Then at last came the day when guards took him to the identical court where Wilkerson had been tried. The evidence was brief and to the point. He was apprehended trying to sneak into Venus when his clearance papers called for Terra as his destination. He had on board eight cases of illicit liquor. He had no acceptable explanation. Guilty. Two years in the Swamp and the loss of his ship was the sentence. Then they took him back to his cell to await the next caravan to the penal camps.

The second stretch of waiting was harder to take than the first, for he had placed the enigmatic collector now in his memory. The man was Von Kleber, thought to have died many years ago in the uranium mines of Sans Espérance. Karns knew him to be a convict from the fact that he had grafted new skin on his face and head so that the burns and baldness caused by radioactivity would not show. But that he was the notorious Von Kleber himself had not occurred to him. And with that recognition came the other. Raoul Dement was the man known as Frenchy the Hop, vice-president of the Von Kleber ring. It was he who had operated the narcotic racket while the big boss turned his attention to such other lines as piracy, white-slaving and smuggling in general. If such men could flourish unchecked in the well-policed Jovian satellites for more than a decade, it was hopeless to expect to dislodge them from their place on corrupt and autonomous Venus.

And so time dragged on and Hank Karns sat, awaiting the day when he would be taken away to the Swamp. He wondered apathetically whether he would be sent to the same camp where Wilkerson and Hildreth were. But at last there came a day when footsteps rang again in the corridors and he heard doors being opened and men taken away. Finally men stopped before his own cell and called him forth. Between two soldiers they marched him away.

To his surprise they took him first to the street, where three sedan chairs were waiting. The guards very politely indicated that Karns was to get in the middle one and they took the others. Hank clambered in and they set off. Shortly they drew up before the courthouse.

He was met inside by a tall, slender man of nearly his own age who wore the uniform of Chief Inspector of the Interplanetary F.B.I.

"How are you, Captain?" he said cheerily. "Sorry you had such a long stay in jail, but we'll try to make that up to you. Come in here and let me show you something?"

Hank Karns looked at the inspector in amazement. He was Frank Haynes, 

 Prev. P 17/19 next