Gloria shivered. "That sounds ghastly."
"It is," Kenniston said somberly. "I've seen scores of my friends stricken 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 heiress said wonderingly. "I thought you said you were a meteor-miner."
Kenniston woke up to the fact that he had made a bad slip. He hastily covered up. "You have to be a good bit of a space-sailor to be a meteor-miner, Miss Loring. You have to cover a lot of territory."
He was thankful that they were interrupted at that moment by some of the others who came along the deck in a lively, chattering group.
Robbie Boone was the center of the group. That chubby, clownish young man, heir to the Atomic Power Corporation millions, had garbed himself in what he fondly believed to be a typical space-man's outfit. His jacket and slacks were of black synthesilk, and he wore a big atom-pistol.
"Hiya, pal!" he grinned cherubically at Kenniston. "When does this here 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 you walked 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't flirt."
Arthur Lanning, the sulky, handsome youngster who always had a drink in his hand, drawled. "Then you've tried him out, Gloria?"
The heiress' dark eyes snapped, but she was spared a reply by the appearance of Mrs. Milsom. That dumpy, fluttery woman, the nominal chaperone 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 a moment.
* * * * *
Into his mind had risen memory of the savage, choking green jungles of the World with a Thousand Moons; of the slithering creatures slipping through the fronds, of the rustling presence of the dreaded Vestans who could never quite be seen; of the pirate wreck around which John Dark 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 a booming laugh. "A hotel on Vesta! That's a good one!"
Kenniston flashed the big green pirate a warning glance. Robbie Boone was asking him, "Will there be any good hunting there?"
"Sure there will," Holk Or declared. His small eyes gleamed with secret humor. "You're going to find lots of adventure there, my lad."
When Mrs. Milsom had dragged the others away for the usual afternoon game of "dimension bridge," the Jovian looked after them, chuckling.
"This crowd of idiots hadn't ought to have ever left Earth. What a surprise they're going to get on Vesta!"
"They're not such a bad bunch, at bottom," Kenniston said halfheartedly. "Just a lot of ignorant kids looking for adventure."
"Bah, you're falling for the Loring girl," scoffed Holk Or. "You'd better 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," he declared.
"Yes? What's that?" returned Kenniston guardedly.
He was very much on the alert. Murdock was not a heedless, gullible youngster like the others. He was, Kenniston had learned, an already important official in the Loring Radium company.
From the chaffing the others gave Murdock, it was evident that the young business man had joined the party only because he was in love with Gloria. There was something likeable about the dogged devotion of the sober young man. His very obvious determination to protect Gloria's safety, and his intelligence, made him dangerous in Kenniston's eyes.
"I was down in the hold looking over the equipment you loaded," Hugh Murdock was saying. "You know, the stuff we're to use to dig out the wreck of Dark's ship. And I can't understand it--there's no digging machinery, but simply a lot of cyclotrons, rocket-tubes and spare plates."
Kenniston smiled to cover the alarm he felt. "Don't worry, Murdock, I loaded 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 to help. It's more like ship-repair stores than anything else."
Kenniston lied hastily. "The cycs are for power-supply, and the rocket-tubes and plates are to build a heavy duty power-hoist to jack the wreck out of the mud. Holk Or and I have got that all figured out."
Murdock frowned as though still unconvinced, but dropped the subject. When he had gone off to join the others, Holk Or glared after him.
"That fellow's too smart for his own good," muttered the Jovian. "He's suspicious. Maybe I'd better see that he meets with an accident."
"No, let him alone," warned Kenniston. "If anything happened to him now, the others would want to turn back. And we're almost to Vesta now."
But worry remained as a shadow in the back of Kenniston's own mind. It still oppressed him hours later when the arbitrary ship's-time had brought the 'night.' Sitting down in the luxurious passenger-cabin over highballs with the others, he wondered where Hugh Murdock was.
The rest of Gloria's party were all here, listening with fascinated interest to Holk Or's colorful yarns of adventures on the wild asteroids. But Murdock was missing. Kenniston wondered worriedly if the fellow was looking over that equipment in the hold again.
* * * * *
A young Earth space-man--one of the Sunsprite's small crew--came into the cabin and approached Kenniston.
"Captain Walls' compliments, sir, and would you come up to the bridge? He'd like your advice about the course again."
"I'll go with you," Gloria said as Kenniston rose. "I like it up in the bridge best of any place on the ship."
As they climbed past the little telaudio transmitter-room, they saw Hugh Murdock standing in there by the operator. He smiled at Gloria.
"I've been trying to get some messages through to Earth, but it seems we're almost out of range," he said ruefully.
"Can't you ever forget business, Hugh?" the girl said exasperatedly. "You're about as adventurous as a fat radium-broker of fifty."
Kenniston, however, felt relieved that Murdock had apparently forgotten about the oddness of the equipment below. His spirits were lighter when they entered the glassite-enclosed bridge.
Captain Walls turned from where he stood beside Bray, the chief pilot. The plump, cheerful master touched his cap to Gloria Loring.
"Sorry to bother you again, Mr. Kenniston," he apologized. "But we're getting pretty near Vesta, and you know this devilish region of space better than I do. The charts are so vague they're useless."
Kenniston glanced at the instrument-panel with a practiced eye and then squinted at the void ahead. The Sunsprite was now throbbing steadily through a starry immensity whose hosts of glittering points of light would have made a bewildering panorama to laymen's eyes.
They seemed near none of those blazing sparks. Yet every few minutes, red lights blinked and buzzers sounded on the instrument panel. At each such warning of the meteorometers, the pilot glanced quickly at their direction-dials and then touched the rocket-throttles to change course slightly. The cruiser was threading a way through unseen but highly perilous swarms of rushing meteors and scores of thundering asteroids.
Vesta was n
ow a bright, pale-green disk like a little moon. It was not directly ahead, but lay well to the left. The cruiser was following an indirect course that had been laid to detour it well around one of the bigger meteor-swarms that was spinning rapidly toward Mars.
"What about it, Mr. Kenniston--is it safe to turn toward Vesta now?" Captain Walls asked anxiously. "The chart doesn't show any more swarms that should be in this region now, by my calculations."
Kenniston snorted. "Charts are all made by planet-lubbers. There's a small swarm that tags after that big No. 480 mess we just detoured around. Let me have the 'scopes and I'll try to locate it."
Using the meteorscopes whose sensitive electromagnetic beams could probe far out through space, to be reflected by any matter, Kenniston searched carefully. He finally straightened from the task.
"It's all right--the tag-swarm is on the far side of No. 480," he reported. "It should be safe to blast straight toward Vesta now."
The captain's anxiety was only partly assuaged. "But when we reach the asteroid, what then? How do we get through the satellite-swarm around it?"
"I can pilot you through that," Kenniston assured him. "There's a periodic break in that swarm, due to gravitational perturbations of the spinning meteor-moons. I know how to find it."
"Then I'll wake you up early tomorrow 'morning' before we reach Vesta," vowed Captain Walls. "I've no hankering to run that swarm myself."
"We'll be there in the morning?" exclaimed Gloria with eager delight. "How long then will it take us to find the pirate wreck?"
Kenniston uncomfortably evaded the question. "I don't know--it shouldn't take long. We can land in the jungle near the wreck."
His feeling of guilt was increased by her enthusiastic excitement. If she and the others only knew what the morrow was to bring them!
* * * * *
He did not feel like facing the rest of them now, and lingered on the dark deck when they went back down from the bridge. Gloria remained beside him instead of going on to the cabin.
She stood, with the starlight from the transparent deck-wall falling upon her youthful face as she looked up at him.
"You are a moody creature, you know," she told Kenniston lightly. "Sometimes you're almost human--then you get all dark and grim again."
Kenniston grinned despite himself. Her voice came in mock surprise. "Why, it can actually smile! I can't believe my eyes."
Her clear young face was provocatively close, the faint perfume of her dark hair in his nostrils. He knew that she was deliberately flirting with him, perhaps mostly out of curiosity.
She expected him to kiss her, he knew. Damn it, he would kiss her! He did so, half ironically. But the ironic amusement faded out of his mind somehow at the oddly shy contact of her soft lips.
"Why, you're just a kid," he muttered. "A little kid masquerading as a bored, sophisticated young lady."
Gloria stiffened with anger. "Don't be silly! I've kissed men before. I just wanted to find out what you were really like."
"Well, what did you find out?"
Her voice softened. "I found out that you're not as grim as you look. I think you're just lonely."
The truth of that made Kenniston wince. Yes, he was lonely enough, he thought somberly. All his old space-mates, passing one by one--
"Don't you have anyone?" Gloria was asking him wonderingly.
"No family, except my kid brother Ricky," he answered heavily. "And most of my old space-partners are either dead or else worse--lying in the grip of gravitation-paralysis."
Memory of those old partners re-established Kenniston's wavering resolution. He mustn't let them down! He must go through with delivering this cruiser's cargo to John Dark, no matter what the consequences.
He thrust the girl almost roughly from him. "It's getting late. You'd better turn in like the others."
But later, in his bunk in the little cabin he shared with Holk Or, Kenniston found memory of Gloria a barrier to sleep. The shy touch of her lips refused to be forgotten. What would she think of him by tomorrow?
He slept, finally. When he awakened, it was to realization that someone had just sharply spoken his name. He knew drowsily it was 'morning' and thought at first that Captain Walls had sent someone to awaken him.
Then he stiffened as he saw who had awakened him. It was Hugh Murdock. The young businessman's sober face was grim now, and he stood in the doorway of the cabin with a heavy atom-pistol in his hand.
"Get up and dress, Kenniston," Murdock said sternly. "And wake up your fellow-pirate, too. If you make a wrong move I'll kill you both."
CHAPTER III
Through the Meteor-Moons
Kenniston went cold with dismay. He told himself numbly that it was impossible Hugh Murdock could have discovered the truth. But the grim expression on Murdock's face and the naked hate in his eyes were explainable on no other grounds.
The young businessman's finger was tense on the trigger of the atom-pistol. Resistance would be senseless. Mechanically, Kenniston slipped from his bunk and threw on his slacks and space-jacket. Holk Or was doing the same, the big Jovian's battered green face almost ludicrous in astonishment.
"Now perhaps you'll tell us what this means," Kenniston said harshly, his mind racing. "Have you lost your senses?"
"I've just come to them, Kenniston," rapped Murdock. "What fools we all were, not to guess that you two belong to Dark's pirates!"
Kenniston's lips tightened. It was clear now that Murdock had actually discovered something. From Holk Or came an angry roar.
"Devils of Pluto, I'm no pirate!" the big Jovian lied magnificently. "Whatever gave you this crazy idea?"
Murdock's hard face did not relax. He waved the atom-pistol. "Go into the main cabin," he ordered. "Walk ahead of me."
Helplessly, Kenniston and Holk Or obeyed. His mind was desperate as he shouldered down the corridor. The throbbing of the rockets told him the Sunsprite was still forging through the void. They must be very near Vesta by now--and now this had to happen!
The others had been awakened by the uproar and streamed into the main cabin after Murdock and his two prisoners. Kenniston glimpsed Gloria, slim in a silken negligee, her dark eyes round with amazement.
"Hugh, have you gone crazy?" she exclaimed stupefiedly.
Murdock answered without looking toward her. "I've found out the truth, Gloria. These men belong to John Dark's crew. They were taking us into a trap."
"Holy smoke!" gasped Robbie Boone, his jaw sagging as the chubby youth stared at Kenniston and Holk Or. "They're pirates?"
"I think you must be losing your mind!" Gloria stormed at Hugh Murdock. "This is ridiculous."
Holk Or yawned elaborately. "Space-sickness hits people in queer ways, Miss Loring," the Jovian told Gloria confidentially. "Some it just makes sick, but others it makes delirious."
"I'm not delirious, and you two know it," Murdock retorted grimly. He spoke to Gloria and the others, without taking his eyes or the muzzle of his pistol off his two captives.
"I thought from the first that this Kenniston's story of finding the wreck of Dark's ship on Vesta was a thin one," Murdock declared. "And yesterday my suspicions were increased when I went down and looked over the cargo of equipment they brought. It's not equipment to dig out a buried wreck. It's equipment to repair a damaged ship--John Dark's ship!
"Suspecting that, last 'night' I sent a telaudiogram to Patrol headquarters at Earth. I gave full descriptions of Kenniston and this Jovian and inquired if they had criminal records. An answer came through an hour ago. This fellow Holk Or has a record of criminal piracy as long as your arm, and was definitely known to be one of John Dark's crew!"
There was an incredulous gasp from the others. Murdock still grimly watched Kenniston and the Jovian as he concluded.
"The Patrol hasn't yet sent through Kenniston's record, but it's obvious enough that he's one of Dark's men too, and that his story that he and the Jovian are meteor-miners is a flat lie."
"I can't under
stand this," muttered young Arthur Lanning, staring. "If they're Dark's men, why should they induce us to go to Vesta?"
"Can't you see?" said Hugh Murdock. "John Dark's ship did crash on Vesta after being wrecked--that must be true enough. But Dark and his pirates weren't dead as the Patrol thought. They had to have machines and material to repair their ship. So Dark sent these two men to Mars for the materials. The two couldn't get a ship there any other way, so they made use of our cruiser by selling us that treasure yarn!"
* * * * *
Kenniston winced. He knew now that he had underestimated Murdock, who had put together the evidence quickly when his suspicions were roused.
Gloria Loring, looking at Kenniston with wide dark eyes, saw the change in his expression. Into her white face came an incredulous loathing.
"Then it's true," she whispered. "You did that--you deliberately planned to lead us all into capture?"
"Aw, you're all space-struck," growled Holk Or, bluffing to the last.
Murdock spoke over his shoulder. "Call Captain Walls, Robbie."
"No need to--here he comes now!" yelped the excited youth.
Captain Walls, entering the cabin in urgent haste, had eyes only for Kenniston in the first moment.
"Ah, there you are, Mr. Kenniston!" the captain exclaimed relievedly. "I was just coming for you. We've reached Vesta! I've ordered the pilot to slow down, for I want you to pilot us through the swarm--"
The captain's voice trailed off. His eyes bulged as for the first time he perceived that Murdock was covering the two men with a gun.
"We're not going in to Vesta, captain," rapped Murdock. "John Dark and his pirates are on the asteroid--alive!"
Captain Walls' plump face went waxy as he heard the name of the most dreaded corsair of the System.
"Dark--living?" he stuttered. "Good God, you must be joking!"
The Worlds of Edmond Hamilton Page 32
