I staggered back from the bull's-eye. As I rushed back along the catwalk my horrified mind was clamoring with the vague thought: had Brenda operated that pressure-mechanism wrongly? Or had someone on the catwalk, at the controls there, done it?
That thought, too, was stricken away. I reached the forward deck triangle. The bow-peak lookout was calling up to Captain Wilkes:
"Passenger overboard! Brenda Carson! It's Miss Brenda Carson!"
Dead girl in the space-light. I could not look at the horrible thing as it rounded our bow and came slowly floating past again.
"You, Fanning—what's happened? Brenda Carson, he says."
Arthur Jerome stood calling to me from his stateroom door at the bow superstructure corner. He was in his nightrobe with a negligee hastily wrapped around him.
"Yes—" I gasped. "Brenda Carson. She—"
"And I heard something about radio-helio room wrecked." The big, florid television lecturer seemed in a panic. Experienced space-traveler, but he had never run into anything like this before. I wouldn't blame him for his terror. But I had no time for him now. The ship was in confusion. I could hear the Martians, below deck in the bow, shouting with frightened questions. Two or three members of the crew were running up to Captain Wilkes who was outside his turret calling down orders.
I ran down the side deck. One of the excited crew stopped me. "You seen young Philip Carson? Captain wants him."
I shook my head and ran on. Somebody else was calling Carson's name. I mounted the companionway to the superstructure roof. Had Philip Carson vanished? They couldn't find him? Well, what I knew about Philip Carson now I'd certainly tell Captain Wilkes! Suddenly I realized fully that because of Brenda I had wanted to keep silent—but there was no need of that now.