Howard looked at the fields, and the wild, overgrown pastureland that bordered the concrete roads. “We might call it Paradise II,” he said. “This place ought to be a farmer’s heaven.”
“Paradise II! That’s pretty good,” Fleming said. “I suppose we’ll have to hire a gang to clear off those skeletons. Looks too weird-like.”
Howard nodded. There were many details to be attended to. “We’ll do that after—”
The space station passed over them.
“The lights!” Howard cried suddenly.
“Lights?” Fleming stared at the receding sphere.
“When we came in. Remember? Those flashing lights?”
“Right.” Fleming said. “Do you suppose someone is holed up in the station?”
“We’ll find out right now,” Howard said grimly. He took a determined bite of his apple as Fleming turned the ship.
When they reached the space station the first thing they saw was the other ship, clinging to the station’s polished metal as a spider clings to its web. It was small, a third the size of their ship, and one of its hatches was ajar.
The two men, suited and helmeted, paused in front of the hatch. Fleming seized the hatch in his gloved hands, and pulled it completely open. Cautiously they aimed their flash-lights inside, looked, and jerked abruptly back. Then Howard motioned impatiently, and Fleming started in.
There was the body of a man inside, half out of the pilot’s chair, frozen forever in that unstable position. His face was fleshed enough to show his death agony, but the skin had been eaten bone deep in spots by some disease.
Piled high in the rear of the ship were dozens of wooden cases. Fleming broke one open and flashed his light inside.
“Food,” Howard said.
“Must have tried to hide in the space station,” Fleming said.
“Looks that way. He never made it.” They left the ship quickly, a little disgusted. Skeletons were acceptable; they were self-contained entities in themselves. But this corpse was too eloquently dead.
“So who turned on the lights?” Fleming asked, on the surface of the station.
“Perhaps they were on automatic relay,” Howard said doubtfully. “There couldn’t be any survivors.”
They walked across the surface of the station, and found the entrance.
“Shall we?” asked Fleming.
“Why bother?” Howard said quickly. “The race is dead. We might as well go back and file our claim.”
“If there’s even one survivor in there,” Fleming reminded him, “the planet’s his by law.”
Howard nodded unwillingly. It would be too bad to make the long, expensive trip back to Earth, return with their surveying teams, and find someone cozily keeping house in the space station. It would be different if survivors were hiding on the planet. Legally, they would still have a valid claim. But a man in the space station, which they had neglected to examine—
“I suppose we must,” Howard said, and opened the hatch.
Within, they were in total darkness. Howard turned his flashlight on Fleming. In its yellow glow, Fleming’s face was completely shadowless, stylized like a primitive mask. Howard blinked, a little frightened at what he saw, for at that moment, Fleming’s face was completely depersonalized.
“Air’s breathable,” Fleming said, and immediately regained his personality.
Howard pushed back his helmet and turned up the light. The sheer mass of the walls seemed to crush in on him. He groped in his pocket, found a radish, and popped it in his mouth for morale.
They started forward.
For half an hour they walked along a narrow, winding corridor, their flashlights pushing the darkness ahead of them. The metal floor, which had seemed so stable, began to creak and groan from hidden stresses, setting Howard’s nerves on edge. Fleming seemed unaffected.
“This place must have been a bombing station,” he remarked after a while.
“I suppose so.”
“Simply tons of metal here,” Fleming said conversationally, tapping one of the walls. “I suppose we’ll have to sell it for junk, unless we can salvage some of the machinery.”
“The price of scrap metal—” Howard began. But at that instant a section of floor opened directly under Fleming’s feet. Fleming plunged out of sight so quickly that he didn’t have a chance to scream, and the section of floor slammed back into place.
Howard staggered back, as though physically struck. His flashlight seemed to blaze maniacally for a moment, then fade. Howard stood perfectly still, his hands raised, his mind caught in the timelessness of shock.
The shock wave receded slowly, leaving Howard with a dull, pounding headache. “—is not particularly good just now,” he said inanely, finishing his sentence, wishing that nothing had happened.
He stepped close to the section of floor and called, “Fleming.”
There was no answer. A shudder passed over his body. He shouted, “Fleming!” at the top of his lungs, leaning over the sealed floor. He straightened up, his head pounding painfully, took a deep breath, turned, and trotted back to the entrance. He did not allow himself to think.
The entrance, however, was sealed, and its fused edges were still hot. Howard examined it with every appearance of interest. He touched it, tapped it, kicked it. Then he became aware of the darkness pressing against him. He whirled, perspiration pouring down his face.
“Who’s there?” he shouted down the corridor. “Fleming! Can you hear me?”
There was no answer.
He shouted, “Who did this? Why did you flash the station lights? What did you do to Fleming?” He listened for a moment, then went on, sobbing for breath. “Unseal the entrance! I’ll go, and I won’t tell anyone!”
He waited, shining his light down the corridor, wondering what lay behind the darkness. Finally he screamed, “Why don’t you open a trapdoor under me?”
He lay back against the wall, panting. No trapdoor opened. Perhaps, he thought, no trapdoor will. The thought gave him a moment’s courage. Sternly he told himself that there had to be another way out. He walked back up the corridor.
An hour later he was still walking, his flashlight stabbing ahead, and darkness creeping at his back. He had himself under control now, and his headache had subsided to a dull ache. He had begun to reason again.
The lights could have been on automatic circuit. Perhaps the trapdoor had been automatic, too. As for the self-sealing entrance—that could be a precaution in time of war, to make sure that no enemy agent could sneak in.
He knew that his reasoning wasn’t too sound, but it was the best he could do. The entire situation was inexplicable. That corpse in the spaceship, the beautiful dead planet—there was a relationship, somewhere. If only he could discover where.
“Howard,” a voice said.
Howard jumped back convulsively, as though he had touched a high-tension wire. Immediately his headache resumed.
“It’s me,” the voice said. “Fleming.”
Howard flashed his light wildly in all directions. “Where? Where are you?”
“About two hundred feet down, as well as I can judge,” Fleming said, his voice floating harshly down the corridor. “The audio hookup isn’t very good, but it’s the best I can do.”
Howard sat down in the corridor, because his legs refused to hold him up. He was relieved, however. There was something sane about Fleming being two hundred feet down, something very human and understandable about an imperfect audio hookup.
“Can you get up? How can I help you?”
“You can’t,” Fleming said, and there was a crackle of static which Howard thought was a chuckle. “I don’t seem to have much ... body left.”
“But where is your body?” Howard insisted seriously.
“Gone, smashed in the fall. There’s just enough left of me to hook into circuit.”
“I see,” said Howard, feeling strangely light-headed. “You’re now just a brain, a pure intelligence.”