Quickly we plotted. I would surrender to her, Anita Prince, whom the brigands thought was George Prince. Together we might possibly be able, with Snap's help, to turn the tide, and reclaim the _Planetara_. I was taken to my stateroom and locked there until Miko the brigand leader should come to dispose of me. But I cared not what had happened--Anita was alive! CHAPTER XIV _The Brigand Leader_ The giant Miko stood confronting me. He slid my cubby door closed behind him. He stood with his head towering close against my ceiling. His cloak was discarded. In his leather clothes, and with his clanking sword-ornament, his aspect carried the swagger of a brigand of old. He was bareheaded; the light from one of my tubes fell upon his grinning, leering gray face. "So, Gregg Haljan? You have come to your senses at last. You do not wish me to write my name upon your chest? I would not have done that to Dean; he forced me. Sit back." I had been on my bunk. I sank back at the gesture of his huge hairy arm. His forearm was bare now; the sear of a burn on it was plain to be seen. He remarked my gaze. "True. You did that, Haljan, in Great-New York. But I bear you no malice. I want to talk to you now." He cast about for a seat, and took the little stool which stood by my desk. His hand held a small cylinder of the Martian paralyzing ray; he rested it beside him on the desk. "Now we can talk." I remained silent. Alert. Yet my thoughts were whirling. Anita was alive. Masquerading now as her brother. And, with the joy of it, came a shudder. Above everything, Miko must not know. "A great adventure we are upon, Haljan." * * * * * My thoughts came back. Miko was talking with an assumption of friendly comradeship. "All is well--and we need you, as I have said before. I am no fool. I have been aware of everything that went on aboard this ship. You, of all the officers, are most clever at the routine mathematics. Is that so?" "Perhaps," I said. "You are modest." He fumbled at a pocket of his jacket, produced a scroll-sheaf. I recognized it: Blackstone's figures; the calculation Blackstone roughly made of the elements of the asteroid we had passed. "I am interested in these," Miko went on. "I want you to verify them. And this." He held up another scroll. "This is the calculation of our present position. And our course. Hahn claims he is a navigator. We have set the ship's gravity plates--see, like this--" He handed me the scrolls; he watched me keenly as I glanced over them. "Well?" I said. "You are sparing of words, Haljan. By the devils of the airways, I could make you talk! But I want to be friendly." * * * * * I handed him back the scrolls. I stood up; I was almost within reach of his weapon, but with a sweep of his great arm he abruptly knocked me back to my bunk. "You dare?" Then he smiled. "Let us not come to blows!"