"Space Flier Found Drifting with Two Hundred Dead! Notorious Interplanetary Pirate—Prince of Space—Believed to Have Committed Ghastly Outrage!"
Mr. William Windsor, a hard-headed, grim-visaged newspaperman of forty, stood nonchalantly on the moving walk that swept him briskly down Fifth Avenue. He smiled with pardonable pride as he listened to the raucous magnetic speakers shouting out the phrases that drew excited mobs to the robot vending machines which sold the yet-damp news strips of printed shorthand. Bill had written the account of the outrage; he had risked his life in a mad flight upon a hurtling sunship to get his concise story to New York in time to beat his competitors. Discovering the inmost details of whatever was puzzling or important or exciting in this day of 2131, regardless of risk to life or limb, and elucidating those details to the ten million avid readers of the great daily newspaper, The Herald-Sun, was the prime passion of Bill's life.
Incidentally, the reader might be warned at this point that Bill is not, properly speaking, a character in this narrative; he is only an observer. The real hero is that amazing person who has chosen to call himself "The Prince of Space." This history is drawn from Bill's diary, which he kept conscientiously, expecting to write a book of the great adventure.
Bill stepped off the moving sidewalk by the corner vending machine, dropped a coin in the slot, and received a copy of the damp shorthand strip delivered fresh from the presses by magnetic tube. He read his story, standing in a busy street that rustled quietly with the whir of moving walks and the barely audible drone of the thousands of electrically driven heliocars which spun smoothly along on rubber-tired wheels, or easily lifted themselves to skimming flight upon whirling helicopters.
Heliographic advices from the Moon Patrol flier Avenger state that the sunship Helicon was found today, at 16:19, Universal Time, drifting two thousand miles off the lunar lane. The locks were open, air had escaped, all on board were frozen and dead. Casualties include Captain Stormburg, the crew of 71 officers and men, and 132 passengers, of whom 41 were women. The Helicon was bound to Los Angeles from the lunarium health resorts at Tycho on the Moon. It is stated that the bodies were barbarously torn and mutilated, as if the most frightful excesses had been perpetrated upon them. The cargo of the sunship had been looted. The most serious loss is some thousands of tubes of the new radioactive metal, vitalium, said to have been worth nearly a million eagles.
A crew was put aboard the Helicon from the Avenger, her valves were closed, and she will be brought under her own motor tubes to the interplanetary base at Miami, Florida, where a more complete official examination will be made. No attempt has been made to identify the bodies of the dead. The passenger list is printed below.
Military officials are inclined to place blame for the outrage upon the notorious interplanetary outlaw, who calls himself "The Prince of Space." On several occasions the "Prince" has robbed sunships of cargoes of vitalium, though he has never before committed so atrocious a deed as the murder of scores of innocent passengers. It is stated that the engraved calling card, which the "Prince" is said always to present to the captain of a captured sunship, was not found on the wreck.
Further details will be given the public as soon as it is possible to obtain them.
The rewards offered for the "Prince of Space," taken dead or alive, have been materially increased since the outrage. The total offered by the International Confederation, Interplanetary Transport, Lunar Mining Corporation, Sunship Corporation, Vitalium Power Company, and various other societies, corporations, newspapers, and individuals, is now ten million eagles.
"Ten million eagles!" Bill exclaimed. "That would mean a private heliocar, and a long, long vacation in the South Seas!"