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<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> 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. <hr class="tb" /> 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. <hr class="tb" /> 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. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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