Four hours, he thought. Four hours and twelve ships. Diane reported every few moments by intercom. In her first four hours she had visited eight ships. Her voice sounded funny. She was fighting it every step of the way he thought. It must have been hell to her, breaking into those wrecks with their dead men with faces like white, bloated melons—

In the thirteenth ship he found a skeleton.

He did not report it to Diane over the intercom. The skeleton made no sense at all. The flesh could not possibly have decomposed. Curious, he clomped closer on his magnetic boots. Even if the flesh had decomposed, the clothing would have remained. But it was a skeleton picked completely clean, with no clothing, not even boots—

As if the man had stripped of his clothing first.

He found out why a moment later, and it left him feeling more than a little sick. There were other corpses aboard the ship, a battered Thompson '81 in worse shape than their own Gormann. Bodies, not skeletons. But when they had entered the sargasso they had apparently struck another ship. One whole side of the Thompson was smashed in and Ralph could see the repair patches on the wall. Near them and thoroughly destroyed, were the Thompson's spacesuits.

The galley lockers were empty when Ralph found them. All the food gone—how many years ago? And one of the crew, dying before the others.

Cannibalism.

Shuddering, Ralph rocketed outside into the clear darkness of space. That was a paradox, he thought. It was clear, all right, but it was dark. You could see a great way. You could see a million million miles but it was darker than anything on Earth. It was almost an extra-dimensional effect. It made the third dimension on earth, the dimension of depth, seem hopelessly flat.

"Ralph!"

"Go ahead, kid," he said. It was their first radio contact in almost half an hour.

"Oh, Ralph. It's a Gormann. An eighty-five. I think. Right in front of me. Ralph, if its scopes are good—oh, Ralph."

"I'm coming," he said. "Go ahead inside. I'll pick up your beam and be along." He could feel his heart thumping wildly. Five hours now. They did not have much time. This ship—this Gormann eighty-five which Diane had found—might be their last chance. Because it would certainly take him all of three hours to transfer the radarscope, using the rockets from one of their spacesuits, to their own ship.

He rocketed along now, following her directional beam, and listened as she said: "I'm cutting through the porthole now, Ralph. I—"

Her voice stopped suddenly. It did not drift off gradually. It merely ceased, without warning, without reason. "Diane!" he called. "Diane, can you hear me?"

He tracked the beam in desperate silence. Wrecks flashed by, tumbling slowly in their web of mutual gravitation. Some were molten silver if the wan sunlight caught them. Some were black, but every rivet, every seam was distinct. The impossible clarity of blackest space....

"Ralph?" Her voice came suddenly.

"Yes, Diane. Yes. What is it?"

"What a curious thing. I stopped blasting at the port hole. I'm not going in that way. The airlock, Ralph."

"What about the airlock?"

"It opened up on me. It swung out into space, all of a sudden. I'm going in, Ralph."

Fear, unexpected, inexplicable, gripped him. "Don't," he said. "Wait for me."

"That's silly, Ralph. We barely have time. I'm going in now, Ralph. There. I'm closing the outer door. I wonder if the pressure will build up for me. If it doesn't, I'll blast the outer door with my rockets and get out of here.... Ralph! The light's blinking. The pressures building. The inner door is beginning to open, Ralph. I'm going inside now."

He was still tracking the beam. He thought he was close now, a hundred miles perhaps. A hundred miles by suit rocket was merely a few seconds but somehow the fear was still with him. It was that skeleton, he