CHAPTER XI
Secret Police
JOAN THORN perceived that the approaching Saturnians were slith-hunters. They were a rough-looking crew, wearing stained leather and carrying heavy atom-guns. In their lead was a hulking woman of middle age who hailed the Planeteers in a bull voice.
'What luck, friends?' she called jovially. 'I see you've got a few sliths, at least.'
'A few is right,' Joan Thorn answered ruefully. 'We've been roaming the fungi for days, and these are the first teeth we've got.'
Thorn was careful to speak with the heavy Saturnian accent. The language of all the system's peoples is the same, since all are descended from the original colonizing Earth stock. But each world has developed its characteristic accent.
Sua Av and Gunda Welk had risen to their feet. They stood, casually wiping the gray blood of the slain sliths from their leather jackets as the Saturnians came up.
'I'm Kribe,' announced the hulking leader of the newcomers in her bull voice. 'I thought I knew all the hunters in these parts, but you lasses are new.'
Thorn nodded. 'We came down here from Karies, figuring the hunting might be better here. Instead, it's worse.'
Kribe nodded her big head in emphatic agreement. 'Aye, it's getting so a hunter can't make a living in these parts,' she boomed. 'Too near Saturnopolis, I guess.'
She slapped a bulging pouch at her belt. 'Anyway, we've made a fair haul of teeth and we're on our way back to Saturnopolis. Wanta lift in our rocket-plane?'
Joan Thorn's pulses leaped at the offer. Here was a quick way to get into the Saturnian capital in company that would nullify, suspicion. But she frowned doubtfully, and looked questioningly at the other two Planeteers beside her.
'What about it?' she asked them. 'Shall we pull out of these forests with what few teeth we have?'
'I say yes,' growled Gunda Welk disgustedly, in Saturnian accents. 'This section isn't as good hunting as where we came from.'
Sua Av nodded her agreement. 'I want to see a few lights and get a few drinks, after two weeks like we've had.'
'Ho, ho!' guffawed the hulking Kribe. 'Don't be so down-hearted about your bad luck, lasses. It'll change soon, sure.'
The disguised Planeteers trudged through the towering fungi with their new-found friends. Thorn and her two comrades had to exert all their strength to keep from showing the dragging, leaden effect of the Saturnian gravitation upon them.
The wan, sickly day of Saturn had come. The little, far-off disk of the sun was rising rapidly to cast its thin, feeble rays upon the looming gray fungi and spongy gray mosses. Across the dusky sky, the incredible arc of the rings soared stupendously. The usual cold morning rain was dripping from the mists by the time they reached the rocket-plane.
Kribe's vehicle proved an ancient, battered one whose glassite windows were cracked and whose inertrum power-chamber had been strained, and crudely reinforced with chromaloy bands.
As they piled into the tubular body, Thorn hoped fervently that that power-chamber would not choose to let go at this particular time.
Kribe started the antique machine, and it lurched crazily up from the fungus forest into the rainy mists. The Saturnian turned to Thorn with a large, ostentatious air.
'I suppose you're wondering where a slith-hunter got money enough to buy a fine rocket-plane like this,' she boomed to Thorn over the irregular roar of defective tubes. 'The fact is that me and my girls here own it together.'
'It's a fine machine,' Thorn said admiringly. 'I always hoped to own one. But times are hard for a hunter.'
'Aye, and getting harder,' growled the hulking Saturnian. 'Since this war-scare cut off all trade with the inner worlds, the price of teeth has gone down almost to nothing. When the war really starts, our market will be gone altogether.'
A youthful Saturnian behind them spoke up, her face flushed with patriotic ardor.
'You forget, Kribe, that once we have conquered the Inner Alliance and have access to the rich resources of those worlds, we'll all be prosperous. The Chairwoman has said so, hasn't she? And the Chairwoman is always right.'
'Oh, sure, the Chairwoman is always right,' hastily boomed Kribe, with a doubtful glance at the Planeteers.
It was the slogan of the four League worlds, Thorn knew, the formula that Hasna Trask, the dictator, had impressed almost hypnotically upon her followers. Everyone in the rocketplane, to show her patriotism, hastened to repeat it.
'The Chairwoman is always right,' they chorused together, the Planeteers joining in.
Sua Av choked over a sneeze that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle, and Thorn shot the disguised Venusian a furious glance.
Thorn guessed after a little while that they were approaching Saturnopolis. The city was not yet visible through the misty rain, but below them now lay vast cultivated groves of the queer fungus-fruits developed on this world. Many workers could be seen down there, toiling and plodding through the cold, dripping rain.
Saturnopolis came into sight, low on the distant horizon ahead. Underneath the dusky daylight sky, framed by the colossal shining arch of the rings, the metropolis showed as a great mass of low black structures. A square, terraced black fortress rose near the center of the city, vague and distant in the mists.
Joan Thorn's hands clenched as she glimpsed, miles north of the capital, the huge expanse of an enormous spaceport. She could make out rows of hundreds on hundreds of battle cruisers parked there, and others landing or taking off. That hive of swarming activity, she knew, was the main base at which most of the ships of the League navies were gathering for the coming attack on the Alliance.
Kribe had followed Thorn's intent gaze. The booming voice of the hunter startled the disguised young Earthwoman.
'They say any rocket-plane that flies within five miles of that spaceport is gunned down,' Kribe declared. 'I always give the place a wide berth.'
Thorn nodded. For the moment, as she stared at the gathering armada that was intended to carry conquest and destruction to the inner worlds, she could not trust herself to speak.
'Here we are,' boomed Kribe a few minutes later. She added proudly, 'It didn't take long in this machine, did it?'
Their rocket-plane was gliding down over the flat, black roofs of the city. They poised in the rainy mist, edged into a descent-level, and presently came down on a parking-roof.
Kribe turned genially to Thorn and her comrades as the party of slith hunters emerged from the battered machine.
'You three lasses come along with us to Mother Bombey's place,' she boomed. 'It's our favorite drinking spot here.'
'Sorry, we can't,' Thorn told her. 'We're out of money, and these few teeth we have won't bring more than enough to pay our way back to Karies.'
'Who said you would need money?' demanded Kribe indignantly. 'I'm paying for everything, lasses. I know what it is to come back from a hard trip with only a handful of teeth.'
Thorn thought rapidly. She had a plan for seeking Lann, but could not try it until night came. The Planeteers would be safer if they stayed off the streets in the meantime.
'All right, we're your women if you're paying,' she told Kribe with a grin, as they descended to the street.
Saturnopolis looked a dreary place in the sickly daylight beneath the falling rain. The cold mists that fogged its streets were bone-chilling. Through the streets roared rocketcars, and the pedestrian-walks were crowded with the Saturnian populace, and with hordes of officers and women of the four League navies. The four circle emblem of the League was showing everywhere, and it was clearly evident that Hasna Trask had whipped the people to war-fever.
Far away, across the city, there rose from the ruck of low, black cement buildings the huge, terraced square pile that dominated everything. It had been built two centuries before, as the seat of the Saturnian government. Now, Thorn knew, it was the guarded citadel in which the ruthless dictator of the League of Cold Worlds lived and worked and wove her plans of conquest.
Sua Av and Gunda Wel
k pressed close beside Thorn as the noisy hunters pushed through the crowded streets.
The Mercurian, glancing at the distant, frowning pile, spoke guardedly in deep undertones.
'The boy will be in that fortress, Joan. And I still don't see how we can, hope even to get in there.'
'We'll get in,' Thorn muttered with grim determination. 'I've been here before, and I have a plan.'
'It'll have to be damned good to get us past the net of secret police around that place,' whispered Gunda. Thorn's eyes clung with fierce intensity to the looming, mist-vague fortress. Somewhere behind those forbidding walls was the pirate boy who was the focus of all her thoughts. What tortures were Hasna Trask and her fat spymaster using upon his to make his reveal the secret of Erebus?
'Here we are!' boomed Kribe, stopping in a dingy cross-street. She pushed through a door, the others following.
Thorn perceived that Mother Bornbey's was a shabby rendezvous, with a drinking-counter, tables, and a few 'happiness vibration'booths. Krypton lamps lit the place, a few 'glowers'dispelled the chill, and it was more than crowded with rough slith hunters.
'Welcome, Kribe!' roared a dozen voices. 'What luck this time?'
'Fair, girls, fair,' answered the hulking hunter complacently. She turned. 'Meet some lasses from up in Karies.'
She pointed to the disguised Planeteers, introducing them to the crowd by the false names that Thorn had given her.
A hard-faced, ample-figured old Saturnian hag reached over the drinking-counter with an outstretched hand.
'Pass over the guns, Kribe,' he, ordered harshly.
'This is Mother Bombey,' Kribe told Thorn with a grin. 'He makes us check our guns when we come in, so that our little arguments won't wreck the place.'
Thorn made no objection to handing over the heavy atom-guns, for she and Sua Av and Gunda Welk retained their atom pistols inside their jackets.
'Drinks or vibrations for everybody!' ordered Kribe, slapping down a platinum coin with a lordly gesture.
Thorn ordered fungus wine, which she knew was the Saturnian favorite. Sua Av and Gunda Welk followed her lead.
'Here's better times and plenty teeth for every hunter!' proposed Kribe, quaffing the pale liquor.
Joan Thorn could not help liking the hulking hunter. She sensed that here was a representative of the real population of the League worlds, hardworking, fundamentally decent people all, when not whipped up to war fever by an ambitious dictator's inflammatory lies.
The Three Planeteers For All Page 18
