"They are coming," the Vorkul thought, and lay back, exhausted.
"Just as well that they're comin' out here, at that," Brandon commented. "We couldn't begin to handle that structure anywhere near Jupiter—in fact, we wouldn't want to get very close ourselves, with passengers aboard."
Such was the power of the Vorkulian vessels that in less than twenty hours another heptagon slowed to a halt beside the Sirius and two of its crew were wafted aboard.
They were ushered into the Venerian room, where they talked briefly with their wounded fellow before they dressed him in a space-suit, which they filled with air to their own pressure. Then all three were lifted lightly into the air, and without a word or a sign were borne through the air-locks of the vessel, and into an opening in the wall of the rescuing heptagon. A green tractor beam reached out, seizing the derelict, and both structures darted away at such a pace that in a few minutes they had disappeared in the black depths of space.
"Well—that, as I may have remarked before, is indisputably and conclusively that." Brandon broke the surprised, almost stunned, silence that followed the unceremonious departure of the visitors. "I don't know whether to feel relieved at the knowledge that they won't bother us, or whether to get mad because they won't have anything to do with us."
He sent the "All x" signal to the pilot and the Sirius, once more at the acceleration of Terrestrial gravity, again bored on through space.
CHAPTER XIII
Spacehounds Triumphant
Now that the hexan threat that had so long oppressed the humanity of the Sirius was lifted, that dull gray football of armor steel was filled with relief and rejoicing as the pilot laid his course for Europa. Lounges and saloons resounded with noise as police, passengers, and such of the crew as were at liberty made merry. The control room, in which were grouped the leaders of the expedition and the scientists, was orderly enough, but a noticeable undertone of gladness had replaced the tense air it had known so long.