"I never heard this story before," Janus said. "What happened?"
"I stayed a safe distance away in my spaceship, watching and this is what happened. Ketrik made them a speech! I swear it! He climbed up on a block of stone in full range of their weapons—and do you know what his speech consisted of? The entire first chapter of the 'Advanced Principles of Space Navigation'. He quoted it most violently. Those Deimians didn't understand a word of it, but I swear to you, when Ketrik had finished they weren't angry any more! They cheered him! He walked calmly over to his space-cruiser and blasted away, jewels and all!"
"I came across him once on Mercury," Dethman contributed. "The barbarians from the dark side were warring on the race inhabiting the twilight strip. Well, if it hadn't been for Ketrik, the whole colony would've been wiped out. They almost made a superman out of him, wanted him to marry a thousand wives to make sure he'd leave plenty of his descendants there. And by Jupiter, he almost did! When I left he was still there, married to ten wives—or was it twelve?"
Mark was enjoying all this. He looked to Ferris, who seemed to be the only one without a story to tell. Ferris lit a venomous Venusian cigar, and sneered:
"I don't hold with all this hero-worship, and I don't believe more'n a tenth of it. Don't think we'll find Ketrik out here either. I've sunk a year's takin's from my placer on Mars into this venture—"
"And afraid you won't get it back, is that it?" Driscoll snapped. "Why, that placer you're yapping about was Ketrik's in the first place, and you know it! Sure, you'd rather hide out some place and manufacture more Frequency Tuners."
"We'll do that, too, once we make a strike," Janus said thoughtfully. "We'll equip a whole fleet with 'em, and really exploit the outer planets. That should give that addle-brained Earth Council something to really think about!"
On the third day they crossed the orbit of Pluto. Mark was in the control room with Janus and the Professor. The latter pointed to a thin thread of liquid helium in the directional-finder, surging slightly off center.
"Pluto's the nearest body now. It must be heavy, to drag us that way." He gave a touch to the Tuner's impellator, and the helium line came back to center as their acceleration increased.