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There were very few observers in the high-powered Earth stations who knew that an exploring party was on the Moon. Perhaps none of them. The Government officials who had sanctioned the expedition and Halsey and his confrères in the Detective Bureau were not anticipating trouble at this point. The Planetara was supposed to be well on her course to Ferrok-Shahn.
The vein had now been exhausted; but the treasure was here enough to supply every need on his Earth! Nothing was left but to wait for the Planetara. The men were talking of that now. "She ought to be well midway from Ferrok-Shahn by now. When do you figure she'll be back here and signal us?" "Twenty days. Give her another five now to Mars, and five in port. That's ten.
"I got one slight television swing a minute ago then it faded. I think it's the Planetara." "Planetara!" The crowding group of men chorused. How could it be the Planetara? But it was. The call came in presently. Unmistakably the Planetara, turned back now from her course to Ferrok-Shahn. "How far away, Peter?" The duty man consulted the needles of his dial scale. "Close! Very weak infra-red.
You have all these men on the Planetara. And in Ferrok-Shahn, others " I paused. Would she tell me? Could I make her talk of that other brigand ship which Miko had said was waiting on Mars? I wondered if he had been able to signal it. The distance from here to Mars was great; yet upon other voyages Snap's signals had gotten through. My heart sank at the thought.
And we now have those code passwords I forced Dean to tell me where he had hidden them. If we should be challenged, our password answer will relieve suspicion." "The Planetara," I objected, "being overdue at Ferrok-Shahn, will cause alarm. You'll have a covey of patrol ships after you." "That will be two weeks from now," he smiled. "I have a ship of my own in Ferrok-Shahn.
Her gaze was on me as I glanced her way, and she smiled an invitation for me to join her. "But, Miss Prince, why are you and your brother going to Ferrok-Shahn? His business " Even as I voiced it, I hated myself for such a question. So nimble in the humble mind that mingled with my rhapsodies of love, was my need for information of George Prince. "Oh," she said.
With only five hours in port here, we were departing the same night at the zero hour for Ferrok-Shahn, capital of the Martian Union. We were no sooner at the landing stage than I found a code flash summoning Dan Dean and me to Divisional Detective Headquarters. Dan "Snap" Dean was one of my closest friends. He was electron-radio operator of the Planetara.
You have how many is it, Carter? thirty or forty passengers this trip tonight?" "Thirty-eight," said Carter. "There are thirty-eight people listed for the flight to Ferrok-Shahn tonight," Halsey said slowly. "And some may not be what they seem." He raised his thin dark hand. "We have information...." He paused. "I confess, we know almost nothing hardly more than enough to alarm us."
The exotic perfume of her enveloped me. She glanced at me sidewise from beneath her sweeping black lashes. "Be serious," I added. "I am serious. Sober. Intoxicated by you, but sober." I said, "What sort of a contract?" "A theater in Ferrok-Shahn. Good money, Gregg. I'll be there a year." She sat up to face me. "There's a fellow here on the Planetara, Rance Rankin, he calls himself.
She and I are destined for the same theater in Ferrok-Shahn." So Venza was to sit beside me. It was good news. Ten days of a religious argument three times a day would be intolerable. But the cheerful Venza would help. "She never eats the midday meal," said Snap. "She's on the deck, having orange juice. I guess it's the old gag about diet, eh?" My attention wandered about the salon.
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