The Three Planeteers

CHAPTER X Under Saturn's Rings

A HARP-STRING tenseness gripped the four men in the Venture's control-room as they peered ahead into space.

"So far, so good,” muttered old Stilicho Keene, leaning forward over the bank of firing-keys to gaze with faded eyes. “We're past the outer League patrols. Now if we can only slip through the inner."

"We're in their zone now,” John Thorn warned tautly. “See anything in the ‘scope, Gunner?"

"Not yet,” the big Mercurian rumbled without taking his eyes from the eyepiece.

The Venture moved steadily on through the void, its rockets cut down to a low, soft purr. The aura-chart was dead. They were running blind so their own aura would not cut the aura of any vigilant patrol cruiser and give them away unnecessarily.

Saturn bulked colossal in the star-gemmed vault ahead, an enormous, yellowish sphere encircled by its immense, sweeping white rings. Even from this distance of a few million miles, the mighty rings looked quite solid. The thin black gap between the two outermost rings, Cassini's division, stood out sharp and clear. It was hard to realize that those great, solid seeming white bands were really vast swarms of tiny satellites circling the planet.

Out beyond even the huge rings marched the planet's nine brilliant moons. Titan was a bright little disk far on the other side of the spinning monster world. Tethys and Rhea shone to the left. And Iapetus, a bright white moon almost as large as Mercury, lay close ahead on the right.

"The Saturnian Navy has a big outer base on Iapetus,” warned Thorn. “It'll be alive with cruisers now that the navies of all four League planets are concentrated here."

"I know, but we got to run close to Iapetus if we're going to slip around to the night side of Saturn,” quavered the old Martian pirate.

"Keep at least two million miles out, to clear the auras of the base,” Thorn told him.

The Venture purred on, and the big white moon began to march slowly past on their right. The Planeteers and the old pirate were silent and strained.

Sual Av scratched his head irritably. “Curse me if I can get used to this wig,” he muttered.

The Venusian's appearance was curiously changed. His bald pate had been covered by a wig of short, coarse black hair, and his face and skin had been stained pale green. John Thorn and Gunner Welk were similarly transformed. Their faces too were now a livid green, and the Mercurian's bristling yellow hair was dyed black.

The people of Saturn, and also of Uranus and Neptune, had acquired their peculiar green complexion during the past thousand years. Their worlds, like all the others in the system, had first been colonized by pioneering Earthmen in the 21st century, though a few centuries later all those seven colonized worlds had seceded from Earth and become independent planets. In the generations since the first colonization, environment had gradually changed the original Earth stock.

The men of Jupiter had grown into a squat, great-boned race, because of the dragging gravitation of their world. The men of Mars had acquired their red skin because of the predominance of certain metallic elements in their air and food. And similarly, the men of Saturn and Uranus and Neptune, because of a lack of certain elements on their worlds, had acquired their characteristic jaundiced green complexion.

Thorn and his two comrades had realized that disguise was vitally necessary for their daring venture on Saturn. So, during the days that the Venture had hurtled at top speed toward the far ringed world, the Planeteers had worked to make themselves look as much as possible like Saturnians.

Now the Venture was well past, Iapetus, and swinging around to the night side of Saturn in a great parabola.

"Shall we pass under the rings?” asked the old Martian pirate, turning from, the firing-keys.

Thorn nodded. “It'll keep us in shadow by going under them. Better cling close beneath them"

Saturn filled all space before them now, looming colossal in the firmament with the tilted plane of its outer gigantic ring shadowing above them as their ship shot through it. The ring, more than thirty thousand miles in width, was brightly sunlit on its upper side because of the tilt of its plane, but here beneath it they were in shadow.

Space above them was now roofed as far as the eye could stretch by the white, gleaming, concentric rings. At this close distance they could clearly see the millions of separate satellites that made up the rings, vast circular swarms of tiny planetoids endlessly whirling. Then they were in past the rings, and only six thousand miles from the nighted surface of Saturn.

Stilicho Keene pointed a bony finger toward a misty glow of lights that lay slightly north of the equator.

"Them's the lights of Saturnopolis,” the old pirate declared.

"Run westward,” John Thorn ordered. “The fungus forests are in that direction, and if we three are to pose as slith-hunters, that's where we need to land."

The first Planeteer watched with emotion as the distant lights of Saturnopolis slid away to the left. Down there in the great capital city of Saturn, somewhere, was Lana Cain. She would likely be imprisoned in the citadel of Haskell Trask, dictator of the League — the big fortress-palace that was the very storm center of the gathering menace threatening the four inner worlds.

Thorn had had the girl in his mind every hour of the long flight out to Saturn. Again and again he had envisioned her eager white face as she had stood with him under the meteor-blazing night sky of Turkoon, telling him her dreams for the future. She had become much more to’ him, he realized deeply, than just the pirate girl who held the secret he must obtain.

The lights of Saturnopolis disappeared as the Venture throbbed westward through the night. They glimpsed the lights of another, smaller city far to the north. Then Stilicho sent the ship in a long, descending glide toward the far-stretching black wilderness that now lay beneath.

Air whistled thinly outside the walls. The ship dropped into thin mists. Then through the mists the surface rushed up toward them — a vast and endless forest of grotesque, towering growth, dimly lit by the radiance of three moons and the majestic arc of the ring.

With a prolonged flash from the keel tubes and a soft, bumping jar, the Venture landed. They were in silent darkness.

"Here's the fungus forest you wanted to be landed in,” said Stilicho doubtfully. “It's a long way from here to Saturnopolis, though."

"We'll get there,” Thorn told him grimly. “It would be inviting capture to land too near the capital. By landing here and working our way toward Saturnopolis as slith-hunters, we'll be much less likely to be suspected by the secret police."

Gunner Welk and Sual Av were gathering the atom-guns and other equipment they were to take with them. The Planeteers had already changed into jackets and boots of soft Jovian leather.

"You're sure you understand where you're to wait for us with the Venture?" Thorn asked the old pirate.

Stilicho's white head bobbed. “Out in the ring, in Cassini's division just at the west limb of the planet-shadow. We'll lie there in the ship till you come. But how will you get out there?"

"If we get Lana out safely,” Thorn clipped, “we'll steal a small ship somehow and get there."

They went down to the ship door. It had been opened and the frigid, misty air of Saturn, faintly tainted with ammonia, was pouring into the ship. The motley crew was silently watching as the Planeteers prepared to disembark. And Ool, the big gray space dog, pressed against Thorn's legs and looked up at him with great green eyes that held an almost human expression of anxiety.

"Ool wants to go with you,” said Stilicho. “He senses you're going after Lana."

"We daren't take him — it'd arouse too much attention for poor slith-hunters to own such a rare beast. You hold him, Stilicho,” Thorn said.

"Won't you change your mind and let me go along with you?” asked the old Martian pleadingly.

"We've argued that out,” Thorn reminded him. “One of us four has got to keep the ship waiting at the rendezvous in the ring, and that's the way in which you can best help us."

Stilicho, holding the space dog's neck, reached up to grip Thorn's hand with bony fingers. His cracked voice quavered.

"Good luck, boy — and God grant you bring the lass out safely."

The door ground shut. With a resounding reverberation of blazing keel-tubes, the Venture blasted off.

The Planeteers stood silent in the frigid misty darkness, watching the ship disappear into the sky.

"So we're on our own now,” rumbled Gunner Welk. “And all we have to do is make our way into Saturnopolis through ten thousand secret police who are watching for spies, break into Haskell Trask's citadel that even Saturnians don't dare go near, and steal away the dictator's most important prisoner right from under his nose. It's almost too easy!"

"I hate to see you grow sarcastic, Gunner,” said Sual Av worriedly. “It's the mark of a small mind."

The Venusian dodged, chuckling, as the towering Mercurian aimed a bear-like blow at him.

"Be quiet!” snapped John Thorn tautly. “I hear someone or something."

The other two Planeteers were instantly silent, all three gripping their heavy atom-guns and listening intently.

The great fungus forest that covered much of Saturn stretched about them in the cold mist, illuminated by the combined ring-light and moonlight. All around the little clearing in which they stood towered the enormous fungi, huge gray growths in the form of bulbous spheres, drawing their sustenance by parasitism from the thick mat of spongy mosses underfoot.

Nothing appeared stirring except a few “diggers" — furry little beasts with flat, spade-like noses, whose red eyes fearfully watched from tunnel-mouths nearby. The only sounds were the occasional zooming drone of pinkly luminous “fire bats” winging through the towering fungi, and the long, distant ululation of a pack of “climbers."

The sky over the Planeteers’ heads was weirdly magnificent — dominated by the colossal arc of the rings that spanned the heavens just south of the zenith like a huge, shining, white rainbow. Out beyond the rings shone the bright shield of Titan, sinking rapidly toward the horizon while Tethys and Rhea rose like twin jewels among the stars.

"I don't hear anything,” muttered Sual Av finally. “But the noise of the ship landing may have attracted—"

"John, look out!” yelled Gunner Welk suddenly. “A slith!"

One of the smaller bulbous gray fungi of the forest had suddenly begun to move. It came toward them with rocket-speed, a charge almost faster than the eye could follow.

Thorn knew it was slith as he flung his atom-gun to his shoulder. That creature alone could so perfectly mimic the gray fungi by means of its protective coloration,

Thorn glimpsed the charging thing over the sights of his weapon for an instant, a bulbous. oily gray monster ten feet high, its dumpy, shapeless body running with incredible swiftness on thick little legs, the two cold, bright eyes in the front of its faceless body flaming as its white-fanged mouth gaped unbelievably wide.

He fired and missed. His shell exploded blindingly just behind the charging slith. Gunner fired an instant later, and his atom-shell hit the creature's side. When the flare of the shell vanished, they saw the great gray mass lying unstirring only a dozen feet from them.

"We let that thing catch us napping!” Thorn said harshly. “We should have remembered this forest is alive with sliths."

"You're right about that!” yelled Sual Av. “There's another of them!"

The Venusian's gun fairly leaped to his shoulder. But instead of firing, he stared stupefiedly.

"Devils of space, look at it! The thing's coming apart!"

The second slith that Sual Av had glimpsed was a hundred yards away among the fungi. It was an even bigger creature than the first, and its treat gray mass was grotesquely different in shape, consisting of a large mass with the cold, bright eyes and wide, lipless mouth, and a smaller attached mass with eyes and mouth also.

The smaller mass was detaching itself from the main body of the creature. Soft gray flesh stretched and snapped. And instead of one slith, there stood two, a large one and a little one. A moment later, both of them charged toward the Planeteers.

The shells of three atom-guns exploded together around the onrushing monsters. Both lay dead when the flares died.

"Am I seeing things or did that creature really divide into two?” demanded the Venusian.

"Planetary zoology must be a closed book to you,” Gunner Welk told him dourly. “If you knew any, you'd know that the aboriginal animal life of Saturn is asexual, and propagates by fission."

"Come on, we'll get the teeth out of these carcasses,” Thorn said. “It's lucky we've killed a few, for slith hunters going back to town without any teeth might arouse suspicion."

They advanced to the torn dead bodies, feeling with this first locomotion the powerful drag of Saturnian gravitation. Only the fact that that gravitation was partly neutralized by the centrifugal force of the planet's rapid spin made it tolerable to men. The space-trained muscles of the Planeteers quickly began to adjust themselves to the greater load, though they felt very slow and heavy.

With their keen knives of Earth steelite they hacked and slashed at the repulsive bodies of the sliths, digging the huge white fangs out. Those teeth, the hardest and most perdurable organic substance in the system, were in high demand on all worlds for carving into jewelry and for certain industrial processes. The system wide demand for them was responsible for the fact that slith-hunting was a profession on this world.

Dawn was rapidly filtering through the mists about them. The brief five hour night of Saturn was ending.

"Curse these cold fogs!” muttered Sual Av, his teeth chattering as he worked. “I wouldn't trade one hot, steamy swamp of Venus for all these outer worlds."

"If you liked that mud-puddle native world of yours so much, why did you leave it?” demanded Gunner.

They had the last of the teeth out, and were putting them into the pouches at their belts, when Thorn suddenly sprang to his feet, gripping his heavy atom-gun.

"Stand by, boys, and don't show any excitement,” he said in a low, rapid voice.

Through the chill, dawn-lit mists of the fungus forest toward the three comrades were coming a dozen green-faced Saturnians, all heavily armed.