Chapter 6: Back to Iapetus

An indefinite time later Carse awoke to a trip-hammer of pain thudding through his head. He groaned a little, and tried to turn over in an effort to ease it. He found he could not. Then his eyes opened and he blinked up.

He found himself lying on the deck of the control cabin, near the after wall, and bound hand and foot with tightly strapped rope. Over him, looking down, was Judd the Kite, hands on his hips, a gloating smile on his coarse lips, and in his eyes a look of taunting, exultant triumph. He drew back his foot and kicked the netted Hawk in the ribs. The trader made no sound; his pale face did not change, except to set a trifle more rigidly.

“Pretty easy the way my men got you, Carse,” said Judd. “Seems to me you’re just a damned fool with a big rep you don’t deserve. You’re too careless. You ought to know by now not to leave bound men in reach of high-powered cable. It cuts as good as an electric knife. Does your head hurt where you were hit?” Deliberately, still smiling, he rapped his foot brutally against Carse’s head.

The trader said nothing. He glanced around, to get the situation clearly. Friday, he saw, was in the control cabin too, lying stretched out and bound as he was, but evidently still unconscious from the ugly, bloody welt on his head. One of Judd’s men was at the ship’s space-stick, another stood by her dials, occasionally glancing back at the prisoners and grinning; the two remaining pirates were apparently aft. The body of the one whom Carse had killed had been removed.

Through the port bow window, far out, he noticed a small spot, half black and half brilliant with the reflected light of Saturn: that would be the other space ship, the Kite’s, on the same course as they. And ahead was the large-looming sphere of Iapetus. The pirate was returning, then, to the ranch, probably to pick up his three men, and perhaps to leave a small crew to work it.

“Yes. I’m afraid this is the end of the Sparrow Hawk!” Judd sneered the name and laughed harshly. “A lot of people will be glad to hear it. There’ll be a big reward for me, too, from Ku Sui. Head still bad?” And again he swung his leg and drove its heavy shoe into his captive’s head.

Carse’s lips compressed till they were colorless. He looked steadily at Judd’s eyes and asked:

“What are you going to do with Friday and me?”

“Well,” grinned the pirate, “I can’t tell you definitely, but it’s sure to be interesting. It’d suit me best if I could teach you a few little tricks with a peeling knife--the Venusians have some very neat ones, you know--and then perhaps burn you full of holes. Little holes, done with a mild needle-ray. But unfortunately I can’t kill you personally, for Ku Sui will want to do that himself. You’re worth a hell of a lot of money alive.”

“I go to Ku Sui, then?”

“That’s right. I’ll hand you over when I have my rendezvous with him, seven days from now. Clever man, Ku Sui! Half Chinese, you know. He’ll be tickled to get you alive.”

A muscle in the Hawk’s cheek quivered. Then he asked:

“And Friday?”

Judd laughed. “Oh, I don’t much care; he’s not worth anything. I’ll throw him in with you for good measure, probably. How’s the head?” Once more the foot swung.

Carse’s gray eyes were as frigid as the snow caps of Mars. The left eyelid was twitching a little; otherwise his pale face was as if graven from stone.

“Judd,” he whispered, so softly that his voice was almost inaudible. “I shall kill you very soon. I shall make it a point to. Very soon. Judd...”

The Kite stared at the pallid gray eyes. His lips parted slightly. And then he remembered that his captive was bound, helpless. He spat.

“Bah!” he snarled. “Just your old stuff, Carse. It’s all over with you now. You’ll be screaming to me to kill you when Ku Sui begins to touch you up!” He guffawed, again kicked the man at his feet, and turned away.

Hawk Carse watched him walk to the forward end of the cabin; and, after a little while, he sighed. He could be patient. He was still alive, and he would stay alive, he felt. A chance would come--he did not know how or when; it perhaps would not be soon; it might not come until he had been delivered to Ku Sui, but it would arrive. And then...

Then there would be a reckoning!

The deceptively mild gray eyes of the Hawk were veiled by their lids.

Night had settled over the ranch by the time the Star Devil and Judd’s accompanying ship were in the satellite’s atmosphere. It was the rare, deep, moonless night of Iapetus, when the only light came from the far, cold, distant stars that hung faintly twinkling in the great void above. Occasionally, the tiny world was lit clearly at night by the rays of Saturn, reflected from one of the eight other satellites; and occasionally, too, there was no night, the central sun of the solar universe sending its distance-weakened shafts of fire to light one side of the globe while ringed Saturn gilded the other.

But this season was the one of dark, full-bodied nights; and it was into the hush of their blackness that the Star Devil and her attendant brigand ship glided.