Part 2 (1/2)

After two weeks of flight through the vast blackness of interstellar s.p.a.ce, the _Lord Nelson_ came out of overdrive and set itself in an orbit around Fomalhaut V. Lieutenant Jervis, the sole survivor of the ill-fated _Mavis_, located the small valley between the giant crags that covered the planet, and the huge spherical bulk of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p settled gently to the floor of the valley.

They were gathered in the central room of the s.h.i.+p ten minutes after the _all-clear_ rang through the corridors, informing everyone that the landing had been safely accomplished. From the portholes they could see the white bones of the _Mavis's_ crew lying on the reddish sand of the valley bottom.

”There they are,” Jervis said quietly. ”Just bones. Those were my s.h.i.+pmates.”

Wayne saw Sherri repress a shudder. Little heaps of bones lay here and there on the sand, s.h.i.+ning brightly in the hot sun. That was the crew of the _Mavis_--or what was left of them.

Colonel Petersen entered the room and confronted the crew. ”We're here,”

he said. ”You know the schedule from now on. No one's to leave the s.h.i.+p until we've made a check outside, and after that--a.s.suming it's OK to go out--no more than six are to leave the s.h.i.+p at any one time.”

He pointed to a row of metal magnetic tabs clinging to the wall nearest the corridor that led to the airlock. ”When you go out, take one of those tabs and touch it on your suit. There are exactly six tabs. If none are there, don't go out. It's as simple as that.”

Four men in s.p.a.cesuits entered the room, followed by two others. The leader of the group saluted. ”We're ready, sir,” he said.

”Go out and get a look at the bodies,” the colonel told the men, who were Medical Corpsmen. ”You know the procedure. Air and sand samples too, of course.”

The leader saluted again, turned, and left. Wayne watched the six s.p.a.cesuited figures step one at a time to the wall, withdraw one of the metal tabs, and affix it to the outer skin of his suit. Then they went outside.

Captain Wayne and Sherri James stood by one of the portholes and watched the six medics as they bent over the corpses outside. ”I don't get it, I just don't understand,” Wayne said quietly.

”What don't you get?” Sherri asked.

”Those skeletons. Those men have only been dead for two months, and they've been reduced to nothing but bones already. Even the fabric of their clothing is gone. Why? There must be something here that causes human flesh to deteriorate much faster than normal.”

”It does look pretty gruesome,” Sherri agreed. ”I'm glad we've been ordered to keep our s.p.a.cesuits on. I wouldn't want to be exposed to anything that might be out there.”

”I wonder--” Wayne muttered.

”What? What's the matter?”

Wayne pointed to one figure lying on the sand. ”See that? What's that over his head?”

”Why--it's a s.p.a.ce helmet!”

”Yeah,” said Wayne. ”The question is: was he wearing just the helmet, or the whole suit? If he was wearing the whole suit, we're not going to be as well protected as we thought, even with our fancy suits.”

Fifteen minutes pa.s.sed slowly before the medics returned, and five minutes more before they had pa.s.sed through the decontamination chambers and were allowed into the s.h.i.+p proper. A ring of tense faces surrounded them as they made their report.

The leader, a tall, bespectacled doctor named Stevelman, was the spokesman. He shrugged when Colonel Petersen put forth the question whose answer everyone waited for.

”I don't know,” the medic replied. ”I don't know what killed them.

There's dry bones out there, but no sign of anything that might have done it. It's pretty hard to make a quick diagnosis on a skeleton, Colonel.”

”What about the one skeleton with the bubble helmet?” Peter Wayne asked.

”Did you see any sign of a full suit on him?”