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Updated: May 20, 2025
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.
But air was escaping! The Planetara's dome was broken and our precious air was hissing out. Full reality came to me. I was not seriously injured. I found I could move freely. I could stand. A twisted shoulder, a limp left arm, but they were better in a moment. And Anita did not seem to be hurt. Blood was upon her. But not her own.
I did not see them as they put the body in the tube, sent it through the exhaust chamber and dropped it. But a moment later I saw it, a small black, oblong bundle hovering beside us. It was perhaps a hundred feet away, circling us. Held by the Planetara's bulk, it had momentarily become our satellite. It swung around us like a moon. Gruesome satellite, by nature's laws forever to follow us.
He took it from them; raised it at the top of the incline, poised it over his head an instant, with his massive arms like gray pillars beneath it; and flung it. The box catapulted, dropped; and then passing the Planetara's gravity area, it sailed in a long flat arc over the forest glade and crashed into the purple underbrush. "Give me another!" The stewards pushed another at him.
I prayed so. There was a thumbnail mirror here which would bring an answer. Would some Earth telescope be able to see us? I doubted it. The pinpoint of the Planetara's infinitesimal bulk would be beyond vision. Long silences, broken only by the faint hiss and murmur of Snap's instruments. "Shall I try the graphs, Miko?" "Yes." I helped him with the spectro.
Ninety millions, with only a million and a half to come off for expedition expenses, and the Planetara's share another million. A nice little stake. Grantline strode across the room with his rolling gait. "Cheer up, boys. Who's winning there? I say, you fellows " An audiphone buzzer interrupted him, a call from the duty man in the instrument room of the nearby building.
I could see the brink of this ledge upon which the ship lay, the descending crags down the precipitous wall of Archimedes to the Earthlit plains far below. Miko, Moa, and a few of the Planetara's crew were down there somewhere. Anita and I had a fairly definite plan. We were now in Potan's confidence; this interview at an end, I felt that our status among the brigands would be established.
When I had us upon our new course, with the attractive and repulsive plates in the Planetara's hull set in their altered combinations, I went to the bridge again. The asteroid hung over our bow quarter. No more than twenty or thirty thousand miles away. A giant ball now, filling all that quadrant of the heavens. The configurations of its mountains, its land and water areas, were plainly visible.
Frank evidently was having little trouble with pressure sick passengers. The Planetara's equalizers were fairly efficient. Prowling through the silent metal lounges and passages, I went to the door of A22. It was on the deck level, in a tiny transverse passage just off the main lounging room. Its name-grid glowed with the letters: Anita Prince.
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