That evil oscillation will creep back.
It bleeds away the power—and it may shake the mortal ship to fragments!”
“We’ve lost speed,” John Star reported apprehensively from the instruments.
“The Legion ships are gaining.”
“Adjust them, please, Giles,” Jay Kalam pleaded into the telephone.
“Everything depends on you.”
Giles Habibula toiled.
The pure power-song came back, and broke again.
The Purple Dream flashed on, gaining upon the seven pursuing ships when the geodynes hummed clear and keen, but always losing, falling sluggishly back, when the harsh, disturbing vibration returned.
John Star studied his instruments long and anxiously.
“We’re holding them just about even,” he decided at last.
“We can keep ahead so long as the generators do no worse—though we can’t escape them altogether.
Anyhow, we can say farewell to the Sun and the System. Even if they follow us out…”
“No,” Jay Kalam objected quietly, “we aren’t ready yet to leave.”
“What’s the matter?”
“We must have more fuel for the trip out to Barnard’s Star—six light years and back.
We must have every foot of space on board packed with extra cathode plates for the geodyne generators.
And, of course, we must check the supplies for ourselves—food, and oxygen.”
John Star nodded slowly.
“I knew we needed a captain.
Where———”
“We must land at some Legion base, and get what we need.”
“At a Legion base?
With all the Legion fleets hunting us for pirates?
The alarm will be spread to the limits of the System!”
“We’ll land,” Jay Kalam said, with his usual quiet gravity, “at the base on Pluto’s moon.
This is the farthest on our way, and the most isolated Legion station in the System.”
“But even it will be warned and armed.”
“No doubt.
But we must have supplies.
We’re pirates now. We shall take what we need.” 11 The Trap on Pluto’s Moon
It was five days’ flight to Pluto, most distant outpost of the System; so far that even its sun was but a bright star, its daylight eternal twilight.
Five days—with the full power of the geodynes, whose fields of force reacted against the curvature of space itself, warped it, so that they drove the ship not through space, to put it very crudely, but around it, and so made possible terrific accelerations without any discomfort to passengers, and speeds far beyond even the speed of winged light.
Apparent speeds, a mathematician would hasten to add, as measured in the ordinary space that the vessel went around; for both acceleration and velocity were quite moderate in the hyper-space it really went through.
Giles Habibula nursed the hard-driven generators with amazing care and energy—his thick hands proved to have an astounding sureness and delicacy and skill; and he had an enormous respect for the ever-increasing swarm of Legion cruisers racing astern, with their threat of successfully prosecuted charges of piracy, if not immediate destruction of the Purple Dream and all on board in the consuming flame of their proton blasts.
He adjusted the injured unit until it was all but perfect.
For an hour at a time, perhaps, the song of the generators would be clear and keen—but always the harsh discord of the destructive vibration returned.
One by one, the far-flying patrol cruisers of the Legion had joined the pursuing fleet, until sixteen ships were chasing the Purple Dream.
But, little by little, they were left behind, until, near Pluto, John Star estimated them to be nearly five hours astern.
Five hours, that meant, in which to land at the hostile base, overcome its crew, force them to bring aboard some twenty tons of supplies, and get safely away into space again.
In those days of the flight, John Star found himself thinking often of Aladoree Anthar—and his thoughts were soft music and sheer agony.
Though he had known her but a day, memory of her brought a glow of joy to him, and a bitter throb of pain at thought of the human traitors and the monstrous half-known things that held her captive.
The Purple Dream hurtled down on Pluto’s moon.
Pluto itself, the Black Planet, was naked rock and ancient ice, killing cold and solitude.
Its only people were a few hardy miners, mostly descendants of the political prisoners shipped there under the Empire, lonely exiles of eternal night.
Cerberus, moon of Pluto, was a tiny, cragged rock, more desolate and cruel to man than even its dark planet.
A dead satellite, it had never lived.
Save for the crew of the lonely Legion station, it had no inhabitants.
John Star had more than half expected that the Pluto Squadron of the Legion fleet would be warned and waiting for them, but the field seemed deserted as they came down.
He began to hope that the evil web of Adam Ulnar’s treason had not been spun so far.