John Dark at last.
Dark's pirate ship, the _Falcon_, had been gunned to a helpless wreck.It had, fortunately for the pirates, drifted off into a region ofperilous meteor-swarms where the Patrol cruisers dared not follow. ThePatrol thought everybody on the pirate ship dead anyway, Kennistonknew.
But John Dark and most of his crew were still alive in the driftingwreck. They had fought the battle wearing space-suits, and that hadsaved them. They had clung grimly to the wreck as it drifted on and onuntil it finally fell into the feeble gravitational pull of Vesta.
Kenniston could still remember those tense hours when the wreck hadfallen through the satellite swarm of meteors onto the World with aThousand Moons. They had managed to cushion their crash. John Dark,always the most resourceful of men, had managed to jury-rig makeshiftrocket-tubes that had softened the impact of their fall.
But the wrecked _Falcon_ had been marooned there in the weirdasteroidal jungle, with the alien, menacing Vestans already gatheringaround it. The ship would never fly space again until major repairswere made. And they could not be made until quantities of material andequipment were brought. Someone must go for those materials to Mars,the nearest planet.
John Dark had superintended construction of a little two-man rocketfrom parts of the ship. Kenniston and Holk Or were to go in it.
"You _must_ be back with that list of equipment and materials withintwo weeks, Kenniston," Dark had emphasized. "If we stay castaway herelonger than that, either the Vestans will get us or the Patroldiscover us."
The pirate leader had added, "The moon-jewels I've given you will morethan pay for a small cruiser, if you can buy one at Mars. If you can'tbuy one, get one any way you can--but get back here quickly!"
Well, Kenniston thought grimly, he had got a cruiser in the only wayhe could. Down in its hold were the berylloy plates and sparerocket-tubes and new cyclotrons he had had loaded aboard at Syrtis.
But he was also bringing back to Vesta with him a bunch ofthrill-seeking, rich, young people who believed they were going on aromantic treasure-hunt. What would they think of him when theydiscovered how he had betrayed them?
* * * * *
"That's Vesta, isn't it?" spoke a girl's eager voice behind him,interrupting his dark thoughts.
Kenniston turned quickly. It was Gloria Loring, boyish in silkenspace-slacks, her hands thrust into the pockets.
There was a naive eagerness in her clear, lovely face as she lookedtoward the distant asteroid, that made her look more like an excitedsmall girl than like the bored, jewelled heiress of that night atSyrtis.
"Yes, that's the World with a Thousand Moons," Kenniston nodded."We'll reach it by tomorrow. I've just been up on the bridge, tellingyour Captain Walls the safest route through the meteor swarms."
Her dark eyes studied him curiously. "You've been out here on thefrontier a long time, haven't you?"
"Twelve years," he told her. "That's a long time in the outer planets.Most space-men don't last that long out here--wrecks, accidents orgravitation-paralysis gets them."
"Gravitation-paralysis?" she repeated. "I've heard of that as aterrible danger to space-travelers. But I don't really know what itis."
"It's the most dreaded danger of all out here," Kenniston answered. "Aparalysis that hits you when you change from very weak to very stronggravities or vice versa, too often. It locks all your muscles rigid bynumbing the motor-nerves."
Gloria shivered. "That sounds ghastly."
"It is," Kenniston said somberly. "I've seen scores of my friendsstricken down by it, in the years I've sailed the outer System."
"I didn't know you'd been a space-sailor all that time," the heiresssaid wonderingly. "I thought you said you were a meteor-miner."
Kenniston woke up to the fact that he had made a bad slip. He hastilycovered up. "You have to be a good bit of a space-sailor to be ameteor-miner, Miss Loring. You have to cover a lot of territory."
He was thankful that they were interrupted at that moment by some ofthe others who came along the deck in a lively, chattering group.
Robbie Boone was the center of the group. That chubby, clownish youngman, heir to the Atomic Power Corporation millions, had garbed himselfin what he fondly believed to be a typical space-man's outfit. Hisjacket and slacks were of black synthesilk, and he wore a bigatom-pistol.
"Hiya, pal!" he grinned cherubically at Kenniston. "When does thishere crate of ours jet down at Vesta?"
"If you knew how silly you looked, Robbie," said Gloria devastatingly,"trying to dress and talk like an old space-man."
"You're just jealous," Robbie defied. "I look all right, don't I,Kenniston?"
Kenniston's lips twitched. "You'd certainly create a sensation if youwalked into the Spaceman's Rendezvous in Jovopolis."
Alice Krim, a featherheaded little blonde, eyed Kenniston admiringly."You've been to an awful lot of planets, haven't you?" she sighed.
"Turn it off, Alice," said Gloria dryly. "Mr. Kenniston doesn'tflirt."
Arthur Lanning, the sulky, handsome youngster who always had a drinkin his hand, drawled. "Then you've tried him out, Gloria?"
The heiress' dark eyes snapped, but she was spared a reply by theappearance of Mrs. Milsom. That dumpy, fluttery woman, the nominalchaperone of the group, immediately seized upon Kenniston as usual.
"Mr. Kenniston, are you sure this asteroid we're going to is safe?"she asked him for the hundredth time. "Is there a good hotel there?"
"A good hotel there?" Kenniston was too astounded to answer, for amoment.
* * * * *
Into his mind had risen memory of the savage, choking green jungles ofthe World with a Thousand Moons; of the slithering creatures slippingthrough the fronds, of the rustling presence of the dreaded Vestanswho could never quite be seen; of the pirate wreck around which JohnDark and half a hundred of the System's most hardened outlaws waited.
"Of course there's no hotel there, Aunty," Gloria said disgustedly."Can't you understand that this asteroid's almost unexplored?"
Holk Or had come up, and the big Jovian had heard. He broke into abooming laugh. "A hotel on Vesta! That's a good one!"
Kenniston flashed the big green pirate a warning glance. Robbie Boonewas asking him, "Will there be any good hunting there?"
"Sure there will," Holk Or declared. His small eyes gleamed withsecret humor. "You're going to find lots of adventure there, my lad."
When Mrs. Milsom had dragged the others away for the usual afternoongame of "dimension bridge," the Jovian looked after them, chuckling.
"This crowd of idiots hadn't ought to have ever left Earth. What asurprise they're going to get on Vesta!"
"They're not such a bad bunch, at bottom," Kenniston saidhalfheartedly. "Just a lot of ignorant kids looking for adventure."
"Bah, you're falling for the Loring girl," scoffed Holk Or. "You'dbetter keep your mind on John Dark's orders."
Kenniston made a warning gesture. "Cut it! Here comes Murdock."
Hugh Murdock came straight along the deck toward them, and his sober,clean-cut young face wore a puzzled look as he halted before them.
"Kenniston, there's something about this I can't understand," hedeclared.
"Yes? What's that?" returned Kenniston guardedly.
He was very much on the alert. Murdock was not a heedless, gullibleyoungster like the others. He was, Kenniston had learned, an alreadyimportant official in the Loring Radium company.
From the chaffing the others gave Murdock, it was evident that theyoung business man had joined the party only because he was in lovewith Gloria. There was something likeable about the dogged devotion ofthe sober young man. His very obvious determination to protectGloria's safety, and his intelligence, made him dangerous inKenniston's eyes.
"I was down in the hold looking over the equipment you loaded," HughMurdock was saying. "You know, the stuff we're to use to dig out thewreck of Dark's ship. And I can't understand it--there's no diggingmachine
ry, but simply a lot of cyclotrons, rocket-tubes and spareplates."
Kenniston smiled to cover the alarm he felt. "Don't worry, Murdock, Iloaded just the equipment we'll need. You'll see when we reach Vesta."
Murdock persisted. "But I still don't see how that stuff is going tohelp. It's more like ship-repair stores than anything else."
Kenniston lied hastily. "The cycs are for power-supply, and therocket-tubes and plates are to build a heavy duty