Hargraves carried the shovel. He and Noble were armed, and very much alert.
"When you ask me if it is chemically possible for a man—or an animal—to freeze, die, be buried, then rise again and live, I cannot answer," Noble said. "So far as I know, it is not possible. The physical act of freezing will involve tremendous and seemingly irreversible changes in the body cells. Thawing will produce almost immediate bacterial action, which also seems irreversible. All I can say is, if Hal Sarkoff is alive, we have seen a miracle that contradicts chemical laws as we know them."
"And if he is not alive, we face a miracle of duplication. Whatever it is that is sleeping back in the ship, it looks, talks, acts, like Hal Sarkoff, even to memory. Can you suggest any method by which flesh and bone could be so speedily moulded into a living image of a man whom we know died?"
"No," said Noble bluntly. "Jed, do you realize all the possible implications of this situation?"
"Probably not," Hargraves answered. "Some that I do recognize, I exclude from my thoughts."
His tone was so harsh that Noble said nothing more.
Dawn was already breaking over this Vegan world. The sky in the east was the color of pearl. In the trees over them, creatures that sounded like birds were beginning to chirp.
They reached the place where they had buried Hal Sarkoff and his two companions.
The graves were empty.
No effort had been made to conceal the fact that the graves had been opened. The dirt had been shoveled out again and had not been shoveled back.