A man in the gray uniform of a noncom of the Earth Navy was shouldering toward them out of the passing throng. He was a middle-aged man with a flat, grizzled face.
"Can you spare a smoke, sailor?” he asked Thorn.
"Of course,” John Thorn answered calmly, and fished one of the green cigarettes from his pocket. He kept his face bent as he handed it over.
"Thanks,” muttered the man, and was gone in the throng.
"A false alarm, after all,” grunted Gunner Welk.
"No,” clipped Thorn. “I know that man. He was one of my non-coms before I deserted the Navy. He knows I'm John Thorn, which means that he knows we're the Planeteers. He's gone for the police."
Thorn's gaze swiveled rapidly. Then he pushed his companions toward the swinging door of the vibration-joint.
"In here!” he exclaimed. “We can go out another door."
Thrumming music hit John Thorn and his comrades in the faces as they entered the place. It was a room clogged with greenish smoke. Men at tables in the center were arguing in bull voices as they drank black Venusian wine or brown Earth whisky. In the booths around the walls, many more men sprawled, somnolent, sleepy faces relaxed under the pale violet rays of the brain-soothing happiness vibrations."
Thorn's lean figure shouldered through the noisy, crowded tables, the bald-pated Venusian and the towering Mercurian following closely. They were half-way across the crowded place toward the back door, when there was a rush of feet through the front entrance.
Thorn twisted his head. Two men in the white uniform of the Earth Police had just burst in. With them was the grizzled non-com. The latter instantly pointed at Thorn and his two companions.
"There they are!” he yelled. “The Three Planeteers!"
For a moment, the noisy throng in the place was petrified. Even that motley, hard-bitten crowd was frozen by the sudden declaration that there in their midst stood the three half-legendary interplanetary outlaws.
Then the foremost of the two policemen, drawing his atom pistol, yelled to Thorn.
"Stand where you are!"
Thorn's pistol was already in his hand, as was the big Mercurian's.
"The lights, Gunner!” Thorn cried.
At the same moment, Thorn shot up toward the ceiling with the quickness of a wolf's snap.
The pellets from his and the Mercurian's pistols hit the big cluster of krypton lights in the ceiling. The flare of white proton fire from the exploding pellets was followed by an abrupt extinguishing of the lights. The place was plunged into darkness, except for the faint blue glow of the “happiness vibration” booths.
Scores of voices yelled in the darkness, and shadowy figures surged forward in a melee of reeling, clutching shapes. Some shouted for lights, others to guard the door. Everyone in the room had suddenly remembered the big reward for the capture of the Planeteers.
"This way,” chuckled Sual Av's throaty voice in the darkness. The Venusian was stolidly clearing a path through the crowd.
Men sought to hold the three in the darkness, cried out that they were escaping. Gunner Welk's huge fists thudded down in resounding blows, while Thorn struck with the heavy barrel of his atom-pistol.
Suddenly Sual Av was pulling them out of a shadowy riot, through a door. They stumbled out into an unlighted alley. As they did so, they heard the whiz and roar of rocketcars racing up to the front entrance of the Club of Weary Spacemen.
"Police,” grunted Gunner Welk. “They'll be around here in a minute."
"Come on!” cried Thorn, starting down the dark alley in a run. “We're all right now if we keep clear of spy-plates."
"Yes,” came the Venusian's chuckle as he ran beside them. “The last place they'll look for the Planeteers is the mansion of the Chairman!"
A half-hour later, the three comrades were two miles across the city from the spaceport, having threaded devious ways to avoid the omnipresent spy-plates of the police.
"Spy-plates” were televisor eyes mounted throughout the city, some openly but many more cunningly concealed, by which police headquarters could keep watch on all parts of the metropolis.
The Planeteers entered the deep shadow of tall trees that bordered extensive grounds. Through the trees glimmered the lighted windows of a magnificent metal mansion. The three comrades moved soundlessly as phantoms toward it.
The mansion was the official residence of the Chairman of the Earth Government. It was on a scale commensurate with the dignity of the elected executive of the planet. The huge tower that housed the Earth Government itself soared into the starlight from a great park nearby.
The Planeteers met no guards as they slipped cautiously toward the rear of the impressive mansion. There was a broad terrace here, splashed with blue-white light from a single window. John Thorn and his comrades stole up onto the terrace toward that window.
Thorn peered tautly into the lighted room. It was a small, paneled study. The only furniture was a big desk which lay in the blue-white pool of a krypton lamp. A gray-haired man sat at this desk, writing.
"It's the Chairman,” Thorn whispered. “And he's alone."
"Good,” muttered Gunner Welk. “That makes it easier!"
Thorn gently reached and pushed on the window. It was unlocked, and swung inward on soundless hinges. He stepped silently in upon the soft rug, and Sual Av and Gunner Welk followed as noiselessly.
The man at the desk suddenly looked up. His haggard, aging face stiffened as he beheld, ten feet from him, the three silent men — the lean, browned young Earthman, the bald, bow-legged Venusian, and the towering, hard-faced Mercurian.
"The Planeteers!” exclaimed the Chairman, rising to his feet. “Thank God, you're here!"
CHAPTER II
Cold-World Menace
The career of the Three Planeteers had begun four years previously, in 2952.
That year had seen the splitting of the eight independent inhabited worlds of the Solar System into two hostile alliances. The great and powerful League of Cold Worlds had been formed by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, under a ruthless, ambitious dictator. Feeling themselves menaced, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars had formed the Inner Alliance. The Alliance had sent out many spies to gain information of the League's threatening plans, but nearly all of them had rapidly been detected and executed.
Then John Thorn, captain in the Earth Navy, had conceived his patriotic plan. He and two friends, Sual Av, Venusian engineer, and Gunner Welk, Mercurian adventurer, would go forth into the underworld of the system as outlaws. And as fugitives from the law, they would never be suspected of being agents of the Alliance.
The three friends had deliberately established criminal records. Thorn had deserted from the Earth Navy. Sual Av had fled after supposedly embezzling a great sum — a sum which was being secretly held in trust for its rightful owners. Gunner Welk had broken jail after a brawl on Mercury.
The three fugitive friends had foregathered, and thus had been born the three Planeteers. They had performed one daring exploit after another. Each time, their exploits seemed mere criminal raids or robberies. Yet each time, their real purpose had been the securing of information as to the purposes and plans of the hostile, threatening League of Cold Worlds.
Now, the Three Planeteers were the most famous outlaws in the system. Three lone wolves of the void, extravagantly admired by all criminals and pirates, bitterly condemned by all law-abiding men. Only one man — the Chairman of the Earth Government — knew that the notorious Planeteers were really undercover spies.
Now that man, Richard Hoskins, faced the three comrades with gladness in his eyes. His powerful face, deeply lined by strain of responsibility, quivered with emotion.