But he was better armed than even General Wheelwright had expected. Women had been no mystery to him since his sudden fortune, nor subservient men with sullen eyes. What the wise and kindly Martian fishermen with whom he had spent his outcast days had not taught him, the attentions of eager parasites had supplied. He was not lightly deceived.
So he entered into the games with frank and open zest, overthrowing the men and being thrown, kissing the women when necessary, and oftener, keeping both victory and defeat light with laughter. He did not seek out Iris, nor challenge her, but when it came to kissing her in the course of one of the Venusian games these cosmopolites had brought with them, he kissed her with considerable enjoyment and found himself being kissed promptly in return. It was a very pleasant voyage and he sincerely regretted that the time was at hand when he must divert it to the approaching asteroid dot known only as Banya Tor. He had not seen what lay there awaiting them, but he had seen other human wreckage left along the star-ways by the wolf packs raiding interspacial shipping. It would not be a pleasant finale.
Iris and Thorne stood the morning of the fifth day out from Mars at a port in the small pilot cabin with two or three others of their party, oblivious to the ill-concealed resentment of the officers on duty. From the corner of his eye he noted the first tremulous quiver of the directo-bar and his lips twitched. The game had begun.
Casually he herded the laughing young people from the cabin on the pretext of a fencing match already pre-arranged in anticipation of the expected attack. Andrews, his opponent, was a good blade and the match drew most of the party and crew off-duty, as he had intended. The two ships coming up fast astern would be Bannerman's faked pirates and he intended their attack to lose no point in surprise to those for whom the effect was being staged. To insure it, he slyly broke the wires leading to the standard directo-gauge as they crowded noisily out of the cramped little room. Once Bannerman's ships were near enough to be spotted by the visual scanner, the slow passenger ship could never hope to evade the planned attack.
Less than thirty minutes later the brazen clamor of a bugle split the air of the lower deck where Thorne and Andrews were deftly matching blades before a shouting crowd. The silence that instantly dropped was broken by the glacial clang of alarm bells from end to end of the stubby little liner.
"Battle stations!" shouted Thorne, snatching up his gun belt from Iris. He seized her hand and bounded from the enclosed hall amidst the yelping pack pouring up the companions, snatching whatever weapons lay to hand. But the sight that met their eyes as they emerged upon the saloon deck, panelled with Vinite, struck the brashest of them dumb on the instant.
Fanned out to either side of the racing liner, two sleek grey racers of fast, if obsolescent design, whirled silently through the void. They bore a red sun on needle prows.