ly 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 a villain this man
not yet thirty 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, with his set white
face, 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. Words seemed to echo: "A little son, cast in the
gentle image of his mother...."

"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 her
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 projector. Its dull light caught the floating bundle,
neutralizing its metallic wrappings.

It swung off at