outside. His mind waswholly intent on the desperately ticklish piloting at hand.
He cut speed and eased the _Sunsprite_ down into that thinner area ofthe meteor-swarm. Space around them now seemed buzzing with rushing,brilliant little moons.
The meteorometers had gone crazy, blinking and buzzing unceasingwarning, their needles bobbing all over the direction-dials.Instruments were useless here--he had to work by sight alone. He easedthe cruiser lower through the swarm, his fingers flashing over thethrottles, using quick bursts of the rockets to veer aside from thebright, rushing meteors.
"Hurry!" yelled Holk Or hoarsely again, over the tumult. "Ican't--hold them out much longer--"
Down and down went the _Sunsprite_ through the maze of meteor-moons,twisting, turning, dropping ever lower toward the green asteroid.
A last gasping shout from Holk Or, and the door crashed off itsburned-through hinges. Kenniston, unable to turn from thelife-or-death business of threading the swarm, heard the Jovianfighting furiously.
Next moment a hand gripped Kenniston's shoulder and tore him away fromthe controls. It was Murdock, his eyes blazing, his gun raised.
"Raise your hands or I'll kill you, Kenniston!" he cried.
"Let me go!" yelled Kenniston, struggling to get back to thethrottles. "You _fool_!"
He had just glimpsed the jagged moonlet rushing obliquely toward themfrom the left, bulking suddenly big and monstrous.
_Crash!_ The shock flung them from their feet, and the _Sunsprite_gyrated crazily in space. There was a blood-chilling shriek ofoutrushing air from the fore part of the ship, and the slam-slam-slamof the automatic air-doors closing, down there.
The cruiser's whole bows had been crushed in by the glancing blow ofthe meteor. Now, ironically, the ship was falling clear of themeteor-swarm for Kenniston's piloting had almost won through it beforethe impact. But the _Sunsprite_ was falling helplessly, turning overand over as it plunged down toward the green surface of the jungledasteroid.
* * * * *
"My God, we're struck!" came Captain Walls' thin yell.
"This is your fault!" Murdock blazed at Kenniston. "You damned pirateswill die for this!"
"Let me at those controls or we'll all die together in five minutes!"Kenniston cried. "We'll crash to smithereens unless I can make atail-tube landing--"
Heedless of Murdock's gun, he jumped to the controls. His hands flewover the throttles, firing desperate quick bursts of the tailrocket-tubes to bring them out of the spin in which they were falling.
The brake-rockets in the bow were gone. The ship was crippled, almostimpossible to handle. And the dark green jungles of Vesta's surfacewere rushing upward with appalling speed.
Kenniston's frantic efforts brought the _Sunsprite_ out of the spin.By firing the lateral rockets, he kept it falling tail-downward.
"We're goners!" yelled someone in the stricken ship. "We're going tocrash!"
Air was screaming outside the plummeting ship. Kenniston, his handssuperhumanly tense on the throttles, mechanically estimated theirdistance from the uprushing green jungles.
He glimpsed a little black lake in the jungle, and near it the bigcircle of an electrified stockade. He recognized it--John Dark'scamp!
Then, a thousand feet above the jungle, Kenniston's hands jerked openthe throttles. The tail rockets spouted fire downward.
Sickening shock of the sudden check almost hurled him away from thecontrols. His hands jabbed the throttles in and out with lightningrapidity, checking their further fall with one quick burst afteranother.
A sound of rending branches--a staggering sidewise shock that flunghim from his feet. A jarring thump, then silence. They had landed.
CHAPTER IV
The Vestans
Kenniston picked himself up groggily. The others in the bridge hadbeen thrown against walls or floor by the shock, but seemed no morethan bruised. Holk Or was nursing his burned arm. But Hugh Murdock,staggering in a corner, still held his atom-pistol trained onKenniston and the Jovian.
"My God, what a landing!" exclaimed Captain Walls, his plump facestill white. "I thought we were done for."
"Maybe we still are," Murdock said grimly. He said savagely toKenniston, "You think you've won, don't you? Because you've managed tocrash us on this asteroid where your pirate boss is waiting?"
"Listen, Murdock--," Kenniston began desperately.
"Keep your hands up or I'll kill you both!" blazed Murdock. "Marchdown to the main cabin."
Kenniston and the Jovian obeyed. The _Sunsprite_ was lying sharplycanted on its side, and it was difficult to scramble down through thetilted passageways and decks to the big main cabin.
The cabin was a scene of confusion, for it was impossible to standupright on its tilted floor. Young Arthur Lanning had been stunned,and Gloria Loring and the scared blonde girl, Alice Krim, were bathinghis bruised forehead. Robbie Boone was peering wildly through aporthole at the sunlit tangle of green jungle outside. From Mrs.Milsom came a shrill, steady wail of terror.
"Stop that screeching," Murdock told the dumpy dowager brutally."You're not hurt. Gloria, are you others all right?"
Gloria raised her white face from her task. "Only bruised, Hugh."
She did not look at Kenniston or the big Jovian as she spoke.
Robbie Boone's teeth were chattering. "Murdock, what are we going todo? We're wrecked, on this hellish jungle asteroid--"
Murdock paid the frightened, chubby youth no attention. Captain Walls,Bray, and four of the crew were entering the cabin. The captain andpilot had belted on atom-pistols.
Captain Walls' plump face was paler. "Two of the crew were killed andour telaudio wrecked by that meteor," he reported. He glared atKenniston. "You damned pirate! You're responsible for this!"
"If you hadn't dragged me away from the controls, the cruiser wouldn'thave been struck," Kenniston denied. "And I'm not a pirate--"
Murdock interrupted. "We'll settle with those two later," he told theenraged captain. "Right now, we'll have to get out of the ship. Wecan't stay in here until we get it righted on an even keel."
Holk Or rumbled a warning. "Better be careful about going outside.Those cursed Vestans are thick in these jungles."
"I'll have no advice from you two pirates!" flamed the captain. "Bray,you and Thorpe keep your guns on them every minute."
The heavy main space-door was opened. Pale sunlight and warm, steamyair laden with rank scents of strange vegetation drifted in. Outsidelay a raw clearing the falling ship had crushed out of the jungle.
Captain Walls supervised as they all donned lead-soled weight-shoes tocompensate for the weaker gravity. Then they emerged, young Lanningbeing supported by Murdock and Robbie. Kenniston and the Jovian werelast to emerge, under the watchful guns of their guards.
The crew and passengers were looking around with wonder and revulsion.The silvery bulk of the _Sunsprite_ lay awkwardly heeled on its side.The symmetrical torpedo shape of the cruiser was now badly marred bythe crumpled condition of its bow.
* * * * *
All around them in the thin sunlight rose slender trees whose enormousgreen leaves grew directly from the trunks. This grotesque forest wasmade more dense by festoons of writhing "snake-vines," weird rootlesscreepers which crawled like plant-serpents from one tree to another.Each stir of wind brought white spore-dust down in a shower from thetrees.
The few living creatures of this forbidding landscape were equallyalien. Big white meteor-rats scurried on their eight legs through thebrush. Phosphorescent flame-birds shot through the upper fronds likestreaks of fire. In the pale sky overhead, there were ceaseless gleamsand flashes of light as the spinning meteor-swarm reflected thesunlight.
"What a horrible place!" shrilled Mrs. Milsom. "We'll all diehere--we'll never get back to Earth. I knew this would happen!"
"This is certainly a mean spot to be cast away," muttered CaptainWalls. "God knows what queer creatures inhabit it, not to speak of t
hemysterious Vestans everybody talks about. And John Dark and his creware somewhere here. And the telaudio wrecked, so we can't call forhelp."
Kenniston realized that none of the others had glimpsed Dark's camp asthey fell. They didn't know the pirate encampment was only a few milesaway in the jungle.
"What are we going to do, captain?" Gloria was asking, her face stillpale but her voice quite steady. "Can we get away?"
Captain Walls looked hopeless. "We can't take off with the whole bowof the _Sunsprite_ crushed in."
"We can repair it, can't we?" Hugh Murdock suggested. "Remember, inthe hold is the cargo of machinery and