Ship of the dead! I took only one look at the dimly starlit deck triangle; the bodies lying strewn there. Little group of humans who had gathered there in a last frenzied panic, clinging to each other, falling one upon the other—suffocating, dying.
Nothing but the dead here.
But this tragedy had happened out in space! And we had seen the Seven Stars calmly coming down, gracefully, skilfully landing!
I swung back to Brenda. I gasped, "Good Lord, we've got to get out!"
Too late a realization! I was aware suddenly of a dark glistening shape behind us in the corridor—a man in a sleek tight-fitting black robe. His white face, evil with a leer, grinned at us. Brenda screamed. I tried to defend us from another dark blob that leaped from a doorway beside me. And then something struck my head. I was aware only that Brenda was screaming as I felt myself falling, my senses hurtling off into the soundless abyss of unconsciousness.
I came at last into a dim half-consciousness in which I realized that I was being carried. I could feel the rhythmic step; and then I knew that I was slung over a man's shoulder and that he was walking with me on the rocks. Other dark forms were beside us. With blurred vague vision I could see the little Seven Stars which we had left.
And near at hand another spaceship had landed now, here upon little Asteroid-9. I was being carried to it. I could glimpse it only vaguely as I hung inert on my captor's shoulder. It was a small ship, smaller than the Seven Stars, and of a type I had never seen before—barrel-finned and with a spreading fan-tail, somewhat in the British Earth-design. It rested on the rocks like a long, thin bird, with body puffed out underneath. Over it was the conventional glassite pressure dome, low-slung so that its top was no more than ten feet above the single deck. A dead-black bird. The starlight and mellow Earthlight were on it, but the black metal surface did not shimmer.
My senses wafted away again into another blank interval.... And then dimly my hearing came....
"We're glad to have you, little Brenda. You are a treasure indeed. A woman among us—to cook and sew with woman's duties. Your father will appreciate that. You do, eh Carson?"