The Phantom flyer. From here in its tiny control room, it did not seem unusually weird. Its fittings a dead-black metal. Its men garbed in sleek, dead-black, close-fitting fabric suits with black fabric helmets dangling at the back of the neck.
I could see that we were in space. Through the pressure dome the stars were glittering in a black firmament. Where were we going? Jerome had not the slightest objection to telling me. Perhaps in the back of his mind there was the idea that ultimately he could bribe me, make me one of his band of cutthroats, useful to him. He was a genial, triumphant villain now, flushed with his success, pleased to boast of it before his men and before Brenda.
Old Professor Carson had not intended that his children come to Asteroid-9 and try to rescue him. That furtive message he had found opportunity to send was intended to bring the Interplanetary Police. Jerome had discovered that the message was sent. On the Seven Stars he had thrust Philip out through the porte; and had been searching Philip's stateroom, fearing that some incriminating evidence might be there, when I assailed him.
"You were using an X-ray screen?" he jibed at me now. "My metal headplate? Much good will it ever do you now to know that I was the Chameleon. A clever fellow, that Chameleon—but I like the Phantom bandit better, don't you?"
And then he told me gloatingly how easy it had been for him to don a pressure-suit and hide in the pressure-room while he wrecked the air-valves and let the air out of the doomed Seven Stars. Ship of the dead, on which he was the only living human until his phantom raider had come with a boarding party. Then the Seven had been taken to Asteroid-9, her cargo of electronic weapons transferred to the arriving X-flyer, and here we were.
"Headed for Deimos," he chuckled. "How glad they will be to see us! A million decimars of Interplanetary currency, Fanning. You'll want some of it, surely. And then we'll go looking for another adventure. Romantic life, eh?"
I tried, during those following hours, very cautiously to convince Jerome that at heart I might be a villain like himself. Perhaps to some extent, I succeeded. At all events, there came at last a brief interval when the controls were locked and Brenda, her father and I were out on the tiny forepeak in the starlight, momentarily alone. I had found now that a little freedom of movement was given us. After all, there was nothing that we could do, trapped here.
"You know where the exit porte of this ship is?" I murmured.
"Yes, yes, of course." Professor Carson was a confused, dazed old man; his life among these cutthroats for so long now had cowed him. "But what—what do you think you could do?"