"He means we head for the Great Moon, steal a plane there and see what we can pick up in the Earthian traffic lanes," Spike translated. "It took me a long time to persuade them that you were okey, so be nice!"
"Sure," said Rusty. He had barely heard the words. "Sure."
Lothar stared at him with his slanting, narrow eyes. He finally nodded, moved away.
The little ship was crudely made, Rusty noticed, of cans in which the prisoners had been dropped. It was held down by ropes stretching over the hull. The thick, insulated drift-tubes were simple antigravitic units of low power. With the engineering skill of the Martians, six of these had been fixed together, forming a squat hull, blunt at one end. Powered by fuel salvaged from countless near-dry tubes, it was planned, he was told, to wait till the nearby satellite was directly overhead, then release the ship, allowing it to drift upward. After a few miles—with an over-load of fuel they would drift fast—they would be caught by the pull of the larger planet, sucked into it. The gravity of the Great Moon would overcome their diminished power and they would drift down. There was, of course, no oxygen equipment and they would doubtless lose consciousness. But it would be only a few moments in space and they should revive in the dense atmosphere of the moon. It was a chance they would have to take.
Creeping comets! thought Rusty. Wouldn't he have a story if he ever reached the Tele-news plant again! But would he ever see Earth again?
He felt little optimism when he looked up at the planet slowly swinging toward them. Gigantic, almost as large as Pluto, its rugged land and dark seas were quite visible across the few thousand miles. The triplet-moons were dead, of their own radiations, but the Great Moon, in a separate orbit, was eternally tropical. A regular transit to the eccentric orbit of the warming spheres, it received a degree of heat that Pluto's greater distance denied. Its atmosphere was thin, tinged with ozone, but breatheable. It rotated slowly, a perceptible movement. A smooth patch came into view upon its green surface and Rusty remembered it was the only inhabitable portion of the planet. The rest was insect-infested jungle, shallow oceans. If they waited till it was overhead, they could not miss the moon. But they must hit that little spot upon its surface.
"We're waiting till the Plain comes around again," Spike answered Rusty's thoughts. "Have to leave navigation to the Martians. They have an uncanny sense of precision."
"What—" began Rusty.
He heard a slithering in the plants behind them.