The dusky purple sky of Mars was suddenly split asunder by an arc of dazzling white fire, which split the dark firmament from zenith to nadir. This streak of atomic flame sped towards a range of low, worn, incredibly ancient mountains in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, and the trim little speedster whose rocket drive was the cause of that fiery wake settled down to rest on the top of one of these eminences�Mount Mern, in the Ygnarth region of the Drylands of Cotaspar.

The airlock slid open and two men in protective suits, their faces shielded by airmasks, emerged into view. One was obviously an Earthling, tall, rangy, long-legged, with a fiery thatch of red hair and mischievous green eyes that sparkled with irrepressible humor in a handsome, tanned, clean-shaved face. The other was a Venusian, from his lithe and limber, almost boneless grace of movement, bald hairless pate, slanted albino-pink eyes, and dead-white skin.

The two trudged across the plateau, space-boots squealing and crunching in the thin layer of rock dust that overlay the age-old stone, flogged on by icy gusts of gaspingly thin but breathable air. They approached a domelike structure of dark, gloomy basalt. It was ages older than the Great Pyramid of Cheops, that massive dome; aeons more ancient than the very cornerstone of Babylon. For Mars was ... old ... and the lurking remnants of her once-glorious civilization which she still nurtured at her shrivelled breast had origins so anterior in time as to dwell in the shadowlands of myth ...

The bitterly cold, desiccated wind drove a swirl of talcum-fine rock dust rattling against the faceplate of his airmask, and Phath, the Venusian, started irritably and muttered a curse to his Swamp Country god. He was used to the dank climate of his muddy world, with its fetid bogs and clinging mists and bubbling fens, and this bone-dry, withered old dustball of a world ran against his grain.

"Cursed if I can see why we had to travel all the way to this miserable excuse for a planet, when the old crackpot could have told us what his trouble was on the televisor," grumbled Phath, wiping his faceplate clear.

His redheaded companion shrugged carelessly. "Dr. Zoar will have his own reasons, and they�ll be good ones," observed the space-adventurer known only as 'Star Pirate.' "Just be patient, and we�ll soon know. Besides, if we hadn�t come, we'd be missing out on the swell Martian brandy the Doc usually serves us, not to mention those fried canal-mushroom filets�"

Phath muttered something disparaging on the question of Martian cuisine, but then the great door loomed up before them. The massive slab of wood wherefrom it had been anciently fabricated was so old that it had become petrified into stone over the ages, and it bore the bronze sigil of twin interlaced crescents that denoted the structure as a monastery dedicated to the Moon Gods. That had been long ago, and within the memory of living men the old edifice had served the reclusive savant and master-scientist, Zoar, as his hermitage and laboratory.

It was Zoar himself, and not one of his robot servitors, who answered the door. He was squat, diminutive, little more than a dwarf, with a bald, wrinkled skull and an ugly, froglike face, which wore a scowl that seemed permanently grafted upon his leathery, green-skinned face. It amused his warped sense of humor to assume the dusty dark-red robes and scuffing sandals of the long-extinct Moon Priests who had once haunted the drafty, echoing halls of what was now his sanctuary.

"Ah, it�s you at last, my boy!" he croaked, peering up into Star�s grinning face. Then his tones turned surly and his expression sour as he spied Phath lurking in the background.

"Brought your web-footed flunky along with you, eh?" he demanded with a sneer. "I thought the air rather savored of swamp-slime when I opened the door�"

Phath flushed�as much as his chalk-white skin could flush�and his pink eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, one hand fondling the worn butt of his proton-needle in its leathern holster slung at his lean hip. "Why, you lice-ridden old sand-rat, I�ve half a mind to feed you a pint or two of your own desert-dust�!"

"If you actually had half a mind," snarled the savant with a savage smirk, "then you�d only be a cretin, not the perambulating two-legged amoeba you are now!"

"Is that so, you crawling sandlizard," Phath spat venomously. "Well, scuttle into your nearest sewer-hole, �cause I�ve a needler here just aching to broil one more slithering bit of Martian vermin!"

"Boys, boys!" sighed Star, but he knew it was no use. The two had a feud going for many years, and both obviously enjoyed it too much to be mollified by any words of his. Philosophically, he sat down on a stone bench to wait out the exchange of vituperation.

"You recall when you were on your way to Mercury a while back, on that nasty Fire Troll business," said Zoar, "I told you of my observations with the gravitometer�my own small invention," he added with a self-deprecating little cough which fooled no one. "I believe I told you then that I had discovered the cause of those mysterious perturbations in the orbit of the planet Pluto which have baffled every astronomer since the immortal Tombaugh discovered the ninth world from the sun . . . and that my calculations proved the long-suspected existence of a tenth world from the sun, that elusive will-o�-the-wisp, the legendary planet 'Persephone.' "

"Why, sure, Doc, I remember you said something�"

"Since then," continued Dr. Zoar, serenely riding over Star Pirate's interjection as if he had not even heard it, "since then, I have completed my calculations to a nicety. Once I had managed to pinpoint the periodicity of the perturbations in the orbit of Pluto (no mean feat in itself, I assure you, lad!), I had to prove it with hard mathematics. I employed three droneships, widely spaced, to take further readings and thus obtained a fix on the mystery planet. Once I had taken the parallax, it was child's play to feed the computer with the math and derive the precise location of this new world in space. As soon as the computer has finished its purely routine calculations, we will have the entire orbit of the tenth world�Persephone, if you will�charted to a degree of exactitude that should satisfy those jealous scoffers"�here the Martian savant was apparently referring to his fellow scientists� "but one last proof is needed, before I will be completely satisfied ."

Star was impressed, and said as much. "Terrific job, Doc! It'll put you right up there next to Herschel and Tombaugh and the rest, but ..."

"But what do we have to do with all this?" muttered Phath, virtually stealing the very words from Star's mouth.

"Tut, isn't it obvious?" purred the green dwarf in self-satisfied tones. "Having discovered the tenth planet, do you dare to dream I would leave the glory of actually exploring it to someone else? I need your help, lad, in getting to Persephone in your little craft, the Jolly Roger!"

They looked at each other blankly, then turned to regard the little savant, who sat there smiling a smug little smile and sipping his mellow brandy contentedly.

"But, Doc, the Roger's no expeditionary craft�just a scout�a speedster! We�" began Star Pirate, but then his Venusian comrade interrupted with an ejaculation.

"Yakdar's tungsten tonsils! Just how far away is this-here Persephone, anyway?"

Still smiling smugly, Dr. Zoar named a distance so staggering that it made them gasp.

"B-but, Doc," said Star Pirate helplessly, "that's nearly as far from Pluto as Pluto itself is from the sun! The Jolly Roger would take many many weeks�months�why, even if we reprocessed every atom of air, every molecule of water through the purifiers, we still couldn�t possibly carry enough food for the three of us to last for a voyage as long as the one you contemplate. We'd starve to death before we even got there!"

"Not if you flew fast enough," said Zoar cunningly.

Once again the two adventurers exchanged a blank look, one with the other.

"Listen, Mars-man," snapped Phath huffily. "The Roger's just about the fastest thing in space as it is�how could we make �er any faster than she is?"

"There are, ah, certain techniques," chuckled Zoar. He was in a rare good humor, and it was obvious that he hugged some secret to his bosom. "Now," Zoar said, "let me put a question to you. To both of you�if there were a way by which your little craft could attain to a velocity enormously superior to that which she can now attain�to a velocity still, of course, below light speed, but only fractionally so�which would mean that your voyage to Persephone would take not a year or so, not even months, but days or merely a couple of weeks�which is well within your ship's capacity to carry food supplies�would you make the trip?"

The challenge hung there in the dim air of the huge, dusty stone room. A chemical fire crawled and crackled on the grate. Huge shadows slithered overhead to the serpentine writhings of the eerie green flames. Phath methodically downed the last scrap of sandcat sausage and bit into one of the queer, spicy Dryland fruits that stood in a bowl of polished stone on the tabouret.

His weird pink eyes swivelled sideways to fix on Star's bronzed face. The adventurer's expression was rapt, his eyes filled with hazy dreams.

"Well, chief?" drawled the Venusian around another mouthful of the Martian fruit. "What do you say?"

"A brand new world," Star Pirate whispered, caught in a net of dreams. "To go where no other man has ever set foot before you ... a whole world of wonders unguessed at, marvels unknown ..."

No further words were needed. Phath sighed, shook his head philosophically, and poured another slug of the superb old Martian brandy into a small goblet hewn from rock-crystal .

Zoar smiled his wrinkled, froggish smile, hooded cold black eyes unblinking.

Star Pirate dreamed ... the same dream that once stirred the hearts of the Vikings, of Marco Polo, of Columbus, Scott, Amundsen, and Neil Armstrong.

A brand new world ...

Deep in that whirling wilderness choked with shattered moonlets and meteors known as the Asteroid Belt, lies a hidden little world that serves Star Pirate and his Venusian comrade as their secret hideout. Haven they call it, and a safer haven would be hard to imagine. While its core of heavy metals provides mass enough to afford a gravity field strong enough to hold breathable atmosphere and moisture to the surface of the miniature world, it is protected from chance discovery or the invasion of enemies by its peculiar location. For it lies at the heart of a swirling vortex of meteor swarms which would be swift and sudden death to any ship of space ignorant of the secret of safe passage through the storm of frozen, flying stone�a passage Star has charted and which he and Phath alone can follow.

The odd-shaped, lopsided little worldlet lies warm and humid, bathed in faint ochre Jupiter-light, dim and filled with shadows. Great shelves of stone lift against the glittering stars, mantled with strange pale tree-like growths, their rock surfaces sheathed with satiny moss. Small beetle-like creatures scuttle between the crumbling ruins of a time-lost people�the enigmatic monuments of Aster, the planet-culture destroyed when the Lost Planet itself was torn asunder in time's dawn as the last act of an ancient tug-of-war between the gravitational fields of the sun and the giant planet Jupiter. Which resultant destruction of the lost planet, Aster, gave birth to the scattered fragments and moonlets which comprise the Asteroid Belt ... or so went the theory current in Star Pirate's day.

Here rose the low, shallow dome of transparent metal that was house and home, laboratory and workshop, to Star and his Venusian sidekick. Their home was one vast, dome-roofed room, with folding screens and draw-curtains affording privacy. Galley and pantry and stores were here; bath facilities over there; Star's bunk and bureau to the side; the laboratory beyond the living area, where (anachronism of all anachronisms!) a fireplace built of rugged fieldstone towered, with a wood-fire roaring on the grate, and thick, overstuffed chairs drawn up before the hearth.

"An expensive luxury," murmured Zoar, craning his neck and trying to see how Star and Phath got rid of the smoke.

"Never mind that, right now," said the redheaded adventurer, grimly, "you said you needed our robot workshop facilities to install this new super-drive of yours in our ship, so let me show you what we've got."

"That was why you couldn't tell us all this stuff over the televisor, right?" guessed Phath shrewdly. "Even our multiwave set could be tapped, right? You didn't want others to know about this superdrive of yours, because the military types, the governments, the fanatical political groups, revolutionaries�?"

Zoar eyed the Venusian with a strange respect in his eyes. It was there for only a flicker of time, then veiled behind a forced sneer�but while it had lasted, it had been sincere enough.

"A lucky guess, mud-eater," he growled in his hoarse, bullfrog voice. "But there is something to what you say, yes. The political, economic and military implications of my super-drive (as you persist in calling it) are indeed such as to make it worth our while keeping it undercover. And, as your swamp-lizard friend says, lad, any communication system can be cracked, any code deciphered. And while nobody very much cares about the discovery of a new trans-Plutonian planet (what's one more ball of methane ice, after all, washed by sluggish seas of half-gelid ammonia and whipped by merciless hurricanes of hydrogen-snow?), a spacedrive that is only a fraction from the velocity of light is very interesting, no? Now, I�d like to see this robot workshop of yours."

The Jolly Roger climbed skyward on a pillar of atomic fire. Far below, the twilit surface of Haven dwindled and was lost amidst the whirling storm of meteors which surrounded the little moonlet like some protective moat. Star switched to the computer pilot, and let the trim little speedster steer herself through the barrier of spinning chunks of frozen rock, guided by the coded radio signals broadcast from beacons planted amidst the swarm.

For two weeks the robot workshops underneath the dome-dwelling had toiled around the clock, as automata refitted the little scoutcraft with the outsized rocket-tubes of Dr. Zoar's design. Now the speedster looked clumsy and unbalanced with the heavy cluster of tubes at its stern, but Star was more than willing to trade aesthetics for a drive that would carry them to Pluto�and beyond�at the colossal speeds the diminutive Martian savant had promised.

The little craft dipped far below the plane of the ecliptic, so as to be in clear space, uncluttered by asteroid fragments and wandering meteorites, and before very long they had traveled on conventional drive far enough for Zoar to cut in his super-drive.

The moment was a tense one: within seconds, weeks of labor might prove to have been wasted on a flawed theory, a faulty plan. Zoar wrinkled his brow in a hideous scowl, as if daring the new engines to fail to fire. Star looked serious, concerned, but, as for the Venusian, he maintained the skepticism he had evinced ever since first hearing of the newfangled system of propulsion.

"Bet you my new gunbelt and holsters the gadget blows a fuse," Phath hissed to the redhead�just loud enough for the Martian scientist to hear. Zoar scowled even more ferociously, and thumbed the activator. A deep-throated resonance entered into the drumming song of the roaring rockets, but there was no other change. Beyond the televisor screens, stars glittered against the ebon backdrop of space like sequins sewn upon the velvet curtains of some enormous theatre.

"I told you�!" chortled Phath; even Star looked puzzled and dubious; but, as for Zoar, he only smirked and indicated the fancy new velocitometer attached to the control board. The two adventurers bent to study the dial ... and saw that already the ship�s speed had gone off the conventional velocitometer and they were traveling at speeds hitherto undreamed of.

"Yaklar�s ... tungsten ... tonsils!" gasped the Venusian, his pink eyes widening. Such speeds were phenomenal. "Why don�t we�feel the difference in speed?" he blurted, mystified.

"Because of my new stasis field, of course, simpleton!" snarled Zoar. "Its field of force cradles each sub-atomic particle in a cushioning web of force ... otherwise, our velocity would wreck the ship�s internal structure, and we would be plastered all over the walls."

"Well, I�ll be a�a�� stammered the Venusian, for once at a lack for words. Zoar grinned malignantly, preening.

"If you need an appropriate epithet, friend Phath," he growled in his bass tones, "I believe I can supply a few�?"

A brief exchange of insults ensued, as usual. Sighing, Star Pirate left the control room in Phath�s charge and went into his cabin to store away his luggage. It seemed the little argument soon fizzled out, for the next time he passed the entrance to the control room, Phath was stretched out in the big chair, plucking on his Venusian guitar and singing an old space-chanty in his soft, sibilant voice:

Star snapped a curse to every space god he knew, and sprang to the emergency override controls. Already, the craft was losing air in an ear-splitting shriek through the punctured hull, and it was becoming swiftly more and more difficult to draw breath. Star spun a wheel and slammed a lever home; air-tight emergency compartment doors slid out of the walls to seal off the danger area. Fortunately, it was back in the tail compartment where the store rooms were located.

"How in the name of thirty spacedevils did we run into a meteor storm here, below the ecliptic?" demanded Phath, switching the controls to manual and sending the Jolly Roger arching through the void in a steep curve designed to carry the trim little craft out of the path of the storm of hurtling rock and ice.

"More to the point, why didn�t our repellor fields stop the meteorite before it hulled us?" said Star flatly, scanning the dials. Fortunately for their mission, remarkably little damage had been done, although they were not yet out of the path of danger.

"I think�I can answer that one, my boy," said Dr. Zoar, waddling into the control room. He had been lying down in his bunk catching a well-deserved nap, until the clangor of the alarms had roused him from his rest. "It�s the new drive�we�re traveling so fast, the meteor went right through the repellor fields before they had time to deflect it."

He scratched his chin reflectively. "If travel by my super-drive should ever become common, we shall have to do something to beef up the standard repellor field generators ... a pretty little problem, by the Twin Moons! I suppose we could use an overlapping, heterodyning electromagnetic barrier with ..." His voice trailed off into an indistinguishable mumble as he became lost between equations.

"Yeah?" queried Phath in startled tones. "Well, we're not goin' so fast now, you Martian hop-toad! In fact, we're losing velocity rapidly. That new thingummy of yours has blown a fuse or something�"

Star sprang to the control board to study the new velocitometer. With a sinking heart he saw that Phath spoke the truth�the superdrive was no longer functioning, and the impact of being hulled had slowed the craft until she was virtually adrift. He jiggled the controls, but could not spark the new rocket-tubes into roaring life�neither did the conventional drive work.

"Looks like that blasted meteor did more than just cost us a little air, chief," muttered the Venusian. Star looked grim.

"It must have severed some of the wiring that runs through the hollow hull," he said tensely. "We can't get at the conduits from inside; break out the suits, Phath. We'll have to go outside to repair the damage�where are we exactly, Doc?"

Zoar scrutinized the dials. "Just passing Jupiter's orbit," said the little scientist. "Luckily, we're too low on the ecliptic to have a chance of getting pulled in by Jupiter's gravitational field. Or Saturn's either, for that matter."

Both men had forgotten that their suit radios were still switched on, and that Dr. Zoar could hear every word they spoke to each other. His puzzled voice came rasping through the crackle of cosmic-ray static.

"Vortex? What Vortex, my boy? Unless you mean that old space legend ... the Sargasso of Space ... the graveyard of lost ships ... but surely�"

"It�s no legend, Doc, believe me," grated Star Pirate in ringing tones. "I�ve not only seen the swarm of lost rockets drifting forever at the heart of the Vortex, but I almost got caught up in the gravity tides on the edge of the Vortex once, years ago."

Phath stared at him blankly, and Star Pirate forced a mirthless chuckle to his lips.

"That was before you joined forces with me," he remarked. "And how I could have used you at my side that day!" His memory hearkened back to days and nights of ceaseless toil, without sleep, food and water and even his supplies of air running low, as he had battled the remorseless suction of the gravity tides that had been pulling the Jolly Roger deeper and deeper into the tangle of dead, long-deserted and abandoned space vessels at the Vortex�s mysterious heart.

"But, lad�!" protested the Martian. Star swiftly shrugged off his dreamful mood of recollection of those desperate days and nights when he had labored to repair his wrecked rocket engines in time to break free of the whirlpool of gravity.

"It�s midway between the two giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, Doc," he said swiftly. "Gravity plays strange tricks out there, where two massive gravity-fields interlock and battle in a ceaseless tug of war, complicated by the ever-changing gravity flux of the many moons of the two huge worlds. A sort of vortex of gravitation that traps unwary ships and pulls them in to the center, where they can never break free. I saw ships in there near the center that belonged to museums�stuff I�d only seen in the history books�but we�ve got to get finished with repairing the control circuits, without delay. You keep watch over the meters and give me the readings every quarter hour, so I'll know how fast we�re drifting into the Vortex. I'll keep working out here as long as I can still stand up and stay awake�"

And the tall redhead bent to his work again, striving to drive every thought from his mind except that of the task before him.

"Holy space-devils, chief, the Sargasso of Space!" whispered Phath, his sibilant tones touched with awe. "I thought it was just another old space-legend myself ... and now we're caught up in it and every minute, every hour, being drawn deeper and deeper into the graveyard of lost ships ..."

"Less talk and more work," grated Star Pirate harshly.

Phath nodded, and the two of them bent to their toil under the cold and mocking gaze of the uncaring stars.

Day after day went by; hurtling at a velocity heretofore never achieved by a manned spacecraft, the trim little speedster edged past the orbit of giant Saturn, and past Uranus, and beyond Neptune. Ahead floated the ghostly pale globe of Pluto, for centuries thought to be the outermost planet of all the System.

Beyond lay the Unknown, into which the three men aboard the Jolly Roger would be the first to penetrate. It was a sobering thought.

Phath, however, seemed unmoved by it. By now well rested, and well fed, the Venusian lolled back in the capacious embrace of the pilot's chair, against the pneumatic cushions, and plucked with lazy fingers the twangling wires of his Venusian guitar.

Before long, he burst into not-particularly-melodious song. While Phath was a good man to have at your side in a back-alley brawl, or to man the guns in a space-battle, or to juggle the pots and pans in the galley, it must be admitted that singing was not among the several endeavors in which he excelled. In fact, quite the contrary.

Hearing his albino partner raise his voice in song, Star Pirate winced a little and headed aft to the engine room for a little peace and quiet among the drumming cyclotrons. Oblivious, Phath sang on�continuing the same space-chanty he had been carelessly yodelling only moments before they had been caught in the unexpected space-storm, and were hulled by the micro-meteorite.

Star Pirate discovers the astounding secret of the mystery planet!

Dr. Zoar, a distinguished Martian scientist, has mathematical proof of the existence of a long-suspected but unknown Tenth Planet beyond the edge of the solar system.

He persuades that team of space-adventurers, Star Pirate and his Venusian sidekick Phath, into a journey of exploration and discovery. Installing his new superdrive aboard Star's scoutcratt, the Jolly Roger, Zoar predicts they will achieve speeds narrowly close to that of light itself.

The renovated speedster is launched from Star's secret hideout, the asteroid Haven, drops below the ecliptic, and accelerates on its new propulsion system�only to run into an uncharted meteor-storm which hulls the Roger and cripples the rocket drive. As Star and Phath toil to repair the damage, the powerless ship drifts deeper and deeper into the sinister "Vortex," a whirlpool of gravitational forces at whose heart lies an eerie graveyard of lost ships. At the last minute, the repairs are completed and the impetus of the superdrive enables the Jolly Roger to break free of the gravity-vortex.

Later, the little ship crosses the orbit of Pluto and heads into unknown, uncharted space�where no man of the Inner Worlds has ever trespassed before. What mysteries will they be faced with, what inexplicable perils, on the surface of the "brave new world" Zoar has named Persephone?

"Why, you mud-eating swamp-lizard, if you dare touch one string of that devil's instrument, or utter a single caterwauling yowl of so-called song, I'll throttle you with my bare hands!"

This savage challenge was uttered by a squat green dwarf, a malignant scowl disfiguring his froglike face, under a tall, bald, wrinkled brow. He wore a dusty red smock and leathern sandals, for all that he was one of the System's most distinguished scientific celebrities, Zoar of Mars.

"Izzat so, you dust-chewing old horned toad?" snarled a soft, sibilant voice from the other side of the cramped little cabin, where a lithe figure with dead-white skin and slitted pink albino eyes lounged, cradling his nine-stringed Venusian guitar protectively in his arms. This was Phath, a Venusian space-adventurer who was pilot and first mate of the trim little speedster, the Jolly Roger.

"Yes, that�s so," growled the diminutive Martian scientist with a fierce glare from his ink-black eyes. "I�ll break that cursed noise-maker over your empty skull if you dare interrupt my concentration with your tuneless gargling!"

Phath swore by six or seven space gods, and his pink eyes narrowed dangerously while one hand hovered over his leather holster, fingertips just tentatively brushing the worn butt of his proton needle. He spluttered wordlessly, but the fact of the matter was that while the Venusian adventurer was a good man to have at your back in a tavern brawl, or by your side in a street-fight, and while he was a dead shot with his needier and an ace rocket pilot, the one talent in which he was seriously lacking was the gift of song. His attempts at melodic self-expression did, to a certain extent, resemble the cry of a cat whose tail has been caught in the proverbial wringer.

He knew it, although he would rather die than admit it, and he hated the fact; since there was nothing he could possibly do about it, he was touchy on the subject and easily flew off the handle when someone made a remark about his singing voice.

"Go on," sneered Dr. Zoar, laying down the calculator upon which he had been working out a set of abstruse equations in celestial mechanics. "Put a beam through me�I dare you! If you can�t shoot any better than you can carry a tune, I�ve nothing to worry about."

"By Yakdar�s beryllium bellybutton, but I�ve a mind to do just that!" Phath exploded, uncoiling from his chair and coming to his feet.

"Children . . . children," sighed a third voice, wearily. The interruption came from Star Pirate himself, as the lean, lanky, broad-shouldered young Earthling with the curly red hair and mischievous green eyes was known to the citizens of the Nine Worlds. He had been stretched out on his bunk, taking a bit of a nap after one of Phath�s sumptuous luncheons, before the argument from the control cabin had roused him from his rest.

The Martian and the Venusian began trying to explain how each of them was in the right, and innocent of provocation, while the other was a double-dyed villain, constantly interrupting each other and each trying to talk the loudest. Star pretended tolerantly to be paying attention, but actually his mind was elsewhere, ruefully remembering the interesting dream from which he had been so noisily, not to say rudely, awakened by their quarrel.

It was not the first time this had happened, and it would surely not be the last, he told himself. For days now, since the Jolly Roger had flown over the edge of known space and crossed the orbit of Pluto, the trim little speedster had penetrated deeper and deeper into unknown, uncharted space, where no other man had ever flown.

The little craft, never designed for three, was cramped and crowded, and the forced proximity, the lack of privacy, the prolonged confinement in such close quarters, caused the space-travelers to tend to rub each other the wrong way. This was to be expected, since they were only human, but in the present case the matter was somewhat aggravated by the fact that for years now, the Venusian adventurer and the diminutive Martian savant had cultivated a long-lived feud that had been smouldering for years. That it occasionally exploded into vocal argument was to be regretted, but even Star Pirate was not always able to keep peace between his irascible old Martian mentor and his touchy Venusian sidekick.

"Calm down, boys," he advised at last. "Save the temper tantrums for tomorrow; you know, we expect to be within visual range of Persephone by then ... and who knows what we'll encounter when we land? Savage beasts and hostile natives, perhaps: so save your energy until then, we may have need of it, if push comes to shove and we find we've got a fight on our hands."

These sensible words of advice proved to have a calming effect on the two belligerents; they had momentarily forgotten that in mere hours they expected to take their first look at the "brave new world" they had come so very far to be the first to discover and to explore .

And, as Star Pirate said, who knew what might lie ahead on them when they landed on the surface of the mystery world?

Early in the morning of the very next day, Phath lolled lazily in the huge pilot's chair before the curve of the control board, with its maze of flashing red and green lights and glittering dials and meters. The Venusian was strumming an old space chanty on his nine-stringed native instrument, having seized the opportunity when both of his shipmates were busy elsewhere in the ship.

White fire gushed from the rocket tubes of the Jolly Roger, deftly nudging the trim little craft out of her parking orbit about the equator of Persephone. She sank towards the thick blanket of impenetrable black clouds which surrounded the dark world; ere long, she plunged into them.

Darkness closed about the cabin of the little craft. The �scope was useless now, for nothing could be seen except for scudding ebon mist. Not visually, that is�but still Dr. Zoar clung to his sensors, probing with delicate vibrations the unknown surface far beneath their keel, and still hidden by the seething swirls of black vapor.

"Coming out of the cloud-layer now, chief!" said Phath cheerfully. And no sooner had those words left his lips, than an eerie yellow light broke about them. The Earthling, the Martian and the Venusian blinked incredulously, and found their craft floating down from a strange sky of sourceless yellow glare.

"Where does all the cursed light come from?" demanded Phath in baffled tones. Zoar studied his meters closely.

"Electromagnetic forces causing excitation in the bottom layer of the clouds," announced the Martian savant. "That layer seems to be one of the heavy metallic vapors, like argon or�"

"�Neon?" hazarded Star Pirate.

The Martian savant permitted himself a slight, approving smile. "Precisely," he rasped in his hoarse, bullfrog voice.

"Well, it gives plenty of light, sure enough," grunted Phath, sounding rather disgusted. "Too bad there�s nothing to see with all that light�"

And so it was: the surface was nothing but one enormous, endless snowfield, broken only here and there by the raw, sharp outcroppings of black mineral deposits, and swept by howling gales. There did not even seem to be mountains on this weird, shrouded world of yellow glare, endless ice, and remorseless wind.

Phath announced the temperature readings from the other side of their hull. It was nowhere near as cold as it would be on Pluto's surface�perhaps the electrical excitation of the neon layer had some sort of a mild warming effect on the planet's surface temperature�but it was cold enough.

"Take an orbit around the equator, Phath," Star Pirate said, "and turn on the cameras. We'll make a photomap, since we're here. Give us something, at least, to take back home."

"Righto!" chirped the Venusian. And the Jolly Roger began to trace a circle around the frozen world, skimming along above the endless snowfields, hurtling along under the uncanny glare of that luminous golden sky.

Chemical analysis proved that the air outside the ship was composed of a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen very similar to Earth's own atmosphere, and therefore breathable without the need of protective masks and bottled oxygen. So Star opened the control cabin airlock and stepped out, followed by Dr. Zoar and Phath, as soon as the Venusian pilot had locked the controls against any possibility of tampering.

They stepped forth not on grass, as they had unconsciously supposed they would, but on soft, cushiony, emerald-hued moss, pearled with sweet dew.

The air was warm and moist and fragrant with the heady aroma of many strange flowers and blossoming trees unfamiliar to the Earthling, the Martian and the Venusian. The frigid, howling gales that swept the golden skies of the world beyond the immense valley, sheltered behind its dim dome of force, seemingly could not penetrate into this alien Eden. Looking about at the lush shrubbery, the velvet moss, the strange flowers, Star shook his head; it was difficult to believe that, not half a mile away, the surface was locked under an adamantine sheath of eternal ice and swept by frozen hurricanes of terrific force, hostile to all life.

"People coming, chief!" snapped Phath warningly. Star Pirate looked up to see a strange sight. From the uppermost tiers of the big palace-like structures which faced each other across the plaza, there came hurtling towards them immense, red-furred, prick-eared creatures, with the ribbed, membranous wings of bats. But enormous bats�their wingspread must have measured thirty feet and more.

And mounted upon their backs, seated between the beating vans, were human riders! Star thrilled to a distinct shock as he had his first glimpse of the mysterious denizens of this weird new world. They rode their batlike steeds, seated in capacious wicker-work saddles, guiding their aerial mounts with long reins. The men�for only one of them seemed to be a woman�were completely humanoid, save for their dead-white skins and lustrous eyes, slightly larger and rounder than Star was accustomed to back in the many worlds of the System. They were as black as obsidian, those staring eyes, and the hair upon their heads, which they wore long and which whipped behind them in their flight like elfin banners, was of the rare shade called platinum-blond .

They were slight of build, a trifle shorter than Phath, but taller, of course, than the green-skinned dwarf at his side. They were all dressed alike in silken tunics of some dark, glittering metallic weave, short-sleeved and ending at the knee. Soft buskins of something like supple doeskin clad their feet, and bound about the brows of each of the newcomers on a silver-link chain was a large disc of glimmering amber crystal which swirled and sparkled with uncanny inner fires.

"I don't see any weapons, chief� guess they've come to have a polite palaver with the sky-gods from the silver bird," grinned the Venusian at his side. Phath's sense of humor generally tended to get broader the more danger they were in, so Star tried to ignore his sidekick. But, in fact, he saw nothing resembling javelins or bows or swords�not even knives. Each, including the young woman, however, did clasp a slim metallic baton of dully gleaming metal, perhaps ceremonial in function, like a mace of office.

The gigantic batlike flying steeds settled to the emerald sward some several yards away, their thundering membranous wings raising a dust-storm of leaves, twigs and bits of gravel. The first of the riders to dismount was a languid, slender young man who seemed a personage of high rank or importance, from the way the members of his entourage deferred to him. He hesitantly came nearer, staring with growing amazement at the three strangers. His wide eyes flew from Star's bronzed features, red curly hair and bright green eyes, to the diminutive green-skinned dwarf in the dusty red smock at his side, and the lithe, hairless, pink-eyed Venusian.

Above all else, he seemed fascinated with the Jolly Roger. From the way he stared at its sleek, glistening lines with awe and bewilderment, it was blatantly obvious that he had never seen�perhaps had never even dreamed�of such an astounding vehicle as the spacecraft .

And the gaze he turned on Star Pirate reflected this. It would seem that Phath's joke about "skygods from the silver bird" had struck a lot closer to the center of the truth of the matter than had at first seemed likely.

This personage and his retinue had all flown hither from the imposing structure directly ahead of them, which they soon discovered to be the palace of the prince. The second party, consisting of the young woman and what at first appeared to be a boy�but whom they discovered was a girl with her bright hair shorn mannishly short, a novice in the temple service, bidden this day to attend upon the person of the high priestess�had flown in the same instant from the upper works of the huge building at their backs, which proved to be the temple.

That palace and temple confronted each other across the plaza was symbolic of the confrontation and the struggle for power between the two centers of administration. But this they did not suspect until a bit later.

Star Pirate stepped forward and saluted the princely personage with a lifted palm. His other hand, however, although unobtrusively, hovered mighty close to the butt of his proton needle in its worn holster at his hip.

"I don't expect that you folks will be able to understand my lingo, but maybe you can read my meaning in the tone of my voice," he said. "We come as friends to visit you on a peaceful scientific mission, and we greet you in the name of peace."

The reply he received astounded him�but it came, not in words, but in the form of a cool thought-tendril insinuated into the depths of his brain.

There is no need to accompany your thoughts, lord, with vocal utterance. And we, in turn, greet you in the name of peace! I am Narba, prince and ruler of this country, the Great Vale of Tuluun. I bid you and your stranger-friends welcome to this city of Alazar, and will be happy to offer the three of you lords the hospitality of my palace yonder�

"Controlled telepathy, by the Twin Moons!" croaked Dr. Zoar just loud enough for Star Pirate to hear. "Thank the space-gods I left the sensors switched on as you said, lad. At last we will have measured the wavelengths of telepathic communication and of thought itself!"

Phath jostled the green dwarf into silence with a rude elbow.

"Watch what you're blabbing, frog-face," hissed the Venusian in sibilant tones. "Utton-bay yer ip-lay. Le�s not give the show away in front of all these telepaths�"

Dr. Zoar simmered towards a boil, then subsided. He cleared his throat with a grating cough and fixed the white-skinned space-adventurer with a cold hard eye that could probably pry open an oyster at twenty paces.

"A civilization where telepathic communication is the norm, my swamp-lizard of a friend, would of necessity have to be a civilization in which one politely ignores�or somehow manages to filter out and remain oblivious of�any thought-waves which are not specifically directed at you by another person. Otherwise polite society would collapse into raw red savagery in a moment. Think what would happen at a Manhattan cocktail party, or in a singles bar, or during a high-level business conference, or when a politician is giving a speech, if everyone felt free to read everyone else�s slightest thought, and you will realize what I mean!"

"Um," said Phath, with a shudder, looking gloomy. He hated it so, whenever Dr. Zoar proved to be right about something. Which, come to think of it, was depressingly frequent!

Just then Prince Narba hastily stepped aside as the young woman from the temple and her little novice strode forward. The woman advanced through Narba's entourage, which melted from her path like snow before a spring rain. She stepped forward, brushing past the Prince unceremoniously, not even deigning to cast a glance in his direction, and planted herself squarely in front of Star Pirate, hands planted on her hips, sweeping him from heel to crown with a sharp, searching gaze.

She was young and handsome, in a bold, domineering sort of way, and she moved with a swaggering arrogance that left no doubt in your mind that she held a remarkably high opinion of herself, and was not at all accustomed to being thwarted.

Her brilliant black eyes were afire with keen interest, and in their gleam shone something not unlike the fire of fanaticism. The redheaded space-adventurer had seen it before in other eyes, in his time, and knew that it usually meant trouble in anyone�s language.

Having raked Star Pirate with her eyes, and examined the Martian and the Venusian with the merest flick of her gaze, she turned searchingly to Prince Narba, who virtually cringed before her. It was not hard to see that power was divided between church and state in here in the Great Vale of Tuluun, and that, for the moment at least, church seemed to be uppermost.

You speak of 'hospitality' in the palace, Narba, as if you were wining and dining emissaries from some other city of the Vale! But these are not men, but gods! In sooth, they are none other than the very star gods, whose descent into the Great Vale has been for so very long announced as forthcoming by our prophets! And, as such, it were only fitting that I, Zarga, as high priestess of the star gods, welcome them, not you�and that they be most fittingly housed in the temple, not your hovel of a palace! Come, divinities! Follow me�

And without so much as a backward glance to ascertain that the "gods" were obedient to her command, the young woman turned on her heel and was about to go swaggering back to where grooms held the immense winged steeds of herself and the girl novice, when she found the child directly in her way and thrust her aside with a sharp ejaculation of impatience.

The girl fell, uttering a little cry of pain�the first vocal sound which Star Pirate and his comrades had as yet heard from the lips of the Persephonians. Until then they had not been fully certain that the pale-skinned, bright-haired denizens of Tuluun in fact possessed the power of uttering sounds.

Star stepped forward quickly and bent to assist the shaken child to her feet. Tears glimmered in her huge dark eyes as she stared at him, lips trembling with incredulous disbelief.

Lord�!

"Are you hurt, girl?" demanded Star roughly. Zarga had frozen in her tracks and was looking back over her shoulder with a face filled with a torrent of conflicting emotions, whereamong rage, amazement, and fury were preeminent.

N-no, lord�please�my mistress�

Prince Narba seized this momentary distraction to speak up, however hesitantly.

But, my lady priestess, these strangers do not in any wise resemble the likenesses of the star gods as recorded in our folios or basreliefs or statuary . . . surely, until we know for certain who and what they are, the palace would be most suitable�

Although the Prince, who seemed on the whole rather ineffectual, tended to defer to the haughty young priestess, it could be seen that he had not entirely surrendered the power of the monarchy to the authority of the temple.

They began the discussion, the Prince humble and tactful, the priestess punctuating her mental argument with sharp, emphatic gestures. At Star Pirate's side, Dr. Zoar chortled happily to himself:

"And to think that every mental transmission is being scanned and dissected by my sensors, and registering on the dials and meters! How delicious!"

"You mean your sensors are picking up these thought-waves?" demanded Star, surprised. Zoar shrugged and gave a leer which was his way of smiling.

"Certainly! You know that thought ts electrical ... that the brain is simply an electrochemical battery ... hitherto, attempts to measure the wave-length of human thought have been faulty and inconclusive, since the waves are exceptionally short and the energy behind such broadcasts relatively feeble ... but my sensors are detecting the whole thing."

The matter is settled, lords, said Prince Narba resignedly, turning from the priestess to address Star Pirate. We are agreed, Lady Zarga and I, that you and your comrades would most fittingly be housed in the temple of the star gods across the plaza�

Something warned the redheaded adventurer that perhaps it were best if the three "star gods" stayed as far as possible from their priestess, since their ignorance of their own theology was as complete and total as it could possibly be. And what was the point of being treated like a god, unless occasionally you decided to act like one?

"We disagree, Prince Narba, and desire to accept the hospitality of the palace," he said imperiously. "There will be time enough to visit the temple, where the Priestess Zarga will no doubt be happy to present the assembled clergy to us. For now, let us be gone to your palace."

Narba�s eyes lit with delight and his pale face broke into a smile of pleasure�exactly matched, Star Pirate noticed, by the venomous glare which lit the dark eyes of the priestess, and the expression of outraged disapproval which marred and twisted her handsome but cold features. It was more than obvious that the Lady Zarga was not used to being opposed in anything; nevertheless, under his keen, watchful eye, she wilted and sketched a humble bow. But he could guess how much it rankled her soul to submit even to the wishes of a god, when it ran contrary to her own wishes.

"Is it wise to leave the ship unguarded, lad?" asked Zoar worriedly. Star Pirate shrugged.

"Unless they know the combination of the lock, how could any of them open the airlock? Stop worrying, Doc, and c�mon. We�re armed and they�re not�and they think we�re their gods! How can we get in trouble?"

"I don�t know, I�m sure," muttered the diminutive Martian savant. "But I have a suspicion that we�ll manage to, somehow ..."

The Prince gestured, and room was made for the three adventurers behind the riders of the red-furred bats. The saddles were capacious enough to hold an extra passenger, Star perceived, and while he wasn�t exactly anxious to ride the flapping creature through the skies, gods aren�t supposed to be afraid of such things, so he pretended not to mind. It was a relief to the redhead to see that Dr. Zoar and Phath were taking their cue from his manner.

While the three newcomers mounted their saddles, however gingerly�in the case of Dr. Zoar�and distrustfully�in the case of the Venusian, Phath, who had no confidence at all in modes of transportation that did not involve machinery�Star could not help glancing over his shoulder to see the furious high priestess stalking away to her mount, followed by the little novice.

While the priestess did not deign to cast a glance behind, the child did, and the shy gaze she turned upon the tall, redheaded stranger was brimming with adoration ...

Once in the saddle, the grooms fastened them in place by belting thin leather straps about their thighs for safety. Then the order for flight was given by Prince Narba, and the riders dug their heels into the furry ribs of their gigantic steeds.

Vast wings snapped open like enormous Chinese paper fans, and beat the air, throbbing like pounded drums. Dust and leaves and twigs and gravel arose about them in a blinding cloud. Slowly, but then faster and faster, they ascended into the air on the giant bats. They circled the park once, then soared off towards the palace, landing on gigantic perches fitted into the upper works, which served as nesting-places�Star found it hard not to think of them as "hangars"�for the winged creatures.

He was pondering the problem of the priestess, Zarga, whom he had seriously offended by his whim to frustrate her plan to have him as her guest, choosing Prince Narba. Narba seemed intimidated by the priestess, with her imperious and domineering ways�

"As who wouldn't be?" muttered the Pirate humorously to himself.

Your pardon, lord? inquired the noble whose saddle he shared.

"Nothing�talking to myself ... but couldn't you read my thoughts?" Star added, rather curious. The aristocrat smiled and explained that as the "lord' ' was not at the moment wearing his "talisman"�and here he touched with one forefinger the disc of amber crystal all the Tuluunites wore fastened to their brows�his mental transmissions were singularly difficult to perceive.

The redheaded adventurer instantly guessed that these curious crystals in some unknown manner focused or concentrated the thought-messages, as a lens focuses a random beam of scattered light.

It was an interesting datum, and one which Star filed away for later reference.