CHAPTER VIII
Out of the Past
'From Mercury to Pluto,
From Saturn back to mars,
We'll fight and sail and blaze our trail in crimson through the stars.
We'll cram our holds with plunder
From every world and moon,
And thunder back on the homeward track
To feast at old Turkoon!'
THAT song that was roaring now from hundreds of, lusty throats had been the traditional song of the space pirates for centuries. Every corner of the Solanr System had shivered at the sound of it at one time or another. It echoed now in a fierce, swinging chant through the night at Turkoon Town,
The pirates and their men were feasting at rude tables and benches around a huge fire of dry fern-logs that blazed in the center of the street. The tables groaned with enormous masses of food, huge haunches of Jovian marsh-steers, rosy canal-fruit from Mars, sticky confections looted from Neptunian ships. And there were platoons of bottles and bulging casks from every world in the system. Strong drink was going down with the food as the Companions celebrated their partially successful foray.
Above the firelit feasters stretched the night sky of the Zone, the most wonderful in the system, a black canopy gaudy with thousands of blazing stars, with the yellow topaz of Saturn and the far green emeralds of Uranus and Neptune blazing high. Comets moved like mysterious, white ghosts through the jungled heavens, and constantly meteors flashed and ran across the black sky-span.
At one of the tables sat Lann Cain, his smooth hair gleaming like dull gold in the firelight, his hand absently patting the neck of the great gray beast crouched beneath her—Ool, the space dog.
Joan Thorn sat beside him, her dark face inscrutable and her black eyes watchful. Sua Av was feasting heartily farther down the table, joking and laughing with the other pirate captains, while Gunda Welk ate in brooding silence.
'They are like children, the Companions,' the boy said to Thorn over the din of voices and clatter of bottles. 'Already they have forgotten that they nearly met death in that trap today, in their rejoicing over the loot we got.'
Thorn shrugged. 'I can't say that I blame them. An outlaw has to take her fun when she can—he never knows whether she'll see the next day or not.'
Lann's blue eyes, dark in the ruddy firelight, studied Thorn's lean face thoughtfully.
'But you Planeteers are not like most outlaws, Joan Thorn,' he said. 'There is something different about you—something purposeful, I don't know what.'
Thorn sensed faint danger, but she smiled as she fingered a goblet of wonderful pink Martian glass.
'The only real purpose we Planeteers have is to hunt excitement, I guess,' she told him. 'We've done a lot of damn fool things, without much reason.'
'Thorn, why do you not stay here with me, with the Companions?' Lann asked, impulsively grasping her hand. His blue eyes eager on hers, he added earnestly, 'I have great plans, and with you Planeteers helping—'
He was interrupted by a sudden uproar in a fierce voice along the table. Thorn jumped up.
Old Stilicha Keene was standing, her rheumy eyes glaring with rage, her thin, bony hands trembling with passion as she faced the obese green Uranian, Jen Cheerly.
'Say that again,' shrilled the old pirate to the Uranian, 'and I'll blow your lying head off your pig's body!'
Jen Cheerly's small eyes glittered with hate as she rose to face the enraged old Martian.
'I do say it again!' squeaked the obese Uranian. 'I say it was your fault that we nearly got trapped by those League cruisers today! You said you spied out the freighters and tankers before they blasted from Jupiter. If you did, you would have been sure to see those tankers were disguised battle-cruisers. So you didn't do it. Or you knew about the trap, and led us right into it!'
Old Stilicha seemed to suffocate with her own passion. Her bony figure was quivering, her wrinkled face livid.
'You're accusing me of treachery!' she shrilled. 'Me, Stilicha Keene, that's rocketed with the Companions for fifty years! By space, Uranian, no woman can—'
The old pirate's clawlike hand was darting toward the atom-pistol at her belt. Jen Cheerly's fat hand flew toward her own weapon.
But Lann Cain sprang in between them. His eyes were flaming with wrath.
'If you draw, I'll blast you both down'he flared. 'You know our rule—no quarreling among ourselves!'
'But, lad, you heard what she accused me of!' shrilled the old pirate, outraged. 'I tell you, when I saw those tankers as they sailed from Jupiter, they were tankers, nothing else.'
'Isn't it likely that real tankers did sail with the freighters,' Joan Thorn said quietly, 'to deceive any spies who might be watching them take off, and that the tankers were replaced by the disguised battle-cruisers at some secret rendezvous in space?'
Kinne Queen, the handsome middle-aged Earthwoman captain, nodded quickly. 'That must be the explanation.'
'That may be so,' grumbled Jen Cheerly in her squeaky voice, 'but I still say there was something queer about it. We should have got all the cargoes of those freighters, instead of just part of them.'
Stilicha Keene stiffened again, but Lann hastily intervened to calm the old pirate.
'You've forgotten to initiate the Planeteers into the Companions, Stilicha,' he reminded. 'The Eight Goblets!'
The old woman's face slowly cleared, and she turned around to Thorn and Sua Av and Gunda Welk.
'That's right,' she cackled. 'You girls ain't real pirates till you've drunk the Eight Goblets. Eli, Companions?'
A roaring shout of laughter rose from the fierce-faced corsairs and their men gathered at the firelit tables.
'Yes, the Goblets! The Eight Goblets for the Planeteers!'
'What the devil is this?' growled Gunda Welk suspiciously. 'If they try any of their tricks on me—'
Under cover of the roar of laughing voices, Thorn spoke in a rapid, low voice to her two comrades, as they three stood close together behind the tables. They were momentarily unwatched, for all the mirthfully shouting pirates were watching old Stilicha as she supervised the preparations for the coming ceremony.
'I'm going to try my plan of searching Lann's papers tonight!' Thorn told her comrades swiftly. 'If he ever wrote down what his mother told him about Erebus, he'd surely still have it.'
'Joan, it'll be deadly dangerous!' warned Gunda Welk in a taut undertone. 'Remember, someone here knows what we're after.'
'Yes, whoever put that Ear in your Pocket must be watching us all the time,' muttered Sua Av.
'I'll never have a better chance than tonight, with everyone present at the feast,' Thorn whispered. 'You two stick here—it would awake suspicion if all three of us left.'
She stopped whispering abruptly as the roar of laughing voices began to lessen. Old Stilicha had held up a hand to quiet the pirate throng.
'Planeteers,' she shrilled to the three comrades, 'you've got a great name in the system, and you showed today you deserve it, for you saved our Lann from that trap when no one else could have done it. We're proud and glad to welcome you three among us. Eh, Companions?'
'Yes!' roared back the pirate feasters with one voice. Lann was sitting again, smiling at Thorn's puzzled face.
'But before you can really be of the Companions,' the old pirate continued in her shrill, cracked voice, you've got to drink the Eight Goblets, in proper order-to show that as a true Companion you defy the governments and navies of all the eight inhabited worlds!'
Three grinning pirates advanced, each carrying a tray on which rested eight small glass goblets filled with various colored liquors.
Sua Av's green eyes widened. 'Are we expected to—'
Stilicha Keene cackled. 'Yes, lasses. You're expected to drink defiance to the eight worlds as we call them off.'
Thorn and her two comrades took the little goblets first handed them. They were brimming with colorless rock-liquor, the fiery distillate that is the favorite drink of Mercury.
Stilicha, grinning, raised her bony hand. And from the firelit feasters crashed a mirthful shout.
'Mercury''
The Planeteers tossed off the burning liquor. It seared Thorn's throat, but Gunda Welk smacked her lips.
'Venus!' crashed the shout an instant later.
Down went the little goblets of heady black Venusian swamp-grape wine. And the pirate horde, without giving the Planeteers time to catch breath, called out planet after planet.
A goblet of tingling brown Earth whisky; another of suave, smooth desert-flower cordial from Mars; and a bumper of raw, potent marsh-apple brandy from Jupiter followed each other.
Thorn gasped for air, but neither she nor her comrades hesitated. A goblet of musty-tasting wine from the fungus-fruits of Saturn; another of sour, strong Uranian beer; and finally a last goblet of sweet, cloying Neptunian sacra liqueur.
Thorn's head was spinning as she smashed the last of the eight goblets on the ground. Sua Av was staggering, and even Gunda Welk looked unsteady. Old Stilicha slapped Thorn's back.
'You're true Companions of Space now, Planeteers,' cackled the old pirate, and approving roars went up from the crowd.
Every pirate there knew it was the Planeteers who had saved their idolized boy leader in the fight that day. The heartiness of their lusty welcome was unmistakable.
Thorn fought to keep the liquor from overcoming her, as she went back to her seat beside Lann. Her senses were hazed—he was only dimly aware that now wild music was thrumming from stringed instruments somewhere, and that two white-limbed Venusian girls were swaying in a languorous dance near the blazing fire.
Gradually, Thorn felt her senses clear. But she took care to appear still fogged. Now was the time for her attempt!
'I need some air after the Eight Goblets,' she told Lann, keeping her voice thick. 'I'm going for a walk.'
To her discomfiture, Lann rose from his place and took her arm. 'I'll walk with you, Joan Thorn,' he smiled.
Thorn could not reject him, though inwardly she chafed. They moved away from the firelit feast, the space dog Ool padding silently beside the boy. None of the crowd seemed to notice them leaving, for now a lithe red Martian boy was twisting in a furious desert dance, to the roaring applause of the Companions.
The roar of shouts and laughter and crashing glass behind them faded away as they walked a little down the dark, silent and dusty street of Turkoon Town. The blazing sky above them seemed alive with the long, shining trails of flashing meteors.
Thorn looked down at the boy's gold head. His starlit white face seemed softer now, with a queer yearning in it as he gazed along the dark street. It all seemed strangely dreamlike to the Earthwoman—he and the pirate boy and the green-eyed, padding space dog walking together under the meteor-blazoned night sky.
Lann Cain looked up at her and asked the question that he had already voiced earlier that evening.
'Why don't you Planeteers stay here with us,' Joan Thorn? With you to help, my plans could—'
'Your plans?' she repeated, interrupting. 'What do you mean, Lann?'
He stopped and looked up at her. 'Do you think that being leader of the pirates is all I want? No, that is only a means to an end. I have a dream, the same dream my mother had—a dream of making the Zone a place of orderly life and happy cities, instead of just a wild, lawless jungle.'
His words came with an eager rush. 'There are hundreds of asteroids in the Zone that are habitable, or could be made habitable. A whole new world, that could be independent and self-sufficient, and could be a refuge for oppressed people from all parts of the system, people fleeing from tyranny and injustice.'
Lann's voice throbbed with earnestness. 'My mother worked with that dream in mind, organized the scattered bands of pirates and made them temper their bloodthirsty ways. I've worked toward that goal, too. And now, when the League of Colorsis about to attack the Inner Alliance, the chance is, coming to make that dream come true. For with interplanetary war going on, we could organize our new world in’ the Zone without interference. And millions of people may want a safe refuge.'
Thorn was impressed by the boy's sincerity and breadth of ambition.
'But, Lann, are all the eight worlds as bad as you seem to think?' she said slowly. 'It's true the four worlds of the League are crushed under the fanatical tyranny of Hasna Trask, their dictator, but what about Earth and the other three inner worlds? They have no tyranny or oppression.'
'They have black injustice that is as bad as tyranny,' answered Lann, his starlit face hardening. 'Look at what they did to my father!'
Thorn saw that she could not change his bitter obsession on that subject. She shook her head.
'Perhaps you're right,' she said. And she added thoughtfully, 'I was wondering why a boy like you was content to live as leader of these wild pirates. But I understand, now that you've told me of your scheme.'
'And you'll help me make that dream come true, Joan Thorn? You Planeteers will, stay?' Lann asked eagerly. He added earnestly, 'You're the first one I've ever told of my plan.'
Thorn was touched. 'I'll have to talk to Sua Av and Gunda Welk before I can promise to stay,' she evaded.
She put her hand to her head, and winced. 'I'm not feeling so good yet, after those Eight Goblets. I think I'll pass up the rest of the feast, and sleep it off.'
'You're not ill?' Lann asked anxiously. 'If you are—'
He was gazing up at her, his dark eyes wide with worry in his starlit face, his hand on her shoulder.
Thorn felt a sudden strong impulse to kiss him. She mastered herself, but she suspected that her feelings had shown in her face, for Lann's expression changed.
'I-I must go back to the feast,' he said, with an unaccustomed shyness. 'If I am not there, they will be quarreling. I will see you in the morning.'
She watched his move back down the dark street toward the firelit feast, the space dog silently accompanying him. Then Thorn turned and walked with assumed unsteadiness to her cabin. But instead of entering the cabin, she slipped. around it, and then hastened along the back of the street toward the Council House.
The long, low metal building was dark and silent. Thorn listened outside a back door, then pushed stealthily inside. The dull red ray of her pocket fluoric flash-lamp lighted her through store-rooms and a kitchen. The place was deserted.
She found Lann's bedroom quickly. It was a bare chamber with a chromaloy cot and breast, and a rack of atom-pistols on the wall. There was a closet, to which Thorn went first. In it hung a dozen suits of the mannish silk jackets and trousers the pirate boy always wore. But in the back of the closet, Thorn found a single gaily-flowered flowing tunic-dress of the type worn by Earth men to social functions.
A queer wave of tenderness swept her as she touched the gay, flowered dress. It was obviously unworn. She could picture Lann taking it secretly from pirate loot, trying it on—
'Hell, am I going soft on the boy?' Joan Thorn muttered to herself. 'I'm wasting time!'
She searched through the big breast. In it she found a flat viridiurn box that was packed with papers.
Thorn's pulses raced as she hastily started scanning the papers by her little ray of dull red light. The first she unfolded was a parchment document, discolored with age. It was a captain's commission in the Earth Navy, dated over forty years before, made out to Martina Cain. Across it was stamped 'CANCELLED.'
Most of the other papers were old letters of Lann's mother. They told nothing. Then Thorn muttered an exclamation as she took out of the box a thick log-book, bound in marsh-calf skin, and filled with the square, precise writing of Martina Cain.
Swiftly Thorn riffled the maids until she found the year she was looking for. With taut eagerness she read the entries.
9-27. (Off Pluto.) It looks as though our raid on the Pluto mining bases with a single ship was too daring. We are being hotly pursued by Neptunian cruisers, and can hear the audio-calls of others.
9-28. Fear net i
s closing in on us. Space alive with audio calls.
9-29. I, Martina Cain, am sole survivor of my ship's company. We were trapped and attacked at 7:Z2, sun-time, by eight Neptunian cruisers. We got two, but the rest gunned us till our power-chambers exploded and tore our ship apart. I was flung clear, and found one of our lifeboats that also had been thrown clear. Got away in it unnoticed. But am far outside Pluto's orbit, where they had chased us. Dare not go back to Pluto, and have not half enough fuel to take me to Saturn, the next nearest world sunward.
I am taking a desperate chance-am heading outward, toward Erebus. I know no one has ever yet visited that world and returned, but my last chance is to get fuel-ores there, for it is far nearer than Saturn. I greatly fear that I shall never get back to the Zone to see my little boy and my husband again.
Thorn turned to the next entry, her pulse pounding with excitement. But the next entry was dated weeks later.
12-7. Back to the Zone again, thank God, I shall never go beyond Pluto's orbit again.
Thorn desperately ran through the following pages. But there was no mention whatever in them of Erebus.
Why had not Martina Cain made one entry about her visit to Erebus? What was there on that far, dark, mysterious planet that Cain had so carefully kept secret?
''Raise your hands, Joan Thorn!'
Thorn turned, appalled. Lights had flashed on in the little room. Standing in the doorway were two women.
They were Jen Cheerly, the fat Uranian, and the Earthwoman, Kinne Queen. They were covering her with atom-pistols, and their faces were deadly.
The Three Planeteers For All Page 12