George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame.
Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey.
"No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him.
Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic:
"Prepare to return!"
Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe.
Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately.
Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits.
"Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement.