"That's where you're mistaken, Sydney. This is very much our concern. So much so, in fact, that we dare not make port again until it's cleared up. I think you have forgotten that it is not the scar-faced man who is wanted for the killing of Haldane—but Chip!"
"B-but—" gasped Palmer—"b-but that's ridiculous! Chip and Johnny were old buddies. Lifelong friends!"
"Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence indicates Chip's guilt. Twenty men saw him standing over Johnny's dead body, with a flame-pistol in his hand. And the barkeep heard Johnny 'arrest' Chip and accuse him of murder!"
Chip said ruefully, "That's right, Syd. It was only a joke, but it backfired. The bartender thought Johnny meant it. He scooted out of there like a bat out of Hades. I'm in it up to my neck unless we can bring back evidence that Scarface actually did the killing. And that may not be so easy."
He stirred restlessly. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now our job is to keep this rat in sight. We've gone farther already than I expected we would." He turned to the old preacher. "Where do you think we're going, Padre? Out of the Belt entirely?"
"I've been wondering that myself, son. I don't know for sure, of course, but it looks to me as if we're going for the Bog. If so, you'd better keep a weather-eye peeled."
"The Bog!" Chip had never penetrated the planetoids so deeply before, but he knew of the Bog by hearsay. All men did. A treacherous region of tightly packed asteroids, a mad and whirling scramble of the gigantic rocks which, aeons ago, had been a planet. Few spacemen dared penetrate the Bog. Of those who did dare, few returned to tell the tale. "The Bog! Say! I'd better keep a sharp lookout!"
He turned to the perilens once more, fastened an eye to its lens. And then—
"Syd!" he cried. "Salvation! Look! She—she—!"
He pressed the plunger that transferred the perilens image to the central viewscreen. And as he did so, a phantom filled the area which should have revealed yawning space, gay with the spangles of a myriad glowing orbs. The vision of an unbelievably beautiful girl, the golden-crowned embodiment of a man's fondest dreaming, eyes wide with an indistinguishable emotion, arms stretched wide in mute appeal.