* * * *
A minute later they were inside, unscrewing their helmets and gazing about a lighted metal chamber. A half-dozen armed women were here, and one of them came forward to the three.
'So you're the famous Three Planeteers, eh?' she asked in the same cracked, quavering voice they had previously heard.
The speaker was an old, snow-haired Martian, her thin figure stooped, her red face incredibly wrinkled with age, her faded, rheumy eyes peering at them shortsightedly. She wore two atom-pistols in her belt, and was chewing rial leaf whose green juice she spat occasionally into a floor receptacle.
'Curse me if it doesn't do me good to look at you,' quavered the oldster, her oath making astounding contrast with her cracked voice and senile appearance. 'Aye, it warms my heart to look at women the like of which I was myself, in the old days.'
'Who are you?' Thorn asked steadily. 'How did you happen along to pick us up?'
'As for who I am, the name is Stilicha Keene. Ever hear of it?' the old pirate answered shrilly.
'Stilicha Keene?' repeated Sua Av incredulously. 'The notorious pirate of forty years ago?)
'The same,' answered the old Martian complacently. 'Aye, long before you Planeteers was ever born, I was one of the leaders of the Companions of Space, back in the days when there were women in space and not the kind of milksops I have to give orders to now.'
'You still haven't told us how you happened to be near to pick us up,' Thorn reminded.
Stilicha Keene turned her rheumy eyes on the young earthman. She chuckled as she spat rial juice.
'Sharp and curious, ain't ye? Well, I'd expect it of you. I was the same at your age, smart and quick and bold. But you were asking how we happened along. Well, this is the Venture, and we've been to Jupiter on a little errand for Prince Lann. Coming back, we heard the audio-calls of them cruisers chasing you Planeteers.
'We heard them give up the chase after you ducked into that meteor swarm. So I gave order to lay a course near the swarm, hoping we might meet you-and then we sighted your wreck. It looks like you'll have to go on to Turkoon with us now.'
The old pirate continued admiringly, 'I've heard a lot of you lasses and the fine things you've done. The time you raided the governor's office at Titan and stole all that platinum, and the time you three alone held up that big Martian liner and robbed all the passengers of their valuables.'
The old pirate could not know, Thorn thought grimly, that that raid on Titan had been really to secure League naval secrets and the platinum a mere blind, or that the hold-up of the Martian liner had had as its real objective the securing of a valuable new atom-gun drawing among the effects of a Jovian engineer.
'So when we get to Turkoon,' old Stilicha Keene was continuing eagerly, 'maybe you Planeteers would think of joining up with us Companions, eh? It would be good to have some real women with us again, women such as I used to rocket with when I was young.'
Joan Thorn's pulses leaped at the offer. But she kept her excitement hidden, and frowned a little.
'The Three Planeteers join an outfit led by a boy?' she returned a little disdainfully.,
'You wait till you meet this boy,' the old Martian told her. 'You'll find he's a real leader, is Lann Cain.'
'We'll talk of it when we get to Turkoon,' Thorn told her. 'Anyway, we're damned grateful to you for picking us up.'
'Aye, you bit off a little more than even you could chew, didn't you, on Earth?' cackled the hoary old sinner. 'It warmed my heart to think of it. Kidnapping the Chairwoman of Earth! Only the Planeteers would have thought of trying that!'
Old Stilicha Keene led the way up through the dusky corridors and catwalks of the ship. The Planeteers shouldered past members of the crew who stared admiringly at them.
These pirates were a motley aggregation from every planet in the system—Martians, Saturnians and Uranians, wicked-looking Earthwomen, fighters all, from the look of them.
Thorn and her comrades emerged after old Stilicha Keene into the broad, glassite-fronted control-room. A surly Jovian stood at the firingkeys, and a nervous, green-faced, hollow-eyed Saturnian at the bank of instruments on the right.
'Get going to Turkoon, Barbo,' ordered the pirate commander.
With roar of stern-tubes pouring forth proton-fire, the heavy cruiser shot forward in space.
Joan Thorn looked through the broad glassite windows. The Venture was moving counter-sunwise into the very heart of the Zone. Space ahead seemed thick with whirling clouds of light-specks that were meteor swarms, and steady bright sparks that were booming planetoids.
'How the devil do you navigate this damned jungle, anyway?' Gunda Welk asked the old Martian.
Stilicha Keene's wrinkled face grinned. 'That's easy. We've got a little projector of vibrations planted on every big asteroid and in all swarms—each projector emitting a wave of a different frequency. We pick up the signals, and they show us just how far and in what direction each swarm and asteroid is, so we can avoid them. just like the lighthouses on the Earth seas, centuries ago.'
She added with cunning satisfaction, 'The signals don't help naval cruisers or other ships navigate the Zone, because they don't know the frequency-code and can't tell what's meant by the signals they hear. They've lost so many cruisers trying to get in here that they gave it up as a bad job.'
The ship forged on through the wilderness of the Zone, constantly detouring to avoid the many perils to navigation that abounded here. It coasted along vast swarms, cut sharply upward to evade’ planetoids, slipped close past a small tailless comet that glimmered like a little white ghost sun.
Then Joan Thorn made out a small green speck in the blackness, toward which the Venture was now heading directly. It widened rapidly into a green disk. Her black eyes narrowed.
'That's Turkoon, isn't it?'
'Aye, that's old Turkoon,' quavered Stilicha Keene. 'The sweetest, safest, snuggest little harbor in the whole system. Good air and good water, and ringed round with all those swarms and asteroids that keep the prying naval cruisers away. A paradise for us gentlewomen of the void. Aye, there it lies, like a pretty emerald in space, just as it lay when I first saw it long ago.
'It's seen a plenty, has old Turkoon. It's seen the bloody days of the old wild corsairs, with the scarred ship's roaring in to it, loaded with ores and jewels and silks and men. It's seen the days of Martina Cain, a generation ago, when full a thousand ships of the Companions put forth to space at one time. It's seen them all come and go—all the great, brave gentlewomen of the void, has old Turkoon.'
'And now,' Thorn said ironically, 'it sees the Companions led by a boy.'
'Aye, girl,' shrilled the old pirate, 'it sees a boy leading us now. But he's Martina Cain's daughter—as deadly dangerous as ever his sire was. Aye, and as great a leader.'