Yet Crane's determination to wrest Doctor Alph's stolen brain from the other spy was strengthened rather than weakened. That weirdly living brain was a doom hanging over Earth!
When he dressed for dinner, Crane put his beam-pistol inside his coat, and the feel of it was comforting as he walked into the big, brilliantly lighted dining saloon. Laughing, chatting men and women of several planets, expensively garbed and gowned and jewelled, filled the room. Under the conversation, a Venusian orchestra was softly playing haunting popular melodies.
The steward who led Rab Crane to a table in a corner apologized for its obscure position.
"It's not a very good table, sir, but it was all we had left for last-minute passengers like yourself."
His words made Crane study the others at the table closely as they introduced themselves. The spy who had the stolen brain would be a last-minute passenger, too. He must be at this table!
The four other men at the table were of four different worlds. One was Kin Nilga, a Saturnian rocket engineer, with solemn green face, pale, big eyes and the great-boned body of his race.
Next to him sat Jurk Usk, a Jovian shipping-magnate, squat, huge-shouldered and heavy-browed like all men of Jupiter ' and as surly and sparing of words as most of his compatriots.
The other two were Kark Al, the thin, wisp-like, spectacled little Martian salesman whom Crane had heard complaining about his machinery samples; and Donn Ennimer, the handsome, drunken young Earthman he had noticed when he boarded ship.
* * *
The young Earthman had apparently been imbibing further of the intoxicating blue vibrations at the bar. He was talking with drunken owlishness, to the table at large.