utiously groped deeper into this
most perilous region of the System. Now a bright, tiny disk of white
light was shining far ahead like a beckoning beacon. It was the
asteroid Vesta--their goal.

Kenniston, leaning against the glassite deck-wall, somberly eyed the
distant asteroid.

"We'll reach it by tomorrow," he thought. "Then what? I suppose John
Dark will hold these rich youngsters for ransom."

Kenniston knew that the pirate leader would instantly see the chance
of extorting vast sums by holding this group of wealthy young people
as captives.

"I wish to God I hadn't had to bring them into this," Kenniston
sweated. "But what else could I do? It was the only way I could get
back to Vesta with the materials."

His mind was going back over the disastrous events since the day three
weeks before, when the Patrol had caught up to John Dark at last.

Dark's pirate ship, the _Falcon_, had been gunned to a helpless wreck.
It had, fortunately for the pirates, drifted off into a region of
perilous meteor-swarms where the Patrol cruisers dared not follow. The
Patrol thought everybody on the pirate ship dead anyway, Kenniston
knew.

But John Dark and most of his crew were still alive in the drifting
wreck. They had fought the battle wearing space-suits, and that had
saved them. They had clung grimly to the wreck as it drifted on and on
until it finally fell into the feeble gravitational pull of Vesta.

Kenniston could still remember those tense hours when the wreck had
fallen through the satellite swarm of meteors onto the World with a
Thousand Moons. They had managed to cushion their crash. John Dark,
always the most resourceful of men, had managed to jury-rig makeshift
rocket-tubes that had softened the impact of their fall.

But the wrecked _Falcon_ had been marooned there in the weird
asteroidal jungle, with the alien, menacing Vestans already gathering
around it. The ship would never fly space again until major repairs
were made. And they could not be made until quantities of material and
equipment were brought. Someone must go for those materials to Mars,
the nearest planet.

John Dark had superintended construction of a little two-man rocket
from parts of the ship. Kenniston and Holk Or were to go in it.

"You _must_ be back with that list of equipment and materials within
two weeks, Kenniston," Dark had emphasized. "If we stay castaway here
longer than that, either the Vestans will get us or the Patrol
di