flesh is radiolucent to hard X-rays. Quite possibly it could
be seen by infra-red or ultra-violet light--evidently it was visible
enough to the dog's eyes, with their different range of sensitivity.
* * * * *
Pushing the subject from his mind, he turned to survey the room into
which he had burst. It had apparently been occupied by a woman. A
frail blue silk dress and more intimate items of feminine wearing
apparel were hanging above the berth. Two pairs of delicate black
slippers stood neatly below it.
Across from him was a dressing table, with a large mirror above it.
Combs, pins, jars of cosmetic cluttered it. And Thad saw upon it a
little leather-bound book, locked, stamped on the back "Diary."
He crossed the room and picked up the little book, which smelled
faintly of jasmine. Momentary shame overcame him at thus stealing the
secrets of an unknown girl. Necessity, however, left him no choice but
to seize any chance of learning more of this ship of mystery and her
invisible haunter. He broke the flimsy fastening.
Linda Cross was the name written on the fly-leaf, in a firm, clear
feminine hand. On the next page was the photograph, in color, of a
girl, the brown-haired girl whose body Thad had discovered in the
crystal coffer in the hold. Her eyes, he saw, had been blue. He
thought she looked very lovely--like the waiting girl in his old dream
of the silver tower in the red hills by Helion.
The diary, it appeared, had not been kept very devotedly. Most of the
pages were blank.
One of the first entries, dated a year and a half before, told of a
party that Linda had attended in San Francisco, and of her refusal to
dance with a certain man, referred to as "Benny," because he had been
unpleasantly insistent about wanting to marry her. It ended:
"Dad said to-night that we're going off in the _Dragon_
again. All the way to Uranus, if the new fuel works as he
expects. What a lark, to explore a few new worlds of our
own! Dad says one of Uranus' moons is as large as Mercury.
And Benny won't be proposing again soon!"
Turning on, Thad found other scattered entries, some of them dealing
with the preparation for the voyage, the start from San Francisco--and
a huge bunch of flowers from "Benny," the long months of the trip
through space, out past the orbit of Mars, above the meteor belt,
across Jupiter's orbit, beyond the track of Saturn, which was the
fart
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