Whether he understood me or not, I didn't stop to find out. I had still only a very vague idea myself, just the glimmer of a desperate plan which might work out. "You better lead," I suggested. "I'll direct you. Len Smith showed me down there. If we run into anybody you can fool them long enough for me to jump them." Unless it might be the Martian, with his belt bristling with electronic guns. Vehemently I prayed we could keep clear of him. Silently, furtively, we padded into the lower corridor. No sound. With young Blake close ahead of me, we went down onto the mid-level catwalk. Still there was nothing save eerie lights and deserted rooms. Nothing? A ghastly reek came through a doorway at me. I glanced in. "The dead," Blake whispered with a shudder. "Said they were going to cast them out a porte, but they didn't yet." * * * * * The dead. That catwalk room was a reeking, ghastly charnel house. A good thirty bodies--men, women and children of three worlds, piled in a horrible litter. I gasped. All the passengers were here. There had been no disembarking of passengers, as Torio had ironically described to Nina. We went on. Descended another level. We were in the keel now. Suddenly footsteps sounded on the catwalk above us. One of the crew passed along it. Fortunately he did not look down through the grid. "Got by that by a margin," I whispered. "Straight ahead, Jim. Then half a flight down." From one of the storehouse rooms just ahead of us a man suddenly emerged. I shrank against the dark corridor wall. "Oh, you, Durk," the man said softly. "Lookit what I found in here--cask of alcoholite. Good drinkin', Durk." Jim Blake is only a boy, but he didn't shrink from his job. I was tensed to leap past him upon the man in the doorway. The fellow abruptly saw me. He squealed, "Look, behind you--" That's all he ever did say. Blake went at him like a little springing leopard. The knife flashed; the man went down with only a choked gurgle of blood in his throat. "Got him," Blake murmured. "Good enough. Come on." The emergency pressure porte was to one side of the corridor, an oblong compartment, with one tiny segment of the tubelight up in its ceiling sending down a faint pallid sheen. The inner door here was open so that normal air pressure was in the porte. "Luck better be with us now," I murmured. "Let's see what they've left in the emergency equipment room." It was here on the other side the corridor. My heart pounded with triumph. There were plenty of Erentz suits and helmets here. Both young Blake and I had used the familiar Carpley suit and helmet for outer stratosphere flying. These were not so very different, save that the electronic current in the double shell of the fabric circulated faster, for the more speedy absorption of the interior pressure within the suit, when worn in the vacuum of Space.