Brigands of the Moon (Sci-Fi Classic). Ray Cummings
body of Anita was being made ready for burial. George Prince was still in his stateroom. Glutz, effeminate little hairdresser, who waxed rich acting as beauty doctor for the women passengers, and who, in his youth, had been an undertaker, had gone with Dr. Frank to prepare the body.
Gruesome details. I tried not to think of them. I sat, numbed, in the chart room.
An astronomical burial—there was little precedent for it. I dragged myself to the stern deck where, at five a.m., the ceremony took place.
We were a solemn little group, gathered there in the checkered starlight with the great vault of the heavens around us. A dismantled electronic projector—necessary when a long range gun was mounted—had been rigged up in one of the deck ports.
They brought out the body. I stood apart, gazing reluctantly at the small bundle, wrapped like a mummy in a dark metallic screen-cloth. A patch of black silk rested over her face. Four cabin stewards carried her; and beside her walked George Prince. A long black robe covered him, but his head was bare. And suddenly he reminded me of the ancient play-character of Hamlet. His black, wavy hair; his finely chiseled, pallid face, set now in a stern patrician cast. And staring, I realized that however much of the villain this man might be, at this instant, walking beside the body of his dead sister, he was stricken with grief. He loved that sister with whom he had lived since childhood; and to see him now no one could doubt it.
The little procession stopped in a patch of starlight by the port. They rested the body on a bank of chairs. The black-robed chaplain, roused from his bed and still trembling from excitement of this sudden, inexplicable death on board, said a brief, solemn little prayer. An appeal: That the Almighty Ruler of all these blazing worlds might guard the soul of this gentle girl whose mortal remains were now to be returned to Him.
Ah, if ever God seemed hovering close, it was now at this instant, on this starlit deck floating in the black void of space.
Then Carter for just a moment removed the black shroud from her face. I saw her brother gaze silently; saw him stoop and implant a kiss—and turn away. I did not want to look, but I found myself moving slowly forward.
She lay, so beautiful. Her face, white and calm and peaceful in death. My sight blurred.
"Easy Gregg," Snap was whispering to me. He had his arm around me. "Come on away."
They tied the shroud over her face. I did not see them as they put the body in the tube, sent it through the exhaust chamber and dropped it.
But a moment later I saw it, a small black, oblong bundle hovering beside us. It was perhaps a hundred feet away, circling us. Held by the Planetara's bulk, it had momentarily become our satellite. It swung around us like a moon. Gruesome satellite, by nature's laws forever to follow us.
Then from another tube at the bow, Blackstone operated a small zed-co-ray projector. Its dull light caught the floating bundle, neutralizing its metallic wrappings.
It swung off at a tangent. Speeding. Falling free in the dome of the heavens. A rotating black oblong. But in a moment distance dwindled it to a speck. A dull silver dot with the sunlight on it. A speck of human Earth dust, falling free....
It vanished. Anita—gone.
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