The Three Planeteers For All

by Edmonda Hamilton

CHAPTER XIX

  Cheerly's Cunning

  THE SCENE was one out of nightstallion. The gloomy chasm of shimmering blue haze, the shining cliff upon a ledge of which the three spacesuited women desperately defended themselves, and the insanely shouting, raging mob of weirdly glowing radioactive women who attacked them.

  Joan Thorn, her heart hammering at having come within actual sight of both Lann Cain and the precious raw radite, leaped forward. But the upraised warning hand of Clyme Nison stopped her.

  'No!' said the glowing woman. 'That raging crowd of doomed ones would tear you to pieces if you tried to make your way through them. For very many of my fellow-sufferers on this world are crazed, made mad by our horrible existence.'

  'We've got to get Lann and the radite out of there quickly!' Thorn cried. 'Cheerly and her women can't hold that mob off much longer!'

  Cheerly and her two women were plainly being hard pressed. Only by snatching up shining rocks that lay strewn on the narrow ledge, and dashing them down at their attackers, could they keep the radioactive women from winning up to them,

  'You run out of rocks soon and that'll be the end of them!' Sua Av exclaimed.

  'Why the devil don't they use their atom-pistols?' Gunda demanded.

  'They would be useless against such women as myself,' Clyme Nison declared sadly. ‘I know a way to get onto that ledge farther back along the chasm. Follow me!'

  The Planeteers raced back along the chasm after Nison and her companion. The glowing women swerved and started climbing up a narrow crack in the shimmering cliff.

  Thorn and her comrades struggled to follow. By tremendous effort, they hoisted their heavy figures up after the two glowing women. They found themselves on a precariously narrow shelf of the rock wall.

  Nison and the glowing Martian led the way now back along the chasm to the battle, following this narrow shelf. There were places where it was hardly a yard wide. But in a few minutes, they had followed it to a point where it connected with the ledge upon which Cheerly and her women were defending themselves.

  Cheerly turned, appalled, as the Planeteers and their two glowing guides appeared. The Uranian, unrecognizable in her shapeless spacesuit and coated helmet, made herself known by the cry that vibrated from her as she saw them.

  'Have you come from the ship to help?' Cheerly cried, not recognizing the Planeteers. 'How did you get here with those two glowing devils?'

  'We came after you, Cheerly,' Thorn cried throbbingly. The Uranian shrank back as she heard Thorn's voice.

  'The Planeteers!' she exclaimed wildly.

  Lann stumbled forward, unrecognizable in his ray-proofed suit, but his silver voice wildly glad from inside it.

  'Joan! Joan Thorn!' he cried. 'I knew you would follow somehow.'

  Thorn, gripping his tightly for a moment, saw beyond his the little asterium sledge, and the mass upon it which was wrapped in the sheets of asterium Cheerly had prepared and brought. That mass was no more than four feet in diameter each way, and a corner of it that protruded through the hastily wrapped sheets showed that it was a huge chunk of dense matter blazing with intolerable white brilliance.

  There was the radite, at last! The isotope that was the rarest element in existence, the block of blazing matter that contained locked within it incalculable power that might sway the future of the whole system!

  'I knew you would escape from Saturn and come after us,' Lann was sobbing wildly. 'But I feared—'

  'Joan, here they come!' Gunda Welk yelled wildly.

  The radioactive mob below were scrambling up to the attack again. And this time, as though enraged by the appearance of the newcomers with two of their own glowing kind, the maddened mob of radiant women came with ferocious determination.

  There was no time for Thorn to deal Cheerly the fate she deserved, no time for anything. The first of the glowing women was already scrambling onto the ledge!

  Gunda fired her atom-pistol at them viciously. But the flare of blinding energy did not harm the glowing women. The emanations from their radioactive bodies simply repelled that energy.

  'Use rocks!' Thorn yelled, stooping and picking up a chunk of shimmering stone and hurling it.

  It knocked one of the glowing women off the ledge. But others were scrambling onto it. It became a wild battle to hold the ledge against them.

  Clyme Nison and Chana Gray, the glowing Martian, fought by the side of the Planeteers and Cheerly's women. They seized glowing attackers and hurled them down. But still others gained the ledge, and it became a crazy hand-to-hand melee.

  Thorn, struggling in the insane grip of one of the glowing women, saw others tear the helmet off one of Cheerly's followers. As the terrific radiation omnipresent on this planet struck the luckless Saturnian's unprotected face, she screamed like a hurt animal. And almost instantly, her face and body began to glow with that ghastly blue emanation.

  The Planeteers fought with their metal-clad fists. Gunda Welk's great arms swept a clear circle around her, the big Mercurian roaring. Sua Av pulled off a glowing attacker who had leaped on Thorn's back and was trying to wrench away her helmet.

  For minutes the crazy struggle went on. A fight with maddened lost souls on a planet of the damned! But with Nison and the Martian helping, the Planeteers forced, the radiant women back off the ledge. They gathered below, howling with fury.

  Thorn turned quickly. Lann was stumbling to his feet from the back of the ledge.

  'Joan, Cheerly's gone!' he cried. 'While you were fighting, she and her remaining woman slipped away along the ledge with the sledge of radite! They struck me down—'

  Thorn whirled, wild with rage and apprehension. The cunning Uranian, seizing the opportunity when the Planeteers were engaged in the wild melee, had with her remaining follower stolen away with the radite. They could, be seen now in the distance, hurrying along the shelf by which the Planeteers had come to the ledge.

  'After them!' Thorn cried.

  They rushed back along the shelf, Nison and Chana Gray following joining in pursuit of the two fugitives. Rapidly they gained on the two fugitives who were encumbered with the sledge.

  They saw Cheerly and her follower round a narrow place in the shelf ahead. As they rushed after them, atomic shells burst ahead and a mass of the shimmering cliff was dislodged by the flare of energy and fell in an avalanche across the shelf. It blocked the narrow way completely, halting the Planeteers.

  'Cheerly used their pistols to cause that rock-fall!' Sua Av cried furiously.

  'Down to the floor of the chasm! We'll follow that way and beat them back to the ship!' Thorn shouted.

  'We can't!' the Venusian cried. 'Look, that mob has followed us!'

  The maddened crowd of radioactive women below, seeing the Planeteers’ party moving away along the narrow ledge, had followed along the floor of the chasm. They were gathered now below, preparing to climb up in furious attack once more.

  'We're trapped!' Gunda Welk yelled. 'We can't go further along the ledge and we can't go down through that crazy mob!'

  Already the crazed radioactive women were climbing up to the ledge. Lann uttered a hopeless cry.

  Thorn swept his behind her, and she and her comrades and their two glowing friends sprang to repel the assault of the shining horde. With rocks, with their fists, with their clubbed atom-pistols, they beat back their insensate attackers.

  But again and again the radioactive women came up at them. Time was dragging past. Thorn felt as though she were struggling in an endless nightstallion of horror and despair.

  The radioactive attackers had limbs broken, bodies crushed in many places—yet still they came on. The flame of strange energy and life that throbbed in every atom of their bodies could not be extinguished or dimmed by any bodily harm.

  As the glowing women below gathered for another charge up the rock wall,

  Clyme Nison spoke to the exhausted, staggering Planeteers.

  'I may be able to turn them,' said the space-pioneer. 'It is
a chance to stop Cheerly..'

  Thorn saw Nison step to the edge of the ledge and speak to the radioactive horde gathering again below. 'There is no use in attacking us any longer!' Nison cried to them. 'We do not have the radite. Those who took it from the niche have fled with it, and are escaping!'

  A chorus of insanely raging yells answered her, as the half-crazy horde started forward to climb again to the attack. But a huge Jovian among the glowing horde held back her companions.

  'Clyme Nison speaks truth!' she shouted. 'See, the radite is gone from the ledge and so are some of the women. We must scatter and search for the thieves!'

  'Scatter and search!' went up the husky, furious shout from the radioactive mob.

  They began to split up, starting along the chasm in both directions, searching carefully for Cheerly and the radite,

  'By heaven, Nison, your idea worked!' panted Joan Thorn. 'Quick, now—we've got to get back to the meteorite-mountain. That's where Cheerly will have headed with the radite.'

  'There's nothing for us to fear, since Stilicha and her women hold Cheerly's ship and crew prisoner,' Sua Av gasped.

  'Cheerly must know something has happened to her ship,' Thorn retorted. 'That Uranian is a devil for cleverness.'

  Thorn helped Lann as they scrambled down the rook wall, to the floor of the chasm.

  And as they started at a trot back eastward, she half-supported, half-carried the staggering boy.