The Three Planeteers

CHAPTER IV Pirate Princess

They saw the distant ship coast the edge of the vast meteor swarm for some minutes and then come to a halt in space, with a prolonged flash of its bow rocket-tubes halting it.

A moment later a cracked, shrill voice sounded from the little audiospeakers inside their helmets.

"Ahoy, Planeteers! Are any of you alive in that wreck?"

Thorn answered instantly. “We're all alive — John Thorn speaking."

"I figgered it'd take more than, a meteor-swarm to finish you three,” retorted the cracked voice, chuckling.

"Who's speaking? What ship is that?” Thorn demanded.

"Cautious, ain't ye?” said the shrill voice, with a cackle of mirth. “I don't blame you’ seeing how you boys was chased. But you needn't worry-this ain't no naval cruiser. We're Companions of Space. Want to come aboard?"

"Companions of Space? Pirates, eh?” Thorn said. “Yes, we'll come aboard."

"Figgered you would,” cackled the other. “We'll stand by, and you can come across with your impellers."

Thorn switched off his suit-audio and spoke to his two companions, clutching their arms to conduct his voice to them.

"Cut your audios and listen,” he said tautly. “These pirates may plan some kind of treachery, but I don't think so. This looks like our chance to get to their base at Turkoon. But if we get there, don't mention Erebus or the radite, whatever you do,

"We understand,” Gunner Welk muttered.

They each got a torch-like metal impeller from a locker, and then wrenched open the door amidships. Bracing his feet’ against its edge, John Thorn leaped out into the abyss.

He shot floatingly away from the wreck. As his momentum faded and he began to float back toward the wreck, Thorn switched on the impeller in his hand. The blast from it kicked his space-suited figure on through space.

Sual Av and the big Mercurian were following closely. The three progressed thus, with frequent flashes from their impellers thrusting them on toward the distant waiting pirate ship.

Bright stars gleamed like millions of watching eyes all around Thorn. He glimpsed the ominous red flash of colliding meteors, nearby. He had to turn constantly to make sure that they were moving toward the waiting craft. Soon they were very close to it, moving faster, now that its slight gravitational field drew them.

Thorn eyed the long, grim ship that floated here in space just outside the edge of the vast swarm. He judged that it had once been a Neptunian or Uranian naval cruiser-the design one adapted to great distances, and ominous muzzles of atom-guns peering forth along its sides spoke of heavy armament.

The Planeteers bumped the side of the vessel. They scrambled along it and into the waiting open air-lock.

A minute later they were inside, unscrewing their helmets and gazing about a lighted metal chamber. A half-dozen armed men were here, and one of them came forward to the three.

"So you're the famous Three Planeteers, eh?” he asked in the same cracked, quavering voice they had previously heard.

The speaker was an old, snow-haired Martian, his thin figure stooped, his red face incredibly wrinkled with age, his faded, rheumy eyes peering at them shortsightedly. He wore two atom-pistols in his belt, and was chewing rial leaf whose green juice he spat occasionally into a floor receptacle.

"Curse me if it doesn't do me good to look at you,” quavered the oldster, his oath making astounding contrast with his cracked voice and senile appearance. “Aye, it warms my heart to look at men the like of which I was myself, in the old days."

"Who are you?” Thorn asked steadily. “How did you happen along to pick us up?"

"As for who I am, the name is Stilicho Keene. Ever hear of it?” the old pirate answered shrilly.

"Stilicho Keene?” repeated Sual Av incredulously. “The notorious pirate of forty years ago?)

"The same,” answered the old Martian complacently. “Aye, long before you Planeteers was ever born, I was one of the leaders of the Companions of Space, back in the days when there were men in space and not the kind of milksops I have to give orders to now."

"You still haven't told us how you happened to be near to pick us up,” Thorn reminded.

Stilicho Keene turned his rheumy eyes on the young earthman. He chuckled as he spat rial juice.

"Sharp and curious, ain't ye? Well, I'd expect it of you. I was the same at your age, smart and quick and bold. But you were asking how we happened along. Well, this is the Venture, and we've been to Jupiter on a little errand for Princess Lana. Coming back, we heard the audio-calls of them cruisers chasing you Planeteers.

"We heard them give up the chase after you ducked into that meteor swarm. So I gave order to lay a course near the swarm, hoping we might meet you-and then we sighted your wreck. It looks like you'll have to go on to Turkoon with us now."

The old pirate continued admiringly, “I've heard a lot of you lads and the fine things you've done. The time you raided the governor's office at Titan and stole all that platinum, and the time you three alone held up that big Martian liner and robbed all the passengers of their valuables."

The old pirate could not know, Thorn thought grimly, that that raid on Titan had been really to secure League naval secrets and the platinum a mere blind, or that the hold-up of the Martian liner had had as its real objective the securing of a valuable new atom-gun drawing among the effects of a Jovian engineer.

"So when we get to Turkoon,” old Stilicho Keene was continuing eagerly, “maybe you Planeteers would think of joining up with us Companions, eh? It would be good to have some real men with us again, men such as I used to rocket with when I was young."

John Thorn's pulses leaped at the offer. But he kept his excitement hidden, and frowned a little.

"The Three Planeteers join an outfit led by a girl?” he returned a little disdainfully.,

"You wait till you meet this girl,” the old Martian told him. “You'll find she's a real leader, is Lana Cain."

"We'll talk of it when we get to Turkoon,” Thorn told him. “Anyway, we're damned grateful to you for picking us up."

"Aye, you bit off a little more than even you could chew, didn't you, on Earth?” cackled the hoary old sinner. “It warmed my heart to think of it. Kidnapping the Chairman of Earth! Only the Planeteers would have thought of trying that!"

Old Stilicho Keene led the way up through the dusky corridors and catwalks of the ship. The Planeteers shouldered past members of the crew who stared admiringly at them.

These pirates were a motley aggregation from every planet in the system — Martians, Saturnians and Uranians, wicked-looking Earthmen, fighters all, from the look of them.

Thorn and his comrades emerged after old Stilicho Keene into the broad, glassite-fronted control-room. A surly Jovian stood at the firingkeys, and a nervous, green-faced, hollow-eyed Saturnian at the bank of instruments on the right.

"Get going to Turkoon, Barbo,” ordered the pirate commander.

With roar of stern-tubes pouring forth proton-fire, the heavy cruiser shot forward in space.

John Thorn looked through the broad glassite windows. The Venture was moving counter-sunwise into the very heart of the Zone. Space ahead seemed thick with whirling clouds of light-specks that were meteor swarms, and steady bright sparks that were booming planetoids.

"How the devil do you navigate this damned jungle, anyway?” Gunner Welk asked the old Martian.

Stilicho Keene's wrinkled face grinned. “That's easy. We've got a little projector of vibrations planted on every big asteroid and in all swarms — each projector emitting a wave of a different frequency. We pick up the signals, and they show us just how far and in what direction each swarm and asteroid is, so we can avoid them. just like the lighthouses on the Earth seas, centuries ago."

He added with cunning satisfaction, “The signals don't help naval cruisers or other ships navigate the Zone, because they don't know the frequency-code and can't tell what's meant by the signals they hear. They've lost so many cruisers trying to get in here that they gave it up as a bad job."

The ship forged on through the wilderness of the Zone, constantly detouring to avoid the many perils to navigation that abounded here. It coasted along vast swarms, cut sharply upward to evade’ planetoids, slipped close past a small tailless comet that glimmered like a little white ghost sun.

Then John Thorn made out a small green speck in the blackness, toward which the Venture was now heading directly. It widened rapidly into a green disk. His black eyes narrowed.

"That's Turkoon, isn't it?"

"Aye, that's old Turkoon,” quavered Stilicho Keene. “The sweetest, safest, snuggest little harbor in the whole system. Good air and good water, and ringed round with all those swarms and asteroids that keep the prying naval cruisers away. A paradise for us gentlemen of the void. Aye, there it lies, like a pretty emerald in space, just as it lay when I first saw it long ago.

"It's seen a plenty, has old Turkoon. It's seen the bloody days of the old wild corsairs, with the scarred ship's roaring in to it, loaded with ores and jewels and silks and women. It's seen the days of Martin Cain, a generation ago, when full a thousand ships of the Companions put forth to space at one time. It's seen them all come and go — all the great, brave gentlemen of the void, has old Turkoon."

"And now,” Thorn said ironically, “it sees the Companions led by a girl."

"Aye, boy,” shrilled the old pirate, “it sees a girl leading us now. But she's Martin Cain's daughter — as deadly dangerous as ever her sire was. Aye, and as great a leader."

The Venture roared closer to the green asteroid and then dropped rapidly toward it, air whistling outside its walls.

"I didn't think an asteroid this small could have an atmosphere,” commented Sual Av, peering downward.

"'It must have unusual mass for its size — probably a core of neutronium or other super-heavy elements,” Thorn guessed. “Otherwise, the escape of its air molecules would be inevitable, and it wouldn't be able to hold an atmosphere."

"Let's hope that nothing holds us here, once we get what we're after,” muttered Gunner Welk.

Thorn was taut with the same thought. Down in this hell's nest of pirates was a girl with a secret that would save four worlds from conquest — if they could get it from her.

Turkoon widened beneath them, a little world blanketed by thick green fern-jungles. Directly underneath was a raw brown oval, a big clearing that had been blasted from the jungle. At one end of it gleamed the straggling chromaloy buildings of a town of considerable size, while parked ships covered the rest of the field.

The Venture landed with a roar of brake-blasts and a bumping jar beside the scores of parked ships. The door ports were rapidly unscrewed, and warm, heavy air hit the Planeteers’ faces as they followed old Stilicho Keene out of the ship.

"We'll go right up to the Council House. Martin Cain's house, it was, and Lana lives there now,” the old pirate told the three. His rheumy eyes glistened. “I want to see the faces of some of these young milksop captains when they learn that I've brought in the Three Planeteers!"

They went with Stilicho Keene across the field and through the main street of the straggling pirate town.

Turkoon Town sprawled, unkempt and somnolent, in the pale wash of light from the shrunken, setting sun. The looming dark green wall of the jungle was only rods from the outermost metal cabins.

Solemn, green and dark towered the fifty-foot jungle all around. Colossal ferns crowded each other, the space between their huge trunks choked with underbrush. Here and there in the tangle, blindly writhed “crawler vines,” parasitic fungoid creepers that wandered with their peculiar power of self-locomotion, searching for a host. Through the upper jungle and out over the town drifted “floating flowers,” white blooms that drank sunlight and water vapor from the air, and never touched ground after they budded free.

Thorn and his two comrades were eyed without interest by the motley population of the town — a population as varied in origin as the pirate crew they had already met. The men were from every inhabited world in the system. And there were also many women here — hot-eyed red Martian girls, languid white Venusian women, tall, awkward green girls from Saturn, brazen-faced Earth girls. All were clad in incongruously rich tunics and jewels-pirate loot.

Children, hybrids of a half dozen different peoples, fought and chased each other along the dusty brown street. And there was an astounding variety of animals from all planets, some chained, others running free. Solemn-eyed, furry Martian vardaks, green Venusian swamp pups, a big, hopping uniped from Io, and many others-all of them brought home here by the far-ranging pirate crews.

The crew of the Venture was stumping into town behind them, caning loudly to let all know they had returned. But by now, Stilicho Keene had brought the Planeteers to the long, low chromaloy building that faced the end of the main street.

The snow-haired old pirate painfully climbed the steps, and led them into a big, low-ceilinged, dusky room.

A small group of men stood in it, all wearing atom pistols.

"Where's Lana?” demanded the old pirate as this little group turned toward him.

"We're waiting for her. She'll be out in a moment,” answered a squat, scarred-faced Jovian who was one of the group. “So you finally got back, Stilicho!"

"Yes, I'm back,” shrilled the ancient Martian. “And a cursed strange thing it is that old Stilicho Keene has to go out on reconnaissance while you younger men rest your bones."

The old pirate spat real juice viciously out the open door and then turned to Thorn and his two comrades.

"Boy, I hate to admit it, but these are the captains of the Companions now,” he told Thorn. “Aye, these; the worthless lot who call themselves pirates in these degenerate days. Yon ox of a Jovian is Brun Abo. The pretty fellow beside him is Kinnel King, and the fat hog yonder is Jenk Cheerly, the latest to join our ranks."

Thorn's black eyes swept the pirate leaders. The man beside the Jovian, the man called Kinnel King, was an Earthman, middle-aged, with a very handsome face and brooding eyes.

Jenk Cheerly, the third pirate captain, was a Uranian of incredible obesity. His fat, puffy body seemed about to burst his jacket, and his pale-green, rotund face was featureless except for two bright, pig-like little eyes.

The obese Uranian stared at Thorn and his two comrades with those little eyes, and then spoke in an incongruously high and squeaky voice to old Stilicho Keene.

"Where did you pick up these three?” he asked. “And why did you bring them here?"

Stilicho Keene cackled, his rheumy eyes glistening.

"You'll find out who they are in a minute, Jenk,” he shrilled. “It's going to be a surprise for you, and all you other louts who call yourselves pirates."

A door in the rear of the room suddenly opened, and a girl in white silk jacket and trousers entered the room.

"You're back, Stilicho?” she exclaimed eagerly as she saw the old Martian. “What did you learn at Jupiter?"

Thorn's gaze riveted on the girl. He heard a low whisper from Sual Av behind him.

"So that's Lana Cain,” whispered the Venusian.

Lana Cain's eyes looked past the old Martian into Thorn's face. He felt the impact of her challenging stare as though it were a tangible shock.

The pirate girl was a slender, imperious figure in her silk garments. Her proud, graceful form seemed somehow vibrant with force. The bronze-gold hair that hung to her shoulders was like a casque of dull gold flame around her face, catching the glints of sunlight in its strands.

Her face was white, dynamic, with hardness in the straight red mouth and in the stubborn set of her small chin. Her dark blue eyes, as they stared into Thorn's face, were growing slowly darker, as though storm were gathering in them, tiny lightnings seeming to flash in their depths.

Thorn was momentarily bewildered, badly startled. He had expected some blowsy, barbaric, aging wench, whom he could, without difficulty, trick out of the secret he wanted. But this girl was as beautiful-and as dangerous-looking-as a sword blade.