"A ton of pure radite?” exclaimed Thorn incredulously. “Why, not one of the eight worlds has more than a few pounds of the stuff! It takes thousands of tons of ore to yield an ounce!"
"There is a ton of pure radite in the system,” the Chairman affirmed. “But it's not on any of the eight inhabited worlds."
"It can't be on Pluto, surely,” protested Sual Av. “The League mining bases there would have found it long ago.
"It's farther than Pluto,” the Chairman said.
John Thorn stared. “You mean, it's on Erebus?"
The Chairman nodded slowly. “Yes, it's on Erebus, the tenth and outermost planet, that mysterious, unexplored world that swings out there in space a billion miles beyond even Pluto's orbit."
"How can anyone know the radite's there?” Gunner Welk demanded unbelievingly. “Why, no one knows what's on Erebus! Not one of the expeditions that sailed for that planet ever came back. For centuries, no one has even tried to explore that mystery world!"
"Years ago,” the Chairman said “astronomers detected the presence of a mass of pure radite on Erebus, through their spectroscopes. Supervaluable as radite is, no one has tried to go after it, for all know it's suicide to try to visit Erebus."
The Chairman's lined face quivered.
"But now we've got to have that radite! It alone will operate Blaine's new secret weapon. It alone will enable us to resist the League's attack, and preserve the liberty of these four inner worlds."
He looked at the three comrades solemnly. “We have sent five big secret expeditions to Erebus during the last year, in desperate hope of getting, the radite. Not one ship, not one man, not one message has ever come back from them. The sinister mystery there swallowed them up, as it has swallowed all who tried to visit Erebus.
"Now I am calling on you Planeteers. If anybody in the system can reach Erebus and bring back the radite, you can. The chances are a thousand to one you'll perish there as mysterious air hives—all other would-be explorers of that world. But that thousandth chance that you might succeed and bring back the radite, is the last chance of the Alliance worlds to preserve their liberty—"
"We'll go, sir, of course!” Gunner Welk exclaimed instantly. “Hell, whatever's on Erebus, it can't stop us!"
Sual-Av scratched his baldhead. “I wonder what is really there? Anyway, if human men can bring that radite back—"
"Wait a minute!” Thorn exclaimed, his lean brown face suddenly eager. He turned to the Chairman. “You said nobody had ever landed on Erebus and returned, sir. But one man did land there and come back.
Martin Cain, the great space pirate of, a generation ago."
The Chairman nodded. “Yes, I remember the story now. Cain is supposed to have made for Erebus alone in a lifeboat when his ship was gunned to a wreck outside Pluto's orbit. They say he spent two weeks there and returned safely, the only man ever to do so."
"Martin Cain,” Thorn pointed out tensely, “must have discovered the secret of how to land safely on Erebus. If we knew that secret, we could land there safely and lift the radite!"
"But Cain has been dead for years,” the Chairman reminded. “And he never told anyone what was on Erebus, they say."
"He told one person the secret of Erebus, if what I've heard in the underworld is true,” John Thorn persisted. “His daughter, Lana Cain."
The Chairman stared. “Lana Cain, the girl who's leader of the space pirates out in the Zone? The girl they call the pirate princess?"
"That's right.” Thorn said tautly. “They say that Martin Cain, her father, before he died told her the secret of how to visit Erebus safely, so she could take refuge there if ever she had to. She's never told anyone the secret. But she knows it!"
Sual Av's green eyes glistened. “If we could get that secret from Lana Cain—"
"That's my idea!” Thorn exclaimed. “If we three go straight to Erebus to get the radite, the chances are a thousand to one as you say that we'll simply meet the same mysterious fate as all other explorers, and never come back. Our lives don't matter, of course, but the Alliance wouldn't get that precious radite.
"Our only real chance, as I see it, is to make first for the Zone, and get this girl Lana Cain's knowledge of Erebus, by trickery or force. With that knowledge, we can go on to Erebus and have a fighting chance of winning through and bringing back the radite."
A flame of eager hope leaped into the haggard eyes of the Earth Government executive.
"It's the best plan yet, Thorn! But dare you enter the Zone and seek out this pirate girl? Those corsairs are ferociously hostile and suspicious of all strangers."
"You forget, sir,” flashed John Thorn, “that we are the Three Planeteers!"
"Yes,” rumbled Gunner Welk, cold blue eyes gleaming. “We have a reputation of our own among the outlaws of the system, sir."
Sual Av grinned.
"I always did have a hidden longing to be a pirate."
"Thorn, you give me new hope!” declared the Chairman. “If you can do this, in the little time left us—"
"Listen!” commanded Gunner Welk suddenly.
Through the locked door and metal-shuttered window of the study penetrated a rising tumult, the roar of rocket-cars racing up to the mansion. Then came a rush of running feet through it, and a loud knock on the door.
"Mr. Hoskins!” called a secretary anxiously to the Chairman through the door. “The police are here!
They say the Three Planeteers are in the city tonight, and were glimpsed by spy-plates heading toward this mansion. They want to make sure you're safe."
"The cursed Earth Police!” flared Gunner Welk in a hoarse whisper. “We overlooked some of their spy-plates."
Thom's eyes were black pinpoints, his brown face taut. He knew the Mercurian was right, that they had been glimpsed by some of the hidden visiplates planted cunningly throughout the metropolis for the benefit of the police.
"I'm all right, Ames!” called the Chairman to his secretary. “Tell the police not to bother me."
But in the next moment came a loud cry from a police officer outside the shuttered windows.
" The Planeteers are in there with the Chairman!" the man shouted. “Their tracks lead to the window-they must be making him say he's all right!"
"Break down the door!” roared another officer's voice. “Quick, before they kill the Chairman!"
A resounding battering began against the locked door and another banging at the metal shutter that closed the window.
The Chairman looked helplessly at Thorn. “I'll have to tell them the truth, that you Planeteers are really my agents, or they'll haul you off to prison,"
"No!” said John Thorn fiercely. “Once the secret that we're Alliance agents gets out, it would spread swiftly over the whole system. Our chance of getting the secret of Erebus from that pirate girl would be wrecked—our whole plan ruined."
"But you can't escape from here the Chairman exclaimed. “They're at both window and door!"
"We can escape,” Thorn said swiftly. “But we've got to make it look as though we came here for a criminal purpose. Otherwise, people will ask why the Planeteers came to the Chairman's mansion, and it will be guessed that we're really your agents after all."
Thorn drew a roll of flexible metal cord from his pocket, and sprang toward the Chairman.
"Forgive me for this, sir,” he cried.
The bewildered Chairman did not resist as Thorn bound his arms and legs tightly. Then the young Earthman straightened.
"Tell them we tried to kidnap you, sir,” he said swiftly to the Chairman. “That we meant to hold you for ransom."
Gunner Welk stood ready now to open the window shutter. And Sual Av had taken a little metal sphere from his pocket.
"You're right-the light-bomb is our best chance,” Thorn clipped. “Throw it when Gunner opens the window."
Gunner Welk suddenly flung open the shutter. Before the police hammering outside it could enter, the bald Venusian flung out the tiny sphere. Th
e Planeteers clapped their hands in front of their eyes. The sphere burst out on the terrace amid the pressing group of police. A terrific glare of blazing white light exploded from the bomb. A tiny charge of atoms inside it had been suddenly broken down, not into energy, but into pure radiation in the frequency of light. The awful glare of radiation instantly paralyzed the optic nerves of the unprepared police, temporarily blinding them.
The glare died swiftly. Thorn and his two comrades were already plunging out through the blinded men.
"This way!” Thorn cried.
"They're escaping!” yelled a blinded officer.
The Planeteers plunged around the corner of the huge mansion, toward the long, low rocket-cars parked in front.
Sual Av jumped into one, whose power-chamber was throbbing. As the others leaped in after him, the bald Venusian yanked back the throttle. The car rabbited out through the dark grounds with a rising roar from the rocket-tubes at its rear.
"Straight for the spaceport!” Thorn yelled.
"Hold tight!” called Sual Av, with a throaty laugh. “I always did want to let one of these things out!"
A whizz and roar, a spuming flash of fire—that was the stolen rocketcar as it shot through the streets. Its speed was suicidal, but streets were almost empty at this late hour.
Now the spaceport was close ahead. Thorn could see the soaring tower of the starter, flashing varicolored landing signals to a huge freighter that was sinking ponderously down out of the stars with all its blasts braking.
The audio speaker in the car broke into frantic voice. “All police! The Planeteers have stolen a police rocket-car and are making for the spaceport, after making an attempt to kidnap the Chairman! Shoot on sight!"
"Look ahead!” yelled Gunner Welk.
Men in white uniforms were running across the spaceport toward them, between the great docks and the big freighters and liners that rested like huge torpedoes on the tarmac.
"They're too late!” the Venusian chuckled. “Here's our ship."
Before them loomed the three-man scout cruiser that had brought them to Earth, a long, torpedo-slim craft of gleaming inertrum, on its nose the number N-77. The thick-clustered tubes at its stern told of immense powers of acceleration and speed.
John Thorn and his comrades tumbled into the little ship, as atom-pistols coughed, and shells exploded in white proton-fire around them. Sual Av spun the heavy, round door shut while Thorn and the Mercurian leaped into the control-room in the nose.
Thorn's hands flashed amid the bewildering array of controls, and the power-chambers in the stern began a soft, rising roar of atomic energy.
Thorn jammed down two firing keys. With thunderous blast, white fire burst from the keel tubes of the cruiser. It lurched upward, riding its columns of proton-flame, then shooting obliquely up across the spaceport as Thorn cut in all the stern tubes.
He was flung back, deep into the cushioned pilot chair, his entrails seeming crushed by the terrific acceleration. The shadowed convexity of Earth fell away appallingly beneath them, as the sharp clang of the friction-alarm told of walls being dangerously overheated by the too-rapid rush through the air. Then the roar of air outside the walls died rapidly away. They were out in space.
"We're clear!” shouted Sual Av, stumbling into the control-room, his grin twisted by pain of shock.
"Clear, yes—but every Earth cruiser in space will be after us now for trying to kidnap the Chairman!”
Thorn rapped. “We've got to reach the Zone before they catch us!"
CHAPTER III
Into the Zone
"Oh, the gloom of outer space,
Where the tailless cornets race,
And the sun's a star that almost disappears
When our rockets’ steady roar.
Sings the good old song owe more,
We're outward bound again, oh, Planeteers!"
Sual Av’s throaty bass reverberated through the little control-room of the cruiser, in which he sat with Gunner Welk. It rose above the soft hissing of the rocket-tubes.
"Curse me if I can see anything to make up songs about,” growled the big Mercurian.
"You have no poetry in your soul, Gunner,” retorted the little Venusian with a grin. “A poetic genius like myself doesn't make up his songs—they come to him out of the great ether."
"They sound uncommonly like the bellowing of a Jovian marsh-calf when they do force themselves out,” said Gunner Welk dourly. “Besides, you'll wake up John."
"I'm awake,” came a voice behind them, and they turned.
Thorn came into the control-room, rubbing his eyes. Then he peered tautly through the broad window that framed a magnificent vista of black space and stars.
"What about the cruisers on our tail?” he asked quickly.
The big Mercurian shrugged. “They're hanging on—we've heard their audio calls. And they've called up every Alliance cruiser in this part of the system. We've stirred up a hornets’ nest this time, John!"
John Thorn cut in the switch of the audio. From the speaker came a weird jumble of meaningless sound.
All naval calls were always “scrambled” to prevent eavesdropping; only an official unscrambler could translate them.
There was such an unscrambler in this little ship. Thorn had built it, out of his own naval experience. He hastily snapped it on, and the incoherent jumble of sounds from the speaker at once became a crisp, understandable voice.
"-our auras, which shows that present course of the fugitives is straight toward the Zone. Undoubtedly they're hoping to hide out there. It is imperative that we cut them off before they enter the Zone. Flagship Gull, signing off."
"The Gull!" Thorn exclaimed, his brown face strange for a moment. “I know that ship. It was old Commander Leigh speaking. He commands the Alliance patrol squadrons out here."
His thoughts swept him back into memory for a moment. He had, only four years before, commanded a cruiser of the Earth Navy that helped patrol this very sector of space, out here beyond the orbit of Mars, against a surprise League attack.
"They've guessed that we're making for the Zone,” Thorn went on. “It's where all outlaws head for when things get too hot for them."
"The whole system is too hot for us right now,” observed Sual Av. “You should have heard the audio news bulletins going back and forth while you were sleeping. Three Planeteers try to kidnap Earth Chairman! Notorious outlaws foiled in daring attempt.’ The system's ringing with it!"
"It'll ring with the news if we're gunned out of space by those cruisers converging on us,” grunted Gunner Welk sourly. “Do you think we can slip through them, John?"
"I think so,” Thorn clipped. “We've got to keep straight on. Turkoon, the asteroid that's the pirates’ main base, lies in the part of the Zone almost directly ahead."
Thorn stared with narrowed eyes through the broad window, into the magnificent star-flecked vault.
The little ship of the Planeteers was roaring out through the void at top speed, millions of miles outside the orbit of Mars. The bright, small disk of the sun was dead astern, its rays hiding the gray blob of Earth, away from which they had been fleeing for so many long hours.
Ahead of them, the void was thick with bright stars. Brilliant among them gleamed the big yellow topaz of Saturn, and beyond, and to the left, the fainter green sparks of Uranus and Neptune. Pluto was somewhere farther away, off to the right. And Erebus, their mysterious, ultimate goal, lay invisible still farther off—the dark, enigmatic outpost of the solar system.
Directly ahead of the racing little ship, only a few million miles away, extended a wide band of countless tiny specks of light, stretching parallel with the equator of the system. That broad band of light-specks was the Zone, the great asteroidal belt whirling between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Thorn gazed tautly into the Zone. That mighty wilderness of countless planetoids and meteor-swarms, which all ordinary shipping avoided by running above or below, was the No Man's Land
of the Solar System. In it the space pirates had long had their lairs, from which they still sallied forth to levy ton on the interplanetary shipping. Countless naval expeditions had tried to clean the place out, and had been baffled by the shifting swarms of meteors and tiny planets which made it impossible to conduct organized operations in there without prohibitive losses.
John Thorn's brown hands clenched. In there, in the Zone, at the pirates’ asteroid base, was the girl who alone in the system, held the secret of mysterious Erebus, the secret that would make possible the securing of the precious radite from that far, dark planet. Somehow, that girl's secret must be secured.
"Calling flagship Gull!” suddenly boomed a deep voice from the audio speaker. “Cruiser Tharine, reporting. Our aura shows the Planeteers’ ship four hundred thousand miles from us, eighteen degrees counter-sunwise."
"Orders to Tharine," rapped back Commander Leigh's hard voice swiftly. “Close in before they slip past you into the Zone. Calling cruiser Rantal!"
" Rantal speaking!” came a quick voice.
"Change your course to eighty-six degrees sunwise,” hammered the Commander. “You and the Tharine can catch the Planeteers between you if you put on all speed."
Sual Av scratched his bald head and looked at Thorn. “They're converging on us from two sides, John."
"Damn them!” growled the huge Mercurian angrily. “If they only knew that we Planeteers are risking our necks for the sake of the Alliance—"
"But they don't know. To them, we're outlaws who must be either captured or gunned,” John Thorn clipped. “We've got to outrun those two cruisers! Turn the injectors on full, Gunner."
The Mercurian quickly obeyed. Thorn leaned toward the bank of firing-keys, his eyes on the power gauges.
All modern space ships were propelled by the atomic disintegration of copper or a similar metal. The powdered metal's atoms were broken down by terrific electric voltages, in power chambers of heavy inertrum. Only inertrum, that artificial metal whose atoms were synthetically “crystallized,” could stand the awful strain.
The Worlds of Edmond Hamilton Page 37
