The Three Planeteers For All

by Edmonda Hamilton

  * * * *

  As the next hours passed, the rocket-tubes of the Venture continued to roar unceasingly, the ship quivering and creaking sickeningly. Their speed was mounting to momentous heights—already they were traveling faster than the fastest ship in the system's history.

  And still the stern tubes roared, the Venture's velocity accelerated. Erebus faded to a dim speck behind them, vanished. The sun-star was brighter and bigger ahead, and the yellow spark of Saturn was largening dead, ahead.

  Time passed, slow, tense hours that dragged into a full day, and then another. The exhausted Planeteers and pirates took turns sleeping and watching. They could not know how fast they were traveling now—the instruments were not calibrated for such tremendous velocity—but knew their speed must be an appalling one.

  They neared the orbit of Uranus, and by now Saturn presented a perceptible disk ahead. Thorn haggardly watched the little glowing sphere of the aura-chart.

  'Cheerly's ship can't be far ahead of us now,' she estimated. 'The highest speed the Gargol could attain would bring it about this far by now.'

  Lann stood with his gold head by her shoulder, watching as tensely as she.

  'There, Joan!' he cried in a moment, pointing.

  In the fore of the aura-chart a red speck had appeared, a ship a million miles ahead of the Venture.

  'That's the Gargol—it must be!' Thorn cried. 'Cut the stern tubes, Gunda!'

  Gunda Welk, standing turn at the firing-keys, obeyed instantly. But the aura-chart showed they were still rushing after their quarry with such speed that they would flash past it. Thorn ordered the bow-tubes fired for the purpose of slowing them down.

  As the ship rocked and quivered to the blasting brake-thrust of the tubes, Sua Av came up into the control-room, sleepily rubbing her eyes. Old Stilicha's anxious face was behind her.

  'We'll come up to Cheerly soon,' Thorn rapped. 'That means a fight. She'll never give up that radite willingly.'

  'The Gargol has heavier batteries than we do, and a bigger crew,' reminded Stilicha Keene.

  'But we can outmaneuver them!' Lann said. He cried into the interphone to the pirate crew, 'On suits and prepare for action, women!'

  'Go down and take command of our batteries, Gunda,' Thorn ordered. 'I'll take the controls. Suits on, everyone!'

  In a few moments Thorn, in her space-suit now like the others, was poised over the firing-keys. Sua Av tautly watched the aura-chart, while Lann and old Stilicha peered ahead.

  'We're close,' muttered the Venusian, her eyes on the chart.

  'There's the Gargol!' Lann cried suddenly, pointing ahead through the glassite window. 'And they've spotted us!'

  Thorn saw the Saturnian cruiser in the black, starry vault ahead-a long torpedo-like shape pluming white fire from its rocket-tubes as it put on all possible speed to escape. Jen Cheerly obviously had no desire to risk battle.

  But the Venture, imbued with its unprecedented potential speed, swiftly came up on the tail of the naval cruiser. Now atom-shells began to burst in blinding flares near Thorn's ship as the Gargol cut loose with its stern guns.

  'I'm going to run up under their keel!' Thorn called into the inter-phone. 'Try to score a hit on their stern tubes, Gunda!'

  The Gargol veered around suddenly ahead, to bring its broadside batteries into play. The heavily-gunned cruiser loosed a brief hail of shells in the direction of the Venture.

  But the pirate ship shot clear like lightning as Thorn smashed down a key. Swiftly, it veered after the Saturnian ship, seeking to run beneath its keel.

  The Gargol rolled, to keep presenting its guns toward its enemy. For a brief moment the two ships rushed side by side through space, their rocket-tubes flaming and their guns pouring shell at each other.

  Whizzing white flares of energy burst around the Venture, and it rocked wildly as it was hit. Red lights flashed on the panel before Thorn, warning that two keel compartments had been holed.

  But Gunda's pirates were not idle. They were concentrating all their fire upon the Gargol's stern, hoping to wreck its tubes and completely disable the cruiser. The Saturnian ship volleyed upward through space in a sharp veering turn to escape that fire.

  'We didn't get ‘em!' Stilicha muttered. 'But they'll get us if we come too close quarters again. Their guns and inertrum armor are too heavy for us!'

  'We're closing in again!' Thorn exclaimed, her black eyes blazing now. She called down to Gunda, 'Stand ready! And get those stern-tubes!'

  Like two fighting hawks of space, locked in a death combat out here in the lonely immensity of starry space, the two ships maneuvered. Then again, using her superior speed, Thorn drove the Venture in close against the Saturnian ship.

  Guns of the Gargol vomited shell that blinded Thorn as they broke around the Venture. She clung with wild recklessness to the side of the enemy, as Gunda's batteries let go.

  'They're hit!' Lann cried, his blue eyes blazing with electric excitement.

  The Gargol's clustered stern rocket-tubes had, been struck by a salvo of atom-shells that had blasted the tubes into a fused, horribly twisted mass of inertrum.

  They saw the Saturnian cruiser rock wildly as the fused rocket-tubes backblasted. An instant later, they saw a vastly greater explosion rip out the whole stern wall of the Gargol, blowing mangled women and twisted metal into space.

  'Their tubes back-blasted into the power-chambers, and the chambers themselves let go!' cried Sua Av, momentarily aghast. 'It must have killed almost everyone aboard!'

  'We're going aboard the wreck!' Joan Thorn exclaimed. 'Take over, Stilicha, and run us alongside.'

  The old pirate brought the Venture quickly alongside the silent, drifting wreck. Magnetic grapples hooked on, and then the Planeteers and Lann and a dozen pirates donned space-suits and clambered through the great hole that had been torn in the stern of the Saturnian ship.

  The interior of the Gargol was a scene of utter devastation. The terrific violence of the explosion had bent solid inertrum like tin, had slain most of the crew outright. A few space-suited Saturnians who had survived dazedly raised their hands in token of surrender.

  'The radite? Where is it''Thorn demanded fiercely of them.

  'In the lower bow-compartment,' answered the stunned, shaking women.

  The Planeteers pushed through the wreck toward that compartment. They burst into it, and Thorn sprang forward with a cry.

  The asterium-wrapped mass of radite was in this metal chamber. But toward the precious element was crawling Jen Cheerly, her body badly crushed inside her space-suit, but with a heavy atom-gun in her hand. The Uranian, fatally injured by the explosion, was making a dying attempt to destroy the radite.

  Thorn tore the gun from her hand. Cheerly looked up, her face livid graygreen inside her glassite helmet, her small eyes glistening with undying hatred.

  'You've not won, Planeteers!' she choked. 'You're too late. I notified the Leader days ago by audio that I had the radite, and the League fleet rocketed then to conquer the Alliance! Already they're driving the Alliance navies sunward!

  'And what is more,' she gloated in a dying whisper, 'Hasna Trask herself and a picked strong force have landed on Earth's moon and seized Philippa Blaine and her weapon! The radite is useless to you now!'

  A last flicker of life throbbed in Cheerly's little eyes, a last gleam of triumph.

  'I was always too clever for you Planeteers!' she choked. And then her broken body relaxed as death came.

  Thorn looked up at the others, her brown face grave inside her helmet. 'If what she said is true—'

  'I'll find out with the Gargol's audio!' Sua Av cried, and sprang toward the control-room.

  When the Venusian came back, her face was pale, her green eyes stricken. She spoke unsteadily.

  'It's true, Joan! I heard the audiocalls. The Alliance navies have retreated sunward past the orbit of Venus, attacked by the League's tremendous fleet. The inner worlds are in wild panic, and Hasna Trask is dir
ecting the League operations from the advanced base she's established on Earth's moon!'

  Thorn's body sagged inside her space-suit. For the first time, ultimate despair claimed her.

  'Then this radite that might have saved the Alliance is useless,' she said hoarsely. 'With Trask holding the moon—Blaine's weapon in her possession—the Alliance is doomed!'