Joe thought for a moment. Languages seemed to come easily to Mark—he could absorb concepts and find mental hooks to hang them on with no noticeable effort at all. Joe found languages far more difficult. He preferred engine diagrams and flow charts.
“I don’t know!” The lean pilot blasted, exasperated. The Starmen, like the crew from Z25, were passing time as they entered the third day of their captivity aboard the Silver Cloud. Mark was teaching Zip and Joe some of the Titanian vocabulary he’d been working on for two years.
“This one should be easy for you, Joe, even if it isn’t ‘sleep’ or ‘eat.’ The answer is just about all we’ve been able to do on this trip so far.”
“Well, sleeping and eating is all we’ve done!”
“‘K’intrishian’ means ‘wait.’”
Joe grinned. “We’ve certainly been doing a lot of that on this outing! The past couple of weeks have seemed about pointless! Just about all we’ve been doing is bouncing from place to place! We blasted off from Eagle City to the Asteroid Belt and then went right back to Mars. Then back to Ceres in the Asteroid Belt. Then to Montezuma’s Castle and on to Z25, and we complete our mission just in time to get captured by the enemy! Now we’re being taken to this ‘secret asteroid’ where Lurton Zimbardo has his base and I’ll bet anything we’re going right back to where we started—where we lost track of that ship we were chasing into the Belt!”
An announcement came through the intercom. “Prepare for deceleration in two minutes.”
The Starmen looked at one another, then at the crew of Z25. St. George was already walking toward his acceleration couch. Each of them could feel his heart suddenly beating a little faster. They strapped themselves into their couches. Zip looked out of the window but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
A moment later, the rockets on the Silver Cloud ignited and the ship began to slow. About half an hour later, the had slowed to a crawl and the view of the stars disappeared. It became apparent to the prisoners that they had entered a tunnel. After a few seconds, the ship touched down and secured itself to the landing pad. The prisoners waited. No one spoke.
Minutes passed, then the door to their quarters opened. Spelford stood in the opening, with several other men behind him. All were armed.