you stay with him. I'll have you relieved as soon as possible. And, Ron—"
"Yes."
"You have something a man could use for courage."
Silently, Ron Val walked out of the control room. He fumbled his way through the door and his steps echoed down the corridor that led to the sleeping quarters.
Hargraves sat in thought. Then he, too, left the control room.
"Noble, you're a bio-chemist. You come with me. Nielson, you take over here in the control room. In my absence you are in command."
"Yes sir," Nielson said. "But what are you going to do?"
"See what is in a grave we dug yesterday," Hargraves answered.
CHAPTER V
What the Graves Revealed
HARGRAVES carried the shovel. He and Noble were armed, and very much alert.
"When you ask me if it is chemically possible for a man—or an animal—to freeze, die, be buried, then rise again and live, I cannot answer," Noble said. "So far as I know, it is not possible. The physical act of freezing will involve tremendous and seemingly irreversible changes in the body cells. Thawing will produce almost immediate bacterial action, which also seems irreversible. All I can say is, if Hal Sarkoff is alive, we have seen a miracle that contradicts chemical laws as we know them."
"And if he is not alive, we face a miracle of duplication. Whatever it is that is sleeping back in the ship, it looks, talks, acts, like Hal Sarkoff, even to memory. Can you suggest any method by which flesh and bone could be so speedily moulded into a living image of a man whom we know died?"
"No." said Noble bluntly. "Jed, do you realize all the possible implications of this situation?"
"Probably not," Hargraves answered. "Some that I do recognize. I exclude from my thoughts."
His tone was so harsh that Noble said nothing more.
Dawn was already breaking over this Vegan world. The sky in the east was the color of pearl. In the trees over them, creatures that sounded like birds were beginning to chirp.
They reached the place where they had buried Hal Sarkoff and his two companions.
The graves were empty.
No effort had been made to conceal the fact that the graves had been opened. The dirt had been shoveled out again and had not been shoveled back.
There were marks in the dirt, the tracks of sandaled feet. "Thulon, the three who were with him, wore sandals!" Hargraves rasped. "They came back here. They opened these graves."
"But what happened after that? Are you suggesting those primitive graybeards resurrected Hal Sarkoff?"
"I'm not suggesting anything because I don't know anything," Hargraves answered. "I am just remembering that Thulon and the three who were with him looked human too! I am also remembering that the sphere which attacked us seemingly was without a crew. Our beams blasted it wide open. It was seemingly filled with machinery. Nothing else. If there were any intelligent creatures in it, they were in no form that we recognize. Come on!" Hargraves started running toward the ship.
The ship, badly damaged as it was, represented their sole hope of survival. Without it, they would be helpless.
Hal Sarkoff was with the ship. Or
