We can’t go there!”
“Probably we can’t,” John Star agreed soberly.
“The chances are against us—a hundred to one, I suppose.
But we can try.”
“Bless my bones!
We can’t go there, lad.
‘Tis beyond the System— six light years, and more.
That’s a frightful distance, when it takes a precious ray of light six long and lonely years to cross it!
“Ah, there are ten thousand mortal dangers, life knows!
I’m a brave man—you all know poor old Giles is brave enough to deal with any common peril.
But we can’t do that.
Of all the doomed and dismal expeditions that ever dared to fly outside the precious System, only one ever came back!”
A tiny red light glowed suddenly on the geodesic telltale screen; a warning gong rang out.
“Another Legion cruiser,” observed Jay Kalam, tautly quiet.
“Scouring space for the Purple Dream.
That makes five, in the range of the telltale.
Hunting pirates was always a popular sport, with the Legion.”
“And the nearest within ten thousand miles,” added John Star, with a glance at the dials.
“Though they probably won’t discover us until we contrive to get the generators repaired, and start moving.”
“And to the Runaway Star!” Giles Habibula wheezed on, dolefully.
“Sweet life’s sake, to the green Medusae’s dark and evil world!
The expedition the Legion sent there had five fine fighting ships.
The best the System could build.
Full, trained crews.
And look what came back, after a whole eternal year!
“One crippled ship!
The men on her, most of them, blessed babbling lunatics, chattering to freeze your blood about the horrors they had found on the dark and hideous planet of that evil star.
And rotting away, all the fearful while, of some frightful virus the doctors never saw before—the flesh of their mortal bodies turning green and flaking off.
“Mortal terrors!
And you want us to go there, in one poor and lonely little ship, with her geodynes already wrecked.
Just four men of us, against a whole planet full of green and cunning monsters!
“You can’t ask old Giles Habibula to go out there, lad.
Poor old Giles, half dead from scampering like a hunted rat through the ventilator tubes in the Purple Hall.
Old Giles is too feeble for that.
If you three idiots want to go out to your death of madness and howling horror, why then you must let poor old Giles off the ship on Mars.”
“To be tried and put to death for a pirate?” asked John Star, smiling grimly.
“Don’t joke so with old Giles, lad!
He’s no swaggering, red-handed pirate, lad.
Old Giles is just a poor———”
“The whole Legion is hunting us, Giles,” Jay Kalam broke in quietly.
“Ever since we took the Purple Dream.
The agents of the Legion would soon have you—you’d never disguise that nose!”
“Good life’s sake, Jay, don’t talk so!
I hadn’t thought of that.
But we are blessed pirates now, with the hand of every honest fighting man against us.
Ah, every man looks on us with trembling and horror, and seeks to strike us down to death!”
His fishy eyes glistened with tears; his wheezing voice broke.
“Poor Giles Habibula, aged and crippled in the loyal service of the Legion, now without a place on any planet to rest his mortal head.
Hunted through the black and frozen deep of space, driven out of the System he has given his years and his strength to defend.
Driven out to face a planet full of green inhuman monsters.