The Space Opera MEGAPACK ®. Jay Lake

He glared at Kenniston. “You damned pirate! You’re responsible for this!”

      “If you hadn’t dragged me away from the controls, the cruiser wouldn’t have been struck,” Kenniston denied. “And I’m not a pirate—”

      Murdock interrupted. “We’ll settle with those two later,” he told the enraged captain. “Right now, we’ll have to get out of the ship. We can’t stay in here until we get it righted on an even keel.”

      Holk Or rumbled a warning. “Better be careful about going outside. Those cursed Vestans are thick in these jungles.”

      “I’ll have no advice from you two pirates!” flamed the captain. “Bray, you and Thorpe keep your guns on them every minute.”

      The heavy main space-door was opened. Pale sunlight and warm, steamy air laden with rank scents of strange vegetation drifted in. Outside lay a raw clearing the falling ship had crushed out of the jungle.

      Captain Walls supervised as they all donned lead-soled weight-shoes to compensate for the weaker gravity. Then they emerged, young Lanning being supported by Murdock and Robbie. Kenniston and the Jovian were last to emerge, under the watchful guns of their guards.

      The crew and passengers were looking around with wonder and revulsion. The silvery bulk of the Sunsprite lay awkwardly heeled on its side. The symmetrical torpedo shape of the cruiser was now badly marred by the crumpled condition of its bow.

      All around them in the thin sunlight rose slender trees whose enormous green leaves grew directly from the trunks. This grotesque forest was made more dense by festoons of writhing “snake-vines,” weird rootless creepers which crawled like plant-serpents from one tree to another. Each stir of wind brought white spore-dust down in a shower from the trees.

      The few living creatures of this forbidding landscape were equally alien. Big white meteor-rats scurried on their eight legs through the brush. Phosphorescent flame-birds shot through the upper fronds like streaks of fire. In the pale sky overhead, there were ceaseless gleams and flashes of light as the spinning meteor-swarm reflected the sunlight.

      “What a horrible place!” shrilled Mrs. Milsom. “We’ll all die here—we’ll never get back to Earth. I knew this would happen!”

      “This is certainly a mean spot to be cast away,” muttered Captain Walls. “God knows what queer creatures inhabit it, not to speak of the mysterious Vestans everybody talks about. And John Dark and his crew are somewhere here. And the telaudio wrecked, so we can’t call for help.”

      Kenniston realized that none of the others had glimpsed Dark’s camp as they fell. They didn’t know the pirate encampment was only a few miles away in the jungle.

      “What are we going to do, captain?” Gloria was asking, her face still pale but her voice quite steady. “Can we get away?”

      Captain Walls looked hopeless. “We can’t take off with the whole bow of the Sunsprite crushed in.”

      “We can repair it, can’t we?” Hugh Murdock suggested. “Remember, in the hold is the cargo of machinery and repair-materials that Kenniston was bringing to repair Dark’s ship. Can’t we use that equipment?”

      The captain looked more hopeful. “Maybe we can. Bray and the crew and I ought to be able to do an emergency job of patching the bow and installing new rocket-tubes there. But we’ll have to work fast to get away before Dark’s outfit learns we’re here.”

      He pointed vindicatively at Kenniston. “Better lock up that fellow and his partner to make sure he doesn’t signal somehow to his fellow-pirates.”

      Kenniston tried again to explain. “Will you all listen to me? I tell you, I’m no pirate!”

      Murdock eyed him sternly. “Do you deny that John Dark sent you to Mars for repair-equipment, and that you told us that lying treasure-story to get the equipment here in our ship?”

      “No, I don’t deny that,” Kenniston admitted. “But I’m not one of John Dark’s crew—I never was! I was a prisoner on his ship, captured by the pirates before they themselves were attacked by the Patrol.”

      “Do you expect us to believe that?” Murdock said incredulously.

      “It’s true!” Kenniston insisted. “My kid brother Ricky and I were captured by John Dark’s outfit several weeks ago. We were prisoners on his ship when it was wrecked by the Patrol. After the wreck drifted onto Vesta here, Dark wanted to send someone to Mars for repair-equipment. He wouldn’t send one of his own men in charge, for fear the man would double-cross him and never come back.

      “So he sent me, his prisoner, on that errand. Holk Or came along to help me navigate a ship back. And I had to obey Dark and get the equipment back here at any cost. For Dark kept my brother Ricky prisoner here with him, and told me that if I didn’t bring back that equipment, Ricky would be shot!”

      Holk Or spoke up. “It’s true, what Kenniston’s telling you,” rumbled the Jovian. “Me, I’m one of Dark’s pirates and I don’t care a curse who knows it. But Kenniston did this only to save his brother.”

      “I don’t believe it,” said Captain Walls flatly. “It’s another of the smooth lies this fellow Kenniston makes up so easily.”

      Gloria spoke to Kenniston, her dark eyes still accusing. “If what you say is true and you’re not a pirate, then you brought all of us into this danger simply to save your own brother?”

      Kenniston looked at her miserably. “Yes, I did. I was willing to lead you all into capture to save Ricky. But I had a reason—”

      “Sure, you had a reason,” Murdock said bitterly. “What did the safety of strangers like us mean to you, compared to your precious brother?”

      Captain Walls motioned Kenniston and Holk Or angrily toward the ship. “Bray, take them in and lock them under guard in a cabin,” he said.

      Holk Or suddenly yelled. “Look out! There’s a Vestan!”

      Kenniston, his blood chilling with alarm, glanced where the Jovian pointed. At the west edge of the clearing, a small animal had suddenly emerged from the dense green jungle.

      It was a six-legged, striped, catlike beast, not unordinary as interplanetary animals go. But its head looked queer, seeming to have a bulbous gray mass attached behind its ears.

      Captain Walls uttered a scoffing exclamation. “That’s only an ordinary asteroid-cat.”

      “That is a Vestan!” Kenniston cried. “Shoot at its head—”

      His warning was too late. The catlike beast had launched itself in a spring toward their group.

      As its striped body shot through the air, Walls triggered his atom-pistol. The crackling blast of force tore into the body of the charging asteroid-cat, and the beast fell heavily a few yards away.

      But as it fell, the small gray mass upon its neck suddenly detached itself from the dead animal and scuttled swiftly forward. It moved with blurring speed toward Bray, the nearest to it of the group.

      The little gray creature was no bigger than a man’s clenched fists together. It was a gray, wrinkled featureless thing, except for pinpoint eyes and the tiny clawlike legs upon which it scurried. It reached Bray and ran swiftly up his legs and back as he swore startledly.

      Kenniston, made reckless of danger by his horror, yelled and lunged toward the pilot. Bray was swearing and trying to slap at the gray thing running up his back. But the little creature had now reached his neck. Clinging there, it swiftly dug two tiny, needle-like antennae into the base of his neck.

      “Hold him!” Kenniston shouted hoarsely. “The Vestan has got him!”

      Bray had undergone a sudden metamorphosis as the gray creature dug its antennae into his neck. His face stiffened, became masklike.

      The pilot turned and began to run stiffly toward the jungle. Kenniston’s leap almost