Later he dimly recalled once opening his eyes to find himself lying in the thwarts of a motor-skiff scudding through the tortuous channels of a marshland stream. He was conscious of dank mists choking his nostrils and the humid spray of fen waters drenching him as the tiny craft sped toward an unguessed destination.
When next he wakened all this had disappeared. His body, which had been wet, was parched and dry; his mouth was cottony with thirst, and his head hammered brassily. He lay in the cabin of an aereo flashing swiftly through the atmosphere of Venus. A covey of armed guards surrounded him. When he muttered a feeble plaint for water, one dashed a dipperful in his face and laughed harshly as Steve, bound hand and foot, attempted to gulp a few precious drops.
Then again merciful unconsciousness welcomed him, and he knew no more until he wakened for a third time to find himself lying on a crude pallet within a metal-walled room which was obviously a prison cell in the palace of the Daan capital.
Of this he assured himself when, staggering weakly to his feet, he lurched to a grilled opening in one wall and looked down across a great courtyard bristling with armed men over the rooftops of the Daan's mightiest city to the distant spacedrome which, even from this distance Steve could see, was swarming with a black host of humans and Daans performing indistinguishable tasks in, around, and about the spaceships of Daan's great Armada.
His head still throbbed terribly, but with each passing moment an iota of additional strength seeped back into his superbly conditioned body. And save for a weakness born solely of hunger and thirst, Stephen Duane was very nearly recuperated from the effects of his recent assault by the time his gaolers discovered he had come to.
Then one of the warders came with welcome refreshment and unwelcome tidings. As he pushed the first through a movable grill in the corridor door, he donated the second freely.
"Still alive, eh, dog of Earth?" he taunted grimly. "Well, eat and drink heartily; this may be your last meal. You must have a skull of bronze, human. I did not expect to find you on your feet when I came here."
Steve said, "I'm in the palace tower?"
"That's right," grunted his gaoler. "But not for long. The Supreme Council has ordered you be brought before them as soon as you waken. They have a few questions to ask before—"
He left the matter of Steve's fate dangling, but the smirk of malice on his lips was suggestion enough.