Familiar, suave, ironic voice with a rich booming timber to it of assumed graciousness. I knew I had heard that voice before, but with my swimming senses now I could not quite place it. I felt my eyes opening to a blur of swaying outlines.
"You let her alone." The thin frightened voice of an old man. Brenda's father.
The dim scene clarified as my strength came. I was lying on the floor of a little circular control room, with a black shape beside me. And there were three other figures: Brenda, still garbed in her baggy deflated space-suit, with her white tense face staring in my direction; her gray-haired, thin father, in black trousers and black shirt, seated in a little metal chair beside her. And the other figure at the controls—a big, heavy-set man in tight-fitting black garment. Tubelight shone on his florid face. Arthur Jerome, Interplanetary traveler, Earth television lecturer on things astronomical! The man with the metal skull, unquestionably! Notorious chameleon of former years, and now the Phantom Raider!
"This Fanning comes to his senses," a voice beside me growled.
"Ah, so?" It brought Jerome with a leap, and then he bent over me. "So that blow on your head didn't kill you, Fanning?"
"No," I said. "You, Jerome. If only I had known—"
"Quite true," he chuckled. "Hindsight is very easy. And now we have you here. You will be useful, if you have any sense, A member of the Interplanetary Patrol, you should be skilled in many things of our adventuring in space. Romantic life, Fanning. Did you ever read of Captain Kidd, so long ago? One might say I am his modern incarnation. Romantic idea, eh Fanning?"
A little mad, this fellow. I could well imagine it. But a clever scheming, murderous villain for all that. "Much money for you," he added slyly. "I treat all my men well. There are fifteen of us here."
"I like money," I said with an assumption of sullenness. "But there are a lot of things I want to know."
I found that I was still garbed in the space-suit, but my weapon was gone. I was presently allowed to sit up in a chair beside Brenda and her father. But for all my assumption that I could be bribed, it did not deceive the wily Jerome. The two other black-garbed men here were closely watching me.