"What the devil is this?” growled Gunner Welk suspiciously. “If they try any of their tricks on me—"
Under cover of the roar of laughing voices, Thorn spoke in a rapid, low voice to his two comrades, as they three stood close together behind the tables. They were momentarily unwatched, for all the mirthfully shouting pirates were watching old Stilicho as he supervised the preparations for the coming ceremony.
"I'm going to try my plan of searching Lana's papers tonight!” Thorn told his comrades swiftly. “If she ever wrote down what her father told her about Erebus, she'd surely still have it."
"John, it'll be deadly dangerous!” warned Gunner Welk in a taut undertone. “Remember, someone here knows what we're after."
"Yes, whoever put that Ear in your Pocket must be watching us all the time,” muttered Sual Av.
"I'll never have a better chance than tonight, with everyone present at the feast,” Thorn whispered. “You two stick here — it would awake suspicion if all three of us left."
He stopped whispering abruptly as the roar of laughing voices began to lessen. Old Stilicho had held up a hand to quiet the pirate throng.
"Planeteers,” he shrilled to the three comrades, “you've got a great name in the system, and you showed today you deserve it, for you saved our Lana from that trap when no one else could have done it. We're proud and glad to welcome you three among us. Eh, Companions?"
"Yes!” roared back the pirate feasters with one voice. Lana was sitting again, smiling at Thorn's puzzled face.
"But before you can really be of the Companions,” the old pirate continued in his shrill, cracked voice, you've got to drink the Eight Goblets, in proper order-to show that as a true Companion you defy the governments and navies of all the eight inhabited worlds!"