place.

We were a solemn little group, gathered there in the checkered
starlight with the great vault of the heavens around us. A dismantled
electronic projector--necessary when a long range gun was mounted--had
been rigged up in one of the deck ports.

They brought out the body. I stood apart, gazing reluctantly at the
small bundle, wrapped like a mummy in a dark metallic screen-cloth. A
patch of black silk rested over her face. Four cabin stewards carried
her; and beside her walked George Prince. A long black robe covered
him, but his head was bare. And suddenly he reminded me of the ancient
play-character of Hamlet. His black, wavy hair; his finely chiseled,
pallid face, set now in a stern patrician cast. And staring, I
realized that however much of the villain this man might be, at this
instant, walking beside the body of his dead sister, he was stricken
with grief. He loved that sister with whom he had lived since
childhood; and to see him now no one could doubt it.

The little procession stopped in a patch of starlight by the port.
They rested the body on a bank of chairs. The black-robed chaplain,
roused from his bed and still trembling from excitement of this
sudden, inexplicable death on board, said a brief, solemn little
prayer. An appeal: That the Almighty Ruler of all these blazing worlds
might guard the soul of this gentle girl whose mortal remains were now
to be returned to Him.

Ah, if ever God seemed hovering close, it was now at this instant, on
this starlit deck floating in the black void of space.

Then Carter for just a moment removed the black shroud from her face.
I saw her brother gaze silently; saw him stoop and implant a
kiss--and turn away. I did not want to look, but I found myself moving
slowly forward.

She lay, so beautiful. Her face, white and calm and peaceful in death.
My sight blurred.

"Easy Gregg," Snap was whispering to me. He had his arm around me.
"Come on away."

They tied the shroud over her face. I did not see them as they put the
body in the tube, sent it through the exhaust chamber and dropped it.

But a moment later I saw it, a small black, oblong bundle hovering
beside us. It was perhaps a hundred feet away, circling us. Held by
the _Planetara's_ bulk, it had momentarily become our satellite. It
swung around us like a moon. Gruesome satellite, by nature's laws
forever to follow us.

Then from another tube at the bow, Blackstone operated a small
zed-co-ray proje