I felt a touch on my arm. A bloated helmet visor was thrust near my own. I saw Snap's face peering at me.
"Grantline thinks we should return to the Planetara. Might find some of them alive."
Grantline touched me. "It's only humanity."
"Yes," I said.
We went back. Some ten of us—a line of grotesque figures bounding with slow, easy strides over the jagged, rock-strewn plain. Our lights danced before us.
The Planetara came at last into view. My ship. Again that pang swept me as I saw her. This, her last resting place. She lay here in her open tomb, shattered, broken, unbreathing. The lights on her were extinguished. The Erentz system had ceased to pulse—the heart of the dying ship, for a while beating faintly, but now at rest.
We left the two girls with some of Grantline's men at the admission port. Snap, Grantline and I, with three others, went inside. There still seemed to be air, but not enough so that we dared remove our helmets.
It was dark inside the wrecked ship. The corridors were black; the hull control-rooms were dimly illumined with Earth-light straggling through the windows.
This littered tomb! Already cold and silent with death. We stumbled over a fallen figure. A member of the crew.