Then Rock sobered quickly as he faced the grim task that was to follow. He sighed heavily and stepped through the opening into the air-lock tunnel of the ghost ship, followed by the others. His shoes clung to the floor, indicating that the magnetic floor current was still going after twenty years. Leaving the air lock, Rock and his companions found themselves in a lounge. Everything was in neat order, just as if it had been set to rights only today. “It’s in excellent preservation!” Rock marveled. “The reflector blinds must have kept the temperature in here pretty even through all the years.” They found other parts of the ship also in neat order. Rock had been told by his mother that his father had been a very orderly man. As yet there was no sign of what had made the vessel a ghost ship. Rock dreaded every new room they entered. Which one would reveal to him the skeletons of the ghost crew—one of them his father’s, a father he had never seen? The searchers carried Geiger counters as a check on stray radioactivity from the atomic engines. But so far the only clicks the meters gave off were apparently from the ever-present cosmic rays out in space. Since no bodies had yet been found, it was supposed that the four crewmen were together in one place. The searchers had entered the _Northern Cross_ near the rear and had been working their way forward. Rock guessed that the bodies must be in the main control room. In the galley, remains of a meal were still inside sealed plates. The bits were rock hard. An examination of wall pressure gauges showed that the entire ship was open to the vacuum of space. “Where is the ore?” Kalmus growled. “I don’t like the looks of this!” The search party moved down ghostly corridors that hadn’t felt the thump of space boots for two decades. Just before reaching the main control room, Rock came to a door-marked, “Stores.” “This may be it!” he said hopefully and opened the door. No one needed to tell anyone else that this was the goal they had been looking for. It was a vast, oblong cell, its metal bins piled nearly to the ceiling with gray lumps of rock. The rest of the room was crowded with mining equipment. However, the bigger stuff had evidently been left on Venus. Kalmus gave a shout and flung himself into one of the bins. He fondled the stones, bathing himself in the wealth. “I’m rich! I’m rich!” he kept saying. Rock turned away disgustedly, his young friends following. For some reason he almost wished their mission had been a failure. Sharing this treasure that his father had died to accumulate for unselfish motives made Rock feel sick for a moment. “Want to go into the pilot’s room, Rock,” Shep asked in gentle consideration, “or shall we just pass it up?” “No, Shep, I’ve got to see if Dad is in there,” Rock answered.