The snow-haired old pirate painfully climbed the steps, and led them into a big, low-ceilinged, dusky room.
A small group of men stood in it, all wearing atom pistols.
"Where's Lana?” demanded the old pirate as this little group turned toward him.
"We're waiting for her. She'll be out in a moment,” answered a squat, scarred-faced Jovian who was one of the group. “So you finally got back, Stilicho!"
"Yes, I'm back,” shrilled the ancient Martian. “And a cursed strange thing it is that old Stilicho Keene has to go out on reconnaissance while you younger men rest your bones."
The old pirate spat real juice viciously out the open door and then turned to Thorn and his two comrades.
"Boy, I hate to admit it, but these are the captains of the Companions now,” he told Thorn. “Aye, these; the worthless lot who call themselves pirates in these degenerate days. Yon ox of a Jovian is Brun Abo. The pretty fellow beside him is Kinnel King, and the fat hog yonder is Jenk Cheerly, the latest to join our ranks."
Thorn's black eyes swept the pirate leaders. The man beside the Jovian, the man called Kinnel King, was an Earthman, middle-aged, with a very handsome face and brooding eyes.
Jenk Cheerly, the third pirate captain, was a Uranian of incredible obesity. His fat, puffy body seemed about to burst his jacket, and his pale-green, rotund face was featureless except for two bright, pig-like little eyes.
The obese Uranian stared at Thorn and his two comrades with those little eyes, and then spoke in an incongruously high and squeaky voice to old Stilicho Keene.