the objection Lamberton pointed out—that of obtaining sufficient power to produce the atomic stress."
"Nonsense!" Eli retorted reddening. "That imbecile has not the brains to grasp even my basic theory. There is no connection between my conversion coils and the mud coating!"
"You have a ground of some sort, haven't you?"
"Certainly. The steel shell of the sphere—" The inventor paused abruptly. "That dense outer coating of clay—Yes, yes. It might so act." He paused in exasperation. "Gentlemen! Please kindly go away! Is it not enough that I have great responsibilities, but you must come around with your childish theorizing?"
By this time, the others had been awakened by the commotion, and were crowding around the control room entrance.
"Wha—what's up?" demanded Link.
Marlin looked at DuChane; DuChane returned the look.
"Somebody has to break the news," said Marlin grimly. His eyes swept the gathering. "You may as well have it straight. We're no longer on earth; we're in space."
"Whadda you mean—space?" Link was bewildered.
"This is a space vessel isn't it—built to rise from the earth and fly off into the void? Well, contrary to expectations, it's doing just that. How far above earth we are, there's no way of telling—but I'm inclined to think it's one hell of a long way."
In an ordinary group, such an announcement might have brought hysterical outbursts from the women and at least some kind of clamor from the men. Eli's motley guests were either slower of comprehension or else hardened to vicissitudes. McGruder turned a rather ghastly color, murmured "Jees!" and sat down heavily on a packing box. No one else evinced more than bewilderment.
"So what?" queried Sally Camino. "Where are we going and how do we get back? Whose bright idea was this anyway?"
"Nobody's," Marlin informed her. "Eli left the forcefield in operation and accidentally pushed the starting lever last night. Since nothing happened, it never occurred to him to swing it back. The explanation seems to be that when enough power had accumulated, the anti-gravity polarization occurred, and we parted company with Mother Earth."
Link greeted this with a snicker.
"I was just thinkin'," he explained when the others focused puzzled eyes upon him, "what a su'prise that sheriff an' his dep'ties is gonna have when they find the old mud-ball gone this mornin'. Maybe some of 'em was on guard when it whooshed up into the sky afore their eyes."
No one laughed.
"No use kidding ourselves," Marlin commented. "We're in a tough predicament. We don't know where the sphere is headed; there's nothing but that hopelessly inadequate periscope to guide it by, and personally, I don't see the ghost of a chance of our landing anywhere. We're just a mote of dust in the void of space."
"It's just like Pearlie said, ain't it dearie?" cackled Maw Barstow unexpectedly. "We are all goin' on a long journey. Pearlie never makes a mistake."
"Oh, I don't know!" retorted DuChane, slyly. "I could cite an instance. Or maybe it's just faulty arithmetic. There were to be four and four, not three and five—at least 'that's the way I heard it.'"
"And that's all you know, smarty," chuckled Maw.
Sally winked at the older woman, while Marlin controlled his features with an effort.
"Ask her when we're gonna land—and where at?" suggested Link, peering hopefully.
"Pearlie will tell us everything in her own good time," retorted Maw, grandly. "Won't you darlin'? Don't you want to tell us where we're goin'?"
The girl smiled sweetly, and uttered the first words Marlin had heard from her lips.
"There are so many stones."
McGruder laughed hoarsely. Maw checked him with a ferocious look. "Go on, dearie," she urged. "Tell us more?"
The girl stared upward, as if visioning something in the distance. Her words slurred together; she seemed only half aware of speaking them.
"The world is a stone. There are many stones. So many lonely stones."
Marlin again experienced the uncanny sense of chills spiraling up his back—for no reason that he could comprehend. He looked uncertainly from one face to another. All were staring at the Sybil of the strange voyage.
Maw spoke with vague conviction. "That means something, and don't you mistake it. We'll have to figger it out. Pearlie don't always talk in plain words fer just ever'body to understand."
From behind the huge bank of coils, Elias Thornboldt emerged. He glowered in annoyance.
"Go away!" he ordered. "None of you are permitted in this room." He looked them over with sudden awareness and spoke bitterly. "What a crew for the pioneer flight into space! Instead of a distinguished gathering of world-famous scientists and statesmen, what do I have? Criminals! Go! Out of my sight!"
As they straggled out, DuChane observed with a show of resentment: "We might remind him that if it wasn't for a device rigged up by some of his despised crew, he wouldn't even know his contraption was off the ground."
Burning questions raced through Marlin's mind, but he frankly doubted the scientist's ability to answer them. A genius in his line Thornboldt might be; nevertheless, he was singularly impractical in other directions. One of Marlin's questions related to the persistence of almost normal gravity within the sphere. The explanation, DuChane suggested, must lie in the repulsion plates. While one surface exercised this force, the opposite surface compensated for it by exercising attraction. Though he tentatively accepted this theory for want of a better, Marlin was dissatisfied with it.
Another question related to the direction of their flight. Were they speeding toward or away from the sun? Was there danger of crashing into some planet, moon, or meteoric body, and if so could they avoid such a fate? Observations through the periscope might presently solve the question of direction. Possibly Eli had instruments which would help.
The days that followed settled down to a dull, monotonous routine. There was nothing—almost literally nothing—to do but eat, sleep, and chafe at the helplessness of their position.
Lacking any measurement of time in the uniform semi-gloom of the sphere, they established an arbitrary day of twenty-four hours. They slept and ate in accustomed routine and kept track of the days of the week.
The initial feeling that something must be done—and done immediately—toward getting out of the predicament, gradually gave way to a sense of hopeless resignation. When they goaded Eli with the necessity for action, he flew into violent rages. They realized at length that he was as much at a loss as any of the party.
How could they guide their course, when the limited observations possible through the periscope scarcely told them whether they were traveling toward the sun or away from it? They might, indeed, be hanging inert in space. Marlin contended that they were moving away from the sun.
"It's a cinch we started in that direction, since our ascent took place at night, when the sun was on the opposite side of the earth."
"If that's correct," growled DuChane, "it means that instead of roasting to death, we're doomed to perish of cold, when this hunk of dough gets so far away that there aren't any more of the sun's rays for it to absorb."
"We'll be dead of starvation long before that," Marlin added moodily.
The store of provisions seemed enormous at first glance. Now, faced by stern questions of survival, they calculated that it would actually last them not more than five months, and a careful rationing was instituted.
The water tanks would supply them for a period somewhat longer. Bathing and washing were restricted but not altogether denied, for the equipment included an efficient settling tank as well as an electric incinerator and an air-purifying system that was a credit to Eli's foresight.
"Evidently we'll starve to death before we have a chance to perish of thirst," was DuChane's comforting observation. "Unless the goo of our outside shell proves to be edible. It seems to have about every other property we could ask. Storage battery, heat absorber and distributor, healing agent, and waste converter."
He referred to their discovery that the waste products discharged through locks were seemingly absorbed by the clay-like outer coating. "I believe it digests the stuff. Remember how the pit absorbed those birds and small animals that became imbedded in it?" reminded DuChane. "I sometimes feel as if—"
"As if what?" demanded Marlin, looking at him curiously.
"Nothing. I couldn't put it into words if I tried."
Curiosity centered for a while upon the outlaw, who was making a slow recovery. She—for after a few days her sex had become general knowledge—kept moodily to herself, having little to do with the other women and regarding the men with suspicion.
She gave her real name as Norma Hegstrom. DuChane, by persistent questioning, elicited the additional fact that she had escaped from some institution—possibly a school of correction—and adopted her masquerade on coming West in order to elude the search.
"The way I've got it figured out," he confided to Sally and Marlin, as they sat listlessly on the platform under the periscope, "in order to make good in her boy's disguise and to offset her underlying feminine appearance, she had to act tougher than any of the roughnecks she was thrown with. So, by degrees, she was drawn into the career of an outlaw.
"You'd almost think," he added reflectively, "that Earth spewed out this gang because we're a bunch of what the sociologists call unassimilable elements."
"What do you mean by that?" snapped Sally.
"With all respect to those present, I suppose we could be spared about as well as any you could mention. Nobody here seems to have any home ties. There's no one back on Earth whose life will be affected by our departure. We haven't contributed anything constructive to society—in fact, on the average, we've been just general nuisances."
Marlin looked at him curiously. "You're implying—"
"I'm not implying a thing," DuChane evaded. He twisted around and picked up a jagged disc of metal. "We've got more serious problems to face. Recognize this?"
"It's the piece Slinky cut out of the opening with the blowtorch."
"Ever look at it?"
Marlin studied the other's face under the swinging shadows. Then he took the metal disc and peered at it closely.
Sally glanced from one serious face to the other. "Well," she demanded, "what's it all about?"
Without a word, Marlin passed her the fragment.
"Link said the blowtorch cut through it like butter," DuChane remarked grimly. "We've noticed how the clay covering digests waste material—tin cans included."
Sally turned the piece over curiously, ran her fingers over the serrated surface, held it up to the light.
"So that's all there is between us and—" She hesitated. "Why it's half eaten through in places—like something rusted. Is it my imagination, or can you see through it?"
"Imagination," assured Marlin. He took the fragment and held it before his eyes. "No, by thunder! A couple of pinpoint holes have been eaten clear through it."
After a moment, Sally slowly rose.
"No use saying anything to the others," Marlin suggested, noting the listless drag of her bare feet as she started toward the ladder.
She glanced over her shoulder disdainfully.
"What do you take me for?"
But the secret was not long in becoming general property. Len McGruder, who seemed to prefer devious and furtive ways of accomplishing even obvious things, must have been listening from one of many possible hiding places, or at least observing from a distance, for he produced the steel fragment at the next mealtime gathering.
"What's this about the old ball goin' to pieces?" he demanded. "What're you tryin' to put over?"
Marlin eyed him with distaste. "As far as you are concerned," he said slowly, "nothing. There's only one reason why I denied myself the pleasure of letting you know the fate in store for you—and that's because I knew you were so yellow you'd spill it and frighten the rest."
"Yellow, eh!" McGruder jumped to his feet in a rage. He appealed to the group. "What do you think of this bird—and a couple of others I could mention—" he glanced meaningly at DuChane and Sally—"gettin' their heads together to figger out a way of savin' theirselves while the rest of us is left to rot in this stinkin' blob of mud? How's that for yellow?"
DuChane laughed mirthlessly.
"If there's any comfort in the knowledge," he said, "there'll be no escape for any of us. The mud coating has a faculty of digesting every inert substance it contacts. Very convenient for taking care of our waste products—but unfortunate because it applies also to our habitation."
"You mean it's gonna eat through the shell?" demanded Link, his weasel eyes glittering.
Marlin shrugged.
"But we gotta do something! Does Eli know?"
The slinky one peered around the table, finding no reassurance in any of the blank faces. He gulped and subsided.
Later, he and McGruder constituted themselves a delegation to lay the problem before the scientist. Eli had practically barricaded himself in the control room. At his bellowed command meals were brought to him at irregular intervals by Maw Barstow. He rarely appeared outside of his retreat, except when he ventured forth briefly for a peep through the periscope.
"What'd he say?" demanded DuChane, when the two returned from their self-imposed mission.
"None o' your business!" McGruder snarled.
"The old coot don't seem to get it," complained Link. "All he done was to rant about how they gypped him when they sold him the steel."
The pale-featured outlaw girl, Norma, taking a listless turn along the ramp in a robe provided from Maw Barstow's meager store, was an inadvertent listener to this exchange. She seemed inclined to brush by, but suddenly her deep-set eyes glowed with fire.
"It's a joke!" she contributed unexpectedly. "You save me from the law, doctor up my carcass—and for what?"
"Does seem rather futile," agreed Marlin, sympathetically. He reflected that as her hair grew longer she was becoming a great deal more feminine in appearance. The wound in her neck was by now little more than a scar.
Under his scrutiny, her lips tightened and she abruptly walked away.
DuChane's eyes followed until she disappeared behind the curtain which served as a doorway for her sleeping compartment.
"Y'know," he volunteered, "there's something about that kid I could almost tumble for."
"Cut it out!" was Marlin's sharp response.
"What do you mean?"
Marlin did not answer. He was, in fact, puzzled to know why he had spoken.
"I'll tell you what you mean!" DuChane said heatedly. "You've got your eyes on this dame, same as you've had 'em on Sally. Anything that looks like competition gets your nanny. Well, Marlin, I'm serving notice that where women are concerned I do my own picking. The other man's claim-stakes mean nothing to me."
"That's the talk!" approved McGruder. "What the hell! There's enough to go around, not countin' old Eli, and we don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. I got my eye on that little—"
"Shut up!" blazed Marlin.
He eyed the ex-detective with burning distaste.
He could have reminded them that he was in a position to enforce his edicts, being in possession of the only weapon. They knew this, however, and it was already a source of mounting antagonism.
What had caused him to bristle at signs of interest toward the feminine portion of the party? It wasn't that he wanted any of them for himself, though he sensed a challenge in Sally's eyes and acknowledged that she was desirable in her way. Norma, too, gave promise of becoming attractive as she regained her vitality. But his attitude was inspired by something deeper.
Perhaps it was an instinctive prescience that man-woman rivalry would inevitably bring trouble. This and a very special feeling that Pearl must be protected in her childlike innocence. The covetous looks with which McGruder regarded her were unmistakable. The very thought of them rankled in Marlin like a sacrilege. Maw Barstow was an efficient watchdog, but the shady detective would stop at nothing he thought he could get away with.
From this time, DuChane mockingly defied Marlin's half-expressed edict, by ostentatiously "making a play" for both Sally and Norma. His eyes taunted Marlin to do something about it. And Marlin, knowing that he had no reasonable excuse for interfering, could only chafe inwardly and pretend to have no interest in the matter.
The result was that he withdrew more and more into himself, holding aloof from the others, becoming increasingly morose and distant.
Seemingly least imaginative of them all, it was odd that Link should be the first to crack under the strain.
From the time of the disclosure that their hull was slowly corroding under the chemical action of the clay, he had appeared frightened and morose. Once or twice, as Marlin approached him on isolated portions of the superstructure, he slunk away in a peculiar manner. One day—for they still called their alternation of sleeping and waking periods a "day"—he failed to show up for meals.
When he did not appear the second day, the group aroused from its apathetic indifference sufficiently to institute a search.
He was crouching behind some packing boxes in the store room, and fled with wild shrieks on being discovered.
He managed to hide himself again, and the search was dropped. Some hours later they discovered him furtively clamboring among the girders overhead.
From this time on, the girders became his abode. His weasel face, nearly hidden by the long growth of hair, peered down at them from odd angles with alert suspicion. He resembled an unkempt monkey clad in tattered shirt and trousers. If they attempted to approach or tried to lure him down, he shrieked and chattered at them, and retreated to more precarious heights, until they desisted, fearful of making him fall.
"Hunger'll bring him down," DuChane said. And it did. During one of the sleep periods, he raided the store room and created such havoc that Maw Barstow formed a habit of leaving his ration of food and water on a box in plain sight.
When all were apparently asleep, he would stealthily slip down and snatch the food, wolfing it like a wild creature, ready to scamper for safety at the slightest noise.
Watching from concealment, Marlin saw him do this a couple of times, but made no effort to trap him.
And for Marlin, there were more important concerns. Isolated from the rest, he sat for hours at a time before the periscope, trying to arrive at some theory regarding their position in space.
One thing was established by now. The sphere had developed a lazy rotation of its own, presenting its two hemispheres alternately to the sun and giving the surface on which the periscope projected a "day" of about five hours.
Even without visual observation, the shifting heat areas within the globe would have led to the same conclusion. The clay-like coating seemed to have the property of diffusing the sun's rays throughout its mass. Possibly it would have been burned to a crisp on one side without such rotation. The side which was receiving the direct rays radiated a gentle heat through the walls, and this area of radiation traveled slowly around the circumference.
To Marlin, this rotation seemed to deny the activity of the anti-gravity plates, yet the maintenance of gravity indicated that at least they retained some of their function. To account for this seeming paradox and others, he evolved a set of theories. Some he was able to verify.
From the first, he had found it difficult to swallow DuChane's surmise that gravity was maintained within the sphere through some mysterious reaction from the obverse surfaces of the repulsion plates. To satisfy his doubts, he wormed his way through a narrow opening between the hull and girders supporting the superstructure, until he reached the edge of a segmented bank of repulsion plates.
He found them heavily insulated on the upper side, as if to prevent the force from exerting its full strength in that direction. By lying in a cramped position, he was able to extend an arm through a narrow crevice and to touch the under side of the plates.
His exploring fingers contacted a fragment of some sort—a pebble or hardened lump of clay. Detaching it from the surface, he fingered it exploringly. When his fingers relaxed, the lump escaped and instantly snapped back to the plate, as if held by a taut rubber band. He recovered the fragment and tried the same thing experimentally, with the same result.
There was no mistake. Objects released below the anti-gravity plates dropped toward them, just as did objects released from above. If anything, the attraction of the underside was stronger. In point of fact, the supposed anti-gravity plates were gravity plates.
Convinced of something he had vaguely suspected, Marlin retired to his usual vantage point—the observation scaffold—to think matters out.
He was vaguely disturbed when Sally clambered up the ladder and joined him.
"You're up to something?" she accused. "Tell Sally what it's all about."
"I'd only bore you."
"What's the difference? I'm bored anyway."
She sat beside him on the edge of the platform, bare feet protruding from her threadbare slacks. Marlin was quite certain that she wouldn't resist if he put his arm around her, but he squelched any such impulse. Too many times he had seen DuChane's arm occupying that position.
"All right," he observed. "You asked for it." He told her what he had discovered.
"Well," she asked, "what of it?"
"This is the way I'd explain it. I think the criticism of Thornboldt's principle, advanced by orthodox scientists, was probably justified. Such an enormous application of energy would be needed to effect the stress required for anti-gravity polarization, that it was a practical impossibility. Yet somehow this enormous power was generated for the brief moment which marked the plunge of our vessel into outer space."
"I think we ought to christen the old ball," she remarked irrelevantly. "How about calling it what Bart suggested—the Thornboldt?"
"I suppose the inventor is entitled to some credit," Marlin agreed absently. "But to figure this out: Let's assume a generator or storage battery capable of delivering current of one ampere strength for a hundred hours. Suppose it should release the same amount of current within a single hour. The strength of the current would obviously be multiplied a hundred times, wouldn't it? Suppose the same current were released in a single minute. It would be multiplied six thousand times. Suppose it were released in a second, what would be its strength?"
"I'm no good at figures," replied Sally, fidgeting.
"Thirty-six thousand amperes!" Marlin told her impressively. "That's a lot of stepping up. Eli claims his batteries are capable of supplying current for several months, and while I don't know their capacity, it must be considerable. Suppose most of this potential current was drained off by the shell of our vessel, acting like a Leyden jar or accumulator, and then released in one titanic discharge. Don't you see? This must have accomplished the near-impossible—the polarization of the repulsion plates, resulting in the anti-gravity reaction."
"You sure deal out jawbreakers when you get started," Sally shrugged.
"All right," he went on imperturbably. "The intense discharge probably lasted only a moment—but that was sufficient. It shot our sphere away from the earth as if it had been fired from a cannon—sent it with an initial momentum which took us far beyond Earth's attraction and must still be continuing undiminished in the vacuum of space."
Sally yawned and rose. "What you need is a classroom," she said. "I'll pass the word along in case any of the rest feel the need of brushing up on their education."
Her departure scarcely disturbed Marlin's train of thought. His theory, of course, gave birth to other perplexing problems. How account for the fact that neither sphere nor passengers were crushed by the enormous acceleration?
He had an answer for that one.
Logically, he reasoned, they owed their salvation to the fact that they, too, were subject to the momentary repulsion of the activated plates. Repulsion hurled them violently away—acceleration pressed them back. The two forces practically cancelled out. Possibly the insulation on the upper surfaces of the plates gave acceleration a slight edge, causing the crushing sensation Marlin had felt at the onset of their flight.
But the anti-gravity force was no longer in effect—probably had lasted not more than a few seconds. What had caused the plates to become imbued with an opposite force—an attractive force akin to gravity?
To answer this, Marlin found himself seeking analogies in the realm of electrical phenomena.
A magnet, he reflected, is a bar of iron in which the movements of the molecules are so organized as to keep the lines of their magnetic axis parallel—all the molecular north poles pointing toward the same end of the bar. It is accomplished by placing the bar in a larger magnetic field, and it is made permanent by tempering—which fixes the molecules in permanent alignment.
Thornboldt's atomic polarization principle must be similar. Under terrific stress, the molecules of the repulsion plates, and their constituent atoms, were polarized in such a way that they exercised the force of repulsion. But when the stress was released, there would be no tempering to maintain the molecular set. They would—in a manner of speaking—snap back, like rubber bands released from tension, not quite to their original condition, but to a condition tending toward the opposite of that occasioned by the stress.
The attractive property now inherent in the plates, in other words, was a reaction from the terrific stress of their momentary anti-gravity polarization.
It was notable that there had been no interruption of the electrical power which supplied current for cooking and waste incineration, operated the air-purifying apparatus and refrigeration plant, and kept their lighting system in force. Evidently, Marlin decided, the storage batteries—if they had been drained of their charges prior to the impulse which hurled them into space—must have recovered, as batteries do when given a rest. He inclined also to the opinion that the sphere itself generated electricity through the expansion and contraction of the outer coating as it slowly revolved.
Sally appeared to avoid him after this encounter—or so Marlin imagined. He had a notion that she had been piqued by DuChane's pursuit of Norma, and wanted to show the man a thing or two by giving Marlin an opportunity to make love to her. His failure to rise to the bait had not endeared him to her.
He told himself that he did not care—but, in truth, he felt his isolation. It was comforting even to have Pearl creep up to the periscope ledge beside him, as she did at rare intervals. He fell into the habit of talking to her, as a relief from the close-mouthed silence that had grown upon him. It was better, at any rate, than talking to himself, and helped him to orient his ideas.
"Sometimes, Pearl," he confided, "I have a feeling that you sense what I'm trying to say better than I understand it myself. It's cockeyed—but a fellow develops queer fancies in a weird situation like this."
She smiled amiably.
"I even find myself assuming that you know what's behind all this. I suppose it's your air of calm assurance—or the lucky way you seemed to hit things back there on Earth. And here I go, with another screwy idea—that there is something behind it all."
He applied his eye to the periscope. It was on the night side, and only an impenetrable expanse of blackness, studded with bright, unblinking points of light, rewarded his gaze. Relaxing, he faced the girl.
"Reason tells me that we're the victims of a freakish accident. Yet I find myself assuming—"
He checked the sentence, glancing around self-consciously for possible eavesdroppers. With a dreamy expression Pearl was looking at—or beyond him.
"It's a comfort to talk to you," he confessed. "You make it easier to express the inexpressible. What was I saying? Oh, yes."
He frowned. "I get to fancying sometimes that the crew of us were brought together, herded into this incredible monstrosity, and then spewed forth in accordance with some age-old plan. It's almost as if the little world we're in had a life of its own and had been sent forth with the blessings of the parent Earth to work out its own destiny. What do you think, Pearl? In your infinite wisdom—or simplicity—tell me. At least itcouldbe true."
The girl's lips parted. "It could be true," she echoed.
He shrugged. Often you could get a response from her by making an emphatic effort, but it was usually like this—some amiable repetition of the words you put in her mouth.
"All right," he retorted, as if she had contradicted him, "say that I'm screwy! But tell me—what do we know about other possible states of consciousness? We think we understand human consciousness—because we're experiencing it. We credit animals with consciousness because they act in a limited way like humans. But how do we know there aren't other phases of consciousness? How do we know that a tree isn't a conscious entity, or a rock, or this globe—or the Earth? How do we know?"
"How do we know?" parroted the girl. She smiled up at his tense features, as if trying to please him. Beyond her, in the shadowy obscurity of the girders, he caught a glimpse of Link's monkey-like face peering furtively down at them.
He broke off abruptly. "You're a bad influence, Pearl. You encourage a fellow to voice crazy ideas. First thing I know, I'll be swinging around on girders myself."
McGruder, who as a rule evinced little interest in matters beyond eating, sleeping, and following the feminine members of the party with pig-like, calculating eyes, was the one who made the discovery.
He had climbed to the observation scaffold and peeped idly through the periscope. His yell of dismay reverberated through the interior of the vessel.
"We're gonna hit the moon!" he shouted, as the others scrambled into view.
Marlin gained the platform. "What's the idea!" he demanded sharply. "We aren't within a million miles of the moon."
McGruder gulped, gesturing toward the periscope.
Marlin remained glued to the instrument until DuChane cut in roughly: "Give someone else a chance. What's out there?"
Marlin relinquished his post. His voice sounded unnaturally strained. "See for yourself."
It did look like a shrunken version of the old familiar moon—a gleaming disc shining brilliantly against the inky blackness of space.
"We're approaching a solar body of some sort," Marlin told the others, who had struggled up to the platform. His eyes inadvertently sought Pearl. "Maybe this is the answer to—" He broke off.
DuChane straightened from the eyepiece.
"Two to one it means a crackup," he commented. "Unless Eli knows how to guide this shebang—and I don't believe he does."
Nevertheless, they reported the approaching crisis to the inventor. Eli had grown more eccentric as the voyage continued. His hair and beard were wilder; he talked incoherently.
When he had assured himself that they were actually approaching a stellar body, he displayed a great deal of energy, rushing from periscope to control room and back again; but they had no way of knowing the result of this activity, and received scant satisfaction from his impatient responses to questions.
"My private opinion," Marlin observed, later, "is that his instruments have no more control over this vessel than if we'd left them in that pit back on Earth. All connections must have burned out in that incredible burst of power that hurled us into space."
But at least, Eli made a great show of adjusting his switches and levers. Whether he planned to effect a landing or was trying to avoid the approaching body, was a secret locked in his own dome-like head.
In time this new menace became common-place and life lapsed into its dull routine, with Marlin alone spending a great deal of time observing their progress toward the stellar body. On one occasion, Pearl paid him one of her infrequent visits.
He looked up as the girl climbed from the ladder.
"Better run along," he said abruptly. "It's considered bad medicine for you to chin with me."
She stopped beside him and cocked her head on one side, for all the world like a bird listening for a worm.
"It is so lonely," she said yearningly.
"You—lonely?" he repeated in surprise. "Didn't know you ever felt that way."
With a suggestion of impatience, she touched the bulging crust of clay surrounding the original entrance-hole.
"So lonely," she insisted. "Please let it out."
Not quite sure of her meaning, he picked up a crowbar and tapped the hardened crust. This seemed to be what she desired, for she stood aside expectantly. Cracking the surface, he dislodged a section and allowed the gummy interior substance to flow out.
The girl smiled her pleasure, then cupped both hands over the soft mass, working them below the surface almost lovingly.
"So lonely," she murmured, in a crooning voice.
When she withdrew her hands, smeared with the gummy exudation, she held a small lump of some kind in her palms. As she rubbed the clay away, Marlin saw with a start that it was a dead field mouse.
This was one of the numerous creatures that had been enmeshed in the sticky clay, he realized. But how had the girl known it was there—close to the surface at this point?
"Better throw it into the incinerator," he advised gently. "Nasty thing. Dead."
Shrinking from his outstretched hand, she cuddled the mire-covered little body to her breast and almost furtively escaped down the ladder.
She had cleaned the bedraggled little corpse and was still cuddling it happily, when Marlin descended to obtain his share of the meager rations. He was struck by the madonna-like expression of the girl's features. Wonderful—the mother instinct—he reflected. Wonderful, yet sometimes pitiful.
DuChane stared as he took his packing-box seat at the table. "Where'd the kid get that?"
"Never you mind," bristled Maw. "She can keep it if she wants to. What harm's it doing, I'd like to know?"
DuChane sniffed the air, as if in anticipation. "About this time tomorrow—if there is such a thing—you'll need no urging. If there's any stink more potent than an over-ripe rodent, I'd hate to find out about it."
"How does it happen," demanded Sally, "that the stuff out there didn't act the way it does when we throw things away?"
"That's a thought!" DuChane agreed. "Whatever we throw away, the shell digests—tin cans, refuse, scraps. But this—" He shrugged. "Just one of those freakish accidents, I suppose."
The strange aftermath was that when they gathered for another meal, after the usual sleep period, the mouse was standing on its tiny hind legs, daintily nibbling crumbs from Pearl's hand.
"This thing gets more uncanny," DuChane growled. "We were wondering how the stuff came to leave the creature intact. Now we find that it knows the difference between inert objects and those potentially alive. Not only that, but it seems to know how to keep the creatures in suspended animation."
"You talk as if the ship was something alive," observed Sally sharply.
"It's quite possible," Marlin suggested, "to conceive of chemicals in the clay which attack dead tissue, but to which live cells are resistant."
"Intelligent chemicals! That's a hot one!" retorted the girl.
Marlin eyed her calmly. "It's not so farfetched. I can name one chemical right off the bat—just plain water. Put dead vegetation in a damp spot and it decays. Live vegetation draws nourishment and thrives under the same condition."
McGruder eyed with distaste the slender rations set out before him, then glanced up longingly at the enclosing sphere.
"There must be a mess of them dead animals out in that clay. I wouldn't mind havin' a little fresh meat, even if it was only a chipmunk."
The suggestion was received apathetically, but Marlin found himself reflecting that this might offer a not impossible solution of their food problem—presuming that they survived the dwindling stock of canned provisions.
For the most part, the vessel had proceeded without producing any sense of motion. A violent shift would have dislodged everything loose in the shell—the scaffolding, ladders, the temporarily secured electric lights—and yet there had been nothing of the sort. Once in a while, they felt a trembling jar. This probably was caused by the impact of a meteorite. But thus far, no such bodies had pierced the heavy insulation of resistant clay.
There was now, however, quite definite indication that they were moving in space. Observations taken at intervals showed that the "moon" was coming closer. Presently, the irregularities on the edge of the disc were apparent to the eye, and shadowy configurations on its rocky surface could be discerned.
After some days, Marlin developed a new suspicion.
He checked his observations carefully. There was no doubt about it. They were no longer approaching the mass but were drifting in an orbit around it—either that, or it was rotating around the sphere. And about this time he made a further discovery. A second body had appeared in the heavens—and presently there was a third.
"There's only one explanation," he reported tersely at a mealtime gathering. "We're in the asteroid belt."
DuChane alone seemed to know what this meant.
"Dave seems to be jumping at conclusions, but assuming that he's right, we've swung out beyond the orbit of Mars—somewhere between it and Jupiter. There's a region of small planets, masses of rock, ranging up to four or five hundred miles in diameter. Supposed to be fragments of a planet that broke up somehow."
"Or didn't quite jell in the making," corrected Marlin. "I believe that's the modern scientific view. More than nine hundred of them have been charted though I've no doubt there must be innumerable smaller fragments."
"What's the chance of our gettin' through without bein' hit?" demanded McGruder.
"How should I know? As a matter of fact, I don't think we're on our way through. Looks as if we've established an orbit—at least around that big one."
"Anything we can do about it?"
Marlin regarded him impersonally.
"Nothing," he said. "Exactly nothing. We've no more control over our fate at present than we've had since we started."
Sally gave a mirthless laugh. "That makes it swell! All we've got to do is wait—and wait—and see what this old ball intends to do with us."
Pearl volunteered a remark which, in its unexpectedness, caused them all to look at her.
"So many stones," she breathed. "Lonely stones."
DuChane leaped to his feet.
"The girl knew!" he shouted. "She knew! We thought she was talking gibberish, but she was telling us where we'd wind up. Stones! Lonely stones! Asteroids!"
"Of course Pearl knows!" crowed Maw Barstow. "Didn't I tell you?"
Norma rarely took part in their discussions. She spoke now with bitter conviction. A flush of intensity lighted her wan features.
"It was all intended! I could feel it when I lay there in my stupor—just as if I was a part of it and knew where we were going and why. It's a soulless thing! We don't mean anything to it—not any more than grubs. This is only the beginning—it's going to be more and more terrible. We'll be ground to fragments—"
She closed her lips and stared, shudderingly, as if into space.
McGruder eyed her with resentment. "It's a lot of hogwash," he asserted with hollow confidence.
The nine days' wonder of it gradually became common-place to the rest, but Marlin spent a greater share of his waking time at the observation post. The three moons were joined by more. There were presently a number of gleaming bodies revolving around the sphere, the count increasing almost at every revolution. At one time, Marlin counted eighteen of fairly good size and no doubt several were out of range of the periscope.
The strangeness of it was slowly borne upon him.
"Why should these planetoids be revolving around us?" he questioned. "They're reputed to have eccentric orbits, but we seem to have barged in on a small system revolving around one common center. And the most cockeyed thing of all is that we're apparently that center."
There might be some other explanation, but the reasonable one seemed to be that the vessel was swinging through the vast planetoid belt, "picking up" stellar bodies as it approached them. Each rock concretion drawn into the ever-growing system increased its mass attraction for other bodies, and thus the accumulation grew, like an immense snowball.
Theoretically, there was support for the assumption. The plates within the sphere exercised an attraction which approximated Earth gravity. Normally, the attraction of so small an object in space would have been slight, but thus augmented, it might act as a magnet, drawing much larger bodies out of their natural orbits.
"Still, if that's the case," he reasoned, "they'd keep drawing closer. They'd eventually crush our sphere by the very force of its own gravity."
His mind pictured a churning mass of mountainous and smaller rocks, rolling round and round each other in ever-narrowing orbits, crashing and grinding together, probably generating heat in the process, eventually fusing into a solid mass.
"Nice prospect," he reflected with a shudder. "Where'll we be when that takes place? Somewhere near the center, from all indications."
The prospect revealed through the periscope was awe-inspiring, but increasingly fearsome. For one exciting hour, Marlin watched while two planetoids collided and slowly ground each other to fragments. On another occasion, a huge mass lazily crossed his field of vision so close that he could discern great areas of what looked like ice, mingled with towering spires of rock. He could easily imagine himself looking down on a mountain glacier.
"Why not?" he reflected. "There's no reason why there shouldn't be frozen water in this debris. Presumably the general mass is constituted of the same rock, minerals, and gases as the other planets, including Earth. Some of it could be frozen air—or its constituent gases—considering the absolute zero out there."
He recalled reading the contention of Halbfass that some earth hailstorms originate in outer space. The scientist had produced considerable data in support of his theory that such bombardments may be of stellar origin. There was the case of an iceberg twenty feet in diameter, reported from Dharwar, India, in 1838, and a still earlier case of a block of ice "as big as an elephant" which reputedly fell in the same region during the days of Tippoo Sahib.
Unless Marlin was mistaken there were celestial icebergs among the growing mass of planetary debris circling the sphere.
The picture he had envisioned of the planetoid bodies closing in on the sphere, with its augmented gravitation, had seemed at first fantastic. It was taking on more and more the aspect of grim, threatening reality.
Collisions between bodies in the surrounding space became more frequent as their orbits definitely spiraled inward. Once a fragment drifted so close that it almost seemed to graze the sphere. As Marlin tensed for the seemingly inevitable impact, it passed by. But on its return would it not be materially closer?
That particular fragment did not return. Perhaps it collided with another and was pulverized or deflected from its course. But the sphere might not escape so easily the next time.
Occasionally, his vision would be obscured by what seemed to be a cloud of dust. It was undoubtedly just that—a field of particles from the grinding and colliding of rock masses, settling toward the gravitational pull of the sphere. On another occasion, the obscuring cloud appeared to be sleet—a mass of iceberg fragments, or perhaps more tenuous gas in solidified form.
Since that one shuddering outburst, Norma had seemingly regained her self-control. She appeared only occasionally at meal times, tight-lipped, reserved. Often Marlin saw her standing on a secluded part of the superstructure, wrapped in her moody thoughts. She climbed one day to the observation platform beside him.
"What can you see through that thing?" she asked.
"Take a look," he invited. "It's terrifying, but inspiring too—when you reflect that mortal eyes never looked upon it before."
She studied the awesome prospect for a minute, then drew away, shivering as if with cold.
"Give it to me straight," she demanded. "What's the payoff? Here we are in a thin-shelled bubble floating through a tumble of jagged rocks and icebergs. They're drawing closer all the time, aren't they?"
He temporized. "My biggest worry right now is that the dust fragments, settling down on us, will bury the periscope head. That will be the last of our observations."
"I said give it to me straight," she retorted.
"All right. Your guess is as good as mine. Frankly, it looks like the end. But it looked like the end when we shot off into space. Somehow we've existed up to now." He spoke impersonally, trying to keep the sympathy he felt out of his voice: "Come to think, Norma, I'm puzzled—"
He stopped, but she finished for him.
"You can't understand why a person who's been through what I have should get the willies now. I'm not afraid of something I can fight. I'm not afraid of dying. It's eerie things you can't fight that get me. Hearing that girl Pearl talk gives me the creeps. She calls this a 'little world.' What does she mean?"
Marlin started. He had used the term himself; probably that was how it came to fall from Pearl's lips.
"I know what she means," Norma answered her own question vehemently. "It is a little world. I was a part of it, I tell you, while I lay there between life and death. I sensed things through its consciousness—if you can imagine such a thing. I knew what all of you were doing, just as if you were maggots crawling around inside of me. I had a feeling of what it was bound for—this grinding and crushing and churning in space. And we're no more to it than the mice and bugs that happened to get mired in the sticky clay while it was forming."
Marlin looked at her blankly. Despite her vehemence, she had herself under control—though at the cost of what effort he could only guess. The strange thing was that he himself had been subject to like fancies.
"Natural forces are—rather impersonal," he conceded.
"I hate natural forces! I hate this little world and everybody in it! Why did you help pull me back to life? I never wanted to live. I could have kicked off in a gunfight and had no beef. But here we're helpless like rats in a trap. Why don't we all kill ourselves and get it over with?"
Marlin shrugged. It was pleasanter talking to Pearl. Her unruffled poise almost amounted to an assurance that nothing could happen which particularly mattered.
On her next visit, with Norma's outburst fresh in mind, he reverted to the subject Pearl had once inspired.
"That idea about the world having a consciousness of its own may not be altogether screwy," he told her. "It would explain a lot of things that we take for granted. As an entity, it might very logically take a hand in the involvement of beings in its sphere of influence. Our surface life—the flora and fauna, including man—no doubt play an essential part in its evolution. The Earth entity, with its natural forces—the winds, tides, changes of temperature, volcanic eruptions, and such like—could easily direct the spread of these forms.
"Come to think—that's just what it has been doing, from the dawn of life. The only question is whether it happened by intention. Of course, I'm too much of a reasoning creature to believe such rot."
He stopped, half-awaiting the echoed response, "Such rot," but it was not forthcoming. From a pocket in the girl's soiled dress where she kept her strangely revived pet, a pair of beady eyes looked out at him brightly.
"All right, maybe I shouldn't have said a reasoning creature, but a skeptical creature. After all, it's as unreasonable to disbelieve as to believe—when you have no proof either way. Well, let's assume that you're right."
"Pearlie is right," she assured him.
"H'mm. Maybe so. Well, assuming all this, I suppose the same entity could carry the process further and cause all the activities of so-called civilization. It could stir up the restlessness that sends explorers and colonists to distant parts of the globe. It could inspire persecutions, such as those that drove the Pilgrim fathers across the ocean. It could drive men through greed, lust of conquest—any number of urges. War—perhaps that's Nature's way of purging elements she wants to get rid of, or preparing for some new stage of development. Which brings the topic down to us."
He glanced at her, half expecting a response, but she merely smiled in her vaguely knowing way.
"We all seemed to be free agents," he went on, "but somehow we drifted toward old Eli's shelter—a bunch of misfits that weren't of any particular use in Earth's economy. What financiers not under some strange influence would have invested in Eli's wild theories? And that pit of encrusted mire where the old coot was led to build his sphere. Who knows what substances were brought together by what we call natural forces, and mixed into the right composition to protect us for this dash across space?"
The sphere gave a trembling lurch. Something had brushed its surface, but in his intensity he scarcely noticed.
"There are only two ways of looking at it," he declared, breathing heavily. "Either the whole thing was a freakish combination of accidents, or—it was consciously directed. I'm just sufficiently space-struck to entertain the possibility that it might be conscious purpose. What do you say, Pearl? Accident—or purpose?"
"Or purpose," she assured him dutifully.
He gave a short laugh. "That was hardly fair. I should have phrased it the other way around, knowing your fondness for repeating last words."
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.