LITMIR.BIZ

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      "No!" Rhodan exclaimed, but it was too late. The disintegrator ray traced the outline of the hatch. The metal didn't offer any significant resistance. Where it was touched by the beam, it dissolved into greenish gas. Along the outline of the hatch the metal suddenly turned black.

      A few moments later, deprived of its support, the hatch tipped forward, falling with an echoing impact that must have been heard in the Palenque's control center.

      "Now what's bothering you? I suppose I should have waited for a team of specialists to carefully open the hatch so I wouldn't destroy anything valuable?"

      "Yes, and—"

      "I don't know what's eating you," she interrupted. "Even they couldn't have managed a better cutting job, right?"

      "Hardly."

      "So what's the problem?"

      "I think I saw lettering. Left of the hatch at eye level."

      "Intercosmo, maybe? 'Please don't shoot—the key is under the mat!'"

      Rhodan didn't answer her sarcasm. "No, not Intercosmo. But a language that seemed familiar to me."

      Well, crap. I really messed up that one. If I keep going like this, I'm likely to blow up the whole Palenque out of pure nervousness.

      "There's no reason to get excited," she said, trying to downplay her mistake. "That can't have been the only lettering in this entire thing."

      Rhodan nodded absently. His thoughts were clearly somewhere else.

      Another icescape awaited them beyond the hatchway, though on a much smaller scale. They found themselves in a narrow corridor from which other passageways branched off, lined with doors instead of hatches. Sharita decided that they had penetrated the crew quarters. The engine must have been in the stern section, which had collided with the crawler.

      For the next few minutes, they traveled through the corridors and climbed up several decks using primitive ladders. The ladders were installed in square shafts and their rungs studded all four walls.

      "No antigravity," Rhodan remarked. "I believe this craft is designed for spaceflight without artificial gravity. In weightlessness, you move by pushing off from the rungs and then grabbing on to them again. In acceleration phases or in planetary gravitational fields, they're used like conventional ladders. Primitive, but absolutely maintenance-free."

      Sharita hardly noticed her surroundings. Her left-hand little finger—she wasn't letting go of the beamer in her right hand—raced over her picosyn as she called up data, took measurements and ran scans. She stopped rather suddenly.

      "Got something?" Rhodan asked.

      "Um ... " Sharita tapped the display again. "There is something that stands out."

      "Yes?"

      "Over there." She pointed to a section of the wall several meters further on. "It's too warm. It's much too warm behind that."

      Sharita was so fascinated by her armband's readings that for a moment she even forgot her resentful feeling of being on trial.

      "What's the temperature?"

      "Minus one point three centigrade—which means fourteen point eight degrees warmer than in here."

      "Energy emissions?"

      "None. There aren't any energy-generating devices in this part of the wreck. If there even were any emergency systems, they haven't worked for a very long time."

      "So the reading must be an error."

      "I ran the picosyn's self-diagnostic. The armband is in perfect working order."

      They exchanged glances.

      "Let's take a look."

      Sharita aimed her beamer at the section of the wall where the heat source registered. The disintegration ray made slow progress cutting through the barely visible hatch.

      "This hatch is a lot thicker than the first one," she called over the hissing of the melting metal.

      "Maybe it's a rescue pod that's designed to be ejected in an emergency."

      Sharita's beamer continued to burn through the wall. The loosened hatch fell away, and Sharita stepped first through the opening, her beamer held ready.

      She found herself in a tiny room, this one somehow free of the ice that coated the rest of the wreck. In the weak light beam from her armband, Sharita could see several contour seats anchored to the floor, and in front of them instrument panels and dark, dead screens. At the other end of the room, she saw an opening that led into a kind of cockpit. And in front of that opening, on the floor—

      "A body!"

      Venron hears a noise. A crash that reminds him he is still alive; the cold has not eaten him. Not yet.

      Sharita's light hovered on a human form. The body had drawn itself up into the fetal position, with its back turned toward them. One arm was outstretched, as though the being had been trying to reach something. The body was dressed in lightweight trousers and a shirt that appeared colorless and faded.

      Light. Not the light of the stars. This is softer. Venron tries to open eyelids that are frozen together. He manages only a narrow crack. The colors do not seem right. It is as though the cold has frozen even them. He sees the dully colored floor of the shuttle. And an arm. A long moment passes before he recognizes the emaciated limb as his own arm. He had stretched it out. He had thought he could touch her. Grasp her with his hand and cling to her. Who? he wonders. He has forgotten.

      "That ... that ... "

      Sharita's mind told her to run to the figure on the floor, to help him or her, but her body didn't obey. It was as if her body had frozen at the moment of the discovery. She felt ashamed. How could she have been playing games with Rhodan to save her pride when someone lay here dying?

      Rhodan pushed past her in one stride and knelt down next to the prone form.

      A blur. A voice. It whispers something. Venron does not understand what it says, but that does not matter. It sounds soothing, sincere.

      Rhodan carefully took the body by the shoulders and turned it on its back. It yielded only reluctantly, twisting strangely, as though every bit of flexibility that was natural to the human form was gone.

      It was a man.

      A man. Venron sees him from large, sad eyes. The man's mouth moves unceasingly, whispering a message he cannot understand. Venron wants to say something. But he cannot. His mouth will not obey him. The man in front of him dissolves into a blur.

      Sharita and Rhodan looked at the unshaven face. The eyes lay deep in their sockets, the cheeks were sunken. The man's brown skin was waxy, and had a bluish tint. Rhodan slipped one hand behind the man's head, and with the other opened the magnetic fastenings of his jacket and wriggled out of the sleeve. He switched hands behind the man's head and shrugged his arm out of the other sleeve, then bunched the jacket up into a provisional pillow and rested the man's head on it.

      A warm hand. It feels good to be touched. This touch reminds Venron of ... Denetree. That was who he was reaching out for. He had seen her among the whirling stars. His sister would never abandon him. The shape above him flows into a new form and takes on solid outlines again. Venron sees his sister bending over him. She smiles.

      "Is ... is he still alive?" Sharita asked. She couldn't shake off her stiffness. Her beamer was aimed at Rhodan and the man. It was completely inappropriate and unnecessary, but she couldn't help it. The fingers of her right hand clutched the pistol grip with the intensity of a drowning man holding a life-saving tree limb.

      A second voice. A woman. Venron tries to turn his head. He wants to see her.

      "Yes." Rhodan glanced up at Sharita and looked pointedly at the beamer. "Put that thing away. The poor fellow certainly can't hurt us."

      "Oh ... sure." Sharita deserved the reprimand. But her fingers didn't obey. She had to use her left

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