"No, no!" shrieked the terrified woman.

Dark burst into a roar of laughter. "All right, my shrinking beauty, we'll accept ransom for you."

He turned and shot efficient orders to his subordinates, who by now had gathered behind him.

"Get that stuff out of the hold, rig up power-sledges, and start freighting it up to the camp. You'll have to cut a path through the jungle--use atom-blasters to burn one out."

One of the pirates, a hard-faced Martian, said uneasily, "That will make a racket that'll bring every Vestan on the asteroid down on us."

"You can keep the Vestans off if you keep your eyes open," Dark retorted. "Get to work, now! We've got to get the stuff up there and repair the _Falcon_ at once. I'll take these prisoners up to camp."

Kenniston was grouped with the other prisoners. With a strong escort of armed pirates guarding them, and Dark and Holk Or ahead, they started through the jungle toward the pirate camp.

CHAPTER VI

Asteroid Horror

The pirate encampment was a big clearing hacked from the jungle a mile west of the little lake. In this s.p.a.ce lay the long, looming black ma.s.s of the most dreaded corsair ship ever to sail the void. The _Falcon_ had been righted to even keel, but its crippled condition was evident in the fused, wrecked condition of its tail rocket-tubes.

The whole camp was enclosed and protected by a shimmering blue dome of electric force. This emanated from a heavy copper cable that completely encircled the clearing, and which drew its power from insulated cables that led into the ship to generators driven by the few cyclotrons still functioning. This protective electric wall had been set up at John Dark's orders to keep out the dreaded Vestans.

John Dark raised his voice as he and his men with their prisoners approached the shimmering wall of the camp.

"Kin Ibo! Drop the wall for us!"

They saw the hard-looking Martian who was Dark's second-in-command dive into the ship to turn off the power of the electric barrier. It died, and Dark's party entered the clearing. Then the electric wall sprang into being again behind them.

Kenniston looked swiftly around. There were a score more of the motley pirates here in the camp. Also, near the side of the looming black _Falcon_, were the small, rough log huts that Dark's men had constructed.

Dark's black eyes were triumphant as he told his Martian lieutenant, "Kenniston and Holk Or brought back the equipment all right, and also brought some people who'll bring big ransom. Their wrecked ship is a few miles south. You go down there with half the men here and help the others bring up the equipment."

Kin Ibo, looking a little apprehensively out at the jungle, obeyed.

Dark motioned Kenniston and the other captives toward one of the huts by the big ship.

"That hut will be your quarters until we get the _Falcon_ repaired,"

declared the pirate leader. "Any of you who try to leave it will be shot at sight. I hope you'll not be foolish enough to attempt escape."

"That's right, folks, you wouldn't have a chance," Holk Or told them earnestly. "Even if you could get out through the electric wall, the Vestans would get you. They're thick in the jungle around here."

They silently entered the hut. Its broad open windows admitted enough of the dazzling moonslight to brighten its interior.

A dark, eager-looking young Earthman sprang up as they entered, and rushed to pump Kenniston's hand.

"Lance, you got back safely!" he exclaimed. "Thank the Lord--I've been worrying myself almost crazy about you."

"How about you, Ricky?" Kenniston asked his young brother anxiously.

"You're all right?"

Ricky Kenniston nodded quickly. "Sure, I'm okay. But things haven't been so good here, Lance. The Vestans have got a half-dozen pirates who ventured outside the wall in the last few days. These creatures literally haunt the jungles around here now--I think they've been drawn here from all over the asteroid."

Ricky looked wonderingly at Gloria and the others who were entering the hut. "Lance, who are all these people? Are they prisoners of Dark too?"

"Yes, we're prisoners," Hugh Murdock told him bitterly, with a savage glance at Kenniston. "We're prisoners because your brother sacrificed us all to get back here and save _your_ neck."

"Lance, you didn't do that?" Ricky exclaimed in distress.

"I had to, Ricky," Kenniston protested. "It meant your life if I didn't."

"Of course," Murdock agreed ironically. "What importance are we, compared to saving your young brother's life?"

Kenniston spoke slowly, to Murdock and Gloria and the others. "It wasn't merely Ricky's life at stake that made me sacrifice you all. It was more than that. I tried to tell you before, but you wouldn't listen."

Kenniston went across the hut and brought back the square black medicine-case of his young physician-brother. He opened it, and out of the vials and instruments inside he took a square bottle of milky fluid.

"This is what I sacrificed everything to save," Kenniston said simply.

They all stared. "What is it?" Gloria asked, puzzled.

"It's Ricky's discovery," Kenniston said. "It's a preventative and cure for gravitation-paralysis."

Captain Walls, himself an old-time s.p.a.ce-man, was first of the group to appreciate the significance of the statement. The captain gasped.

"A preventative for gravitation-paralysis? Kenniston, are you _sure_?"

Kenniston nodded gravely. "Yes. Ricky had been working on the problem a long time, back in the Inst.i.tute of Planetary Medicine. He thought he'd found a way to prevent gravitation-paralysis, the most awful scourge of all the outer System, the thing that's doomed so many s.p.a.ce-men. But his formula required rare elements found only in the outer planets.

"Ricky and I," he continued, "went out there and secured those elements.

He made up this formula, and tried it on a gravitation-paralysis case--a s.p.a.ce-man who's lain paralyzed for years. The formula was designed to strengthen the human nervous system against the shock of varying gravitations, to re-establish an already damaged nerve-web. And it worked."

Kenniston's voice was husky as he concluded. "It worked, and that living log became a man again. The formula was a success. Ricky and I started back for Earth, where he intended to announce the discovery and arrange for its manufacture on a big scale. But, on the way back, Dark's pirates captured us."

Kenniston flung out his hand in a tortured gesture. "_That's_ why I went to any lengths to save Ricky's life! It's because Ricky is the only person who knows the intricate formula of this serum. If he were to die, the secret of the cure would die with him. And that would mean that thousands on thousands more of s.p.a.ce-men would be stricken into living death by gravitation-paralysis in the future, just as so many thousands of old friends and shipmates of mine have been stricken in the past!"

Captain Walls was the first to speak. Quietly, the plump master of the _Sunsprite_ extended his hand.

"Kenniston, will you shake hands with me? And will you forgive me for everything? You did absolutely right. I'm an old s.p.a.ce-man and I _know_ what gravitation-paralysis is."

Gloria's dark eyes were glimmering with tears. "If we'd only known,"

she murmured to Kenniston. "No one could blame you for sacrificing a lot of worthless idlers like us, for a thing like this."

"But you're going to be all right--all of you," Kenniston a.s.sured her.

"John Dark will make you pay a big ransom, but you can afford that and you'll get back safely to Earth."

"Thank Heaven for that!" exclaimed Mrs. Milsom. "I can't understand all this scientific talk of yours, but I do know that that pirate chief means no good to me. Didn't you see the l.u.s.tful looks he gave me?"