Rab Crane looked swiftly at his watch again. The Vulcan sailed at nine. It was a little after eight. He would have just time enough to get aboard the spaceliner before it took off — if he were not stopped.
He must get aboard! Somewhere on that ship was the stolen brain whose terrific secret might spell conquest of and doom for Earth. His one slim chance now was to get on the liner, yet he had but forty minutes to reach the spacestation on the other side of the great Venusian metropolis!
* * *
The big clock over the spacestation showed just ten minutes short of nine when the TSS man fought through the crowd to the gangway of the Vulcan. People were waving farewell to departing friends, sweating dockhands were hustling last-minute freight into the ports, ship's officers were bawling orders. Over the crowd and flaring lights loomed the vast, cigar-like metal bulk, waiting in its cradle for the moment of its flaming leap into space.
Rab Crane, gripping his suitcase in one hand and interplanetary passport and ticket in the other, ran up the gangplank into the glassite-walled promenade deck where the Venusian ship's officer on duty was being beset by passengers wanting various services.
A shriveled, red-skinned little Martian with enormous spectacles was fussing at the office. "I want my crate of machinery samples in my cabin, not in the hold. They're valuable!"
A squat, huge-shouldered Jovian was thrusting rudely past others to make his complaints heard, and a handsome young Earthman who had evidently had too much of the intoxicating "blue force," was asking plaintively, "Where's the vibration-bar?"
The harassed officer glanced at Rab Crane's passport hurriedly.
"Norman Idwall, citizen of Earth, importer. Okay, Mr. Idwall," he said.
A steward ran along the deck banging a gong and crying, "Five minutes to take-off time! All passengers in their cabins!"