He eyed Senator Brown sternly.
'There's just two things you've got to do,' he warned.
'What's that?'
'Learn your speech. I don't want you forgetting it like you did the time you dedicated the communications building on the moon. And leave that damn candid camera at home.'
Senator Brown looked unhappy.
Ganymede was plunging into Jupiter's shadow. For a time 'night' would fall upon the satellite. Part of the time Europa would be in the sky, but Europa's light would do little more than make the shadows of the surface deeper and darker.
'Spike' Cardy waited for Ganymede to swing into the shadow. For Spike was going to do something that no man had ever done before He was going to escape from Ganymede prison, from this proud Alcatraz of Space, whose warden boasted that no man had ever left its dome alive until his time was served.
But Spike was leaving before his time was served. He was going to walk out the northwest port and disappear into the Ganymedean night as completely as if he had been wiped out of existence. It was all planned. The planning had been careful and had taken a long time. Spike had waited until he was sure there was no chance for slip-up.
The plan had cost money, had called for pressure being exerted in the right spots, had called for outside assistance that was hard to get. But what others had failed to do, Spike Cardy had done. For was he not the old Spike Cardy of space-racket fame? Had he not for years levied toll upon the interplanetary lines? Were not his men still levying toll on the ships of space? Spike Cardy was tops in gangdom and even now his word was law to many men.
Spike waited until the guard paced past his cell. Then he moved swiftly to his bunk, mounted it and grasped the almost invisible wire of thin spun glass which was tied to one of the ventilator grids. Swiftly, but carefully, he hauled in the wire, taking care to make no noise. At the end of the wire, where it had hung down the ventilator pipe, was a flame pistol.