Sual Av nodded his agreement. “I want to see a few lights and get a few drinks, after two weeks like we've had."
"Ho, ho!” guffawed the hulking Kribo. “Don't be so down-hearted about your bad luck, lads. It'll change soon, sure."
The disguised Planeteers trudged through the towering fungi with their new-found friends. Thorn and his two comrades had to exert all their strength to keep from showing the dragging, leaden effect of the Saturnian gravitation upon them.
The wan, sickly day of Saturn had come. The little, far-off disk of the sun was rising rapidly to cast its thin, feeble rays upon the looming gray fungi and spongy gray mosses. Across the dusky sky, the incredible arc of the rings soared stupendously. The usual cold morning rain was dripping from the mists by the time they reached the rocket-plane.
Kribo's vehicle proved an ancient, battered one whose glassite windows were cracked and whose inertrum power-chamber had been strained, and crudely reinforced with chromaloy bands.
As they piled into the tubular body, Thorn hoped fervently that that power-chamber would not choose to let go at this particular time.
Kribo started the antique machine, and it lurched crazily up from the fungus forest into the rainy mists. The Saturnian turned to Thorn with a large, ostentatious air.
"I suppose you're wondering where a slith-hunter got money enough to buy a fine rocket-plane like this,” he boomed to Thorn over the irregular roar of defective tubes. “The fact is that me and my boys here own it together."
"It's a fine machine,” Thorn said admiringly. “I always hoped to own one. But times are hard for a hunter."
"Aye, and getting harder,” growled the hulking Saturnian. “Since this war-scare cut off all trade with the inner worlds, the price of teeth has gone down almost to nothing. When the war really starts, our market will be gone altogether."