"You don't think much of Earth, eh?” Thorn said curiously. “Yet, after all, it's really your native world."
"The Zone is my world — I was born here. I hate Earth for what it did to my father!” the girl flashed. “I'll be glad to see the League smash the inner worlds, for though I hate the League and its dictator, I've an even greater hate for Earth!"
Thorn felt a faint hope he had cherished until now, die within him. He had hoped that the pirate girl might be induced to save Earth from conquest by telling him the secret of Erebus. But he saw how futile had been that slight hope. This girl had only bitter hatred for the world she deemed to have wronged her father.
"Your father was an extraordinary man,” Thorn mused, looking up at the portrait. “A great fighter and organizer, a wonderful navigator. They say that he even visited Erebus, the tenth world, though I suppose that's just a baseless legend."
"It's the truth!” Lana declared proudly. “My father was on Erebus two weeks, and came back safely — the only man in the whole history of the Solar System that ever did so."
John Thorn stared incredulously. “How did he do it? How did he avoid whatever peril there has swallowed so many men?—"
"I can't tell you that,” the girl A said slowly. “I've never told anybody what my father told me about Erebus."
"Then,” Thorn said wonderingly, “you're the only person in the whole system who knows anything about that mystery world? The only person who knows how it might be visited safely?"
The girl nodded slowly. A queer expression, one of somber, haunting memory, had come into her vital blue eyes.
"Yes, I'm the only one who knows the secret of Erebus,” she admitted. “And nobody will ever learn it from me. I have reasons for keeping silence about that world!"