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Updated: May 1, 2025
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.
And I whispered, "It's Grantline! We're safe, Anita, my darling!" Death had been so close! Those horrible last minutes on the Planetara had shocked us, marked us. We stood trembling. And Grantline and his men came bounding up, weird, inflated figures. A helmeted figure touched me. I saw through the helmetpane the visage of a stern-faced, square-jawed young man. "Grantline? Johnny Grantline?"
It poised over the bow, and presently, as the Planetara swung upon its course for Mars, it shifted sidewise. The light of it glared white and dazzling in our windows. Snap, with his habitual red celluloid eyeshade shoved high on his forehead, worked over our instruments. "Gregg!" The receiving shield was glowing a trifle. Rays were bombarding it!
He had not thought that our plan to stop at the Moon could affect this outward voyage. He had thought that any danger would occur on the way back, and then the Planetara would have been adequately guarded and manned with police-soldiers. But now we were practically defenseless. I had a moment with Venza, but she had nothing new to communicate. And for half an hour I chatted with George Prince.
The Planetara was hanging poised. A sudden gasp went about the room. The men stood with whitening faces, gazing at the Planetara's image. And at the altimeter's needle. It was moving now. The Planetara was descending. But not with an orderly swoop. The grid showed the ship clearly. The bow tilted up, then dipped down. But then in a moment it swung up again. The ship turned partly over.
"We were with Set Miko," she said smilingly, "in the wreck of the Planetara. You heard of it? We know where the treasure is." This duty man was a full seven feet tall, and the most heavy-set Martian I had ever seen. A tremendous, beetle-browed, scowling fellow. He stood with hands on his hips, his leather-garbed legs spread wide; and as I confronted him, I felt like a child.
The electronic streams flowed out like a rocket tail behind us. The Planetara caught their impetus. In the rarefied air, our bow lifted slightly, like a ship riding a gentle ground swell. At a hundred thousand feet we sailed gently forward, hull down to the asteroid's surface, cruising to seek a landing space. A little sea was now beneath us. A shadowed sea, deep purple in the night down there.
From Johnson's breast pocket the surgeon drew a folded document. It was a scale drawing of the Planetara interior corridors, the lower control rooms and mechanisms. It was always kept in Johnson's safe. And with it, another document: the ship's clearance papers the secret code passwords for this voyage, to be used if we should be challenged by any Interplanetary Police ship.
"But Haljan, we have almost no weapons! All my Comet's space was taken with equipment and the mechanisms for my camp. I can't signal Earth! I was depending on the Planetara!" It surged upon us. The brigand menace past? We were blindly congratulating ourselves on our safety!
There has been disaster to Miko. A small light beam came down from the brink of the overhead cliff beside the ship. Continue. I went steadily on: Disaster the Planetara is wrecked. All killed but me and Prince's sister. We want to join you. I flashed off my light. The answer came: Where is the Grantline Camp? Near here. The Mare Imbrium.
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