Winford cursed himself under his breath. Fool that he had been not to have had the men and their baggage searched more carefully before he allowed them to leave the freighter. Nizzo was responsible for that. He should be—but it was too late now. No use crying over spilled milk. He forced a grin and shrugged.
"'The best laid plans of mice and men—'" he quoted philosophically. "I hope the entire blame for this wild venture is put on my shoulders where it belongs when we are brought to trial. These two navigators here and the rest of the men are in no way responsible. I forced every man of them under pain of death to join me."
The young officer shook his head and smiled.
"Not a chance of that, Winford. You'll all stand trial alike, and you know it. You are rather a strange sort of pirate, it seems to me, to offer yourself as a sacrifice for your men. I'd say you are too tender-hearted for buccaneering in the Void."
"If I had succeeded in reaching New Chicago, you might have gained a different impression of me," retorted Winford, his lambent eyes flaming at the thought. "I have sworn to kill Silas Teutoberg, the new governor of Ganymede, because he sent me to die in the mines of Mercury for a crime I never committed."
The young officer laughed.
"You can set your mind at rest about him, Winford. He was due at New Chicago five days ago in his specially chartered space liner from New York. Nothing was heard from his ship ten days after he left New York with his guests aboard. His last reported position was near the Mars orbit and since then nothing has come out of the Void. They'll just chalk him under the 'Lost in Space' column on the admiralty boards of the Universe and give the credit for his disappearance to some hurtling meteor. We were on our way to search for the remains of his liner when we intercepted the messages from Captain Robers and his men on Callisto."
Winford's face was bleak.
"Fate has prevented me from achieving my greatest desire," he said harshly. "To rid the Universe of that scourge to humanity would have been one of the sweetest moments of my life. I've dreamed of it for years."
The officer lighted a cigarette.