"Gunner's right — it can't be Lana,” muttered Thorn. “Someone here is playing a deep game of his own. And whoever it is doesn't like us, and knows now just what we're here for."
"John, our hidden enemy will have a fine chance to gun us tomorrow in the confusion of this attack on the Jovian freighters,” warned Sual Av.
Thorn's brown face hardened. “I know. But we have to keep right on playing our part here, until we get the secret. We've got to take our part in the foray, and keep looking out for trouble."
CHAPTER VI
The Trap
Forty pirate ships throbbed steadily through the wilderness of the Zone. Their course through the jungle of swarms and debris was sunwise. The six basic directions in space navigation are sunwise and counter-sunwise — that is, in the same direction as the rotation of the sun or in an opposite direction; sunward and outward — that is, toward or away from the sun; and up or down, from the equatorial plane of the Solar System as plotted by the fixed stars.
The pirate fleet moved in a close formation of short columns. In the lead was Lana Cain's silvery cruiser, the Lightning. The ship that had been given the Planeteers to command, the Cauphul, was close behind her. On one side of them sailed old Stilicho Keene's cruiser, and on the other the ship of Jenk Cheerly, which was marked on the bows with an ominous, painted black skull.
John Thorn stared through the glassite window of the control-room, as they throbbed on. In the pilot's chair beside him sat Sual Av.
"I don't like this raid,” the Venusian was saying, his ugly face troubled. “An attack on peaceful freighters is out of our line, John."
"Nobody on those freighters will be killed,” Thorn reassured him. “You heard Lana's orders. And we've got to help rob those ships, to keep up the part we're playing here. We've got to do anything until we get that secret out of the girl. And they are not Alliance craft."