of light enveloping everything. A smashing tearing impact. The universe quivering, staggering.
Graham's senses slid into an abyss of soundless blackness—
IV.
A Dead World!
With returning consciousness Graham found himself not greatly hurt; he had been flung to the floor of his cubby. Alma was there. Dead? No, she moved; she opened her eyes.
"Graham—"
He knelt over her; raised her head. In a moment she was recovered.
"What happened, Graham? What was it?"
In the blur of those next minutes Graham moved about his room. Then he roved the spider bridges; went down one of the dangling ladders a distance. What had happened was all to obvious.
Beneath his cubby the Comet lay wrecked and broken. From the ladder he stared down at it. The forward dome-peak was bashed in. Everything movable on the ship had been hurled into a strewn litter. The side decks, as they showed from where Graham stood, were piled at the forward ends with hurled deck chairs. And bodies were there. Lying motionless—stiffened in death—
The emergency glassite bulkheads were closed. Graham drew a deep breath; he was shuddering. There was air here in this upper dome section. The automatic bulkhead slides had closed and were holding it. But, save for this upper network of ladders and bridges, Graham's cubby and the nearby Captain's rooms, the ship was devoid of air! A dead ship. It lay now, silent—gruesome—
Graham stood listening to it. None of the mechanisms were operating. A derelict in space, the doomed Comet hung poised. A little broken world, floating in the grip of all the myriad balanced forces of the universe.
The ship's interior air-pressure had been maintained at some fifteen or sixteen pounds to the square inch. The bow dome had cracked. In a moment from every corner of the vessel, the air had rushed out into the vacuum of space—the cold had rushed in to fill everything. The bodies down there on the deck not mangled; suffocated, lying there stricken when the air left them—frozen into horrible positions—
And Graham knew that all over the ship it was the same. In every public room, in the staterooms, the mechanism rooms—death everywhere. With life only up here in the center dome. Of all the ship's passengers and crew, only he and Alma remained alive.
He went back and told her. And she stared at him. The last thing which had been in both their thoughts was a great desire to be alone together. Now, by strange fate, they were alone. The only inhabitants of this broken little world, drifting in the immensity of space.
Graham made his calculations. The air renewers were not operating. But the air here would last them for a week or more. Though there was no food and no water here he was hopeful. One may live weeks without food, and days without water.
"I can summon help," he told the white-faced girl. "There will be a patrol-ship somewhere between here and Mars. Or I can raise Ferrok-Shahn—I had them a few hours ago with the radio. In two days at the most, help will come to us."
She watched him while in the starlit little cubby, with the silent dead ship beneath them, he sat at his call-key. But the radio would not operate!
They were marooned, alone—no, not quite alone. Outside the cubby doorway they heard a sound. A cry—or a groan. Then footsteps. From beyond the Captain's quarters, along the catwalk bridge, the figure of Kol the Martian came staggering. He too had escaped death. There were three of them up here to share this air, to struggle for their lives together.
He staggered into Graham's cubby. His face was green-grey with fear. He was uninjured. But he knew as well as Graham, their situation, and the terror of impending death was on him.
"Can you get help, Trent? The radio—"
"It isn't working."
"Then the helio-senders—"
"I was just getting ready to try them."
Kol was tremblingly eager to help. "It must work, Trent. It must! Marooned here! To die, slowly day by day suffocating here—Good God—"
Alma suddenly laughed. It was quavering, half hysterical. Graham touched her.
"Quiet, Alma. Don't let yourself start—like that. We're all right. I'll raise some patrol ship."
"I—I just thought—the Captain's midnight lunch! A glass of milk and those sandwiches. And a carafe of water. We have that much anyway."
The helio was working! For an hour Graham sat over the humming, whirling little mirrors, sending his amplified oscillating lightbeam into the darkness of space.
Kol was so humble. So pathetically eager "It must—it must bring help, Trent." He bent over the operator hardly aware of Alma's existence.
"Do your best, Trent. I am a rich man. Riches are yours if you save me."
The instinct for life comes first. But the man's cowardice after his former proud attitude was nauseating.
"Let go of me," Graham said irritably. "If you want to help, let me alone. Keep your mouth shut." He shook off the Martian's clutch. "Sit over there out of the way." This was no time for the regard of social positions. Danger strips us down to elementals.
Kol moved aside like a frightened child— The helio flashed the call of distress over and over again. Would someone answer it?
