"The dirty rat!" he cried wrathfully. "He communicated with the space police. Offered to sell me out, if they'd give him a fresh start. He did that, didn't he, and they made a deal with him? Of course they'd do that!"
She was not retreating and her little head was held high.
"Other people besides you can make bargains!" she cried. "And they'd have kept them with Frenchy Logrieux, even as my father would keep your bargain. Why don't you take me back to earth now? I'm not ill any longer, and I'm certain you can buy any number of sleek space-ships in return for my body."
"Well, why shouldn't I?" demanded Rufus furiously. "That's what I intended to do when we came here. If your father lives up to his word that is just what is going to happen!"
"Don't worry about my father!" burst out Alyce Marshall proudly. "He'll pay everything he promised. And I don't like to hear you cast evil reflections about him in everything you say. He said he'd give every space cruiser he had if I were sound and well again, and he'll do it, if you ask him to."
"What makes you think I won't?" demanded Rufus, striding for the controls. "At least I'm not going to be fool enough to wait here for the space police to come and trap me."
CHAPTER V
LUNAR RENDEZVOUS
Long crater shadows were crawling across the dead seas of Luna. In the very edge of those long shadows which moved so slowly, tiny phosphorescent wrigglers, the only form of life on the satellite, kept pace with the strange twilight of this slow dusk.
A cold, frigid world was the moon, passing into the dusk of existence, even as the month-old day was passing from the dead seas.