“Get hold of yourself, and make your report, Kramer,” I said. “What started this riot?”
Kramer stopped shouting, and stood looking at me, panting. The crowded men fell silent.
“I gave you a job to do, Major,” I said; “opening a cargo can. Now you take it from there.”
“Yeah, Captain,” he said. “We got it open. No wires, no traps. We hauled the load out of the can on to the floor. It was one big frozen mass, wrapped up in some kind of netting. Then we pulled the covering off.”
“All right, go ahead,” I said.
“That load of fresh meat your star-born pals gave us consists of about six families of human beings; men, women, and children.” Kramer was talking for the crowd now, shouting. “Those last should be pretty tender when you ration out our ounce a week, Captain.”
The men milled, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, as I thrust through to the cargo lock. The door stood ajar and wisps of white vapor curled out into the passage.
I stepped through the door. It was bitter cold in the lock. Near the outer hatch the bulky cannister, rimed with white frost, lay in a pool of melting ice. Before it lay the half shrouded bulk that it had contained. I walked closer.
They were frozen together into one solid mass. Kramer was right. They were as human as I. Human corpses, stripped, packed together, frozen. I pulled back the lightly frosted covering, and studied the glazed white bodies.
Kramer called suddenly from the door. “You found your colonists, Captain. Now that your curiosity is satisfied, we can go back where we belong. Out here man is a tame variety of cattle. We’re lucky they didn’t know we were the same variety, or we’d be in their food lockers now ourselves. Now let’s get started back. The men won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”