He faced
only the folds of a wall wide curtain, but he must keep in mind that in
truth there was a sea of faces before him, the faces of those whom he and
Hovan, working together, must convince if he were to save the Queen and
her crew.
He found his voice and it was steady and even, he might have been
outlining some stowage problem for Van Rycke's approval.
"People of Terra--"
Martian, Venusian, Asteroid colonist--inwardly they were still all Terran
and on that point he would rest. He was a Terran appealing to his own
kind.
"People of Terra, we come before you to ask justice--" from somewhere the
words came easily, flowing from his lips to center on a patch of light
ahead. And that "justice" rang with a kind of reassurance.
Chapter XVII
IN CUSTODY
"To those of you who do not travel the star trails our case may seem
puzzling--" the words were coming easily. Dane gathered confidence as he
spoke, intent on making those others out there know what it meant to be
outlawed.
"We are Patrol Posted, outlawed as a plague ship," he confessed frankly.
"But this is our true story--"
Swiftly, with a flow of language he had not known he could command, Dane
swung into the story of Sargol, of the pest they had carried away from
that world.
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