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wn adorable Arl. But this trip would not allow me any time to myself--this trip was ordered by the great Elders of Nor themselves. I was to capture and bring to trial that unwise but accomplished fiend, Sathanas, Ruler of the planet Satana. Sathanas, though a younger member of the God Race, had started his own private revolt against all authority--and the dicta of the Elders are not so lightly flaunted by any upstarts a few score centuries old. He had violated the Elder laws designed to protect and foster life and growth--it seemed that he could not get enough victims for his orgies of cruelty under the existing laws and had set out to make a few laws of his own. But, as I said, the laws laid down by the myriad Lords of Nor in Council are not easily broken--even by a powerful and cunning master of sin like this Sathanas--and thus it was that I sat on the bridge of the war vessel, Darkome--the crew alerted for battle action--its glistening hull plunging toward the general area of the planetary system that gave me birth long years ago.
Once his defection [*2] had been fully exposed, Sathanas escaped our avenging fleet by the barest seconds. The ships in his fleet--several hundreds in numbers--had blasted up in the very face of our fleet--jockeyed into position in the center of the 'zone of weightlessness' [*3] between the planet Satana and her satellite Feon--then disappeared in that fierce burst of full acceleration into light speeds that is only possible in the precise center of such zones of weightlessness. To make the maneuver more untraceable, every ship in the enemy fleet disappeared in a different direction. Perhaps we could have followed a few of them, but never would we find all of those divergent trails at many light speeds into the depths of space.
Of course, they must have had some pre-arranged rendezvous. But where? Our only hope for their capture lay in attempting to follow some of them, and then, by keeping the various observed courses plotted on the space charts, eventually figuring ou