e wreck-pack.
He's dangerous."

"I'll be watching him," he promised. "Good-by, Marta."

Kent reached the lower-deck just as Krell entered from the airlock, his
swarthy face smiling as he removed his helmet. He carried a pointed
steel bar. Liggett and the others were donning their suits.

"All ready to go, Kent?" Krell asked.

Kent nodded. "All ready," he said shortly. Since hearing Marta's story
he found it hard to dissimulate with Krell.

"You'll want bars like mine," Krell continued, "for they're damned
handy when you get jammed between wreckage masses. Exploring this
wreck-pack is no soft job: I can tell you from experience."

Liggett and the rest had their suits adjusted, and with bars in their
grasp, followed Krell into the airlock. Kent hung back for a last word
with Crain, who, with his half-dozen remaining men, was watching.

"Marta just told me that Krell and Jandron have been plotting
something," he told the captain; "so I'd keep a close watch outside."

"Don't worry, Kent. We'll let no one inside the _Pallas_ until you and
Liggett and the men get back."

* * * * *

In a few minutes they were out of the ship, with Krell and Kent and
Liggett leading, and the twelve members of the _Pallas'_ crew following
closely.

The three leaders climbed up on the Uranus-Jupiter passenger-ship that
lay beside the _Pallas_, the others moving on and exploring the
neighboring wrecks in parties of two and three. From the top of the
passenger-ship, when they gained it, Kent and his two companions could
look far out over the wreck-pack. It was an extraordinary spectacle,
this stupendous mass of dead ships floating motionless in the depths of
space, with the burning stars above and below them.

His companions and the other men clambering over the neighboring wrecks
seemed weird figures in their bulky suits and transparent helmets. Kent
looked back at the _Pallas_, and then along the wreck-pack's edge to
where he could glimpse the silvery side of the _Martian Queen_. But now
Krell and Liggett were descending into the ship's interior through the
great opening smashed in its bows, and Kent followed.

They found themselves in the liner's upper navigation-rooms. Officers
and men lay about, frozen to death at the instant the meteor-struck
vessel's air had rushed out, and the cold of space had entered. Krell
led the way on, down into the ship's lower decks, where they found the
bodies of the crew a