* * * *
Gunda Welk and Sua Av were gathering the atom-guns and other equipment they were to take with them. The Planeteers had already changed into jackets and boots of soft Jovian leather.
'You're sure you understand where you're to wait for us with the Venture?' Thorn asked the old pirate.
Stilicha's white head bobbed. 'Out in the ring, in Cassini's division just at the west limb of the planet-shadow. We'll lie there in the ship till you come. But how will you get out there?'
'If we get Lann out safely,' Thorn clipped, 'we'll steal a small ship somehow and get there.'
They went down to the ship door. It had been opened and the frigid, misty air of Saturn, faintly tainted with ammonia, was pouring into the ship. The motley crew was silently watching as the Planeteers prepared to disembark. And Ool, the big gray space dog, pressed against Thorn's legs and looked up at her with great green eyes that held an almost human expression of anxiety.
'Ool wants to go with you,' said Stilicha. 'She senses you're going after Lann.'
'We daren't take her—it'd arouse too much attention for poor slith-hunters to own such a rare beast. You hold her, Stilicha,' Thorn said.
'Won't you change your mind and let me go along with you?' asked the old Martian pleadingly.
'We've argued that out,' Thorn reminded her. 'One of us four has got to keep the ship waiting at the rendezvous in the ring, and that's the way in which you can best help us.'
Stilicha, holding the space dog's neck, reached up to grip Thorn's hand with bony fingers. Her cracked voice quavered.
'Good luck, boy—and God grant you bring the lad out safely.'
The door ground shut. With a resounding reverberation of blazing keel-tubes, the Venture blasted off.
The Planeteers stood silent in the frigid misty darkness, watching the ship disappear into the sky.
'So we're on our own now,' rumbled Gunda Welk. 'And all we have to do is make our way into Saturnopolis through ten thousand secret police who are watching for spies, break into Hasna Trask's citadel that even Saturnians don't dare go near, and steal away the dictator's most important prisoner right from under her nose. It's almost too easy!'
'I hate to see you grow sarcastic, Gunda,' said Sua Av worriedly. 'It's the mark of a small mind.'
The Venusian dodged, chuckling, as the towering Mercurian aimed a bear-like blow at her.
'Be quiet!' snapped Joan Thorn tautly. 'I hear someone or something.'
The other two Planeteers were instantly silent, all three gripping their heavy atom-guns and listening intently.
The great fungus forest that covered much of Saturn stretched about them in the cold mist, illuminated by the combined ring-light and moonlight. All around the little clearing in which they stood towered the enormous fungi, huge gray growths in the form of bulbous spheres, drawing their sustenance by parasitism from the thick mat of spongy mosses underfoot.
Nothing appeared stirring except a few 'diggers'—furry little beasts with flat, spade-like noses, whose red eyes fearfully watched from tunnel-mouths nearby. The only sounds were the occasional zooming drone of pinkly luminous 'fire bats'winging through the towering fungi, and the long, distant ululation of a pack of 'climbers.'
The sky over the Planeteers’ heads was weirdly magnificent—dominated by the colossal arc of the rings that spanned the heavens just south of the zenith like a huge, shining, white rainbow. Out beyond the rings shone the bright shield of Titan, sinking rapidly toward the horizon while Tethys and Rhea rose like twin jewels among the stars.
'I don't hear anything,' muttered Sua Av finally. 'But the noise of the ship landing may have attracted—'
'Joan, look out!' yelled Gunda Welk suddenly. 'A slith!'
One of the smaller bulbous gray fungi of the forest had suddenly begun to move. It came toward them with rocket-speed, a charge almost faster than the eye could follow.
Thorn knew it was slith as she flung her atom-gun to her shoulder. That creature alone could so perfectly mimic the gray fungi by means of its protective coloration,
Thorn glimpsed the charging thing over the sights of her weapon for an instant, a bulbous. oily gray monster ten feet high, its dumpy, shapeless body running with incredible swiftness on thick little legs, the two cold, bright eyes in the front of its faceless body flaming as its white-fanged mouth gaped unbelievably wide.
She fired and missed. Her shell exploded blindingly just behind the charging slith. Gunda fired an instant later, and her atom-shell hit the creature's side. When the flare of the shell vanished, they saw the great gray mass lying unstirring only a dozen feet from them.
'We let that thing catch us napping!' Thorn said harshly. 'We should have remembered this forest is alive with sliths.'
'You're right about that!' yelled Sua Av. 'There's another of them!'
The Venusian's gun fairly leaped to her shoulder. But instead of firing,, she stared stupefiedly.
'Devils of space, look at it! The thing's coming apart!'
The second slith that Sua Av had glimpsed was a hundred yards away among the fungi. It was an even bigger creature than the first, and its treat gray mass was grotesquely different in shape, consisting of a large mass with the cold, bright eyes and wide, lipless mouth, and a smaller attached mass with eyes and mouth also.
The smaller mass was detaching itself from the main body of the creature. Soft gray flesh stretched and snapped. And instead of one slith, there stood two, a large one and a little one. A moment later, both of them charged toward the Planeteers.
The shells of three atom-guns exploded together around the onrushing monsters. Both lay dead when the flares died.
'Am I seeing things or did that creature really divide into two?' demanded the Venusian.
'Planetary zoology must be a closed book to you,' Gunda Welk told her dourly. 'If you knew any, you'd know that the aboriginal animal life of Saturn is asexual, and propagates by fission.'
'Come on, we'll get the teeth out of these carcasses,' Thorn said. 'It's lucky we've killed a few, for slith hunters going back to town without any teeth might arouse suspicion.'
They advanced to the torn dead bodies, feeling with this first locomotion the powerful drag of Saturnian gravitation. Only the fact that that gravitation was partly neutralized by the centrifugal force of the planet's rapid spin made it tolerable to women. The space-trained muscles of the Planeteers quickly began to adjust themselves to the greater load, though they felt very slow and heavy.
With their keen knives of Earth steelite they hacked and slashed at the repulsive bodies of the sliths, digging the huge white fangs out. Those teeth, the hardest and most perdurable organic substance in the system, were in high demand on all worlds for carving into jewelry and for certain industrial processes. The system wide demand for them was responsible for the fact that slith-hunting was a profession on this world.
Dawn was rapidly filtering through the mists about them. The brief five hour night of Saturn was ending.
'Curse these cold fogs!' muttered Sua Av, her teeth chattering as she worked. 'I wouldn't trade one hot, steamy swamp of Venus for all these outer worlds.'
'If you liked that mud-puddle native world of yours so much, why did you leave it?' demanded Gunda.
They had the last of the teeth out, and were putting them into the pouches at their belts, when Thorn suddenly sprang to her feet, gripping her heavy atom-gun.
'Stand by, girls, and don't show any excitement,' she said in a low, rapid voice.
Through the chill, dawn-lit mists of the fungus forest toward the three comrades were coming a dozen green-faced Saturnians, all heavily armed.