Page:Amazing Stories Volume 10 Number 13.djvu/65

Rh good idea for me to familiarize myself with the terrain. It will take only a minute or two more and I didn't think you'd mind."

"Why don't you tell him the real reason, Dan?"

This disconcerting remark came from the third occupant of the space shipspaceship [sic], Lieutenant James Sullivan.

Tall, muscular, with Celtic features and a weather-beaten, saddle-colored skin, Sullivan was reclining languidly in a padded hammock stretched across the control room. Suspended weightlessly a few inches above his chest a peculiar object hovered. Composed of small pieces of metal, it was shaped like a large apple from which some ravenous boy had taken several generous bites. Anyone, who was familiar with the fads of the day, would have recognized it as a three-dimensional, magnetic "jig-saw" puzzle.

From a basket which was also floating in midair, Sullivan selected a tiny section of iron and attempted to fit it into a niche of approximately the same shape. With a grunt of disgusted negation, he put the piece back in the basket and tried another one.

For a few seconds nobody spoke. Apparently Mayer had decided to ignore Sullivan's impertinent question.

It remained for Captain Brink to ask, "What do you mean, Jimmy? Why do you think Dan wants to circumnavigate Ganymede?"

"If you really desire to know," Sullivan told him, "Dave's real interest is not so much in the landscape as in the inhabitants of the Ganymede's Western Hemisphere—or perhaps I should have said in one certain inhabitant."

"I still don't integrate with you," the captain rejoined. "You are getting so woozy about puzzles that you even talk that way."

"Then permit me to elucidate. Doubtless you recall that, when Dan arrived on Ganymede a few months ago one of his fellow passengers aboard the space liner was a certain pulchritudinous and flavicomous female by the name of Ingeborg Andersen."

"Oh, you mean the daughter of Lars Andersen, the missionary."

"Herself in person. I understand that during the space flight from Mother Earth to Jupiter's fair satellite, a very sweet little romance developed between the said blonde Nordic and our mutual friend, Ensign Mayer. Perhaps you haven't noticed that he even carries her portrait inside the cover of his gravinul."

"Isn't anything sacred from your prying eyes?" Dan growled. Then to Captain Brink he said, "Jimmy is right, Chief. Miss Andersen is my principal reason for wanting to come this way. You see, I've had a sort of premonition—an intuition of impending danger or—"

"A what?" Brink yelled.

"Well, a sort of hunch that the mission—" Mayer bit off his sentence in the middle and then went on: "Nothing would please me better than to find out that my fears are unfounded, but I just couldn't resist the temptation to make sure. I hope you don't mind, Chief."

Before Brink could answer, Sullivan interposed with: "Of course he doesn't mind! After all, Captain Brink is human, you know, and I understand that even he was young and romantic once upon a time."

Brink grunted and muttered, "A. Z., Dave. Go ahead and treat yourself to as much Norwegian blonde as you can see from an altitude of fifty kilometers. You understand, of course, that we cannot descend any lower than