The Space Opera MEGAPACK ®. Jay Lake

her friends by the wrecked Sunsprite, so the Patrol will find ’em dead by the wreck and will believe their cruiser crashed accidentally. That way, they won’t go on searching as they would if Miss Loring’s party was all missing. And Dark will have a chance to get out to Pluto without an alarm going out.”

      Kenniston was suspicious. “Why do you tell us this, Holk? You’re one of the pirates yourself.”

      “I know, but I’m afraid Dark means to drop me with the others by the Sunsprite!” Holk Or exclaimed. “He didn’t say so, but I believe he figures on doing it so that the telaudio inquiry about me would be explained when I was found dead with the others by the wreck.”

      Murdock said swiftly, “The Jovian’s right, Kenniston. All this is just what Dark would do, to hide his trail, now that he knows my telaudio message may have aroused the Patrol’s suspicion.”

      Holk Or said emphatically, “I’m with you if you can figure out any way to take the Falcon, Kenniston!”

      Kenniston paced to and fro. His whole mind was suddenly in a wild turmoil of stark fears. This meant death for Gloria and the others, and the ultimate responsibility for that death would be his.

      “There is one possible chance for us to take the Falcon,” he muttered finally. “But my God, it seems like an insane idea—”

      “Wait a minute!” Captain Walls interrupted. “Dark won’t drop you and your brother to die, Kenniston. He still needs your brother as a physician. You two will be safe even if we are killed.”

      “What of that? I can’t let Gloria and the rest of you be murdered! I was willing to sacrifice you when I thought it was only a question of your being held for ransom, but this changes everything,” Kenniston said wildly.

      “It doesn’t change anything,” the captain said firmly. “Your duty is to keep your brother alive at all costs, to save that formula that means life and hope for thousands of gravitation-paralysis victims like my son.”

      “You mean—I should let you all be killed so Ricky and I can be saved?” Kenniston cried. “I’m damned if I will!”

      “We’ll never do that!” Ricky Kenniston agreed warmly. “No formula in the world is worth that.”

      “This formula is,” Gloria said earnestly to Kenniston. “The captain is right.”

      “I won’t do it,” Kenniston repeated. “I have an idea by which we might be able to take the Falcon. We’re going to try it.”

      “Be reasonable, Kenniston,” pleaded Hugh Murdock. “None of us except Holk Or has a weapon. What chance would we have against half a hundred armed pirates?”

      Kenniston looked at his brother. “Ricky, your formula strengthens the nervous system against any form of shock or damage, doesn’t it? You said it did it by sheathing the nerves themselves with an impenetrable coating.”

      Ricky nodded puzzledly. “Yes, that’s the principle. But how is that going to help us?”

      “The Vestans,” Kenniston reminded, “seize control of their victims by inserting those tiny needle antennae of theirs into the victim’s nerve-system to establish contact. Wouldn’t your formula insulate the nerves against such contact? Wouldn’t it make a man immune to Vestan attack?”

      “Why, it would!” Ricky declared wonderingly. “I never thought of it, yet it’s entirely logical.”

      “Then,” Kenniston said swiftly, “I want you to give every one of us, including yourself, an injection of the formula right now.”

      The driving purpose in his voice brushed aside all their bewildered questions and objections. Hastily, Ricky prepared his hypodermics and rapidly made an injection of the milky fluid into the big nerve-centers in the neck of each of them. Kenniston did the same for Ricky himself.

      “We should be immune now to Vestan attack,” Kenniston said prayerfully.

      “But what good’s that going to do us?” Holk Or demanded. “Are you figuring to try an escape into the jungle?”

      “No, I’m figuring on taking the Falcon—by using the Vestans,” Kenniston replied. “Holk, can you get into the ship and turn off the power that keeps the electric wall going? Can you drop the wall?”

      The Jovian’s jaw dropped. “Why, sure, I could do that, but if I did, all those hordes of Vestans outside the wall will burst in here—”

      He stopped, his eyes bulging. “Good God, then that’s your plan? To let the Vestans in?”

      “That’s it,” Kenniston said tightly, his face grim. “To let the Vestans in on the pirates. That’ll give us a chance to take the ship—if the formula really makes us immune to the Vestans.”

      The terrible nature of the proposal stunned them all. But in a moment a flame of purpose lit in the Jovian’s eyes.

      “I’ll do it!” he swore. “It’s better than waiting for Dark to kill me like he’s planning. You be ready!”

      The Jovian slipped out of the opening in the back of the hut. They saw him presently, casually approaching the door of the Falcon.

      John Dark stood, a tall, dominant figure in the moonslight, barking orders to the scores of pirates who were bolting in the last of the new rocket-tubes. Kenniston’s eyes swung toward the shimmering electric wall, and the horde of Vestan-dominated animals outside it.

      The wall suddenly died! And as the electric barrier vanished, into the clearing came rushing the swarm of asteroidal animals.

      “The wall’s down!” John Dark yelled, his atom-gun leaping into his hand. “Get back into the ship—get back—”

      The crash of his atom-gun drowned his own shout. Other pirates were firing wildly at the hideous creatures assailing them.

      For the little gray Vestans had detached themselves from their animal victims and were swarming upon the pirates, clambering with blurring speed up their legs and backs, sinking into their necks the tiny antennae.

      Kenniston glimpsed John Dark, with a hideous little gray bunch now fastened to the back of his neck, drop his gun and stalk stiffly away toward the jungle. His face was an unhuman, lifeless mask—he was a human automaton, dominated utterly by the alien creature.

      “Come on!” Kenniston yelled to his friends. “Now’s our chance to get into the ship!”

      They plunged out of the hut into the gruesome melee. Screaming pirates were now running into the jungle in vain effort to escape the hordes of Vestans. More than half the corsairs were now overcome.

      Kenniston heard a scream from Gloria as they ran, felt a swift scurrying up his back, then the needle-like stab of antennae sinking into his neck.

      But the parasitic creature did not overpower his will! He reached around, grasped and tore loose the hideous little thing, and with strong revulsion flung it to the ground.

      “Your formula works, Ricky—we’re immune to them!” he gasped. “But hurry!”

      Other Vestans were clambering up on them like ghastly gray spiders as they ran, but were powerless to overcome them. They tore away the creatures and plunged on.

      Holk Or appeared in the door of the Falcon, his green face blazing as his atom-pistol pumped crashing fire into pirates inside the ship.

      “I’ve got the ship cleared of them!” the Jovian shouted to Kenniston. “Let’s get out of here!”

      It was time they did so. Almost the last of John Dark’s pirates had been possessed by Vestans and had become parasite-dominated robots stumbling off into the jungle. The remaining swarms of gray creatures were scurrying toward Kenniston’s group.

      They tumbled into the Falcon and slammed shut the space-door. The ship, completely if roughly repaired, was ready for take-off. Captain Walls and the men of the