The Three Planeteers For All
by Edmonda Hamilton
Copyright 2010 Edmonda Hamilton
A Gender Switch Adventure
CHAPTER I
Comrades of Peril
THEY 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 Earthwoman, a Venusian, and a huge Mercurian, looking merely like three ordinary space-sailors in their soiled, drab jackets and trousers.
But inwardly Joan Thorn, the lean, dark-headed Earthwoman of the trio, was queerly tense. She felt the warning of that sixth sense which tells of being watched. Her brown, hard-chinned face showed nothing of what she felt, and she was smiling as though telling some joke as she spoke to her two companions.
'We're being followed,” she said. “I've felt it, since we left the spaceport. I don't know who it is.'
Sua Av, the bald, bow-legged Venusian, laughed merrily as though at a jest. Her bright green eyes glistened, and there was a wide grin on her ugly, froglike face.
'The police?' she chuckled.
Gunda Welk, the huge Mercurian, growled in her throat. Her shock of yellow hair seemed to bristle on her head, her massive face and cold blue eyes hardening belligerently.
'How in hell's name would the Earth police spot us so quickly after our arrival?' she muttered.
'I don't think it's the police,' Joan Thorn said, her 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 Earthwomen-sailors from all the eight inhabited worlds, spewed up by the great spaceport nearby. There were many naval officers and women, 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.
Joan Thorn and her two comrades paused on the corner as though debating whether or not to enter the vibration-joint. Inwardly, Thorn was tautly alert to everyone who passed in the shuffling throngs. Every moment, her sense of peril grew greater. She was now certain that they were being watched from close at hand.
Sua Av suddenly grinned. 'Look at that, Joan. It's a new one.'
The Venusian nodded her bald head toward the corner of the chromaloy building, which was plastered with advertisements and official notices. Among them was a bright new poster.
'WANTED—THE THREE PLANETEERS
'Reward of one million dollars offered by the Earth Police for any information leading to the arrest of the outlaws known as the Three Planeteers.'
Sua Av's green eyes gleamed with droll humor in her froglike face.
'They've raised the price on us, Joan. We ought to feel flattered.'
Gunda Welk was reading the rest of the notice in a low, rumbling voice.
'The identities and descriptions of the Three Planeteers follow: Joan Thorn, Earthwoman, twenty-eight years old, deserter from the Earth Navy—'
'That's enough,' Sua Av chuckled. 'The rest is just a long list of our heinous exploits.'
Joan Thorn took a long, green cigarette of Martian rail leaf from her pocket and scratched its tip against the wall, thus igniting it. As she puffed on it, Thorn spoke under her breath.
'Get ready, girls—here comes our shadow, if my guess is right.'
Neither the grinning, bald Venusian nor the big Mercurian changed expression. But their hands casually dropped to the side of their jackets, where atom-pistols bulged their pockets.
A woman in the gray uniform of a noncom of the Earth Navy was shouldering toward them out of the passing throng. She was a middle-aged woman with a flat, grizzled face.
'Can you spare a smoke, sailor?' she asked Thorn.
'Of course,' Joan Thorn answered calmly, and fished one of the green cigarettes from her pocket. She kept her face bent as she handed it over.
'Thanks,' muttered the woman, and was gone in the throng.
'A false alarm, after all,' grunted Gunda Welk.
'No,' clipped Thorn. 'I know that woman. She was one of my non-coms before I deserted the Navy. She knows I'm Joan Thorn, which means that she knows we're the Planeteers. She's gone for the police.'
Thorn's gaze swiveled rapidly. Then she pushed her companions toward the swinging door of the vibration-joint.
'In here!' she exclaimed. 'We can go out another door.'
Thrumming music hit Joan Thorn and her comrades in the faces as they entered the place. It was a room clogged with greenish smoke. Women at tables in the center were arguing in bull voices as they drank black Venusian wine or brown Earth whisky. In the booths around the walls, many more women sprawled, somnolent, sleepy faces relaxed under the pale violet rays of the brain-soothing happiness vibrations.'
Thorn's lean figure shouldered through the noisy, crowded tables, the bald-pated Venusian and the towering Mercurian following closely. They were half-way across the crowded place toward the back door, when there was a rush of feet through the front entrance.
Thorn twisted her head. Two women in the white uniform of the Earth Police had just burst in. With them was the grizzled non-com. The latter instantly pointed at Thorn and her two companions.
'There they are!' she yelled. 'The Three Planeteers!'
For a moment, the noisy throng in the place was petrified. Even that motley, hard-bitten crowd was frozen by the sudden declaration that there in their midst stood the three half-legendary interplanetary outlaws.
Then the foremost of the two policemen, drawing her atom pistol, yelled to Thorn.
'Stand where you are!'
Thorn's pistol was already in her hand, as was the big Mercurian's.
'The lights, Gunda!' Thorn cried.
At the same moment, Thorn shot up toward the ceiling with the quickness of a wolf's snap.
The pellets from her and the Mercurian's pistols hit the big cluster of krypton lights in the ceiling. The flare of white proton fire from the exploding pellets was followed by an abrupt extinguishing of the lights. The place was plunged into darkness, except for the faint blue glow of the 'happiness vibration'booths.
Scores of voices yelled in the darkness, and shadowy figures surged forward in a melee of reeling, clutching shapes. Some shouted for lights, others to guard the door. Everyone in the room had suddenly remembered the big reward for the capture of the Planeteers.
'This way,' chuckled Sua Av's throaty voice in the darkness. The Venusian was stolidly clearing a path through the crowd.
Women sought to hold the three in the darkness, cried out that they were escaping. Gunda Welk's huge fists thudded down in resounding blows, while Thorn struck with the heavy barrel of her atom-pistol.
Suddenly Sua Av was pulling them out of a shadowy riot, through a door. They stumbled out into an unlighted alley. As they did so, they heard the whiz and roar of rocketcars racing up to the front entrance of the Club of Weary Spacemen.
'Police,' grunted Gunda Welk. 'They'll be around here in a minute.'
'Come on!' cried Thorn, starting down the dark alley in a run. 'We're all right now if we keep clear of spy-plates.'
'Yes,' came the Venusian's chuckle as she ran beside them. 'The last place they'll look for the Planeteers is the mansion of the Chairwoman!'