Stilicho, holding the space dog's neck, reached up to grip Thorn's hand with bony fingers. His cracked voice quavered.
"Good luck, boy — and God grant you bring the lass out safely."
The door ground shut. With a resounding reverberation of blazing keel-tubes, the Venture blasted off.
The Planeteers stood silent in the frigid misty darkness, watching the ship disappear into the sky.
"So we're on our own now,” rumbled Gunner Welk. “And all we have to do is make our way into Saturnopolis through ten thousand secret police who are watching for spies, break into Haskell Trask's citadel that even Saturnians don't dare go near, and steal away the dictator's most important prisoner right from under his nose. It's almost too easy!"
"I hate to see you grow sarcastic, Gunner,” said Sual Av worriedly. “It's the mark of a small mind."
The Venusian dodged, chuckling, as the towering Mercurian aimed a bear-like blow at him.
"Be quiet!” snapped John Thorn tautly. “I hear someone or something."
The other two Planeteers were instantly silent, all three gripping their heavy atom-guns and listening intently.
The great fungus forest that covered much of Saturn stretched about them in the cold mist, illuminated by the combined ring-light and moonlight. All around the little clearing in which they stood towered the enormous fungi, huge gray growths in the form of bulbous spheres, drawing their sustenance by parasitism from the thick mat of spongy mosses underfoot.