"How did you ... know my name?" hissed the veiled one. Star Pirate laughed, and reached out and twitched away the veil, revealing a balding, elderly Earthling with rheumy blue eyes, a large nose, and not much chin.
"You were listed as present on several of the trips made by Interplanet freighters when they were raided by The Blur," he said. "And your speciality is in the field of electromagnetic radiation. It did not take very much detective work to discover that on three different occasions you contested in court Interplanet's claim to certain patents resulting from your work—"
"For which I was inadequately paid," hissed the balding scientist in venomous tones. "I decided to use my genius—which they valued so little!—to reduce Interplanet to beggary. The which I would have done, had not you come meddling into affairs which have naught to do with you—"
"Captain Quolk, an unmarked cruiser is suddenly in the vicinity, and is closing upon us with magnetic grappling beams," cried an ensign.
"Quite all right," declared the yellow-skinned Uranian. "Bosun, conduct Professor Pertinax to the brig, and lock him up. But first I want the prisoner subjected to a strip-search, in case he has any of his nasty little gadgets on him!"
Star laughed and slapped Pertinax between the shoulders, where he appeared to have a natural hump. "Oh, I doubt if you'll find anything other than this—it's the instrument which made him seem invisible to us."
"Is it really?" asked the Uranian, curiously. "How does the thing work?"
"Quite simply, really," said the Pirate. "it broadcasts a jamming frequency in the same wavelengths as visible light, but in a globular and heterodyning field, which in effect bends light around the figure wearing it, so that it vanishes to our sight. Clever, but not all that mysterious."
Stripped of his invisibility projector, The Blur was led off between burly men-at-arms. Quolk turned to his "purser" with rare good humor in his beaming smile.
"And what will we do about yonder black wolf?" he boomed, gesturing at the corsair ship.
"Nothing. When the airlocks do not open, The Blur's men will guess something has gone wrong, and will flee to their base," said Star. "What they will not guess, is that my own ship is waiting—and that I already know where they are going!"
The Uranian bent upon the redhaired youth a stern but admiring gaze. "You are quite a remarkable young man," he said softly.
"Not at all, actually," grinned Star. "Callisto is famous and unique for more than one reason. One of these is that it is the only moon in the System—actually, it's big enough to be considered a planet, and would be, if, like Mercury, it circled the Sun and not another planet—the only moon in the System, I say, that has a moon of its own. This miniature moonlet is known as Callisto-Alpha. It's less than half a mile wide, and nobody ever remembers it's there ... except for a certain old Martian scientist I happen to know. Well, that's the site of the secret base of The Blur's raiders. It has to be: there's nowhere else to go; if you don't land on Callisto, or go off into deep space, you have to land on Callisto-Alpha, to unload your ingots of rhodium and vanadium and—"
"Why did The Blur concentrate on metals like that, anyway, I wonder?" muttered Captain Quolk. Star Pirate grinned again.
"I can even answer that one, too, I think! He wanted to get a sufficiency of non-ferrous metals to build an indetectable space-cruiser that wouldn't show up on a magno-detector! This would give The Blur and his gang of outlaws the freedom to roam the spaceways at will, leaving the Space Patrol helpless to pursue them. They could have preyed upon the shipping of world after world, bringing Interplanet Lines to its knees. And when we investigate The Blur's base on Callisto-Alpha, I'll bet you fifty credits we find a space-cruiser made of noble metals, and about half-built!"
Captain Quolk heaved a hearty sigh of relief.
"Young fellow, you are a remarkable person. And if you don't mind accompanying me to my quarters, I have been hoarding a cask of century-old Martian fire-brandy for just such an occasion as this one has proved to be ..."
"Lead the way, sir," said Star Pirate, with a smile.