The flavor, a bit too bitter for Earthlings, was mostly favored only by the colonists, and the stuff was seldom shipped off-world.
Phath set the Jolly Roger down in a small, raw clearing crudely hacked from the weird forest of pallid, nodding stalks. Here stood a small shack of prefabricated plastic panels, and a couple of small outbuildings, one of them a shed with sheet-metal sides and roof which looked to be large enough to house the Sweet Sue, and, as later came out, did in fact serve as a hangar for the battered, rusty little two-man tug when she was resting up between space-ventures.
In the rear of the plastic shack the two caught a glimpse of a sizeable patch of cultivated soil arranged in neatly hoed rows, where grew potatoes, onions, carrots, green peppers, what looked from this distance to be lima beens, lettuce, beets and tomatoes. There were also a couple of rows of ripe golden corn, a small but heavy-laden apple tree, and a patch devoted to watermelons and canteloupes.
"Guess they do all right for themselves here," observed Phath. As chef and general factotum of Star’s secret base, he grew the same fruits and vegetables, but in hothouses and hydroponics tanks, as Haven's atmosphere, temperature and supply of sunlight were not as good as those to be found here on jungle-clad Ganymede.
The two got out of the cabin of their craft and started to walk across the raw, muddy clearing towards the crude little shack, but came to a halt when a slim figure emerged onto the little porch and showed them the glistening, brassy prong of a proton needle. The weapon was held by a slender, tanned girl in her twenties with a curly mop of honey-blond hair, a dusting of freckles across her small nubbin of a nose, and clear steady gray eyes that did not waver as she confronted the two men. She was slim, with long legs, and wore a loose, dark red sweater and tan slacks. Even in these drab garments, her figure was enticing, thought Star to himself with an appreciative gleam in his emerald eyes.
"You can stop right there," the girl said stoutly, "and turn around. Go back to your ship, get in, and take off. Can't you leave Uncle Scotty alone? He's worn out with mourning Uncle Bill’s death, and I worry about his health. If you Patrol officers have to pester him with more of your eternal questions, call us on the televisor phone!”
"I'm not a Patrol officer, Miss Barlow," Star said, "I'm the man that arranged your uncle's bail. They call me ... Star Pirate."
The blonde girl paled, gasped, swayed for a moment, staring. Then the proton needle sagged, savered, dropped, and she looked about to faint. Star raced to help her, but the lithe and nimble Phath got there first and eased her gently to the flooring of the porch.
6. The Ghost Strikes Again
The fiery liquid in Phath's hip-flask of strong Venusian brandy proved to be a potent restorative. A swig or two of the golden fluid set the slim girl coughing, and very soon she was herself again.
"You must forgive me, please!" she said, limpid blue eyes pleading. "But the last few days have been a hellish ordeal for Uncle Scotty and me, and to ... suddenly realize we had a friend Like Star Pirate ... well, I—I—"
Star grinned that impish grin of his, and silenced her with a lifted hand. "No need to apologize, Miss Barlow," he said. "We’re here to help,"
"My name is Susan," she said with a wan smile. His green eyes sparkled.
"As in Sweet Sue, I suppose?"
She nodded and sat up, thanking Phath for the brandy with a nod. "Uncle Scotty is resting, but I'll have to wake him pretty soon to have his lunch. The doctor said he must keep his strength up ... you can talk to him then."
"Fair enough," Star said cheerfully. "And the first thing I'll want to know is—where are the other six gems your uncles discovered on that uncharted moon? Branigan says they were not on the person of either man, nor in their little craft, and that McGuire refused to reveal their hiding place. I very much need to examine the gems for myself."
"Hid 'em in the only place no one'd think to look, Mr. Star Pirate," said a weak voice from the doorway leading to one of the other rooms. "Big Bill, he put the metal box right smack in the firing chamber of Sweet Sue's cyclotron!" They turned to see the thin little Scotsman leaning against the door. He gave them a shaky grin, then came faltering over to wring Star's hand in a grateful grip.
"Clever!" murmured Star Pirate, and Sue Barlow sat her uncle down and began serving him a hot, nourishing soup, with a thick chicken sandwich and a bowl of fresh chopped salad. "No one is likely to go poking around in the middle of the atomic motor which powered the little tug."
A little while later, having retrieved the queer alloy box from its secret hiding place, the redheaded space adventurer was examining the six shimmering black pearls with a variety of cunningly miniaturized instruments he had fetched with him from his ship.
"Find anything, chief?" inquired the Venusian when he was finished. Star shrugged.
"Nothing, really," he said, rather ruefully. "The pearls have no magnetic charge, are not radioactive—outside of their unexpected weight, there's nothing odd about them except their rarity. Mineralogy knows nothing of such stones ... only the lost Asterites mined them, I guess."
"And are they really as rare and valuable as Uncle Scotty says they are?" demanded Sue Barlow, breathlessly.
"Worth a huge fortune, I’d say," grinned the Pirate. "Enough to send you to the classiest finishing-school back on Earth, and buy you all the pretty dresses and fine jewelry any girl's heart could desire."
The two adventurers were just leaving the little shack in the forest, when the televisor chimed. It was Branigan calling for Star Pirate, on the off-chance that he happened to be there. In the ground-glass view-screen, the Patrol officer's face was grim and heavy, his expression an odd mixture of sheepishness and truculence—a combination Star had never before seen in a human countenance.
"What's up, Branigan?"
"You can tell McGuire he's out of suspicion," muttered the officer in subdued tones. "That is, unless he's anywhere about Madame Ong’s Cafe ..."
"McGuire’s right here in the cabin," said Star, "where he’s been during the hour or so I've been here. What happened in Madame Ong’s Cafe? Another ghost-murder?”
Branigan gave him a sour look. "Should have known you'd be onto it, you young devil! But it’s quite true—black, ghostly shape throttled the life out of a dancing-wench in front of dozens of witnesses. Marks on the girl's throat are identical with those on Barlow, says the coroner. Happened about twenty minutes ago."
He rang off, leaving the Pirate staring with a baffled expression into the blank gray screen.
"The same black ghost or ... or another?"
7. The Murderer—Unmasked!
The Jolly Roger shrieked like a meteor as it flashed through the misty skies of Ganymede. At the giant spaceport, the trim little craft rode down on a blazing pillar of rocket-fire as it settled into a landing-pit of blistered metal. Within moments, Star Pirate and his Venusian comrade strode Into Madame Ong’s Cafe and were met by Branigan.
Star looked around swiftly, sharp green eyes missing little. In the case of this particular establishment, he correctly guessed that "cafe" was a polite euphemism for "house of joy," for the dancing-girls were slim and young and of seductive loveliness, and beyond the huge square stone-walled room of the cafe, in a number of small cubicles, discreetly veiled behind tinkling bead curtains, were dispensed pipes of the forbidden Saturnian drug quang, if his keen nostrils were any judge.