Nana scowled again at the menacing gun, and muttered evasively:
“I can’t let you have them without first reporting to Legion Headquarters, for confirmation of your orders.”
“We’ve no time for that.
Our mission is top emergency———”
Nana lifted his untidy shoulders, in defiance.
“I’m the commandant of Cerberus Station,” he snarled.
“I’m not accustomed to accepting orders from———” He paused, and his red eyes narrowed. “———from pirates!”
“In this case, however,” Jay Kalam said softly, “I should advise you to do so.”
Nana shook his fist, in a rage that looked like bad acting, and Jay Kalam waved a signal to Hal Samdu.
The great needle above their heads lifted toward the radio tower on the peak, and blinding incandescence jetted out.
The tower crumpled instantly, into hot ruin. And Nana was suddenly trembling, his unshaven face white and twitching with a fear that looked more genuine than his wrath had been.
“Very well,” he whispered hoarsely.
“I’ll accept your requisition.”
“Go with him, Captain Ulnar,” said Jay Kalam.
“See that there is no mistake or delay.”
Nana complained that he did not have all the supplies required.
Most of his men were too ill to help with the loading.
The cranes and conveyors were out of order.
He was doing his utmost, John Star recognized, to delay them until the sixteen pursuing Legion cruisers should have time to arrive.
Yet, four hours later, under John Star’s stern supervision and the menace of the great proton gun, all the cathode plates were aboard.
The cylinders of oxygen were safely loaded, and the supplies of food and wine that Giles Habibula had added to the requisitions.
Only the black drums of rocket fuel remained piled beneath the air-lock, and it was still an hour before the pursuing ships should reach them.
Yet John Star had caught a gleam of sullen satisfaction in Nana’s red pig-eyes, that sharpened his uneasiness.
Then Jay leaped from the valve, and came running across the field.
“Time to go, John!”
His voice was low, urgent.
“Why?
We ought to have an hour———”
Jay Kalam glanced at the curious, staring men gathering to load the rocket fuel, and dropped his voice.
“The ‘scopes show another ship, John. Nearer.
Headed here from Pluto.”
“So that was Nana’s game!” John Star nodded in bleak understanding.
“A nice little surprise for us.
Anyhow, we’ve got to have the fuel.
We’ll have to take a chance on outrunning Nana’s friends.”
Jay Kalam’s lean dark face was taut with a rare concern.
“This isn’t a Legion cruiser, John—it’s moving a good deal too fast.”
Beneath his calm, John Star could sense his deep alarm.
“I never saw the like.
A black spider of a ship, with things jutting out of a round belly of a hull.”
John Star staggered back from the cold apprehension that hit him in the pit of his stomach.
“The Medusae!” he gasped.
“That’s the sort of ship that took Aladoree.
Nana must have sent for them, to ambush us here.
I don’t know what sort of weapons they would have———”
“We’ll have to go,” Jay Kalam cut in.
“We can’t risk fighting.”
“The rocket-fuel?”
“Leave it.
Come aboard.”