.

his career. He amassed a hoard of jewels and precious metals. And he kept it right with him in his ship. That treasure’s still in that lost wreck.”

      “How do you know?” asked Hugh Murdock bluntly.

      “Because I found the lost wreck of Dark’s ship myself,” Kenniston answered. He hated to lie like this, but knew that he had no choice.

      He plunged on. “I’m a meteor-miner by profession. Two weeks ago my Jovian partner and I were prospecting in the outer asteroid zone in our little rocket. Our air-tanks got low and to replenish them, we landed on the asteroid Vesta. That’s the big asteroid they call the World with a Thousand Moons, because it’s circled by a swarm of hundreds of meteors.

      “It’s a weird, jungled little world, inhabited by some very queer forms of life. In landing, my partner and I noticed where some great object had crashed down into the jungle. We discovered it was the wreck of John Dark’s ship. The wreck had drifted until it crashed on Vesta, almost completely burying itself in the ground. No one was alive on it, of course.”

      Kenniston concluded. “We knew Dark’s treasure must still be in the buried wreck. But it would take machinery and equipment to dig out the wreck. So we came here to Mars, intending to get a small cruiser, load it with the necessary equipment, and go back to Vesta and lift the treasure. Only we haven’t been able to get a ship of any kind.”

      He leaned toward the girl. “Here’s my proposition, Miss Loring. You take us and our equipment to Vesta in your cruiser, and we’ll share the treasure with you fifty-fifty. What do you say?”

      The blonde girl beside Gloria uttered a squeal of excitement. “Pirate treasure! Gloria, let’s do it—what a thrill it would be!”

      The others showed equal excitement. The romance of a treasure hunt in the wild asteroids lured them, rather than the possible rewards.

      “We’d certainly be able to take back a wonderful story to Earth if we found John Dark’s treasure,” admitted Gloria, with quick, eager interest.

      Hugh Murdock was an exception to the general enthusiasm. He asked Kenniston, “How do you know the treasure’s still in the buried wreck?”

      “Because the wreck was still undisturbed,” Kenniston answered. “And because we found these jewels on the body of one of John Dark’s crew, who had been flung clear somehow when the wreck crashed.”

      He held out a half-dozen gems he took from his pocket. They were Saturnian moon-stones, softly shining white jewels whose brilliance waxed and waned in perfect periodic rhythm.

      “These jewels,” Kenniston said, “must have been that pirate’s share of the loot. You can imagine how rich John Dark’s own hoard must be.”

      The jewels, worth many thousands, swept away the lingering incredulity of the others as Kenniston had known they would.

      “You’re sure no one else knows the wreck is there?” Gloria asked breathlessly.

      “We kept our find absolutely secret,” Kenniston told her. “But since I can’t get a ship any other way, I’m willing to share the hoard with you. If I wait too long, someone else may find the wreck.”

      “I accept your proposition, Mr. Kenniston!” Gloria declared. “We’ll start for Vesta just as soon as you can get the equipment you’ll need loaded on the Sunsprite.”

      “Gloria, you’re being too hasty,” protested Hugh Murdock. “I’ve heard of this world with a Thousand Moons. There’re stories of queer, unhuman creatures they call Vestans, who infest that asteroid. The danger—”

      Gloria impatiently dismissed his objections. “Hugh, if you are going to start worrying about dangers again, you’d better go back to Earth and safety.”

      Murdock flushed and was silent. Kenniston felt a certain sympathy for the young businessman. He knew, if these others did not, just how real was the alien menace of those strange creatures, the Vestans.

      “I’ll go right down to the spaceport and see about loading the equipment aboard your cruiser,” Kenniston told the heiress. “You’d better give me a note to your captain. We ought to be able to start tomorrow.”

      “Pirate treasure on an unexplored asteroid!” exulted the enthusiastic Robbie. “Ho for the World with a Thousand Moons!”

      Kenniston felt guilty when he and Holk Or left the big hotel. These youngsters, he thought, hadn’t the faintest idea of the peril into which he was leading them. They were as ignorant as babies of the dark evil and unearthly danger of the interplanetary frontier.

      He hardened himself against the qualms of conscience. There was that at stake, he told himself fiercely, against which the safety of a lot of spoiled, rich young people was absolutely nothing.

      Holk Or was chuckling as they emerged into the chill Martian night. He told Kenniston admiringly, “That was one of the smoothest jobs of lying I ever heard, that story about finding John Dark’s treasure. Take it from me, it was slick!”

      The Jovian guffawed loudly as he added, “What would their faces be like if they knew that John Dark and his crew are still living? That it was John Dark himself who sent us here?”

      “Be quiet, you idiot!” ordered Kenniston hastily. “Do you want the whole Patrol to hear you?”

      CHAPTER II

      Discovered

      The Sunsprite throbbed steadily through the vast, dangerous wilderness of the asteroidal zone. To the eye, the cruiser moved in a black void starred by creeping crumbs of light. In reality those bright, crawling specks were booming asteroids or whirling meteor-swarms rushing in complicated, unchartable orbits and constantly threatening destruction.

      For three days now, the cruiser had cautiously groped deeper into this most perilous region of the System. Now a bright, tiny disk of white light was shining far ahead like a beckoning beacon. It was the asteroid Vesta—their goal.

      Kenniston, leaning against the glassite deck-wall, somberly eyed the distant asteroid.

      “We’ll reach it by tomorrow,” he thought. “Then what? I suppose John Dark will hold these rich youngsters for ransom.”

      Kenniston knew that the pirate leader would instantly see the chance of extorting vast sums by holding this group of wealthy young people as captives.

      “I wish to God I hadn’t had to bring them into this,” Kenniston sweated. “But what else could I do? It was the only way I could get back to Vesta with the materials.”

      His mind was going back over the disastrous events since the day three weeks before, when the Patrol had caught up to John Dark at last.

      Dark’s pirate ship, the Falcon, had been gunned to a helpless wreck. It had, fortunately for the pirates, drifted off into a region of perilous meteor-swarms where the Patrol cruisers dared not follow. The Patrol thought everybody on the pirate ship dead anyway, Kenniston knew.

      But John Dark and most of his crew were still alive in the drifting wreck. They had fought the battle wearing space-suits, and that had saved them. They had clung grimly to the wreck as it drifted on and on until it finally fell into the feeble gravitational pull of Vesta.

      Kenniston could still remember those tense hours when the wreck had fallen through the satellite swarm of meteors onto the World with a Thousand Moons. They had managed to cushion their crash. John Dark, always the most resourceful of men, had managed to jury-rig makeshift rocket-tubes that had softened the impact of their fall.

      But the wrecked Falcon had been marooned there in the weird asteroidal jungle, with the alien, menacing Vestans already gathering around it. The ship would never fly space again until major repairs were made. And they could not be made until quantities of material and equipment were brought. Someone must go for those materials to Mars, the nearest planet.

      John Dark had superintended construction of a little two-man rocket from parts of the