The skipper snorted.
"No, really," Ernest insisted. "An air of pessimism—even doom—runs all through this stuff. Take this one, for instance:
"Music sings within my brain:
I think I may go mad again."
"Now that begins to make some sense," said Rosco, the communications chief. "It ties in with what Doc Braddon found."
The skipper looked searchingly at his technicians, as if he suspected a joke. But they were serious.
"All right," the skipper said. "It baffles me, but I'm just a simple spacefaring man. You're the experts. I'm going to my cabin and communicate with the liquor chest. When you think you've got something I can understand, let me know. 'I think I may go mad again.' Huh! I think I may get drunk, myself."
What the technicians of the research ship Pringle were trying to learn was why the people of Planetoid S743 had turned to dust.
They had thought at first they were coming to a living, if tiny, world. There had been lights on the nightside and movement along what seemed to be roads.