“And that is where?” Ali, who knew the deserts of Mars better than he did the greener planet from which his stock had sprung, pursued the question.

“Right in the middle of the Big Burn!”

Dane, Terra born and bred, realized first what Rip was planning and what it meant.  Sealed off was right—­the Queen would be amply protected from investigation.  Whether her crew would survive was another matter—­whether she could even make a landing there was also to be considered.

The Big Burn was the horrible scar left by the last of the Atomic Wars—­a section of radiation poisoned land comprising hundreds of square miles—­land which generations had never dared to penetrate.  Originally the survivors of that war had shunned the whole continent which it disfigured.  It had been close to two centuries before men had gone into the still wholesome land laying to the far west and the south.  And through the years, the avoidance of the Big Burn had become part of their racial instinct as they shrank from it.  It was a symbol of something no Terran wanted to remember.

But Ali now had only one question to ask.  “Can we do it?”

“We’ll never know until we try,” was Rip’s reply.

“The Patrol’ll be watching—­” that was Weeks.  With his Venusian background he had less respect for the dangers of the Big Burn than he did for the forces of Law and order which ranged the star lanes.

“They’ll be watching the route lanes,” Rip pointed out.  “They won’t expect a ship to come in on that vector, steering away from the ports.  Why should they?  As far as I know it’s never been tried since Terraport was laid out.  It’ll be tricky—­” And he himself would have to bear most of the responsibility for it.  “But I believe that it can be done.  And we can’t just roam around out here.  With I-S out for our blood and a Patrol warn-off it won’t do us any good to head for Luna—­”

None of his listeners could argue with that.  And, Dane’s spirits began to rise, after all they knew so little about the Big Burn—­it might afford them just the temporary sanctuary they needed.  In the end they agreed to try it, mainly because none of them could see any alternative, except the too dangerous one of trying to contact the authorities and being summarily treated as a plague ship before they could defend themselves.

And their decision was ably endorsed not long afterwards by a sardonic warning on the com—­a warning which Ali who had been tending the machine passed along to them.

“Greetings, pirates—­”

“What do you mean?” Dane was heating broth to feed to Captain Jellico.

“The word has gone out—­our raid on the E-Stat is now a matter of history and Patrol record—­we’ve been Posted!”

Dane felt a cold finger drawn along his backbone.  Now they were fair game for the whole system.  Any Patrol ship that wanted could shoot them down with no questions asked.  Of course that had always been a possibility from the first after their raid on the E-Stat.  But to realize that it was now true was a different matter altogether.  This was one occasion when realization was worse than anticipation.  He tried to keep his voice level as he answered: