"This is the Baldric all right. If my calculations are right, we've hit it at its narrowest spot."
Ezra Karn took a greasy pipe from his lips and spat. "It looks like the rest of this God-forsaken moon," he said, "'ceptin for them sticks."
Xartal, the Martian illustrator, said nothing. He was like that, taciturn, speaking only when spoken to.
He could be excused this time, however, for this was only our third day on Jupiter's Eighth Moon, and the country was still strange to us.
When Annabella C. Flowers, that renowned writer of science fiction, visiphoned me at Crater City, Mars, to meet her here, I had thought she was crazy. But Miss Flowers, known to her friends as Grannie Annie, had always been mildly crazy. If you haven't read her books, you've missed something. She's the author of Lady of the Green Flames, Lady of the Runaway Planet, Lady of the Crimson Space-Beast, and other works of science fiction. Blood-and-thunder as these books are, however, they have one redeeming feature—authenticity of background. Grannie Annie was the original research digger-upper, and when she laid the setting of a yarn on a star of the sixth magnitude, only a transportation-velocity of less than light could prevent her from visiting her "stage" in person.
Therefore when she asked me to meet her at the landing field of Interstellar Voice on Jupiter's Eighth Moon, I knew she had another novel in the state of embryo.
What I didn't expect was Ezra Karn. He was an old prospector Grannie had met, and he had become so attached to the authoress he now followed her wherever she went. As for Xartal, he was a Martian and was slated to do the illustrations for Grannie's new book.
Five minutes after my ship had blasted down, the four of us met in the offices of Interstellar Voice. And then I was shaking hands with Antlers Park, the manager of I. V. himself.
"Glad to meet you," he said cordially. "I've just been trying to persuade Miss Flowers not to attempt a trip into the Baldric."