The Saga of Pelican West
Astounding – February 1937
(1937)*
Eric Frank Russell

Petrified, the group stared at the mercy-gas container and its goggle-eyed bearer.  "Put those guns on the floor!" commanded the voice behind the mask.

-

I.

	It's hell to be old and marooned, worse to be marooned in solitude. Of course, there had been George Andrews, Bill Dorian, Fergie McOchtra and Captain Beck. He'd buried them all three weeks back, their faces rotted beneath a yard of Ceres' loam.

	Bert Pellinore West, erstwhile second navigator of the space freighter Lady Betty, sprawled across a rock and studied his reflection in a pool of water. The shining liquid mirrored a pair of gray eyes set in a muscular, leathery countenance surmounted by a  mop of bristly white hair. Not so good. Three-score years and ten years were O. K. on Earth, but forty-five years was the span of the spaceways. And he was thirty-nine.

	A pebble plopped, dissolved his features with a dozen ripples. He rolled onto his back, surveyed the spangled cosmic curtain, and pondered.

	They had been thirty days out from Great Plains City, the premier Martian space port, when Michaelson developed blue death. Terrestrial medicos claimed this affliction was bubonic plague complicated by alien metabolism. Anyway, Michaelson had got blue swellings in the armpits. There was no known cure. They'd given him an overdose of dope and incinerated him in the four-o'clock stern combustion chamber.

	Nest day young Jensen had the fateful lumps and might have concealed them but for the sharp eyes of McOchtra. Jensen swigged a special cup of coffee and passed out. They'd shoved his still-warm form into the six-o'clock stern chamber, and Beck had cursed like a pirate when the rocket expelled a partly charred body and threw the ship two degrees off line of flight.

	Solikon, Roberts and Quayle had displayed the fateful symptoms within forty-eight hours. Solikon and Roberts had innocently quaffed what they were given, breathed their last and sped along the Lady Betty's fiery wake. Ever suspicious, Quayle had refused to eat or drink. In the end they'd held him down while his lungs absorbed a liter of mercy gas. Then his sparks had pursued the others' into the maw of night.

	Fifty thousand miles Sunward off Ceres five more had paid the penalty for touching Quayle. The Lady Betty had landed on the surface of the little sphere; the fated five had been forced outside at the point of the ray gun. Lecko, senior member of the survivors, had tossed out a supply of food, iodine, quinine, one ray gun, two compressed air-guns and a box of poisoned darts. With a flash and a roar, the half-staffed Lady Betty had plunged into the sky and made for the Jovian system.

	Yes, he'd buried the others three weeks ago. Strange that he, Bert Pellinore West, Better known as "Pelican", had survived. So far as he knew he was the only man to produce buboes and recover. It must be the berries.

	He sat up, plunged a hand into a pocket, brought forth a score of plump, red berries plucked from an adjacent bush. They were tart, but refreshing, and packed his stomach comfortably. White teeth bit into the crumbly substance of a crimson fruit as he continued to consider the problem of his own survival.

	Queer how he'd hung on, just him. And Alfred, the ship's mascot. Darn it, where was the animated sausage? He got to his feet and stood up on the rock, chest heaving in the thin air.

	"Al-fred!" he bawled through cupped hands.

	"Honk!" came the response from dark recesses of a near-by gully.

	"Come here."

	"Come here," mimicked the voice raspily.

	"You come here, you overgrown fish bait!"

	"Fish bait," echoed the unseen speaker.

	"Damn!" Pelican West sat down with obvious exasperation.

	"Damn!" repeated the voice dutifully.

	Something moved in the shadows of the gully's depths, a small stream of pebbles cascaded down one side, the concealed speaker produced a veritable torrent of oaths.

	"Hurry up," shouted Pelican impatiently.

	Over the edge appeared a pair of brilliant optics set in a flat, horny head. The head moved forward followed by ten feet of sinuous body thicker than a man's arm. Weak rays from the distant Sun revealed a magnificent specimen of a Callistrian domestic ulahulah, or reticulated python.

	Rapidly, the serpent glided toward the man. There was something jaunty about its carriage, which, coupled with its large head and liquid, intelligent eyes, deprived it of the repulsiveness of its Terrestrial prototypes.

	"We've got to get a move on, Alfred," said Pelican West. "We've a thousand miles to tramp to get around this one-cent world, and if we don't stumble across anything civilized we're gone coons."

	He gained his feet, made certain his heat-ray gun rested securely in its holster, hefted his water bottle and haversack, slung an air gun over one shoulder.

	"Left, right, left—quick march!"

	"Honk!" said Alfred.

-

	It was the thirty-ninth day, Earth time, since the Lady Betty's departure. Pelican sat straddle-legged on the apex of a sixty-foot tor, the highest piece of ground he had encountered, and surveyed the scene before him.

	Away to the brief, deeply curved horizon stretched a monotonous landscape of dust, rocks and loam, molded into low hummocks and shallow gullies, dotted here and there with tiny shrubs and berry-bearing bushes.

	A heavy thump reached his ears, he turned his head, caught a momentary glimpse of something falling, and heard a second thump. He jumped to his feet, stared without avail, commenced running in the direction from which the mysterious sounds had come.

	Assisted by weak gravity, handicapped by thin atmosphere, he bounded along in giant strides, his chest straining mightily. A gun whined in a distant ravine; Pelican saw its thin, pale-golden beam angle to the sky. Two figures—a woman and a uniformed man—sprang from the depression, raced across his line of progress a quarter of a mile ahead. Four more figures sprouted from the same spot and rushed after the fugitives.

	"Pirates!" cried Pelican, flinging himself headlong into a hollow. He rolled in the dust, gained hands and knees, crept up the slope cautiously. With his ray gun in his right fist, he raised his head slowly above the rim.

	The leading man of the quartet, a burly individual with a week's growth upon his face, had ceased to run and was standing with legs braced apart, his weapon extended in a hairy paw, his eyes drawing a line to the escaping couple. A golden heat beam lanced from the gun's muzzle, crossed intervening space in a split second and struck the man in uniform. The poor devil collapsed without a sound, thin spirals of smoke ascending from the back of his skull. The woman shrieked.

	Callously, the marksman aimed again. Pelican go the fellow's image dead center in the flame of his Albada sight, squeezed shut the divided handle of his gun. The range was four hundred yards, but he made the bell ring first time, caught his mark in the middle. The pirate hooted like a factory siren, dropped, writhed onto his back and lay with legs kicking frenziedly and his arms flailing.

	Two of the remaining trio turned and raced for the gully whence they had come. The third hesitated, bent over his screaming companion, unconsciously lowering his own head into the center of Pelican's Albada. For one second he stood a man, the next he sat a lifeless trunk, with a smouldering cinder on its shoulders.

	Running crazily, the woman had described a half circle, bringing her fifty yards to Pelican's right. He called to her and she approached, sobbing hysterically. A roar of rockets came from the concealed gully.

	"Down!" shouted Pelican. "Down!" Without more ado he pushed her to the ground and smothered her from feet to head with dust and pebbles. "For heaven's sake, don't move. Whatever happens, don't move."

	He glanced around hastily, saw a boulder with a projecting upper edge, ran to it and wriggled into the narrow gap between rock and earth. The space available was scarcely adequate, but he crammed himself in as far as possible, did his utmost to simulate a rock, and hoped for the best.

-

	Rarified air shuddered under a barrage of sound waves, as the hidden rockets doubled their output. Something exploded into the sky and carried its hubbub in a sweeping circle around the field of action. The uproar moved to and fro as its source shifted rapidly from point to point, and when it came overhead Pelican opened a wary eye and saw a space liner's lifeboat burning the air at an altitude of five hundred feet. Scowling faces at the keel window were examining the terrain beneath.

	Dust bubbled and stank, small pebbles burst with whippish cracks when the flying searchers cast a tentative ray along the tiny valley.

	"Keep still," growled Pelican to the recumbent woman. "They're looking for a movement, and if you blink an eyelid you're a corpse."

	Methodically, the lifeboat cruised back and forth, covering all ground within a radius of one mile, releasing a ray whenever its outlaw crew thought they could see something to disturb. Eventually it gained height, streaked across the sky and vanished over the horizon.

	"Don't move yet," warned Pelican. "You stay put until I tell you."

	Ten minutes dragged past before he congratulated himself upon his own caution. With rockets silent, the lifeboat suddenly appeared like a phantom; it dropped from an immense height, turned on its power and drummed four times around the area. If its crew expected to catch their opponents napping, they were foiled. The tiny ship drove upward for the second time and departed with an air of finality.

	"You can get up now." Pelican scrambled from his refuge, dusted himself and stretched his arms. His companion came to her feet and stood revealed as a brunette, about twenty-five, not beautiful, yet attractive.

	"I'm Eve Kelshaw," she introduced herself.

	"Such a pleasure," responded Pelican. "I'm Pelican West. Let's get back to that hill where I've left my worldly belongings. We can talk over there just as well as here."

	"But Jim—Jim— Is he dead?" She stared wide-eyed, tears gathering again.

	"I think so. I'm sorry, but I'm almost certain he is. Wait here a minute while I go and see." He trudged away, looking back now and then and waving a hand reassuringly.

	It was better she hadn't accompanied him, he thought as he examined the body of her late companion. The corpse wore uniform and insignia of an engineer officer in the Earth-Mars passenger service. Below the left epaulet appeared the ship's name Ongortolla. Pelican turned the body over and noted the officer's brains had been cremated within the pan.

	Both pirates were dead. Pelican searched the clothing of all three cadavers, but found nothing worth retaining except a gun and holster belonging to an outlaw.

	He returned to Eve, gave her the spare weapon and holster and they walked back to the tor. Gratefully, she accepted a drink of water, ate two of Pelican's six ship's biscuits and completed her meal with a handful of berries.

	"Now tell me what happened," Pelican encouraged.

	"There's little to tell." She shrugged and gazed pensively into the distance. "I was official hostess on board the Ongortolla. When we were five days off Great Plains, our ship was pirated by Jason Kemp and his gang of toughs, and—"

	"Kemp, eh?" he interrupted.

	"Yes. He swept alongside us, clamped on with magnetic anchors, forced the air lock and placed a prize crew aboard. The Ongortolla hung in space until Mars had swung clear, then made for the asteroid belt."

	"And how does it happen they're chasing you around here?"

	"They weren't making for this world; they've got a lair somewhere else—Vesta I think. Something went wrong with the ship and they made an emergency landing here. Jim Kennedy, the Ongortolla's second engineer, took advantage of the confusion, broke loose, grabbed a lifeboat and escaped with me. The boat was only partly fueled. Half a dozen chased us in another boat and you saw what happened when we came down.

	"Where's the boat you came in?"

	"Still in the gully, I suppose."

	"Hey?" Pelican looked startled. "I didn't know there were two boats. Come on, let's have a look at it."

	"It's no use; there's no fuel aboard."

	"All the same, we'll have a look."

	They hastened over the ground and reached the gully. No boat was to be seen. Puzzled, they searched adjacent gullies, but the missing vessel remained missing.

	"I can guess what has happened to it," said Pelican. "You say there were six pirates, so two couldn't have left the boats. I killed two. That leaves four. The pair who didn't appear must have been dividing their fuel so they could make off with both boats. The surviving four must have gone two to a boat, launching them simultaneously when we were lying with our faces in the dirt."

	"Probably," she conceded.

	"That's another dirty trick on us." He grinned to cheer her up. "Which way did you come from the Ongortolla?"

	"That way."

	"O. K., we'll go that way. It's just as good as any other in this haven of delight. All roads lead to Rome, or so they say."

	They returned to the hillock, gathered their few possessions, divided food, water and weapons. Pelican searched around to make certain nothing had been overlooked and, satisfied, placed a couple of fingers in his mouth and emitted a piercing whistle. Disregarding Eve's questioning glances, he continued to whistle himself red in the face.

	"Curse the big, long string of—"

	"Oh!" exclaimed Eve. She clutched his arm. "Oh, look! A horrible snake."

	"It's only Alfred," he told her. "He's my pet. I'd like you to meet him. He's a Callistrian python, perfectly harmless and quite intelligent. Aren't you Alfred?"

	"Honk!" responded Alfred enthusiastically, gliding up and nudging his hand.

	"These snakes are just like dogs on Callisto," he assured the timid Eve. "Why, he can do tricks. Watch!"

	"I'm looking."

	"Now then—A is for Alfred, the luck of the ship."

	The girl watched, fascinated, as the serpent curled itself into a script A and writhed through the alphabet while Pelican continued to recite, with obvious pride.

	"P's the propulsion that drives you and me; Q is for queer, like the places we see." Obediently, the lissome body formed a P and a Q. "R is for rockets, the cause of our toil; S is for spittle, the engineer's oil."

	"I beg your pardon," exclaimed the girl.

	"Sorry, ma'am," he apologized awkwardly. "I forgot."

	"Fish bait!" sneered Alfred.

-

II.

	Gray fingers of dawn sneaked through purplish skies and heralded the third day's march. Jupiter and his satellites sank slowly in the west; an anemic Sun thrust its rim above the east horizon. Pelican nudged Eve into wakefulness and handed her a steaming water bottle.

	"E-e-eugh!" She yawned widely, and blinked at the bottle. "What's this?"

	"Hooligan's coffee."

	"How'd you make it?"

	"I plunked a dozen berries in the water and brought them to a boil with a dose of heat ray at ten-percent intensity."

	She sipped, made a wry face and sipped again. Pelican busied himself collecting equipment in readiness for departure. Eve finished her drink and looked around.

	"Where's the snake?"

	"Gone looking for shrews, probably. There are plenty of them about; you can see their burrows all over the place. Half a dozen in his stomach and Alfred's a he-man for the rest of the day."

	Casually, Pelican strapped his holster around his waist, filled the bottle at a pool, and slung the yet unused air gun over one shoulder. Eve came to her feet as Alfred slithered into view. With one last look at their camping place, the trio struck out northeast.

	For one hour they trekked steadily across the switchback terrain. Bushes grew more profusely, but still the landscape remained as monotonous as ever, betraying no sign of anything so alien as a rocket ship. They crossed a crest and passed down the farther slope into a valley deeper than any they had encountered. Eve hesitated, then stopped as they reached the bottom. She looked at Pelican anxiously.

	"It's queer, but I've had the strangest feelings for the last twenty minutes."

	"I've had 'em many a time," Pelican assured her. "It's the thin air."

	"No, not that." She stared around vaguely. "I'm perfectly sane, yet I've been feeling as if some one has been trying to explain to me things I can't hope to understand."

	"A touch of nervous trouble," suggested Pelican.

	"Maybe. But it's stronger than ever—and altered somehow since we arrived here."

	"How does it feel now?"

	"For all the world as if I was blind and deaf and was standing in the center of New York while a patient but defeated guide tried to make me understand what was about me."

	"Since you've described it so exactly, I'll admit I've been having the same ideas myself." Pelican looked a little uneasy.

	"Let's get out of here quickly. I'm afraid of spooky places like this."

-

	They hastened up the opposite slope and crossed another twenty valleys before Eve had recovered confidence enough to discuss the matter.

	"That sensation was too strong to be a delusion. It was something supernatural."

	"Bosh!" scoffed Pelican. "Things aren't supernatural merely because we can't find an explanation for them."

	"Can you imagine any explanation?" she challenged.

	"Let's suppose this world harbors a mighty civilization that is all around us, and—"

	"Nonsense," Eve interrupted. "Your own five senses tell you that isn't the case."

	"Are my five senses sufficient?"

	"Well—well—" She looked confused.

	"Suppose that life here, if any, and whatever it may be, has evolved only four senses, three, or all, of which are totally different from ours. And suppose their forms have a construction that doesn't register on our senses, while our forms make little appeal to their senses. Could either of us comprehend each other?"

	"Imperfectly, at least," she conceded.

	"Could you describe a color to a man blind from birth?"

	"No," she admitted.

	"Can you explain to a Martian what your nose is for and how it can smell?"

	"No. I've tried, and it's hopeless. Has a Marian ever succeeded in explaining to you what it means to poldek?"

	"A Martian can't explain it because no Terrestrial has been born with the ability to poldek. All I've been able to gather is that it's a sort of sense that enables them to perceive life, a faculty by which they can tell, with ease, where life is and whether or not anything contains life. But how they do it beats me completely."

	"I don't like to think there might be things I can't see hanging around us. It's much more comfortable to—" She broke off in mid-sentence, gasped and said, "Did you see that?"

	"What?"

	"Something like the wall of an immense building. The light caught it. It was shadowy and unsubstantial and seemed to turn past us as we walked through it."

	"You're dream— Hells bells!" He snatched Eve by one arm, dragged her aside. Together they stared at a wavering, watery vision of a monster wheel, with helical-cut gears, sliding past on their left. It vanished abruptly, leaving a vaguer impression of a multitude of shafts spinning madly at greater heights.

	"Like delirium tremens in an auto factory," said Pelican. "Come on, let's put our best foot forward. We're suffering from too little bread and too many berries."

	A hillock far higher than its neighbors came into sight on the northeast horizon. Eagerly, they made for the landmark, reaching it within thirty minutes. Squatting upon the crest was a giant boulder with a flat, weathered side bearing an inscription. In deep, clear-cut letters they read:

SANDERSON EXPEDITION
JAN. 1998

	"Keep your hands down," growled a deep voice behind them. Eve started nervously and clutched at Pelican. "I said hands down," shouted the voice. "Now then, turn around slowly, drop your guns in front of you, and remember you're the targets."

	They complied, turned round, dropped their weapons on the ground and stood with arms held rigidly to their sides. Eve and Pelican found themselves facing a squat, beetle-browed individual with a ray gun in his hand.

	"Danka!" exclaimed Eve.

	"Correct first time," acknowledged the pirate. He pursed his lips and whistled shrilly. A second outlaw came racing up and stared at the prisoners questioningly "Here's the little devl who escaped with Kennedy," Danka told him.

	"And her bold cavalier," added the other with a sneer.

	"What's your name?" demanded Danka, jerking his gun at Pelican.

	"Fetch." Pelican stood with arms held stiffly, and ignored Eve's expression of astonishment.

	"O. K., Mr. Fitch, we'll settle—"

	"Fetch!" corrected Pelican in a loud voice.

	"Watch him, Danka," warned the other outlaw, "it's a gag."

	"Oh, I can look after this—" His speech ended in a wild yelp, as a lithe shape flashed through the shrubs behind and whipped his legs from under him. He came down heavily, the gun flying from his hand.

	The second pirate made a frantic dive for the weapon as Pelican charged, got his fingers around the split butt, straightened up and half raised the gun. Pelican swung a steel-shod navigator's boot between the fellow's knees and kicked him. The man shrieked like a rabbit in a gin trap, dropped the gun and doubled up. Pelican swung a leg-of-mutton fist from the ground level and landed it on his opponent's nose with a satisfying crunch. Still folded up, the pirate somersaulted backward, his face a bloody mask.

	Hoarse bellowing attracted Pelican's attention to Danka. The ruffian lay on his back, his arms pinioned to his sides by three muscular coils of python. With her own ray gun gripped with dangerous tightness, Eve was dancing excitedly around the fallen pirate.

	"Call your—snake off!" roared Danka. "I give up."

	"I can't," said Pelican quietly.

	"But its constricting. It'll kill him," Eve chattered breathlessly.

	"Let it!" He fixed Eve with a cold eye. "I want you to scout around the nearest valleys and see if you can spot their boat. Be careful, there may be a couple of the gang on board."

	"But—"

	"Do as you are told," he commanded roughly.

	"You can't order me—"

	"Will you do as you are told?" Pelican stepped closer to her and stared stonily. "I know what I'm up to."

	Eve paled, muttered something unintelligible, cast a frightened glance ar the struglling Danka, and departed. Pelican watched her receding form until it vanished into a gully. He picked up his ray gun.

-

	The lifeboat rested on a shallow depression half a mile from the hillock. Eve came upon it suddenly and surveyed it from the cover of a bush. Its door stood ajar. Eve decided there was nobody aboard, walked up boldly and entered the boat. She emergged in time to see Pelican advancing over the crest, Alfred gliding at his side.

	"Local boy makes good," Pelican observed with grim humor.

	"You've murdered them," she accused.

	"What of it?" He clambered through the circular doorway into the tiny control room and studied the bank of instruments. "Iodine, twenty gallons; oxygenated ammonia, one eighty-eight gallons at two hundred pounds pressure; air-rejuvenating cylinders one third full, and—"

	"You killed them in cold blood," Eve persisted. She stood as far away from his as possible, her back to the cushioned wall, her face filled with revulsion.

	Pelican locked the door and took the pilot's seat. "Ever heard of the Lady Sue?"

	"The name is familiar, but what has that to do with it?"

	"She was sister ship to my own, the Lady Betty," he interrupted, "and her case was the cause celebre of 2006. Most of that year Kemp was in Mars, dickering for recruits for his gang and, in his absense, Danka, his deputy, pirated the Lady Sue."

	"Well?"

	"Danka couldn't be bothered with prisoners, at least, not with male ones." Pelican glanced around the cabin. "So he walked the whole twenty-seven of them through the air lock. Their bodies are now merely some of the flotsam and jetsam of the space lanes."

	"Oh!" Eve paled and put a hand to her mouth.

	"There isn't any employee of the Lady Line who wouldn't rip Kemp and his entire gang into little shreds and feel pleasure in doing it." Pelican swung round in his sear and scowled through the bow observaiton window. "My kid brother was on the Lady Sue." He moved the mixing levers and put a finger on the contact button.

	"I'm sorry." A soft, cool hand rested momentarily upon his own. "I'm sorry, very sorry."

	He shrugged, pressed the button. The rockets roared to life. Alfred slithered hastily under a rear bunk and gave vent to a hearty, "Damn!"

	Bushes to the boat's rear recoiled before the blast as the midget rocket ship double the length of its flame gouts, trembled, left ground and curved noisily into the sky. Swiftly, the lifeboat spiraled upward. Pelican controlling it with masterly hand. Eve watching the broadening circle of horizon.

	At twenty thousand feet nothing could be seen of the Ongortolla. Pelican brought the boat down, levelled it off at one thousand feet and let it hammer steadily into the northeast. A constant succession of ridges slid past as the crinkly surface of Ceres rolled under their stern.

	They had been traveling for one hour, when, suddenly, the mirage flashed out of nothingness. Pelican and Eve were keeping watch ahead and saw a forest of lattice-work masts sprout directly in their path. They were mighty erections, glistening, yet shadowy and vague, like great transparent radio masts betrayed by a coating of moisture.

	With a wild swerve, the boat endeavored to avoid the uncanny obstacles, but was too late. It plunged headlong through a tangle of phantasmal girders, with no noise other than bellowing of rockets. The vision blinked out and was gone.

	Beads of perspiration stood on Pelican's brow. He righted the boat, brought the compass needle swinging around, and peered through the observation window.

	"Did you see those masts that weren't?"

	"I did," Eve admitted. She shifted to his side and stared at the horizon. "There it is—the Ongortolla!"

	Pelican gazed in the direction indicated and saw a strip of light gleaming along the space liner's side, where it lay jutting above the sky line.

	"We'll be there in five minutes. Quick, fill a couple of guns from the boat's supply."

	"What are you going to do?" Eve broke the seals of a cardboard box, extracted a score of cobalt-shelled thermo charges, poured them, one by one, into a gun.

	"Try and capture the liner."

	"Just the two of us? It's suicide! There are seventeen pirates on her."

	"Just the one of us," declared Pelican firmly. "And that's me. You're staying in this boat. Nobody can get at you if you keep the door locked. You've got Danka's gun, the air gun and the darts. The air gun will be useful if our supply of thermo charge gives out."

	"But—"

	"I've carted that air gun from Jerusalem here and never used it yet," continued Pelican, determined to outtalk the objections he knew Eve was waiting to voice. "I'll leave Alfred with you, and if worst comes to the worst, you can always fire the rockets and beat it to somewhere safer."

	"Will you listen—" her words were cut off as the boat hit the surface, skidded through dust and dirt and came to rest.

	The Ongortolla lay five hundred yards away, it's immense, cylindrical bulk casting a shadow over intervening ground and darkening the lifeboat's starboard windows. Pelican leaped from his sear, crossed the cabin and unlocked the door.

-

III.

	"Listen to me," ordered Eve, "I'm going with you."

	"You're not," Pelican contradicted. He looked at her. His frown died away; his face saddened. "Pleae don't handicap me by complelling me to look after you as well as myself. Besides, this little boat is my only avenue of escape, and I'm trusting you to look after it."

	"O. K." She regarded him with troubled eyes.

	Pelican opened the door, jumped to the ground and grinned up at her. Alfred thrust his head past Eve's ankles and weaved in anticipation of the drop.

	"Stay back, you!" commanded Pelican.

	"Aw, hell!" grumbled Alfred, withdrawing his head and permitting Eve to shut and lock the door.

	With a slightly exaggerated air of nonchalance, Pelican strolled toward the Ongortolla. Two figures stood by the liner's air lock and waited for him. He was within twenty yards of the ship before one of the watchers spoke.

	"Where are Danka and Lane? Who are you?" The questioner was a muscular brute who studied Pelican with obvious surprise. His companion was smiller, shifty-eyed, ratlike. Both men had hands on their guns, but the guns were not in their hands.

	"I've come to tell about Danka," responded Pelican evenly. He continued his approach, his manner suggesting casual confidence, his weather ey on the air lock. "Kemp aboard?"

	"Yes, Kemp's here," answered the pirate. "What happened to Danka?"

	"Bad news." Pelican wagged his head mournfully and came to a stop beneath the great curve of the liner's side, with the air lock almost overhead. Six feet separated him for the two guards. "So sad! He's still dead, of course—but more so than ever."

	"Hey?" The burly bandit reddened, thrust out a heavy jaw and glared. "I don't like your sarcasm, hobo, and—A-a-argh!" Pelican's ray struck him in the gullet and burned half his neck away. His head flopped to his left shoulder. The corpse stretched and posed grotesquely before it collapsed.

	"B-b-by h-h-heavens!" stuttered the little rat, his face strained and white, his fingers plucking nervously at weapons they failed to draw. With calm deliberation, Pelican burned him between the eyes and watched the body slump across his fellow's.

	Holstering his guns, Pelican waved a triumphant salute to the distant lifeboat, climbed the collapsible ladder to the air lock and entered the Ongortolla.

	There was nobody on the starboard catwalk. Pelican trod the diamon-patterned steel plates cautiously, a gun in his left fist, his eyes flickering before and behind. He reached a bend, stopped, and heard voices mumbling behind the door of the gyroscope room. Gun ready, his right hand about the doorknob, he hesitated a moment, then crept away, placing his feet carefully to soften the clicks of his hobnailed boots. 

	Nerves taut, Pelican turned a corner into the control-room gangway, and came face to face with a red-headed tough. The outlaw sucked in his breath with surprise, eyed Pelican's gun and raised his hands.

	"Click your teeth and you'll never use 'em again," Pelican whispred.

	"What do you want?"

	"The prisoners."

	"They're locked in the stern cabins."

	"O. K. you lead."

	With the ray gun's black snout six inches from his spine, the redhead led the way along a central corridor to the stern. He trod heavily and made plenty of noise as they passed the chart room, the gun's muzzle jabbed between his shoulder blades. He moved ahead with haste.

	Lounging indolently against the wall at the end of the corridor was a deep-chested gorilla with low forehead, heady eyes and a jaw like the ram of a battleship. His gun was in his pocket. A sloppily rolled cigarette dangled from his thick lips.

	"Hi, Soame," rumbled the guard. "Who's the new guy?" His eyes found the weapon in Pelican's hand, he opened his mouth slowly; the cigarette dropped and splashed sparks upon the floor.

	"The keys," said Pelican.

	"I ain't got 'em."

	"Hm, if I can't search you alive I'll have to search you dead." The gun came up.

	"Don't, don't! I've got 'em."

	"Pull them out slowly, and be careful that you pull the keys, nothing else."

	"What d'you want 'em for? The door ain't locked."

	"It's not, hey? Well, turn around and enter. Never mind about playing 'knock-knock'."

	The gorilla licked his lips furtively, turned and pushed the door half open. His hands stretched high above his head, he shuffled forward with unneccesary slowness, Soame following, Pelican in the rear.

	They passed through the doorway. Pelican looked over Soame's shoulder and saw a ship's officer standing against the opposite wall, his eyes glued on the procession.

	"Drop that!" The door jerked at Pelican's side, something hard pressed into the small of his back.

	With reckless abandon, Pelican said, "Like hell!" rayed Soame and flopped to his face. A beam singed his top hairs as he went down. He rolled over, perceived a tall, sallow outlaw behind the door, ray gun in hand.

	The pirate's weapon lowered for a second shot, and Pelican saw his own face reflected in the silvered Albad sight. Flat on his back, he squeezed the butt of his gun, burned the lobe of the pirate's left ear and raised a blister on the paralumin wall.

	A twinge of pain distorted the pirate's face. He released his ray and scorched Pelican's neck, as the latter rolled over frantically. Both men fired together again. Their rays touched in mid-air, sparkled brilliantly at point of contact and filled the room with a smell of ozone.

	A heavy boot thumped Pelican's head, and a phantasmal aurora wavered before his eyes. He dropped his gun, turned over and struggled to his hands and knees, his brain reeling. The boot landed squarely in his ribs and sent a shaft of agony down his right side; sounds of oaths and blows came to his ears, as if from a great distance. He flattened. The boot missed his side and swept across his back; he twisted, seized a leg and jerked its owner down.

	Fighting furiously, the antagonists rolled across the floor. A scowling face came close to his own, and Pelican recognized the gorilla. He gasped as the thug's knee rammed into his stomach, got his two hands about a beefy neck and forced his thumbs into the fellow's windpipe. A sudden twist brought Pelican on top. He lifted his opponent's head and slammed it against the metal floor.

	Out one corner of an eye Pelican caught sight of a hazy figure in full charge; he releaed the gorilla and came to his feet. He blinked, found his eyes refused to focus, stepped back to avoid the onrush and fell headlong over Soame's body. A golden shaft stabbed air where his head had been, a form toppled across his legs, grunted and clambered to its feet.

	Pelican came perpendicular, found a leering face framed in a crimson nimbus, and socked it with all the strenght he could command. The face vanished like something plucked through a curtain, and was replaced by a vision of a fat man with one podgy fist describing a wild arc. Pelican kicked him heartily in the stomach, and the fat man sank slowly, ever so slowly, bellowing, "Oh! oh! oh!"

-

	Pelican rubbed his watering eyes and looked around. Soame lay dead at his feet; the fat man sat nursing his paunch, while shouting at the top of his voice; the gorilla reposed against a wall, his eyes shut, his nose a ruby mess. Behind the door the uniformed officer struggled with the fourth outlaw, who clung to his weapon and fought madly for a chance to use it. Pelican kicked the pirate's legs from under him. As he went down the officer fisted him between the eyes and snatched his gun. Pelican straightened.

	"Thanks," said the officer. "I'm Bill Wakefield, first engineer on this ship."

	"Second Navigator West of the Lady Betty," Pelican introduced himself. He retrieved his own gun from beside Soame's body, walked to the door and glanced down the passage. "It's a wonder that fat fool's yelling hasn't brought the whole horde down on us."

	"They're in the engine, chart and gyroscope rooms, all fairly soundproof places. I'll bet they haven't heard a thing."

	"Good!" Pelican eyed Wakefield speculatively. "I thought the prisoners were in this room. Where are they? How did you happen to be in here?"

	"The Ongortolla's crew and passengers are in the stern cabins, next door along the passage. They've been dragging us in here, one by one. Wanted us to put our signatures and finger prints at the bottom of a ransom note."

	"Holding you for ransom! I'd wondered why they had kept you alive, instead of treating you as they did the crew of the Lady Sue."

	"They didn't want money for us. I understand that Kemp's idea was to exchange us for twenty-five of his gang who are languishing in the jails of Earth and Mars."

	"Fat chance he had," Pelican scoffed. "Can you imagine the authroities making a bargain of that description?"

	"No," admitted Wakefield. "We'd taken it for granted we were as good as dead."

	"Oh! oh! oh!" moaned the fat desperado, arms folded about his middle.

	"Shut up!" ordered Pelican, savagely. "I've got a pain as well as you."

	"Oh! oh!" came the response.

	"Will you shut up or not?" demanded Pelican. He raised his ray gun.

	"You can't do that," exclaimed Wakefield, putting out a restraining hand.

	"Can't I? You watch!"

	The moaning man went white as a sheet, coughed weakly and nursed himself in silence. Pelican lowered his gun, Wakefield watching him askance.

	"Sorry—my control isn't what it ought to be," said Pelican. "You'd better go around and free the crowd next door while I keep an eye out on these toughts. Hurry up!"

-

	Wakefield frisked the gorilla, found his keys and vanished into the corridor. A minute later the Ongortolla's crew and passengers swarmed into the room, their eyes shining with relief. Under Pelican's directions they half stripped the recumbent pirates and bound them hand and foot.

	"Ah, Mr. West." Florid-faced Captain Crompton shook Pelican's hand with hearty vim.

	"How are you, sir?"

	"Not so bad for an old-timer."

	"Sorry, I can't tell you the story of my life," said Pelican, his attention on the door, "we've got to capture the remainder of the gang. You're in command now. Any orders?"

	"What do you suggest?"

	"There are five guns available, three of the pirates' and two of mine. I think that five of us, with a gun each, should conduct the assault, while you unarmed people wedge the door and sit on the prisoners."

	"Yes, that's the only method to adopt," agreed Camptain Crompton. He passed a hand through iron-gray hair. "Give me a gun and pick three more men."

	"You can't go. You're needed."

	"I'm going. That's orders!"

	"O. K., captain, let the ax fall where it may." Pelican shrugged, picked three likely men and distributed the weaons. In single file, Pelican, Crompton and antoher crept along the corridor in the direction of the chart room, while th eother men made for the engine room. Wakefield had told them that the engine room held five or six outlaws who were repairing cracked combustion chambers and were not likely to be armed.

	Four blue-jowled desperadoes sat playing cards in the chart room, when the trio burst through the door. Reaction sent cards, coins and cigarette stubs across the floor. Ray guns yawned in unshaven faces. The players surrendered and marched to stern, where they were bound and dumped with their glowering fellows. Six more pirates arrived from the engine room, arms held stiffly at their sides, features glistening with perspiration, clothes stained with oil and grease. Pelican counted rapidly.

	"Fourteen here and two cadavers outside, sixteen in all. There's one missing—Kemp!"

	"Two missing," corrected Wakefield, "Kemp and his sidekick Faragher."

	"I thought— But never mind. We'll have to get 'em. Let's try the gyroscope room. Somebody was there when I sneaked aboard."

	"You need not bother," came in muffled tones from the doorway.

	A girl passenger screamed. Pelican whirled and saw a figure at the door, a gas mask over its face, its fingers upon the pet cock of a long,black cylinder reposing in its arms. Petrified, the group stared at the mercy-gas container and at its goggle-eyed bearer.

	"Put those guns on the floor," commanded the voice behind the mask.

	"Kemp himself," murmured Pelican.

	"I said you were to put—" commenced Kemp. Phut! his shoulder jerked and light gleamed on his goggles. A woman's shriek reverberated along the corridor outside. Came a heavy thump, an oath, a gasp and a sound of fierce struggling.

	Kemp did not turn his head. Very slowly and deliberately he lowered the gas cylinder to the floor, released his hold upon it and staightened. Fascinated by his uncanny sluggishness, his audience watched without stirring. He raised his left arm like a character in a slow-motion movie, plucked a poisoned dart from his shoulder and held it up before his goggles. Still gripping the dart, he sank to his knees, remained in that positino for several seconds, then slumped forward. His eye pieces splintered when his head struck the paralumin floor.

	Eve appeared, air gun in hand, and ran to Pelican's side. Her face was flushed with excitement, her hands trembling.

	"I shot him," she gasped. "I shot him."

	"You shouldn't have come aboard," Pelican reproved.

	"I shot him," Eve repeated. "Faragher tried to stop me, but Alfred got him. They're in the passage. Call the snake off."

	"If I can." Pelican was dubious. A flood of reptilian profanity poured along the corridor as he went out.

-

	After twnety-four hours of hard, determined work, the Ongortolla was ready for departure. Pelican's inquiries concerning the extra pirate brought forth the fact that the outlaw ship Cosmowolf has arrived shortly after Eve's escape, had place Kemp and Faragher on the Ongortolla and had taken off an injured member of the gang. The Cosmowolf has departed for Asteroid C:37 and was expected to return at any moment.

	There was no time to be lost. At Pelican's suggestion, and under Crompton's orders six berry-bearing bushed were dug up and taken on board. A dozen passengers spent an hour picking berries from surrounding plants, filled a large barrel with the fruit and this, also, was placed in the storeroom.

	With a bellow and a terrific blast, that sent air waves racing halfway around the little world, the Ongortolla forced its great length forward, lifted and thundered into the sky. Blue atmospere gave way to purple, and that to the velvety blackness of cosmic space. Onward roared the Earth-Mars liner, millions of miles outside its normal traffic lanes, a freight navigator at its control board, where Crompton had relinquished all rights in favor of Pelican's local knowledge.

	Deftly, Pelican slanted the ship until its course made a twenty-degree angle to the Earth plane. Ahead flickered a semitransparent aurora, like an immense tiara set upon the jewel-girt brow of night. Far beneath the Ongortolla's nose, describing a mighty arc from starboard to port, lay the Sargasso of space—the asteroid belt.

	Directly above the belt the space liner corrected its angle and pointed its snout to the Jovian system. It scrawled a fiery line in the heavens. Through the stern-keel observation port, Wakefield peered down at a great concourse of tiny, half-illuminated spheres scudding through the void. His powerful binoculars discovered Ceres far below and well to stern; a thin spark was sinking into the lighted edge of the little globe. He reached for the ship's telephone.

	"Vessel just landing on Ceres."

	"Probably the Cosmowolf," answered Pelican. "Well, they're too late. They're faster than we are, but by the time they've landed, scouted around, taken off and circled Ceres just to make certain, we'll be well on our way. They can catch us if they can see us—but I doubt if they can manage it before we reach the area of Jovian armed patrols."

	"Humph!" Wakefield replaced his receiver, focused his glasses on Ceres again. The spark had vanished.

	They had been a week on Ganymede when Pelican was summoned to the Palace of Justice. He went there accompanied by Eve and Alfred. He was admitted to Blenkinsop's office wihtout delay. He left the girl and the snake in the outer room. Blenkinsop, plump and pompous as ever, rested his heavy form in a swivel chair. He sniffed, rubbed one side of his nose with a fat finger, shuffled some papers on his desk and ordered Pelican to sit.

	"Ahem, West," he commenced, "it is my painful duty to report to you the finding of the commission of law administration."

	"Well?" asked Pelican curtly.

	"After most careful and painstaking examination of various written accounts made by yourself and others, the commission find you guilty of usurping the prerogative of the law by administering the death penalty to two wanted criminals, to wit, Herman Danka and Walter Lane."

	"I've admitted it."

	"This offense is tantamount to fourth-degree murder, and merits a penalty of ten years' hard labor in the Martian mines." Blenkinsop wagged his eyebrows and cleared his throat. "However, the commission have been so impressed with evidence of extenuating circumstances in your case that they have decided to temper justice with mercy."

	"Isn't that nice?" inquired Pelican.

	Blenkinsop reddened, scowled and contineud in a loud voice. "You are sentenced to be deprived of your certificate as second navigator for a period of two years, and you are prohibited from being employed in any position superior to fourth navigator with the same period."

	"That means, in effect, that I am being mulcted of one year's salary and two years' promotion."

	"Law and order must be upheld, if civilization is to be preserved," snapped Blenkinsop.

	"Such as it is."

	"I would have you understand that I, personally, am not interested in your degradation." Blenkinsop thumped his fist on his desk and glared. "I am a busy man and have neither time nor desire to bandy words with you. Kindly close the door as you go out."

	Pelican went out, closing the door so that Blenkinsop's ink leaped in its pot. Harrison, tall, gray-haired chief of the Lady Line was waiting with Eve.

	"What happened?" asked Harrison. He listened carefully and sympathetically as Pelican told him, then said, "It won't affect your seniority—I'll see to that."

	"It will affect my pay," Pelican complained.

	"Yes, that's hard lines. Still, you'll get a tidy sum for the salvage of the Ongortolla."

	"After I've filled in twenty forms and waited five years for them to circulate through twenty equally torpid government departments.

	"True, true." Harrison rubbed his chin and looked vaguely troubled. "There are the berries you know. They've made you look years younger, darkened your hair and put some more weight on you. If they turn out to be a certain cure for blue death, as well as an antidote for space strain, you'll get a tremendous amound of credit."

	"Ah, take the cash in hand and waive the rest," quoted Pelican. He glanced at Eve and she looked confused.

	Harrison intercepted the glance and said, "Maybe it's not necessary to remaind you that the Lady Line pays married employees double the wages of single ones."

	"I'd thought of that already," Pelican admitted. He favored Eve with a bold stare and she blushed furiously.

	"You know what sailors are!" put in Alfred with a profound air.

The End