"The City Dies If Anyone Tries to Tail Us or Pull a Double Cross"

"The Three Thieves of Japetus."
By Mark Reinsberg (1923-81).
First appearance: Imagination, June 1957.
Short short story (5 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

"Murder is always a cold-blooded crime any way you look at it. But for outright cruelty and barbarism there was no equal to the actions of—The Three Thieves of Japetus."

The Bard basically nailed it when he had Falstaff complain, "A plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to another!"

Typo: "luninescent"

Resources:
- For more about SFF superfan Mark Reinsberg, see the Fancyclopedia (HERE and reference HERE) and the ISFDb (HERE).

Artwork by Bambam131

- Japetus, Titan, and Hyperion are mentioned in our story. These days the preferred spelling of Japetus, a two-toned natural satellite of Saturn, is Iapetus (HERE); quite a few science fiction writers have used Iapetus in their stories (HERE); a 3-D map of the real Iapetus is (HERE). You can read more about Titan, Saturn's largest moon, in fact (HERE) and fiction (HERE), and the same goes for Hyperion (HERE) and (HERE).

The Earth, the Moon, and (lower left) Iapetus (Japetus).

The bottom line: "The soul of the wicked desireth evil: his neighbour findeth no favour in his eyes.”
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