The great Jovian's face twitched. But there was no fear in it. Bleakly, he lumbered forward, towering. His deep voice rasped: "Kill ahead, Jarl. Any time you want to." His massive shoulders seemed to draw together. "I'm with you now, Jarl. I've always been. But I'll speak my mind when I think I need to—to you, or the devil!"
Jarl's tide of fury ebbed and died. The ray-gun dropped to his side, and of a sudden he was shaking. "Ungo...."
"I know, Jarl. It doesn't matter." Ungo's taloned hand was like a steadying pillar. "Go ahead. Give your orders."
Numb, sick, Jarl Corvett slowly straightened, and breathed deep.
He said, "Our course is still Ceresta!"
CHAPTER V
Ceresta: Port Royal of the void; sprawling, anarchical capitol city of the outlaw worlds.
Here were burrows of Rhea's spider men, and Pervod cones, and Fantay spires. Hive-like Mercurian domes rose amid the flat-roofed dwellings of the llorin. Throbbing Transmi drums beat out their savage rhythm, echoing over voices that spoke in Pluto's clacking accents and the reptilian sibilances of creatures from the ammonia-and-methyl swamplands of Saturn and the Rings. There was the acrid smell of Rogek gas and rocket fuel—and the stink of the bulbous, grub-like Mah'ham that fed on their own dead. Here a rover could dine on t'krai of Callisto, or haggle over the price of one of Neptune's fire-jewels ... or have his brains beaten out with a genuine Torod mace.
For this was a warrior's city, haven of the wild, blood-lusting raiders who made the asteroid belt their home. Fighting men from half-a-hundred satellites and planetoids and planets, they gathered here by their own choice, drawn together in one vast cutthroat brotherhood of booty. Old names, old fames, were left unmentioned. The hulls of the battered ships that ramped in the vastness of the sprawling port bore no Federation registration symbols.