Maw Barstow began a low wailing. Sally also wept. McGruder moistened his lips and looked furtively around, cowering slightly as he saw the eerie features of Link peering from the shadows above. DuChane stood stricken but expressionless. Pearl alone, of those who looked down at the still face, was seemingly unmoved. "I seen her pokin' around in the medicine cabinet," McGruder recalled. "She musta swallowed some kinda dope." They searched through the cabinet, but there was no clue as to what the girl had taken. Several bottles contained drugs which could have caused death. "Oughta be given a decent burial," McGruder commented. No move was made at the time to carry out his suggestion. The only burial possible was through the locks provided for eliminating waste products. The thought was abhorrent. "She talked kind of wild about ending it all," gulped Sally. "Said she could almost hate me for being the one to save her for this. Gosh! I even came back at her with a wisecrack--something about its being a good idea. To end it all, I mean." DuChane spoke for the first time. "Moody sort of kid," he commented hesitantly. "Didn't seem to have a real interest in life." "You tried hard enough to give her one!" Sally retorted with pent-up bitterness. "Too bad she wouldn't tumble." DuChane opened his lips as if to reply, swallowed, then, with a lingering glance at the dead girl, turned away. Eli was not among the silent group. No one bothered to tell him that his passenger list had been reduced by one. The event seemed to do something to the morale of the survivors--something beyond producing the inevitable shock that follows in the wake of death. Marlin felt it keenly. Until now--though he had imagined himself to be impersonal and philosophical about the whole matter--he had been sustained by a feeling that they were being carried on this strange journey for a purpose. There had been Pearl's predictions and their apparent realization--the uncanny fortuitousness of natural forces which had preserved them thus far. It had seemed to presage intention of some kind--suggesting that they bore charmed lives. Now, it seemed, the charm was not inviolate. They were no longer the favorites of some mysterious destiny. One had been snuffed out--the others could be. There was no purpose back of it--none, at any rate, which concerned them. As Norma had said, they were like insects caught up in the mud-ball. It was merely by chance that any had survived thus far. The question of what to do with the dead girl's body was settled by the decision to cremate it. The waste incinerator was electrically heated and connected with a lock, originally intended to open into space, through which ashes and solid residue could be forced into the clay outer coating.