The Cosmic's main saloon was a scene of desolation. The crash landing had hurled furniture, bric-a-brac, luxurious decorations into a jumbled heap. Amidst this shattered débris lay several gaunt skeletons, clad in the uniform of the Trans-Jovian line.
"Funny!" Kindt muttered. "Look!" He pointed to the atomite guns clutched in the bony hands. "Why guns?"
"Mutiny, maybe," Haller said with grim emphasis. "Common failing, it seems! Let's go on!"
They moved along the companionway, toward the rear of the ship. Dark, silent, there was something eerie about the deserted vessel. Like a ghost ship, it seemed, a weird metal tomb. Already rust was beginning to flake the walls, and a moldering smell of decomposition filled the air. The footsteps of the three men echoed hollowly along the dank corridors, and in the light of Barger's astralux torch, grotesque shadows slid along the walls. Death, decay, hung like a pall about the Cosmic and Haller, thinking of Fay, was a tight-lipped specter.
"Kind of gives me the creeps, this packet," Barger muttered. "We...." He broke off, listening. "Did you hear something just then? Like soft footsteps?"
"More nerves," Haller grunted. "Come on!"
Onward they went, examining staterooms, engine-rooms, galley. All at once Haller began to realize that things were missing from the ship. Here, a skeleton stripped of its garments; there, a bed minus its mattress and covers; there, sections of wire, lighting equipment, removed. Reaching the ship's storeholds, they found the shelves swept bare of food.
"She's been cleaned out," Barger said hoarsely. "Looks like the survivors took everything they might need, lit out for parts unknown."
"Maybe," Haller was doubtful. "But from the number of skeletons, there weren't many survivors. And where'd they go?" A picture of Fay crossed his mind as he spoke. Was hers one of these whitened, grinning skulls, or had she been among those who for some reason had abandoned the Cosmic? Memory of the girl's slender loveliness tortured him.
"Might's well go back," Kindt said uneasily. "I don't like this ship. There's something damned wrong here."