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Updated: June 28, 2025
Something told me to beware. I clung to the casement, ready upon the instant to shove myself down. There was a movement in a shadow along the deck. Then a figure rose up. "Don't fire, Haljan!" The sharp command, half appeal, stopped the pressure of my finger. It was the tall, lanky Englishman. Sir Arthur Coniston, he as called himself. So he too, was one of Miko's band!
The steward's shout might not have been heard. Then realization flashed to me. That steward would be revived. He was one of Miko's men. He would be revived and tell what he had seen and heard. Anita's disguise would be revealed. A cold-blooded killing, I do protest, went against me. But it was necessary. I flung myself upon him. I beat his skull with the metal of my cylinder. I stood up.
So this was the end of the brigands' adventure. The Planetara's last voyage! How small and futile are humans' struggles. Miko's daring enterprise so villainous brought all in a few moments to this silent tragedy. The Planetara had fallen thirty thousand miles. But why? What had happened to Hahn? And where was Coniston, down in this broken hull? And Snap! I thought suddenly of Snap.
The rocks of the open ledge were beneath us. Then the abyss, with the moving, climbing specks of Miko's lights far down. I saw, over the side shield, the already distant brigand ship resting on the ledge with the massive Archimedes' wall behind it. A confusion back there of futile flashing rays.
Coniston shouted, "Haljan!" I did not answer. I wonder if he would dare approach to see if I had been hit. A minute passed. Then another. I thought I heard Miko's voice on the deck outside. But it was an aerial, microscopic whisper close beside me. "We see you, Haljan. You must yield!" Their eavesdropping vibrations, with audible projection, were upon me. I retorted loudly, "Come and get me!
His voice, with the horrible gurgling rasp of death in it, rattled my ear-grids. "Not such a fool are you, Haljan " Moa's helmeted head was close over us. I saw that she had seized the knife, jerked it from her brother's throat. She leaped backward, waving it. I twisted from beneath Miko's lifeless, inert body. As I got to my feet, Anita flung herself to shield me.
Miko's voice said: "We mean well by you, Haljan. There is your normality. Join us. We need you to chart our course." "And a hundred pounds of gold leaf," urged Coniston. "Or more. Why, this treasure " I could hear an oath from Miko. And then his ironic voice. "We will not bother you, Haljan. There is no hurry. You will be hungry in good time. And sleepy. Then we will come and get you.
We sailed off toward the opposite crater rim. I remember passing over the broken wreckage of Grantline's little spaceship, the Comet. Miko's bolts momentarily had vanished. We had hit some of his outside projectors; the others were abandoned, or being dragged to safer positions. After a mile we wheeled and went back.
I realized that all this parley was a ruse of Miko's to take me alive. He had made a gesture. Hahn, watching him from the turret window, doubtless flashed a signal down to the hull corridors. The magnetizer control under the chart room was altered, our artificial gravity cut off. I felt the sudden lightness: I gripped the window casement and clung. Carter was startled into incautious movement.
I heard Moa mutter, "So that is it?" A venomous flashing look a shaft from me to Anita and back again. "So that is it?" "Why, Anita!" Miko's great arms gathered her up as though she were a child. "So I have you back! From the dead, delivered back to me!" "Gregg!" Snap's warning, and his grip on my shoulders brought me a measure of sanity. I had tensed to spring.
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