"In here!” he exclaimed. “We can go out another door."
Thrumming music hit John Thorn and his comrades in the faces as they entered the place. It was a room clogged with greenish smoke. Men at tables in the center were arguing in bull voices as they drank black Venusian wine or brown Earth whisky. In the booths around the walls, many more men sprawled, somnolent, sleepy faces relaxed under the pale violet rays of the brain-soothing happiness vibrations."
Thorn's lean figure shouldered through the noisy, crowded tables, the bald-pated Venusian and the towering Mercurian following closely. They were half-way across the crowded place toward the back door, when there was a rush of feet through the front entrance.
Thorn twisted his head. Two men in the white uniform of the Earth Police had just burst in. With them was the grizzled non-com. The latter instantly pointed at Thorn and his two companions.
"There they are!” he yelled. “The Three Planeteers!"
For a moment, the noisy throng in the place was petrified. Even that motley, hard-bitten crowd was frozen by the sudden declaration that there in their midst stood the three half-legendary interplanetary outlaws.
Then the foremost of the two policemen, drawing his atom pistol, yelled to Thorn.
"Stand where you are!"
Thorn's pistol was already in his hand, as was the big Mercurian's.
"The lights, Gunner!” Thorn cried.