* * * *
Presently Gunda Welk and Sua Av were sleeping on the floor calmly oblivious to whatever fate the dawn might bring.
But Joan Thorn could not sleep. Restlessly, she paced the darkness of the little metal room. In her mind queerly persisted the image of Lann's white, stunned face and accusing eyes. She tried to drive that reproachful face from her thoughts and couldn't.
White mists from the jungles had seeped into Turkoon Town as the night advanced, a cold fog that nipped the bones.
A little wind moaned through the dark, sleeping pirate stronghold, and at intervals came raucous calls of weird life teeming in the fern-forest.
Thorn heard a ship blasting off from the distant field, the thudding thunder of its tubes rapidly dying away. She wondered broodingly if ever she and her two comrades would see space again.
Or was the coming dawn to end forever the career of the Planeteers?
Hours dragged past, and finally a faint dawn light began to illumine the swirling gray mists outside. Suddenly through the fog came a wild, distant cry. It was echoed in a minute by raw shouts in other voices.
Thorn leaped to the little window, but could see nothing through the mists. She heard her comrades scrambling up,
'What's happened?' exclaimed Sua Av, rubbing her eyes sleepily.
'I don't know!' Thorn cried. 'But something's wrong.'
She could hear a babel of raging shouts and calls crackling like flame through Turkoon Town, waking everyone. And women were running through the clearing mists toward the field of ships.
'Stilicha!' yelled Thorn through the window as she glimpsed the old Martian pirate running painfully along the street.
The old woman hesitated, then hobbled quickly over to the window of the little prison. She was buckling on her atom-pistols with trembling hands, and her wrinkled face was wild.
'What's happened?' Thorn demanded tensely.
'Lann—she's been kidnapped!' hissed the old Martian. 'Jen Cheerly did it some time last night.'
'Lann kidnapped?' Thorn yelled wildly, her brown face suddenly haggard. 'How do you know Cheerly did?'
'This morning one of our women found our guards at the ship-field lying murdered!' babbled the raging old woman. 'And one of Cheerly's Uranian crew, too, fatally wounded and left for dead. The Uranian boasted about what Cheerly had done, before she died.
'She said that Cheerly was not any pirate at all, like she pretended, but a League spy—the head of Hasna Trask's secret service! She said Cheerly had planned the trap that nearly captured Lann in the attack on them freighters, and that when that failed, Cheerly had used another plan to kidnap Lann last night. She used you in her plan, Joan Thorn!'
'Cheerly used me to kidnap Lann?' Thorn gasped. 'My God, woman, what are you talking about?'
'Lann's soft on you,' spat old Stilicha. 'He didn't want to see you blasted this morning, and Cheerly knew it. So, according to that dying Uranian, Cheerly told Lann that she'd help you Planeteers escape if he released you. She got Lann to start secretly with her to this brig to let you out, and once she had his alone like that, she and her women grabbed him. They blasted down the field-guards and took his in her ship. She's taking his to Saturn!'
The raging old pirate turned from the window. 'We're going to follow Cheerly's ship. And God help that Uranian when we catch up with her!'
'Stilicha, wait—' Thorn cried wildly, but the old pirate was already hobbling urgently away in the mists.,
A few moments later came the thunderous roar of many ships taking off in the distance. As it died away, Thorn turned to her comrades, her face stricken.
'He was going to help us escape,' she said in a slow, choked voice. 'Even after I'd tried to steal his secret, he was going to help us get away. And because of that, he's in the hands of Hasna Trask's spymaster now!'
Her eyes were wild. 'Think of what Trask and that fat fiend Cheerly will do to his to wring the secret out of him! And all because of me. He'd never have been kidnapped if he hadn't tried to help me!'
'It's not your fault, Joan,' rumbled Gunda Welk, her hard face showing her emotion. 'Cheerly would have found one way or another to get hold of him, even if we'd never come here.'
'And Stilicha and Kinne Queen and all the rest of those pirates are trailing her now,' Sua Av added quickly. 'They'll catch her and bring the boy back all right.'
'I hope to heaven they do,' muttered the big Mercurian. 'For if they fail, and Cheerly gets that boy to Saturn, it means that the League, and not the Alliance, will get that radite from Erebus.'
Thorn started violently. For the moment, in her first wild concern for Lann's safety, she had forgotten the larger issue.
'The last hope of the Alliance is gone if that happens!' she exclaimed. Her fists clenched convulsively. 'And we're locked up here! Isn't there something we can do?'
'Nothing but wait,' answered Gunda heavily.
The Three Planeteers For All Page 14
