The Three Planeteers

by Edmond Hamilton

  "Gunner!” Thorn whispered fiercely. “Wake up!"

  "The big Mercurian slowly opened bleared, red-rimmed eyes. Sual Av also awoke, yawning. Their psychophones started droning their awakening thoughts.

  "Gunner, I want you to tip your chair over to bring your head down on my chair,” Thorn whispered. “Then maybe you can chew through one of these leather straps that bind my arms."

  "What good would that do?” said Gunner with dull hopelessness, “Even if we all three got free of our bonds, we couldn't get out of this cell—not with the door bolted by a wave-lock."

  "I've an idea that might get us out!” Thorn said feverishly. “It's a chance—our only one!"

  "Try it, Gunner!” urged Sual Av,’ wide awake now.

  With no hope in his face, Gunner Welk obeyed. He rocked back and forth in his chair until it tipped forward, his head coming down against Thorn's lap. Hitching painfully sidewise, the big Mercurian got his teeth into one of Thorn's leather arm-straps.

  They heard his jaws working as he bit into the tough Jovian leather. Their psychophones continued to drone on, uttering their varying thoughts. But the rumble of the raging storm above was loud enough to keep the guards in the corridor from hearing.

  Thorn felt the strap Gunner was chewing weaken. He tensed his arm in a fierce effort. The strap broke!

  Quickly, Thorn unbuckled the other straps that held him. He tipped Gunner's chair back to normal position. Then he reached around and with numbed fingers found the tiny, needle-like electrode at the back of his skull, and gently pulled it out. He felt his scalp close over the minute incision. His psychophone went silent.

  Thorn got to his feet. He staggered, his numbed limbs buckling under him at first. Then he steadied, and unbuckled the straps that held Sual Av and the Mercurian to their chairs.

  "Don't disconnect your psychophones yet!” he warned them. “If the guards outside happened to notice that all our psychophones were dead, they'd suspect something at once."

  "Now what?” Sual Av whispered. “How can we get out of this cell without a wave-key to operate the lock?"

  "Yes, what's your idea?” Gunner asked hoarsely.

  "It came to me as I watched them changing spools in the psychophones tonight,” Thorn muttered. “I shut my mind off it till after they'd gone, so they wouldn't hear."

  He was taking down from its mounting the psychophone that for so many days had blared his thoughts. With quivering fingers, he began dissembling the intricate little machine. Tubes and coils and condensers came from it, as he rapidly took it apart.

  "There are enough parts here,” he muttered feverishly. “If I can just remember enough of my tech-school training."

  Thorn began putting certain parts of the mechanism back together again, in a totally different hook-up. The tiny atomic generator that furnished power, the transformers and rectifiers—and then he worked long upon rewiring an “alternator,” connecting it electrically to a master modulator tube.

  An hour passed, and another. The hubbub of storm was even louder from above. The droning of the other two Planeteers’ psychophones was almost inaudible through the roar.

  Thorn finally straightened, holding the compact rebuilt mechanism in trembling hands. His face was dripping.

  ,"Now for it!” he whispered shakily to the other two Planeteers. He advanced with the little machine to the locked door.

  "You've rebuilt the psychophone parts into a wave-projector?” Sual Av whispered, staring. “To use as a wave-key?"

  "It won't work,” Gunner muttered. “It may project waves, but you don't know the secret frequency that will operate this lock. It might be any one of countless possible frequencies."

  But Thorn only nodded.

  "I thought of that!” he said hoarsely. “I built an automatic modulator into the thing. It will start projecting waves of frequency down in the sixteenth octave, and run up to the forty-fifth, by steps of twenty vibrations each. You know all wave-locks are keyed in those octaves, for above them you get heat radiations."

  "It might work,” Sual Av agreed. “Most locks have an error-margin of ten vibrations per second, so your automatic step-ups ought to overlap all frequencies in those octaves."

  Thorn was already at the door. He held the end of his little makeshift projector against the inertrum door just inside the wave-lock. He was counting on the high power of his vibrations to penetrate the inertrum from inside, and reach the lock.

  The little projector hummed as he touched its switch. Invisible waves were shooting from it into the lock, changing frequency by 20-vibration jumps each fraction of a second.

  In a moment came a click from the wave-lock! The bolt had drawn back, as the right frequency released the lock.

  "By heaven, it worked!” Gunner Welk exclaimed hoarsely, his eyes lighting with wild hope now.

  Thorn peered tautly out through the door-grating. The two SP guards on duty were standing a few yards down the corridor, evidently discussing the storm that roared above.

  Gunner and Sual Av now removed the needlelike electrodes of the psychophones from the tiny incisions, at the back of their skulls. They staggered stiffly from the chairs to Thorn's side, as he gently opened the unlocked door.

  One of the SP men, seeing the cell door open from the corner of his eye, yelled and reached for his atom-pistol.

  "Get them!” Thorn shouted hoarsely, lunging out.

  The charging Planeteers reached the two Saturnians before they could level the weapons they had drawn. Thorn grabbed the atom-pistol of one of the green men, and twisted fiercely.

  The Saturnian suddenly let go of the gun and jumped back, clawing a pocket-audio from his jacket. He shouted wildly into the little instrument.

  "Dungeon-guards calling for help! The prisoners are—"

  Thorn brought the atom-pistol down on the man's head, and he sank with a groan. Gunner and Sual Av had already knocked out the other guard, and the Mercurian had his gun.

  "That call will bring guards down here at once!” Thorn cried. “Quick—the drain by which we got in here! It's our one chance now to get to the space-ship court!"

  They ran down the short dungeon corridor to the place where the drain opened. The inertrum bars had been reset in new cement to repair the drain-grating, Thorn saw instantly.

  He leveled his gun and triggered rapidly. The bursting flares of blinding energy burned away the new cement, again freeing the inertrum bars. As Gunner Welk bent and tore loose the bars, Thorn heard over the roar of the storm a rush of running feet.

  "They're coming!” he cried, and leaped headfirst down into the narrow tube. The others followed him.

  Thorn writhed down the cramped pipe with frantic haste, ahead of the Mercurian and Venusian. He heard distant yells as soldiers burst into the dungeon which they had just quit.

  In a moment Thorn emerged head first into the place where the five citadel drains converged into one big tube. Water was rushing down here, flowing down through three of the pipes that drained courts open to the raging storm.

  "This is the drain that leads up to the space-ship court!” he cried, scrambling into the right-hand pipe.

  As he crawled at the head of his comrades up this different pipe, icy floods of water from above smashed unceasingly into his face. The drain was almost full of down rushing water. Blinded, gasping, he fought upward through the tube until he glimpsed the grating above, outlined against terrific red lightning flares.

  Thorn drew his gun and fired up at the grating through the rushing water. The whizzing flare of bursting atom-shells above was almost drowned by another appalling burst of scarlet lightning, accompanied by a tremendous shock of thunder.

  He pushed on upward through the streaming water. His hands found the bars of this grating, loose where their ends had been exposed by burning away of the cement. With a convulsive effort, Thorn pushed the bars upward and scrambled up into the court.

  The full fury of the tremendous Saturnian storm beat upon him in this open cour
t. Rattling showers of big hailstones crackled like musketry, torrents of icy rain smashing down upon him from the black sky. Gunner and Sual Av were scrambling up out of the drain to his side.

  Blinding red. lightning arced across the heavens in awful, burning splendor, and showed Thorn two small space-cruisers parked near the center of the court. It also showed him that a troop of guards was running hastily out from the other side of the court.

  "They've guessed we'd make for these ships. Come on before they cut us off!” he yelled hoarsely to his comrades.

  They plunged forward. The crimson lightning died, and in the succeeding thick blackness, the whole citadel rocked wildly about them to the deafening shock of thunder.

  The Planeteers collided with a wet metal wall in the darkness. The side of one of the ships! Then another fizzing flare of fiery lightning showed Thorn the ship door, a few feet away.

  He pushed the unsealed door inward, and fell rather than jumped inside. As the other two Planeteers leaped in after him, through the bellowing thunder came a shout of voices.

  Atom-shells flicked into the inertrum wall of the ship and exploded in bright little bomb-bursts of light. The guards running across the court toward them were shooting.

  "Seal the door, Gunner!” Thorn yelled wildly. “I'll take her up!"

  He pitched forward in darkness toward the control-room, Sual Av at his heels. He heard the door grinding shut as he pawed frantically for the controls, standardized in all ships.

  More atom-shells flared outside. By their glare, Thorn found the injector lever and pulled it frantically. The power-chamber of the little ship burst into a roar,

  The panel-lights sprang on as Sual Av found the switch, Thorn leaping to the firing-keys. His fingers flashed down.

  With a nerve-shattering roar of all keel tubes blasting, the little cruiser shot almost vertically upward, rising on spuming fire-jets out of the big court at the heart of the citadel.

  Thorn cut in all stern tubes, and the little ship screamed up on a steep slant through the raging storm. Rocked by buffeting bursts of thunder, lit by the dancing flares of red lightning, it roared up across storm-swept Saturnopolis with dizzying speed.

  Sual Av had the oxygenators throbbing by now. Gunner Welk came staggering into the control-room, fighting the terrific acceleration pressure. Up through the storm they climbed till they were above the tempest, the roar of air outside now fading away.

  * * * *

  Sual Av uttered an exultant cry as they burst out of mists into open space, with the colossal, gleaming arc of the rings spanning the star thick black firmament ahead.

  "Clear space again!” he cried.

  "They'll call an alarm to all their bases on the outer moons!” Thorn exclaimed. “If Stilicho isn't waiting at the rendezvous—"

  Everything depended now, all three knew, on reaching the rendezvous in the rings where old Stilicho Keene had agreed to wait with the Venture, in Cassini's division at the west limb of the planet-shadow.

  The colossal yellow bulk of Saturn was behind them, the mighty bow of the rings now close ahead. Thorn was heading toward the segment of the rings obscured by the shadow of the planet. Their little ship raced above the innermost, thinnest ring, roaring at top speed low over the vast circular swarm of whirling planetoids.

  Soon ahead yawned Cassini's division, the gap of clear space between the two great outermost rings. As Thorn sent their craft flying down into the gap at the point where the west limb of the planet-shadow lay across it, he flipped the audio-switch.

  "Stilicho, the Planeteers calling!” he spoke into the instrument. “We're being chased. Where are you?"

  In a moment, there came a shrill, excited reply.

  "Coming, boy! We've got you in our aura. Stand by and get your suits on, and we'll take you aboard!"

  A few moments later the long, grim-lined Venture drove up from the gap between rings, and hovered beside the Planeteers’ little ship. The air-lock of the pirate craft was open.

  Then a brief interval saw the Planeteers inside that air-lock, tearing off the space-suits they had worn as they jumped the gap between ships. And the Venture was roaring on through space with all the power of its great tubes, away from Saturn.

  "I thought you boys were dead sure!” Stilicho Keene was babbling wildly to the Planeteers. “It's been days we've waited here. But where's Lana? You didn't leave the lass behind?"

  The old pirate's wrinkled red face and rheumy eyes were tense as his cracked voice shrilled the question. And Ool, the space dog, looked up at Thorn with pleading eyes.

  "Cheerly has Lana,” Thorn said hoarsely. “He sailed in a navel cruiser for Erebus, days ago. He has Lana's secret now, but he took her along in case she knew more than she'd told."

  "Erebus?” Old Stilicho's wrinkled face became ghastly. “God in heaven, if he's taken the lass there..."

  "We've got to follow them, Stilicho!” Thorn cried. “For if Cheerly gets what he wants on Erebus, he'll come back, but he'll never bring Lana back."

  The old man's faded eyes blazed. “We'll follow to Erebus, yes! I'd follow the lass to hell itself!"

  They climbed hastily to the control-room, where Stilicho seized the controls from the Jovian pilot on duty there.

  "Calling Titan and Iapetus bases!” a Saturnian voice was yelling from the audio-speaker excitedly. “All cruisers out in net-patrol. The Planeteers are loose and breaking for space!"

  "They can't catch us now!” Gunner cried fiercely.

  The Venture was already roaring out to the orbit of Titan. Stilicho had changed course, and the huge, ringed bulk of Saturn and the small, bright sun lay dead astern. They were heading out toward the farthest limit of the system, toward the Solar System's last home of mystery.

  Black reaction and apprehension were cold in John Thorn's heart as he looked haggardly ahead. Could they hope to overtake Cheerly's ship when it had such a start? And. if they did not, and so did not have Lana's secret knowledge to guide them, what would be their fate when they reached mysterious Erebus?

  CHAPTER XVI

  Forbidden World

  THE FRONTIER of the Solar System! A vast and gloomy darkness, a region of eternal night remote by six billion trackless miles from the far, bright star of the sun. A cold and awful immensity of space beyond which stretches only the shoreless sea of the interstellar void.

  Yet even out into these far, dark spaces reached the invisible grip of the sun, to hold the outermost of its planetary children. Out here in eternal silence and darkness, far from the flaming orb that gave it birth, solemnly moved the dim world of Erebus on its slow, stupendous patrol.

  A ship was moving out through the colossal dark toward the last planet. It was moving at tremendous speed under inertia, yet it seemed merely to be crawling through the vast emptiness as it held its course toward the dim, slowly enlarging sphere of Erebus.

  John Thorn peered fixedly from the window of the control-room at the mysterious world ahead. It was like a little ghost-world, shining in the dark vault with a feeble blue light.

  "It must have an extraordinarily high albedo to reflect so much sunlight at this distance,” Thorn muttered.

  "Yes, it's cursed queer,” Sual Av agreed, frowning intently.

  Beside the Planeteers, who had discarded their Saturnian disguises, old Stilicho Keene peered forward, a haunting apprehension in his faded eyes. The space dog crouched at his feet.

  Gunner Welk was at the eyepiece of the ‘scope, staring toward dim Erebus. The towering Mercurian turned to Thorn.

  "Cheerly's ship isn't in sight, John,” he rumbled. “He must already have landed on Erebus."

  Thorn's brown face contorted in agonized emotion.

  "We should have overtaken him!” he cried, his voice raw and self-accusing. “If we'd put on a little more speed—"

  "But boy, the Venture's been at top speed in all the long days since we left Saturn!” Stilicho quivered. “It's been like a nightmare voyage, with the power-chambers throbbing
to the limit, and my crew getting more scared each day, and us sailin’ on toward God knows what on that world ahead!"

  It had, indeed, seemed like a strange dream to all of them as their craft had, for days, crept out into the trackless, forbidding immensities. Stilicho's pirate crew had whispered fearfully, only the hope of rescuing their idolized girl leader keeping them from mutinying. An alien chill gripped all except John Thorn.

  Thorn had become more and more feverishly anxious each day, as he thought of Jenk Cheerly speeding on with Lana to seize the precious radite—the radite whose taking would signal Lana's death and the launching of Trask's attack on the Alliance!

  "Shall I try the spectro-telescope?” Gunner was asking. “We're near enough to Erebus for it to detect the radite."

  Thorn nodded quickly. “The radite should show up clearly. I'll check our aura again for Cheerly's ship."

  Thorn snapped on the aura. But something was wrong. The aurachart did not come on. The device was dead.

  "What the devil?” Sual Av muttered astonishedly. “Something must be jamming the ether to kill our aura like that."

  "All our other instruments are dead, too!” burst out Stilicho, looking up worriedly from the panel. “The gravitometers and space-sextants and even the audio!"

  "Is it some trick of Cheerly's?” Sual Av cried.

  "It couldn't be—he wouldn't have power enough to jam the ether like this,” Thorn declared.

  Gunner Welk swung around from his instrument, his massive face puzzled.

  "John, there's something wrong with this spectro-telescope, too,” he said. “I adjusted its limits to the field of radioactive elements, but all of Erebus still shows up in it."

  Old Stilicho looked anxiously from the faintly shining blue ghost-world ahead, to the puzzled Planeteers.

  "We'll soon be close to Erebus,” the old pirate said. “What are we going to do? Land and hunt for Lana on foot?"

  There was lurking terror in his faded eyes as he made the proposition, yet he kept his shrill voice steady.