“Not a chance,” replied Dorothy without looking up, “I’m after the Hartnett fortune because there’s no one else I know who is worth marrying, even for the kind of lab I want.”
“Did you write the book you always said you would if you were ever marooned, Steve?” asked Nick.
Hartnett nodded. “Guess that’s all that kept me from going nuts. All alone here—not strong enough to do much more than take care of myself, write, and send signals out. Didn’t go outside much after—”
Dorothy faced him, her eyes misty. “Don’t try to soften it Steve—I knew as soon as I came in the ship. Harry’s dead, isn’t he? Like all the others?”
Hartnett nodded. “Yes—like all the others.”
“There’s not much to tell,” said Hartnett slowly, after the meal had been finished. “We started out in the Orion much the same as you did in the Columbia, tested the contracels and decided everything was all right. We noticed this little world here and landed to investigate.
“Only we couldn’t get off.
“We’d been going virtually at the speed of light and that warped the fourth dimensional fields which were a basic part of the contracels. We found that the only way we had of getting off this planetoid was by rockets, and rockets weren’t enough. We just slid along the surface, battered up the ship, then stopped.
“Then we began to find out things about this world. Some of them were interesting, and some—” he broke off suddenly. “Nick, you or none of your party have been out without full suits have you?”