The Three Planeteers

From Earth, Venus and Mercury, three Musketeers of Space, accompanied by a female D'Artagnan, rocket out in a grim battle against the League of the Cold Worlds!ExcerptThey sauntered through the crowded, krypton lit street bordering the great New York spaceport, casually, as though there was not a reward on their heads. An Earthman, a Venusian, and a huge Mercurian, looking merely like three ordinary space-sailors in their soiled, drab jackets and trousers.But inwardly John Thorn, the lean, dark-headed Earthman of the trio, was queerly tense. He felt the warning of that sixth sense which tells of being watched. His brown, hard-chinned face showed nothing of what he felt, and he was smiling as though telling some joke as he spoke to his two companions."We're being followed," he said. "I've felt it, since we left the spaceport. I don't know who it is."Sual Av, the bald, bow-legged Venusian, laughed merrily as though at a jest. His bright green eyes glistened, and there was a wide grin on his ugly, froglike face."The police?" he chuckled.Gunner Welk, the huge Mercurian, growled in his throat. His shock of yellow hair seemed to bristle on his head, his massive face and cold blue eyes hardening belligerently."How in hell's name would the Earth police spot us so quickly after our arrival?" he muttered."I don't think it's the police," John Thorn said, his black eyes still smiling casually. "Stop at the next corner, and we'll see who passes us."At the corner gleamed a luminous red sign, "THE CLUB OF WEARY SPACEMEN." In and out of the vibration-joint, thus benevolently named, were streaming dozens of the motley throng that jammed the blue-lit street. Reedy-looking red Martians, squat and surly Jovians, hard-bitten Earthmen-sailors from all the eight inhabited worlds, spewed up by the great spaceport nearby. There were many naval officers and men, too-a few in the crimson of Mars, the green of Venus and blue of Mercury, but most of them in the gray uniform of the Earth Navy.