Thorn was taut with the same thought. Down in this hell's nest of pirates was a girl with a secret that would save four worlds from conquest — if they could get it from her.
Turkoon widened beneath them, a little world blanketed by thick green fern-jungles. Directly underneath was a raw brown oval, a big clearing that had been blasted from the jungle. At one end of it gleamed the straggling chromaloy buildings of a town of considerable size, while parked ships covered the rest of the field.
The Venture landed with a roar of brake-blasts and a bumping jar beside the scores of parked ships. The door ports were rapidly unscrewed, and warm, heavy air hit the Planeteers’ faces as they followed old Stilicho Keene out of the ship.
"We'll go right up to the Council House. Martin Cain's house, it was, and Lana lives there now,” the old pirate told the three. His rheumy eyes glistened. “I want to see the faces of some of these young milksop captains when they learn that I've brought in the Three Planeteers!"
They went with Stilicho Keene across the field and through the main street of the straggling pirate town.
Turkoon Town sprawled, unkempt and somnolent, in the pale wash of light from the shrunken, setting sun. The looming dark green wall of the jungle was only rods from the outermost metal cabins.
Solemn, green and dark towered the fifty-foot jungle all around. Colossal ferns crowded each other, the space between their huge trunks choked with underbrush. Here and there in the tangle, blindly writhed “crawler vines,” parasitic fungoid creepers that wandered with their peculiar power of self-locomotion, searching for a host. Through the upper jungle and out over the town drifted “floating flowers,” white blooms that drank sunlight and water vapor from the air, and never touched ground after they budded free.
Thorn and his two comrades were eyed without interest by the motley population of the town — a population as varied in origin as the pirate crew they had already met. The men were from every inhabited world in the system. And there were also many women here — hot-eyed red Martian girls, languid white Venusian women, tall, awkward green girls from Saturn, brazen-faced Earth girls. All were clad in incongruously rich tunics and jewels-pirate loot.
Children, hybrids of a half dozen different peoples, fought and chased each other along the dusty brown street. And there was an astounding variety of animals from all planets, some chained, others running free. Solemn-eyed, furry Martian vardaks, green Venusian swamp pups, a big, hopping uniped from Io, and many others-all of them brought home here by the far-ranging pirate crews.
The crew of the Venture was stumping into town behind them, caning loudly to let all know they had returned. But by now, Stilicho Keene had brought the Planeteers to the long, low chromaloy building that faced the end of the main street.