The Space Opera MEGAPACK ®. Jay Lake

“There’s no danger of us getting picked up.”

      Kenniston was not so sure, but he was too driven by urgent need to waste time in argument. With the Jovian clumping along beside him, he made his way from the spaceport across the ancient Martian city.

      The dark streets of old Syrtis were not crowded. Martians are not a nocturnal people and only a few were abroad in the chill darkness, even they being wrapped in heavy synthewool cloaks from which only their bald red heads and solemn, cadaverous faces protruded.

      Earthmen were fairly numerous in this main port of the planet. Swaggering space-sailors, prosperous-looking traders and rough meteor-miners made up the most of them. There were a few tourists gaping at the grotesque old black stone buildings, and under a krypton-bulb at a corner, two men in the drab uniform of the Patrol stood eyeing passersby sharply. Kenniston breathed more easily when he and the Jovian had passed the two officers without challenge.

      * * * *

      The Terra Hotel stood in a garden at the edge of town, fronting the moonlit immensity of the desert. This glittering glass block, especially built to cater to the tourist trade from Earth, was Earth-conditioned inside. Its gravitation, air pressure and humidity were ingeniously maintained at Earth standards for the greater comfort of its patrons.

      Kenniston felt oddly oppressed by the warm, soft air inside the resplendent lobby. He had spent so much of his time away from Earth that he had become more or less adapted to thinner, colder atmospheres.

      “Miss Gloria Loring?” repeated the immaculate young Earthman behind the information desk. His eyes appraised Kenniston’s shabby space-jacket and the hulking green Jovian. “I am afraid—”

      “I’m here to see her on important business, by appointment,” Kenniston snapped.

      The clerk melted at once. “Oh, I see! I believe that Miss Loring’s party is now in The Bridge. That’s our cocktail room—top floor.”

      Kenniston felt badly out of place, riding up in the magnetic lift with Holk Or. The other people in the car, Earthmen and women in the shimmering synthesilks of the latest formal dress, stared at him and the Jovian as though wondering how they had ever gained admittance.

      The lights, silks and perfumes made Kenniston feel even shabbier than he was. All this luxury was a far cry from the hard, dangerous life he had led for so long amid the wild asteroids and moons of the outer planets.

      It was worse up in the glittering cocktail room atop the hotel. The place had glassite walls and ceiling, and was designed to give an impression of the navigating bridge of a space-ship. The orchestra played behind a phony control-board of instruments and rocket-controls. Meaningless space-charts hung on the walls for decoration. It was just the sort of pretentious sham, Kenniston thought contemptuously, to appeal to tourists.

      “Some crowd!” muttered Holk Or, looking over the tables of richly dressed and jewelled people. His small eyes gleamed. “What a place to loot!”

      “Shut up!” Kenniston muttered hastily. He asked a waiter for the Loring party, and was conducted to a table in a corner.

      There were a half dozen people at the table, most of them young Earthmen and girls. They were drinking pink Martian desert-wine, except for one sulky-looking youngster who had stuck to Earth whisky.

      One of the girls turned and looked at Kenniston with cool, insolently uninterested gaze when the waiter whispered to her politely.

      “I’m Gloria Loring,” she drawled. “What did you want to see me about?”

      She was dark and slim, and surprisingly young. There were almost childish lines to the bare shoulders revealed by her low golden gown. Her thoroughbred grace and beauty were spoiled for Kenniston by the bored look in her clear dark eyes and the faintly disdainful droop of her mouth.

      The chubby, rosy youth beside her goggled in simulated amazement and terror at the battered green Jovian behind Kenniston. He set down his glass with a theatrical gesture of horror.

      “This Martian liquor has got me!” he exclaimed. “I can see a little green man!”

      Holk Or started wrathfully forward. “Why, that young pup—”

      Kenniston hastily restrained him with a gesture. He turned back to the table. Some of the girls were giggling.

      “Be quiet, Robbie,” Gloria Loring was telling the chubby young comedian. She turned her cool gaze back to Kenniston. “Well?”

      “Miss Loring, I heard down at the spaceport that you are the charterer of that small cruiser, the Sunsprite,” Kenniston explained. “I need a craft like that very badly. If you would part with her, I’d be glad to pay almost any price for your charter.”

      The girl looked at him in astonishment. “Why in the world should I let you have our cruiser?”

      Kenniston said earnestly, “Your party could travel just as well and a lot more comfortably by liner. And getting a cruiser like that is a life-or-death business for me right now.”

      “I’m not interested in your business, Mr. Kenniston,” drawled Gloria Loring. “And I certainly don’t propose to alter our plans just to help a stranger out of his difficulties.”

      Kenniston flushed from the cool rebuke. He stood there, suddenly feeling a savage dislike for the whole pampered group of them.

      “Beside that,” the girl continued, “we chose the cruiser for this trip because we wanted to get off the beaten track of liner routes, and see something new. We’re going from here out to Jupiter’s moons.”

      Kenniston perceived that these bored, spoiled youngsters were out here hunting for new thrills on the interplanetary frontier. His dislike of them increased.

      A clean-cut, sober-faced young man who seemed older and more serious than the rest of the party, was speaking to the heiress.

      “Unhardened space-travellers like us are likely to get hit by gravitation paralysis out in the outer planets, Gloria,” he was saying to the heiress. “I don’t think we ought to go farther out than Mars.”

      Gloria looked at him mockingly. “If you’re scared, Hugh, why did you leave your nice safe office on Earth and come along with us?”

      The chubby youth called Robbie laughed loudly. “We all know why Hugh Murdock came along. It’s not thrills he wants—it’s you, Gloria.”

      They were all ignoring Kenniston now. He felt that he had been dismissed but he was desperately reluctant to lose his last hope of getting a ship. Somehow he must get that cruiser!

      A stratagem occurred to him. If these spoiled scions wouldn’t give up their ship, at least he might induce them to go where he wanted.

      Kenniston hesitated. It would mean leading them all into the deadliest kind of peril. But a man’s life depended on it. A man who was worth all these rich young wastrels put together. He decided to try it.

      “Miss Loring, if it’s thrills you’re after, maybe I can furnish them,” Kenniston said. “Maybe we can team up on this. How would you like to go on a voyage after the biggest treasure in the System?”

      “Treasure?” exclaimed the heiress surprisedly. “Where is it?”

      They were all leaning forward, with quick interest. Kenniston saw that his bait had caught them.

      “You’ve heard of John Dark, the notorious space-pirate?” he asked.

      Gloria nodded. “Of course. The telenews was full of his exploits until the Patrol caught and destroyed his ship a few weeks ago.”

      Kenniston corrected her. “The Patrol caught up to John Dark’s ship in the asteroid, but didn’t completely destroy it. They gunned the pirate craft to a wreck in a running fight. But Dark’s wrecked ship drifted into a dangerous zone of meteor swarms where they couldn’t follow.”

      “I remember now—that’s what