We prowled further. Hahn lay dead in the pump room. The body of Coniston should have been near here. We did not see it. We climbed up to the slanting, littered deck. The air up here had all almost hissed away. Again Grantline touched me. "That the turret?" No wonder he asked me! The wreckage was all so formless. "Yes." We climbed after Snap into the broken turret room. We passed the body of that steward who just at the end had appealed to me and I had left dying. The legs of the forward lookout still poked grotesquely up from the wreckage of the observatory tower where it lay smashed down against the roof of the chart room. We shoved ourselves into the turret. What was this? No bodies here! The giant Miko was gone! The pool of blood lay congealed into a frozen dark splotch on the metal grid. And Moa was gone! They had not been dead. Had dragged themselves out of here, fighting desperately for life. We would find them somewhere around here. But we did not. Nor Coniston. I recalled what Anita had said: other suits and helmets had been here in the nearby chart room. The brigands had taken them, and food and water doubtless, and escaped from the ship, following us through the lower admission ports only a few minutes after we were gone. We made careful search of the entire ship. Eight of the bodies which should have been here were missing: Miko, Moa, Coniston and five of the crew. We did not find them outside. They were hiding near here, no doubt, more willing to take their chances than to yield to us now. But how, in all this Lunar desolation, could we hope to locate them? "No use," said Grantline. "Let them go. If they want death, well, they deserve it." But we were saved. Then, as I stood there, realization leaped at me. Saved? Were we not indeed fatuous fools? In all these emotion-swept moments since we had encountered Grantline, memory of that brigand ship coming from Mars had never once occurred to Snap and me! I told Grantline now. He stared at me. "What!" I told him again. It would be here in eight days. Fully manned and armed. "But Haljan, we have almost no weapons! All my _Comet's_ space was taken with equipment and the mechanisms for my camp. I can't signal Earth! I was depending on the _Planetara_!" It surged upon us. The brigand menace past? We were blindly congratulating ourselves on our safety! But it would be eight days or more before in distant Ferrok-Shahn the nonarrival of the _Planetara_ would cause any real comment. No one was searching for us--no one was worried over us. No wonder the crafty Miko was willing to take his chances out here in the Lunar wilds! His ship, his reinforcements, his weapons were coming rapidly! And we were helpless. Almost unarmed. Marooned here on the Moon! XXIII "Try it again," Snap urged. "Good God, Johnny, we've got to raise some Earth station! Chance it! Use the power--run it up full. Chance it!"