Every wire had been cut into many pieces.
Every tube had been destroyed.
The plates of every condenser were twisted, strangely corroded.
But the silent horror was shrieking at him from what lay on the floor.
It had been a man.
There were scattered garments.
A little pile of gray, ash-like dust shimmered with pale, unpleasant colors. He saw dark stains, where some liquid had run.
The Cometeers had been here before him.
He shut the door upon the thing within the room, and went shakily back down to the rocket field.
Jay Kalam and Giles Habibula were still standing beneath the sealed entrance valve; he told the commander in a hushed voice what he had found, and asked Giles Habibula:
“You can’t open it?”
“Ah, lad!”
Sadly, the old man shook his head.
“Have you no faith in my precious genius?
I could have opened it in a moment, lad— but I waited for you to come back.
Old Giles is too old and feeble, lad, to be recklessly loosing upon himself such frightful evil as is locked within the ship—”
He touched the lock again, and humming motors lowered the valve.
Side by side, Bob Star and Jay Kalam mounted it.
On the deck within they found crumpled garments, piled with iridescent ash, and darkly stained where some strange fluid had run.
Jay Kalam shrank back, shivering.
“Giles,” he whispered hoarsely, “see if the geodynes are ruined.”
“But come with me,” the old man begged.
“Old Giles is no mortal fool, to go blundering off alone—”
Another heap of weirdly shining ash stopped them at the door of the power room.
Giles Habibula peered with apprehensive eyes at the gleaming generators, and sorrowfully shook his head.
“Murdered!” he wheezed.
“Destroyed, like our own.
This ship is as useless as the Halcyon Bird!”
“The ship must have been about to depart, when it happened,” Jay Kalam murmured thoughtfully.
“The valves were closed, the crew at their places.
I suppose the owners of the place were trying to escape.
But they must have left clues for us—”
His slender hands had clenched, as if with sudden agony.
A dark pain tightened his face.
“That’s all that’s left for us to do,” he added bitterly.
“To play detective!
For we’re marooned here, without any way to depart or to call for aid. There’s nothing else we can do—”
12 Out of the Wall
For a time they stood in silence, upon the silent deck of the dead ship.
Beside them lay the gray, glowing heap of something that once had been a man.
A black despair had chained them to it, until Jay Kalam abruptly lifted his shoulders.
“The only thing I see,” he said, “is to explore the asteroid, and learn as much as we can about the men who lived here.
Perhaps we can uncover some resource.
Perhaps there’s a reserve of rocket fuel, or even a new set of geodynes.
We can begin with a search of this ship.
There may be documents—”
They found eleven more piles of glowing dust, where men had died.
Two were on the small bridge.
Bob Star left them, to examine the log.
The positions entered in it told that the ship had made many voyages to Pluto, the equatorial colonies of Neptune, and certain of the smaller asteroids.