Gods of space, but I must laugh when I read what history has recorded of the Compact. "_Merril, filled with the wonder of his great dream, spoke his mind to the Captains. He told them of the sorrow in his heart for his divided fellow men, and his face grew stern when he urged them to put aside ideology and prejudice and join with him in the Compact._" So speaks Quintus Bland, historian of the Age of Space. I imagine that I hear Merril's laughter even as I write. Oh, we put aside ideology and prejudice, all right! That night in Yakki the five Captains clasped hands over the formation of the first and only compact of space-piracy in history! * * * * * It was an all or nothing venture. Our crews were told nothing, but their pockets were emptied and their pittances joined with ours. We loaded the five ships with supplies and thundered off into the cobalt Martian sky to seek a stronghold. We found one readily enough. The chronicles do not record it accurately. They say that the fleet of the Compact based itself on Eros. This is incorrect. We wanted no Base that would bring us so close to the home planet every year. The asteroid we chose was nameless, and remained so. We spoke of it seldom aspace, but it was ever in our minds. There was no space wall, there to divide us one from the other. It was a fortress against the rest of mankind, and in it we were brothers. When we struck for the first time, it was not at a Russian missile post as the histories say. It was at the _Queen of Heaven_, an undefended and unsuspecting merchantman. The records of Earth say the _Queen_ was lost in space between Uranus and Mars, and this is so. But she was listed lost only because no Russian or American patrol found her gutted hulk. I imagine that at this very moment she hangs out beyond Pluto, rounding the bend of the long ellipse we sent her on that day we stripped her bones. She carried gold and precious stones--and more important yet, women being furloughed home after forced labor in the mines of Soviet Umbriel. The _Starhound_ and the _Arrow_ bracketed her a million miles above the plane of the ecliptic near Saturn's orbit, and killed her. We drew abreast of her and forced her valves. We boarded her and took what we chose. Then we slaughtered her men and sent them on their long voyage. That was the beginning. The attack against Corfu was our next move. This is the battle that Celia Witmar Day has described in verse. Very bad verse. "_Corfu slumbered, gorged and proud-- While _Arrow_, _Hound_ and _Maid_ marshalled Freedom's might above the tyrant's ground, And rained down death--_" There is much more, of course. Brave phrases of emotion and fanciful unreality written by one who never saw the night of space agleam with stars.