“So we’re stuck on the bottom of a mortal sea?” observed Giles Habibula.
His mood was not rejoicing.
He had the voice of a well-grown and lusty tomcat protesting a weighty tread on its tail.
John Star nodded soberly, and he continued bitterly:
“Twenty long, loyal years I’ve truly served the Legion, since that evil day on Venus, when———”
He checked himself, with a roll of his fishy eye, and John Star prompted:
“How was it you came to join?”
“Twenty years, lad, old Giles has served hi the Legion, as stout and true a blessed man, and—ah, yes, hi good life’s name!—as brave a soldier as ever was!”
“Yes, I know.
But———”
“Old Giles has put his past behind him, lad.”
His voice turned reproachfully plaintive.
“He has redeemed himself, if ever a daring hero did.
And look at him now, bless his precious bones!
“Accused for a wicked pirate, when for twenty long years he’s never done more than—when for twenty eternal years he’s been a noble warrior hi the Legion.
Ah, yes, lad, look at old Giles Habibula.
Look at him before you now!”
His voice broke; a great tear trembled in the corner of his fishy eye, as if terrified by the purple magnitude of the nose below, hesitated and dared and splashed down unheeded.
“Look at poor old Giles!
Hunted like a dog out of his own native System.
Driven like a rabbit into interstellar space.
Hurled headlong into this planet of ghastly danger and crawling horrors.
Stuck to spend the rest of his cheerless days of suffering in a wreck on the bottom of an evil sea!
“Pitiful old Giles Habibula!
For years he’s been feeble, tottering, with gray hairs crowning his mortal head.
He’s been ill and lame.
He’s been forgotten, stuck away at a lonely, desolate little outpost on Mars.
“Now he’s trapped to starve and die hi a wreck on the bottom of a fearful yellow sea!
Where’s the precious justice of that, lad?”
He buried his great face in his hands, and trembled to sobs somewhat resembling the death-struggles of a harpooned whale.
But it was not long before he straightened, and wiped his fishy eyes with the back of his fat hand.
“Anyhow, lad,” he wheezed wearily, “let’s have a drop of wine to help forget the frightful miseries that are piled upon us. And a taste of cold ham and biscuit.
And there’s a case of canned cheese I found hi the stores the other day.
“And I’ll tell you about that tune on Venus, lad.
It was a brave adventure—if I hadn’t stumbled over a wicked reading lamp in the dark! For poor old Giles Habibula was clever, then, and nimble as you are, lad.”
“No, we’ve no way to move the ship,” John Star repeated, standing with Jay Kalam, a little later, on the bridge.
“She lies in shallow water, though—according to the pressure-gauges, she’s less than a hundred feet down.”
“But we can’t get her to the surface?”
“No.
The geodynes are dead, and the rocket-fuel gone—if we had those drums we left on Pluto’s moon!
And the hull is too heavy to float.
Wasn’t designed for water navigation.”
“Still,” objected Jay Kalam, thoughtfully grave, yet with a calm determination that meant more than another’s utmost vehemence. “Still, we can’t give up.
Not so long as we’re alive and on the same planet with Aladoree.”
“No,” agreed John Star, quietly decisive.
“If we could release her, just long enough to find materials and set up AKKA, we’d have the Medusa; at our mercy.”
“That is what we must do—what we shall do.
“And now,” he added, “let’s talk to Adam Ulnar.”
They found the man sitting wan and dejected on his cot in the brig, still dazed from the shock of the Medusae’s revelation.
The regal pride of the Purple Hall had left him.