AFTER the Galliot dead have been buried by the crew of the Argos, they claw their way free of their shrouds, inhabited by the disembodied spirits of ancient Aurans.
any details because of the fog,” he says of the shadows, “but they seemed to be humanoid shapes. I saw them twice; they were approaching my watch station. I called out to them, but no answer came. I just heard a sort of laugh, as though someone or something was chuckling out of con- tentment.” Dudley explains that he would have kept the whole thing to himself, written it off as an hallucina- tion, if not for the earlier incident on board the Vega. As Pat ruminates on the story, Dudley confesses one more, withheld detail. One of the shadows resembled his dead brother, Peter. At this, Cliff’s voice bursts through the ship’s speakers from his watch station—it sounds like Cliff, but also not like Cliff. He is in hysterics, stam- mering about how he and Lorry were besieged by phantoms, ghosts, and spirits in the likeness of the Orion crew. “Don’t you understand, Pat?” he cries. “All of our friends were there in front of us, all of them dead, just as we pulled them out of the wreckage! Vasco Ramirez had only half of his head, and his body was torn to pieces . . . Peter missing an arm. . . They were all covered in blood . . .” Pat inquires as to Lorry’s whereabouts and Cliff confesses that he fled the scene in fear, leaving his partner behind “with an unimaginable expression on his face.” In search of answers, or at least
confirmation, Pat and Eb race to the burial site where they laid five of the Orion crew to rest. To their horror, the plots are indeed empty, and they are startled by sheets of free-floating plastic, the shrouds peeled off by the reanimated dead. Pat and Eb return to the Vega and
await word from Cliff and Dudley, but none comes. Instead, through one of the ship’s windows, they watch in hor- ror as the brightening, reddening fogscape is illuminated to reveal all the missing crew of the Vega and the Orion—all “holding each other’s hands and dancing, shouting with merri- ment; all as happy as children play- ing Hide and Seek.” Dudley is with
