Chapter 2: Discovered

The Sunsprite throbbed steadily through the vast, dangerous wilderness of the asteroidal zone. To the eye, the cruiser moved in a black void starred by creeping crumbs of light. In reality those bright, crawling specks were booming asteroids or whirling meteor-swarms rushing in complicated, unchartable orbits and constantly threatening destruction.

For three days now, the cruiser had cautiously groped deeper into this most perilous region of the System. Now a bright, tiny disk of white light was shining far ahead like a beckoning beacon. It was the asteroid Vesta--their goal.

Kenniston, leaning against the glassite deck-wall, somberly eyed the distant asteroid.

“We’ll reach it by tomorrow,” he thought. “Then what? I suppose John Dark will hold these rich youngsters for ransom.”

Kenniston knew that the pirate leader would instantly see the chance of extorting vast sums by holding this group of wealthy young people as captives.

“I wish to God I hadn’t had to bring them into this,” Kenniston sweated. “But what else could I do? It was the only way I could get back to Vesta with the materials.”

His mind was going back over the disastrous events since the day three weeks before, when the Patrol had caught up to John Dark at last.

Dark’s pirate ship, the Falcon, had been gunned to a helpless wreck. It had, fortunately for the pirates, drifted off into a region of perilous meteor-swarms where the Patrol cruisers dared not follow. The Patrol thought everybody on the pirate ship dead anyway, Kenniston knew.

But John Dark and most of his crew were still alive in the drifting wreck. They had fought the battle wearing space-suits, and that had saved them. They had clung grimly to the wreck as it drifted on and on until it finally fell into the feeble gravitational pull of Vesta.

Kenniston could still remember those tense hours when the wreck had fallen through the satellite swarm of meteors onto the World with a Thousand Moons. They had managed to cushion their crash. John Dark, always the most resourceful of men, had managed to jury-rig makeshift rocket-tubes that had softened the impact of their fall.

But the wrecked Falcon had been marooned there in the weird asteroidal jungle, with the alien, menacing Vestans already gathering around it. The ship would never fly space again until major repairs were made. And they could not be made until quantities of material and equipment were brought. Someone must go for those materials to Mars, the nearest planet.

John Dark had superintended construction of a little two-man rocket from parts of the ship. Kenniston and Holk Or were to go in it.

“You must be back with that list of equipment and materials within two weeks, Kenniston,” Dark had emphasized. “If we stay castaway here longer than that, either the Vestans will get us or the Patrol discover us.”

The pirate leader had added, “The moon-jewels I’ve given you will more than pay for a small cruiser, if you can buy one at Mars. If you can’t buy one, get one any way you can--but get back here quickly!”

Well, Kenniston thought grimly, he had got a cruiser in the only way he could. Down in its hold were the berylloy plates and spare rocket-tubes and new cyclotrons he had had loaded aboard at Syrtis.

But he was also bringing back to Vesta with him a bunch of thrill-seeking, rich, young people who believed they were going on a romantic treasure-hunt. What would they think of him when they discovered how he had betrayed them?

“That’s Vesta, isn’t it?” spoke a girl’s eager voice behind him, interrupting his dark thoughts.

Kenniston turned quickly. It was Gloria Loring, boyish in silken space-slacks, her hands thrust into the pockets.

There was a naive eagerness in her clear, lovely face as she looked toward the distant asteroid, that made her look more like an excited small girl than like the bored, jewelled heiress of that night at Syrtis.

“Yes, that’s the World with a Thousand Moons,” Kenniston nodded. “We’ll reach it by tomorrow. I’ve just been up on the bridge, telling your Captain Walls the safest route through the meteor swarms.”

Her dark eyes studied him curiously. “You’ve been out here on the frontier a long time, haven’t you?”

“Twelve years,” he told her. “That’s a long time in the outer planets. Most space-men don’t last that long out here--wrecks, accidents or gravitation-paralysis gets them.”

“Gravitation-paralysis?” she repeated. “I’ve heard of that as a terrible danger to space-travelers. But I don’t really know what it is.”

“It’s the most dreaded danger of all out here,” Kenniston answered. “A paralysis that hits you when you change from very weak to very strong gravities or vice versa, too often. It locks all your muscles rigid by numbing the motor-nerves.”

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.