The World with a Thousand Moons Part 12

"Be reasonable, Kenniston," pleaded Hugh Murdock. "None of us except Holk Or has a weapon. What chance would we have against half a hundred armed pirates?"

Kenniston looked at his brother. "Ricky, your formula strengthens the nervous system against any form of shock or damage, doesn't it? You said it did it by sheathing the nerves themselves with an impenetrable coating."

Ricky nodded puzzledly. "Yes, that's the principle. But how is that going to help us?"

"The Vestans," Kenniston reminded, "seize control of their victims by inserting those tiny needle antennae of theirs into the victim's nerve-system to establish contact. Wouldn't your formula insulate the nerves against such contact? Wouldn't it make a man immune to Vestan attack?"

"Why, it would!" Ricky declared wonderingly. "I never thought of it, yet it's entirely logical."

"Then," Kenniston said swiftly, "I want you to give every one of us, including yourself, an injection of the formula right now."

The driving purpose in his voice brushed aside all their bewildered questions and objections. Hastily, Ricky prepared his hypodermics and rapidly made an injection of the milky fluid into the big nerve-centers in the neck of each of them. Kenniston did the same for Ricky himself.

"We _should_ be immune now to Vestan attack," Kenniston said prayerfully.

"But what good's that going to do us?" Holk Or demanded. "Are you figuring to try an escape into the jungle?"

"No, I'm figuring on taking the _Falcon_--by using the Vestans,"

Kenniston replied. "Holk, can you get into the ship and turn off the power that keeps the electric wall going? Can you drop the wall?"

The Jovian's jaw dropped. "Why, sure, I could do that, but if I did, all those hordes of Vestans outside the wall will burst in here--"

He stopped, his eyes bulging. "Good G.o.d, then that's your plan? To let the Vestans in?"

"That's it," Kenniston said tightly, his face grim. "To let the Vestans in on the pirates. That'll give us a chance to take the ship--if the formula really makes us immune to the Vestans."

The terrible nature of the proposal stunned them all. But in a moment a flame of purpose lit in the Jovian's eyes.

"I'll do it!" he swore. "It's better than waiting for Dark to kill me like he's planning. You be ready!"

The Jovian slipped out of the opening in the back of the hut. They saw him presently, casually approaching the door of the _Falcon_.

John Dark stood, a tall, dominant figure in the moonslight, barking orders to the scores of pirates who were bolting in the last of the new rocket-tubes. Kenniston's eyes swung toward the shimmering electric wall, and the horde of Vestan-dominated animals outside it.

The wall suddenly died! And as the electric barrier vanished, into the clearing came rushing the swarm of asteroidal animals.

"The wall's down!" John Dark yelled, his atom-gun leaping into his hand. "Get back into the ship--get back--"

The crash of his atom-gun drowned his own shout. Other pirates were firing wildly at the hideous creatures a.s.sailing them.

For the little gray Vestans had detached themselves from their animal victims and were swarming upon the pirates, clambering with blurring speed up their legs and backs, sinking into their necks the tiny antennae.

Kenniston glimpsed John Dark, with a hideous little gray bunch now fastened to the back of his neck, drop his gun and stalk stiffly away toward the jungle. His face was an unhuman, lifeless mask--he was a human automaton, dominated utterly by the alien creature.

"Come on!" Kenniston yelled to his friends. "Now's our chance to get into the ship!"

They plunged out of the hut into the gruesome melee. Screaming pirates were now running into the jungle in vain effort to escape the hordes of Vestans. More than half the corsairs were now overcome.

Kenniston heard a scream from Gloria as they ran, felt a swift scurrying up his back, then the needle-like stab of antennae sinking into his neck.

But the parasitic creature did _not_ overpower his will! He reached around, grasped and tore loose the hideous little thing, and with strong revulsion flung it to the ground.

"Your formula works, Ricky--we're immune to them!" he gasped. "But hurry!"

Other Vestans were clambering up on them like ghastly gray spiders as they ran, but were powerless to overcome them. They tore away the creatures and plunged on.

Holk Or appeared in the door of the _Falcon_, his green face blazing as his atom-pistol pumped crashing fire into pirates inside the ship.

"I've got the ship cleared of them!" the Jovian shouted to Kenniston.

"Let's get out of here!"

It was time they did so. Almost the last of John Dark's pirates had been possessed by Vestans and had become parasite-dominated robots stumbling off into the jungle. The remaining swarms of gray creatures were scurrying toward Kenniston's group.

They tumbled into the _Falcon_ and slammed shut the s.p.a.ce-door. The ship, completely if roughly repaired, was ready for take-off. Captain Walls and the men of the _Sunsprite_ crew hastily started the newly-installed cyclotrons while Kenniston and the others raced up to the bridge.

Kenniston took the controls. He sent the big black pirate ship leaping up into the darkness upon flaming keel and tail-jets, and then it climbed steeply toward the wonderful sky of countless rushing moonlets.

By the time an hour had pa.s.sed, the _Falcon_ had groped out through the periodic break in the meteor-swarm around the asteroid. And it was throbbing at steadily increasing speed out into the vault of s.p.a.ce, away from the World with a Thousand Moons.

"We'll head for Mars," Kenniston told the others. "We can report there to the Patrol."

"If you don't mind," Holk Or put in hastily, "I'd just as soon you dropped me at some asteroid before then. I've no desire to meet the Patrol."

Captain Walls told the Jovian, "Nonsense! After what you've done, you'll get a full pardon from the Patrol."

"You can count on it," Hugh Murdock told the doubtful Jovian. "We have some influence, back at Earth."

"Well, I guess I'll have to go honest, then," sighed Holk Or. "All the real pirate outfits are gone now, anyway." He shook his head heavily as he walked away. "The System sure isn't what it used to be."

Captain Walls was asking Ricky earnestly, "You're quite sure your formula will cure my son? All these years, I've hoped and prayed--"

"I'm certain," Ricky smiled. "Within a few weeks after we get back to Earth, gravitation-paralysis will be a thing of the past."

They moved off with the others. But Gloria lingered in the bridge with Kenniston.

"Where will you be going, after we get back?" she asked him quietly.

"Oh, back to s.p.a.ce," he answered, a little uncomfortably. "There's nothing to hold me on Earth now that Ricky's work has succeeded."

"Nothing to hold you on Earth?" Gloria repeated. "That, I would say, is about the most ungallant speech on record."

He flushed. "You don't mean--that night on the _Sunsprite_--you weren't in earnest, surely--"

"Your pa.s.sionate proposal is accepted," Gloria said calmly.