Part 2

"Not so far now," Nada was saying. Her face in the dimness was turned toward Morgan, and she was trying to smile--a frightened, puzzled smile. And suddenly he sucked in his breath. Her teeth were shining with blue-green iridescence; luminous with a blue-green light streaming from them! Radioactive, stroboscopic light! The treasure of Zolonite he had come here to find. It must be here close at hand!

Morgan gripped the girl and stood still, peering around.

"What is it?" she murmured with new terror.

"Wait! I'm looking around for something."

And then he saw it. Zolonite in almost its pure state. The vein of its out-cropping was a crescent curve diagonally up the wall; and beneath it, shining chunks had crumbled and were lying strewn. Swiftly Morgan stooped, gathered up handfuls, stuffed them into his pockets. Samples, and then he would bring back a mining crew to open this up. And even the samples would be worth a sizable fortune. But the space-pirates wanted this, too.

Solo Morgan, at that instant, was not quite clear in his mind what he would try to do. But the feel of the girl's pliant waist within his arm as they ran, decided him. She was certainly more important than the Zolonite.

"I'm taking you to my ship," he murmured suddenly. "Don't bother to put up any argument now. That's where you're going."

He saw her turn and stare at him. They had come abruptly to the end of the tunnel; the sheen of Saturn-light was on her face, shining in her misted eyes as she regarded him.

"Taking me to earth?" she said uncertainly.

"I sure am. You can't live out your life here, just for a bunch of weird animals."

"But some time you'd bring me back?" she murmured tremulously.

"Sure I would. Got to come anyway to mine the Zolonite."

Here was the clump of rocks where he had been when first he saw Nada. His leaden cylinder was lying here. He stuffed the Zolonite samples carefully into it. Sealed it.

"Now we go down the mountain, Nada, to my ship down there."

A sizzling flash with a tiny crack of thunder interrupted him. The bolt from nearby sizzled over their heads as Morgan, with a sweep of his arm, knocked the girl to the ground and flung himself beside her.

"That's them," he muttered grimly. "Keep down, Nada."

Another bolt cracked with a prismatic shower of sparks on the rocks in front of them. Morgan and the girl were lying in a little depression now, protected by a broken line of rocks with a cliff close behind them. He could see where the pirates were gathered, at the bottom of a small gully some fifty feet away. And then in the silence, an ironic chuckling voice floated over.

"Got you, Morgan. No use putting up a fight. Toss out your gun an' we won't kill you."

Morgan, watchful for the chance to drill one of them if he showed himself, lay quiet with the huddled girl trembling beside him.

"Got your wife with you?" the voice drawled. "That who it is? Come on out and let's have a look at her. We won't hurt her." There was a burst of raucous laughter from the other pirates.

Morgan did not reply. His brain was busy trying to find an out.

* * * * *

Morgan could see that there was no chance for him and the girl to move from where they were lying. He had chanced a leap from here against Nada's old-fashioned explosive-gun with its single small bullet, but he couldn't take such a chance against modern bolt-weapons. The least move would expose them in the full sheen of Saturn-light.

They lay still.

"So you just want to stay where you are?" the voice called. "Okay, we'll get you."

They were invisible; but back down the distant little gully Morgan suddenly saw the blob of a creeping figure; one of the pirates trying to get to where he could chance a leap. Morgan tensed; raised his gun. The shadowed blob moved again; straightened a little. Morgan's flash spat its bolt. A scream mingled with the tiny thunder-crack, and the blob leaped into the air, turned over and crashed down again, inert upon the rocks.

It brought a fusillade of shots; but they splattered harmlessly with a great shower of sparks on the blackened rocks. And suddenly the trembling girl gripped Morgan.

"Look! Cah is flying over there." She pointed.

There was a flapping of wings in the Saturn-light. And the bird's eerie, cawing, chattering voice. "Cah sees them. There they are!"

The excited bird's fluttering shape was visible. "Cah sees them! Cah sees everything!" it chattered.

A bolt from one of the pirates mingled with its cries. The flash shot up. The huge bird, its weirdly childish voice stilled forever, came wavering down, turning end over end until it thudded heavily on the rocks.

"Oh poor Cah," Nada murmured. Then she gasped: "Oh look! There by the little gully."

The rocks on the upper lip of the small gully where the crouching pirates were gathered were splashed pale-white by the Saturn-light. And in the glow there now, a thin little red line was visible. A moving line. It stretched back over the rocks, down into another hollow and up again. Morgan caught his breath as he stared. It was a line of tiny, moving red figures. Myriads of them; round things small as the end of his finger.

The rolling, red ants. They came hitching themselves, scuttling; a vast little army. And then he saw other lines of them converging on the gully; marching grimly, silently to battle, summoned perhaps by Cah's excited calls.

Breathlessly Morgan and the girl watched. The pirates undoubtedly didn't notice the marching red hordes of tiny insects behind them. A dozen thin red moving lines now. Silently but inexorably they crawled over the rocks, down into the gully.

Then there was a startled cry. "What in hell!" And one of the pirates incautiously straightened, his arms flailing wildly, his hands plucking at his clothing, at his face.

Morgan raised his gun, but Nada shoved it down. "No need," she murmured. "The bites of those red ants are quite poisonous."

Silently then, they stood and watched the strange battle.

It was a ghastly attack. Within a minute the space-pirates were screaming, staggering. Half a dozen of their frenzied bolts went wild into the air. And then they had flung their guns away, frenzied, demoniac as they fought the swarming, viciously biting little insects crawling upon them. There were four of the men. Morgan could have shot them all as they staggered out into the open, but there was no need. In another minute they were rolling in agony on the ground, with yet more thin red lines converging upon them. And then at last their blood-chilling screams were silent. In the Saturn-light they lay motionless, red with their blood and red with the swarming hordes that crawled over them.

Morgan was standing now, with the horrified, shuddering girl trembling against him. The lead cylinder with its treasure of Zolonite was clipped to his belt. But with his arm around Nada he knew that she was the real treasure he had found upon Titan. He held her closer. Nobody would ever be able to call him Solo Morgan again.