"I'm going to take the chance you Planeteers can save her. It looks like the only chance the lass has got. I'm going to release you, and we'll head out in my ship for Saturn, before Brun Abo and the rest find out what I've done."
"Will the crew of your ship follow you?” Thorn asked quickly, his pulses pounding with excitement and hope.
"Hell, they'd sail straight into the sun if I laid the course!” exclaimed the old pirate. His cracked voice throbbed with eagerness as he continued. “I'll have to steal the wave key of this brig from the Council House to let you out. And I'll pass a whisper to my crew to gather in the Venture at once."
The old Martian hastened away through the starlight. John Thorn swung round to his comrades.
"It's a fighting chance we've got now, at least!” he exclaimed.
"A pretty slim one,” said Gunner Welk somberly. “How in hell's name are we to get that girl away from Saturn in the teeth of all the League forces? An army couldn't do it."
"We'll have to do what an army couldn't, then,” Thorn said grimly. “There must be some way."
Presently they glimpsed Stilicho Keene hastening back to their prison. At the old Martian's heels followed a great, gray shape with blazing green eyes, Lana's space dog, Ool.
Stilicho turned the wave-key's beam on the lock. The frequencies actuated the delicate mechanism, and the door opened.
"I had a time stealing the wave-key!” panted the old man as Thorn and his comrades emerged. “Brun Abo and the rest are up in the Council House. As soon as they remember you three, they'll be here to have you executed."
"Why did you bring the space dog?” Gunner asked.
"I didn't bring him — he followed me,” Stilicho said. “He's been wild since Lana was kidnapped, and I think he senses we're going after her. The critters are a little telepathic, you know."
"Let him come along. We don't want to arouse any commotion,” Thorn said swiftly. “Is your crew waiting at the ship?"
"All ready, by now,” the old pirate replied. “Follow me. We'll have to slip out to the field without being seen."
He led the Planeteers through the starlight, close against the towering, dark wall of fern-jungle that encircled Turkoon Town. By that circuitous route they reached the field where the massed pirate ships lay glinting under the meteor-blazoned sky, The big space dog padded beside them as they approached the Venture.
They climbed hastily into the long black ship, the animal following them. Stilicho's motley crew were waiting. The doors were already grinding shut as the Planeteers followed the old pirate up to the control-room.
A few moments later, with a thunderous blast of fire, the Venture shot skyward on its desperate mission.
CHAPTER X
Under Saturn's Rings
A HARP-STRING tenseness gripped the four men in the Venture's control-room as they peered ahead into space.
"So far, so good,” muttered old Stilicho Keene, leaning forward over the bank of firing-keys to gaze with faded eyes. “We're past the outer League patrols. Now if we can only slip through the inner."
"We're in their zone now,” John Thorn warned tautly. “See anything in the ‘scope, Gunner?"
"Not yet,” the big Mercurian rumbled without taking his eyes from the eyepiece.
The Venture moved steadily on through the void, its rockets cut down to a low, soft purr. The aura-chart was dead. They were running blind so their own aura would not cut the aura of any vigilant patrol cruiser and give them away unnecessarily.
Saturn bulked colossal in the star-gemmed vault ahead, an enormous, yellowish sphere encircled by its immense, sweeping white rings. Even from this distance of a few million miles, the mighty rings looked quite solid. The thin black gap between the two outermost rings, Cassini's division, stood out sharp and clear. It was hard to realize that those great, solid seeming white bands were really vast swarms of tiny satellites circling the planet.
Out beyond even the huge rings marched the planet's nine brilliant moons. Titan was a bright little disk far on the other side of the spinning monster world. Tethys and Rhea shone to the left. And Iapetus, a bright white moon almost as large as Mercury, lay close ahead on the right.
"The Saturnian Navy has a big outer base on Iapetus,” warned Thorn. “It'll be alive with cruisers now that the navies of all four League planets are concentrated here."
"I know, but we got to run close to Iapetus if we're going to slip around to the night side of Saturn,” quavered the old Martian pirate.
"Keep at least two million miles out, to clear the auras of the base,” Thorn told him.
The Venture purred on, and the big white moon began to march slowly past on their right. The Planeteers and the old pirate were silent and strained.
Sual Av scratched his head irritably. “Curse me if I can get used to this wig,” he muttered.
The Venusian's appearance was curiously changed. His bald pate had been covered by a wig of short, coarse black hair, and his face and skin had been stained pale green. John Thorn and Gunner Welk were similarly transformed. Their faces too were now a livid green, and the Mercurian's bristling yellow hair was dyed black.
The people of Saturn, and also of Uranus and Neptune, had acquired their peculiar green complexion during the past thousand years. Their worlds, like all the others in the system, had first been colonized by pioneering Earthmen in the 21st century, though a few centuries later all those seven colonized worlds had seceded from Earth and become independent planets. In the generations since the first colonization, environment had gradually changed the original Earth stock.
The men of Jupiter had grown into a squat, great-boned race, because of the dragging gravitation of their world. The men of Mars had acquired their red skin because of the predominance of certain metallic elements in their air and food. And similarly, the men of Saturn and Uranus and Neptune, because of a lack of certain elements on their worlds, had acquired their characteristic jaundiced green complexion.
Thorn and his two comrades had realized that disguise was vitally necessary for their daring venture on Saturn. So, during the days that the Venture had hurtled at top speed toward the far ringed world, the Planeteers had worked to make themselves look as much as possible like Saturnians.
Now the Venture was well past, Iapetus, and swinging around to the night side of Saturn in a great parabola.
"Shall we pass under the rings?” asked the old Martian pirate, turning from, the firing-keys.
Thorn nodded. “It'll keep us in shadow by going under them. Better cling close beneath them"
Saturn filled all space before them now, looming colossal in the firmament with the tilted plane of its outer gigantic ring shadowing above them as their ship shot through it. The ring, more than thirty thousand miles in width, was brightly sunlit on its upper side because of the tilt of its plane, but here beneath it they were in shadow.
Space above them was now roofed as far as the eye could stretch by the white, gleaming, concentric rings. At this close distance they could clearly see the millions of separate satellites that made up the rings, vast circular swarms of tiny planetoids endlessly whirling. Then they were in past the rings, and only six thousand miles from the nighted surface of Saturn.
Stilicho Keene pointed a bony finger toward a misty glow of lights that lay slightly north of the equator.
"Them's the lights of Saturnopolis,” the old pirate declared.
"Run westward,” John Thorn ordered. “The fungus forests are in that direction, and if we three are to pose as slith-hunters, that's where we need to land."