Phath swore by six or seven space gods, and his pink eyes narrowed dangerously while one hand hovered over his leather holster, fingertips just tentatively brushing the worn butt of his proton needle. He spluttered wordlessly, but the fact of the matter was that while the Venusian adventurer was a good man to have at your back in a tavern brawl, or by your side in a street-fight, and while he was a dead shot with his needier and an ace rocket pilot, the one talent in which he was seriously lacking was the gift of song. His attempts at melodic self-expression did, to a certain extent, resemble the cry of a cat whose tail has been caught in the proverbial wringer.
He knew it, although he would rather die than admit it, and he hated the fact; since there was nothing he could possibly do about it, he was touchy on the subject and easily flew off the handle when someone made a remark about his singing voice.
"Go on," sneered Dr. Zoar, laying down the calculator upon which he had been working out a set of abstruse equations in celestial mechanics. "Put a beam through me—I dare you! If you can’t shoot any better than you can carry a tune, I’ve nothing to worry about."
"By Yakdar’s beryllium bellybutton, but I’ve a mind to do just that!" Phath exploded, uncoiling from his chair and coming to his feet.
"Children . . . children," sighed a third voice, wearily. The interruption came from Star Pirate himself, as the lean, lanky, broad-shouldered young Earthling with the curly red hair and mischievous green eyes was known to the citizens of the Nine Worlds. He had been stretched out on his bunk, taking a bit of a nap after one of Phath’s sumptuous luncheons, before the argument from the control cabin had roused him from his rest.
The Martian and the Venusian began trying to explain how each of them was in the right, and innocent of provocation, while the other was a double-dyed villain, constantly interrupting each other and each trying to talk the loudest. Star pretended tolerantly to be paying attention, but actually his mind was elsewhere, ruefully remembering the interesting dream from which he had been so noisily, not to say rudely, awakened by their quarrel.
It was not the first time this had happened, and it would surely not be the last, he told himself. For days now, since the Jolly Roger had flown over the edge of known space and crossed the orbit of Pluto, the trim little speedster had penetrated deeper and deeper into unknown, uncharted space, where no other man had ever flown.
The little craft, never designed for three, was cramped and crowded, and the forced proximity, the lack of privacy, the prolonged confinement in such close quarters, caused the space-travelers to tend to rub each other the wrong way. This was to be expected, since they were only human, but in the present case the matter was somewhat aggravated by the fact that for years now, the Venusian adventurer and the diminutive Martian savant had cultivated a long-lived feud that had been smouldering for years. That it occasionally exploded into vocal argument was to be regretted, but even Star Pirate was not always able to keep peace between his irascible old Martian mentor and his touchy Venusian sidekick.
"Calm down, boys," he advised at last. "Save the temper tantrums for tomorrow; you know, we expect to be within visual range of Persephone by then ... and who knows what we'll encounter when we land? Savage beasts and hostile natives, perhaps: so save your energy until then, we may have need of it, if push comes to shove and we find we've got a fight on our hands."
These sensible words of advice proved to have a calming effect on the two belligerents; they had momentarily forgotten that in mere hours they expected to take their first look at the "brave new world" they had come so very far to be the first to discover and to explore .
And, as Star Pirate said, who knew what might lie ahead on them when they landed on the surface of the mystery world?
Hour after hour, the trim little speedster probed on, ever deeper into the limitless depths of the void. Ahead, still invisible to the unaided eye, the unknown tenth planet of the Solar System swung in her huge orbit, circling the tiny spark-like flare that was the distant Sun—only the brightest of the stars, from this colossal distance .
Zoar expected to find little that was new or even particularly interesting on the surface of Persephone—just another frozen sphere of liquid hydrogen oceans and continents of frozen methane, like Pluto, was his estimate. Still and all, having been the first to prove with unshakable equations that the long-suspected Persephone did in fact actually exist, Dr. Zoar was not about to let the honor of being the first to stand upon her surface go to another.
If it had not been for his newly perfected rocket propulsion system, the super-drive, the trip to Persephone could not have been made in a ship as small as Star Pirate's Jolly Roger. On conventional rocket drive, the journey beyond known space would have taken many months, perhaps years, and the trim little speedster could not possibly have carried sufficient stores of food, air and water for her three passengers over such a long haul.
Fortunately, however, the drive was a success, and the craft hurtled through the blackness of infinite space faster than any ship had ever hurtled before—
—And ahead lay the unexplored mysteries of an unknown world!
9. The Black planet
Early in the morning of the very next day, Phath lolled lazily in the huge pilot's chair before the curve of the control board, with its maze of flashing red and green lights and glittering dials and meters. The Venusian was strumming an old space chanty on his nine-stringed native instrument, having seized the opportunity when both of his shipmates were busy elsewhere in the ship.
he warbled tunelessly, his nimble fingers rousing a shivering echo of melody from the taut silver strings of the Venusian guitar. The old space chanty he was singing was his favorite, and it had more verses than any spaceman could remember. Phath threw his head back and sang on—
when suddenly he broke off his song with a startled squawk as an alarm clang sounded directly above him, and, as the saying goes, loud enough to wake the dead.
"Yakdar’s beryllium belly-button!" swore the Venusian, leaping to his feet and tossing the musical instrument on the bunk across the room. He snapped on the intercom and said into it, excitedly:
"Chief! Zoar! The alarm just went off—the proximity alarm. That means we’ve arrived—!"
He broke off as the green dwarflike Martian savant came waddling into the control cabin, leather sandals slapping the steeloid deckplates .
"I heard it for myself, you simpleton," snapped the scientist, pulling up a stool before the huge 'scope and adjusting its dials with knowing hands. The glass blurred hazily, then sharpened into focus, showing the black backdrop of space bestrewn with a thousand flashing points of light that were the ever-distant stars. The magnificent spectacle always reminded the Venusian adventurer of blue-white diamonds poured out on black velvet.
Star Pirate joined them at the 'scope. He had been back in the engine room, checking out the cyclotrons that fed atomic fire into the big cluster of rocket tubes that drove the little craft through space, making doubly certain that all was well before they dared the unknown dangers of a strange new world. Now he bent over the luminous 'scope, keen gaze probing curiously, as he wiped grease from his fingers with a bit of engine room waste.