"Nobody showed up." Which had it been? Pat Conley? Or Wendy? He prowled about the hotel room, reflexively working off his fear. I hope to god, he thought, that it was Pat.
"In the closet," von Vogelsang said.
"What?" He stopped pacing.
"Maybe you ought to look in there. These more expensive suites have extra-large closets."
Joe touched the stud of the closet door; its spring-loaded mechanism sent it flying open.
On the floor of the closet a huddled heap, dehydrated, almost mummified, lay curled up. Decaying shreds of what seemingly had once been cloth covered most of it, as if it had, by degrees, over a long period of time, retracted into what remained of its garments. Bending, he turned it over. It weighed only a few pounds; at the push of his hand its limbs folded out into thin bony extensions that rustled like paper. Its hair seemed enormously long; wiry and tangled, the black cloud of hair obscured its face. He crouched, not moving, not wanting to see who it was.
In a strangled voice von Vogelsang rasped, "That's old. Completely dried-out. Like it's been here for centuries. I'll go downstairs and tell the manager."
"It can't be an adult woman," Joe said. These could only be the remnants of a child; they were just too small. "It can't be either Pat or Wendy," he said, and lifted the cloudy hair away from its face. "It's like it was in a kiln," he said. "At a very high temperature, for a long time." The blast, he thought. The severe heat from the bomb.
He stared silently then at the shriveled, heat-darkened little face. And knew who this was. With difficulty he recognized her.
Wendy Wright.
Sometime during the night, he reasoned, she had come into the room, and then some process had started in her or around her. She had sensed it and had crept off, hiding herself in the closet, so he wouldn't know; in her last few hours of life - or perhaps minutes; he hoped it was only minutes - this had overtaken her, but she had made no sound. She hadn't wakened him. Or, he thought, she tried and she couldn't do it, couldn't attract my attention. Maybe it was after that, after trying and failing to wake me, that she crawled into this closet.
I pray to god, he thought, that it happened fast.
"You can't do anything for her?" he asked von Vogelsang. "At your moratorium?"
"Not this late. There wouldn't be any residual half-life left, not with this complete deterioration. Is - she the girl?"
"Yes," he said, nodding.
"You better leave this hotel. Right now. For your own safety. Hollis - it is Hollis, isn't it? - will do this to you too."
"My cigarettes," Joe said. "Dried out. The two-year-old phone book in the ship. The soured cream and coffee with scum on it, mold on it. The antiquated money." A common thread: age. "She said that back on Luna, after we made it up to the ship; she said, 'I feel old.'" He pondered, trying to control his fear; it had begun now to turn into terror. But the voice on the phone, he thought. Runciter's voice. What did that mean?
He saw no underlying pattern, no meaning. Runciter's voice on the vidphone fitted no theory which he could summon up or imagine.
"Radiation," von Vogelsang said. "It would seem to me that she was exposed to extensive radioactivity, probably some time ago. An enormous amount of it, in fact."
Joe said, "I think she died because of the blast. The explosion that killed Runciter." Cobalt particles, he said to himself. Hot dust that settled on her and which she inhaled. But, then, we're all going to die this way; it must have settled on all of us. I have it in my own lungs; so does Al; so do the other inertials. There's nothing that can be done in that case. It's too late. We didn't think of that, he realized. It didn't occur to us that the explosion consisted of a micronic nuclear reaction.
No wonder Hollis allowed us to leave. And yet-
That explained Wendy's death and it explained the dried-out cigarettes. But not the phone book, not the coins, not the corruption of the cream and coffee.
Nor did it explain Runciter's voice, the yammering monologue on the hotel room's vidphone. Which ceased when von Vogelsang lifted the receiver. When someone else tried to hear it, he realized.
I've got to get back to New York, he said to himself. All of us who were there on Luna - all of us who were present when the bomb blast went off. We have to work this out together; in fact, it's probably the only way it can be worked out. Before the rest of us die, one by one, the way Wendy did. Or in a worse way, if that's possible.
"Have the hotel management send a polyethylene bag up here," he said to the moratorium owner. "I'll put her in it and take her with me to New York."
"Isn't this a matter for the police? A horrible murder like this; they should be informed."
Joe said, "Just get me the bag."
"All right. It's your employee." The moratorium owner started off down the hall.
