re vicious than these native "Three's" of Porno were the
visiting bipeds, man himself, who thronged the _kantrans_--which may be
defined as dives for the purveying of all entertainments. In them were a
score of snares for the buccaneer with money in his pocket and dope in
his blood. The open doors on the Street of the Sailors were all
loud-speakers of drunken oaths and laughter, pierced now and then by a
scream or cry as someone in the sweating press of bodies inside knew
rage or fear.

* * * * *

One interplanetarily notorious kantran made a feature of swinging its
attractions aloft in gilded cages, where all of them, young and old,
pale and painted, giant and dwarf, ogled the arrested passers-by and
invited sampling of their wares.

Of all kinds and conditions of men were these passers-by. Earthling
sailors, white, negro, Chinese and Eurasian, most of them in the drab
blue of space-ship crews, but each with a ray-gun strapped to his waist;
short, thin-faced Venusians, shifty-eyed, cunning, with the planet's
universal weapon, the skewer-blade, sheathed at their sides; tall,
sweaty Martians, powerful brutes, wearing the air-rarifying mask that
was necessary for them in Satellite III's Earthlike atmosphere. Business
men and sight-seers, except the most bold, were apt to stay in their
houses after their first visit to the Street of the Sailors. Each face
on the street or in the kantrans that lined it bore the mark of drink,
or the contemptuous, insolent expression bred by Porno's favorite drug,
isuan.

Around Porno was the constant threat of savage life; below it were
half-human savagery and mystery; above, in the very shadow of their
mighty engines of space, were the most vicious animals of all--degraded
men.

This was the Port o' Porno of a hundred years ago.

This was the Port o' Porno where Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow for
very good reasons had told Hawk Carse he would meet him. 574. The house
of his friend.

* * * * *

Night descended suddenly on the outlaw space-port that day the elderly
exile waited in vain for his comrade in arms Hawk Carse to show up.

There were six hours when the blasting heat received by Satellite III
from near-lying Jupiter would be gone, and in its place a warm, cloying
tropical darkness, heavy with the odors of town and exotic products and
the damp, lush vegetation of the impinging jungle. The ni