CHAPTER VII
Shadow of the League
JOAN THORN'S ship rocked wildly as another shell struck it. The shells of all atom-guns contained a charge of powdered metal whose atoms had been brought to a critical point of instability. When an electric charge stored in the shell was released, either by impact or a timer, it detonated the unstable atoms into a destroying flare of atomic energy. These deadly shells were fired from guns and pistols by the push of an electroisolenoid built into the barrel.
Red lights flashing on and off in the panel in front of her warned Thorn that already a half dozen compartments of the Cauphul had been holed and had lost their air. Down below, Gunda Welk was still keeping her crew batteries going, pouring shell out on the encircling League cruisers, but at any moment a hit on their rocket-tubes or power-chambers might disable them entirely.
Thorn's mind was crazy with worry for the fate of Lann Cain. The League cruiser that had hooked its magnetic grapples on the keel of his ship was still winching his helpless craft closer. The capture or killing of the pirate boy meant the collapse of her great plan, and the probable ruin of the four inner worlds.
'We've got to free Lann's ship!' she cried to Sua Av over the thudding of guns. 'There's only one way—drive our ship between his and the one that's hooked her—break the grapple-lines!'
Sua Av's green eyes widened startledly inside her glassite helmet. Then the bald Venusian laughed recklessly.
'All right—here goes, Joan! Hold tight!' !
'Cease firing!' Thorn yelled into the interphone to Gunda Welk at the same moment.
Sua Av's fingers smashed down on firing keys. The Cauphul jumped forward in space, a raving torrent of energy streaming from his stern tubes.
The Venusian drove the ship straight toward the two craft ahead, the League cruiser and the Lightning. The half-dozen grapple-lines had been now so far drawn in that there was not enough room for a third ship to pass between the two.
But Sua Av steered the hurtling Cauphul between the two, anyway. Space around them seemed blazing with continuous flares of bursting atom-shells.
Crash! The grinding shock that flung Thorn to the floor of the control-room seemed to her the end of everything. The Cauphul, rushing in between the Lightning and the League cruiser grappling it, sideswiped both ships with stunning force.
Thorn tried, to clutch a stanchion and pull herself up, as the control-room rocked wildly around her. She heard the triumphant shout of the bald Venusian clinging to the controlpanel.
'We're through, Joan! We did it!'
Thorn's ship had crashed in between the other two, forcing its way through and breaking the grapple-lines.
'Blast away, Lann!' yelled Thorn into the audio. 'You're clear now!'
Like a streak of light, the silvery cruiser of the pirate boy shot upward. And with it cometed the battered Cauphul, and old Stilicha Keene's black ship. The other pirate craft that had tried to help Lann counterattack the League cruisers had been riddled to helpless wrecks by the heavy fire of the enemy.
But the main body of the pirate fleet had had time to cut away from their prey during the few minutes of the furious fight below. They were shooting out like startled hawks of space, joining Lann Cain's cruiser and the other two as they sped upward.
'Up to the Zone!' pealed the boy's voice from the audio.
Rising together as they soared through space, the pirate ships streaked upward through the vault. Hot after them raced the League cruisers, which now outnumbered the pirates.
'What in the devil's name's going on?' roared Gunda Welk's voice. 'That crash strained our sides! It looks down here as though the ship will crumple any minute.'
'If we can get into the Zone, we can lose those cruisers,' Sua Av was muttering. 'If he'll just keep going until then!'
Thorn could hear the Cauphul groaning and creaking beneath the fierce thrust of his blazing rocket-tubes. The hull of the ship, weakened by shell-fire and badly strained by the side-swiping collision, threatened to crumple up without notice.
The pirate ships could not match the heavily armed League cruisers in fire-power. But one thing the ships of the Companions of Space did have, and that was speed. They were drawing slowly away from the hotly pursuing cruisers as they rushed upward.
It was a wild yet thrilling scene to Joan Thorn's eyes! The black vault of abysmal space around them tapestried with countless blazing stars, the blinding flares of atom-shells bursting like exploding lightning, the raving flame of proton-fire from pursued and pursuing ships, and the vast, vague cloud of light-flecks of the Zone stretching above.
They were thundering up into the Zone now, Lann Cain's silver ship leading, curving sharply to avoid the meteor-swarm directly above. But the League cruisers were pursuing them into the vast wilderness of debris.
'Scatter!' came the boy's sharp order from the audio. 'We'll rendezvous at Turkoon!'
'That finishes us, Joan,' said Sua Av bitterly. 'We don't know the wave code. We can't navigate this damned jungle.'
But hard on the heels of her words came a quick call from the boy.
'Planeteers! Keep your ship with mine!'
The pirate ships scattered in all directions, like a frightened flock of wild fowl. Darting away through the swarms and planetoids, navigating by means of the coded wave-signals from the projectors on every swarm and asteroid, they melted away.
The League fleet could not hope to pursue all those diverging ships through the wilderness of debris in which they were perfectly at home. But a dozen League cruisers followed purposefully after Lann's silver ship and the Planeteers’ crippled craft as they raced away through the Zone in a counter-sunwise direction.
'Damn them, they must have recognized Lann's ship and they're determined to catch him!' Sua Av exclaimed.
Gunda Welk's towering spacesuited figure came thrusting hastily into the control-room.
'Joan, the compartment walls are cracking down there!' exclaimed the Mercurian. 'If they—'
A thunderous explosion from below interrupted her words. Instantly, the Cauphul's acceleration decreased, the roar of its rocket-tubes sharply diminished.
'One power-chamber has exploded!' yelled an engineer's voice from the interphone.
'We're sunk!' the big Mercurian cried.
'No, Lann's coming around!' Joan Thorn exclaimed.
They had been rushing close to the coast of a far-flung swarm, with the pirate boy's silver ship just ahead, the League cruisers a fair distance behind, when the explosion had occurred. Now the silvery Lightning was darting back around to their side.
'I'm standing by to take you on!' Lann cried from the audio-speaker. 'Hurry!'
'Break open the portside door to abandon ship!' Thorn yelled into the interphone. 'Cut the tubes, Sua, and, come on!'
The Planeteers hastened down out of the control-room through the wrecked ship. The motley crew of the Cauphul, all in suits and helmets like the three comrades, had got the round door on the portside open. There was no air now in the whole ship, and its walls and beams were sagging and cracking ominously as it floated on in space under inertia.
Up to the side of the Cauphul drove the Lightning. There was no time to hook on with magnetic grapples or run out catwalks, for the League cruisers were coming up along the edge of the great meteor swarm in hot pursuit. The Lightning's starboard door was open, the silvery ship keeping even with the wreck only a few yards away.
'Jump for it!' Thorn yelled to her crew. 'Hurry!'
Across the gap between ships shot space-suited figures like human projectiles, leaping toward the big open door of the Lightning. Those who missed the door grabbed lines that had been flung out, and were hauled in like floundering fish.
There was a thundering crash of metal as a whole section of the Cauphul's stern collapsed. The wreck sagged drunkenly in space, and the League cruisers were racing closer.
'This is getting a little too hot for even the Planeteers!' laughed Sua Av as she leaped.
Gun
da Welk followed, and Joan Thorn jumped last. She felt herself hurtle floatingly across the gap toward the open door of the Lightning, infinity below and above her. Then she hit the edge of the door and a hand grasped her arm and pulled her in.
Instantly the Lightning sprang forward with renewed acceleration as its stern tubes blasted. The door was ground shut.
Thorn and her two comrades climbed to the control-room. When she entered it, a glance showed her that they were now pulling steadily away from their pursuers.
Lann Cain, his slender figure bulky in space-suit and helmet, was leaning beside the Jovian pilot at the firingkeys. He was listening intently to the constant buzzing from the section of the panel that received the navigation wave-signals.
'Turn ninety degrees outward, and fifteen degrees upward, Rimil!' exclaimed the boy. 'That'll take us between swarms where they won't follow for long.'
The Lightning curved sharply, shot between the two vast clouds of dangerous debris.
Looking back through the rear window of the bulging control-room, Thorn saw two of the pursuing League cruisers glow red and fall out of line. They had been meteor-struck. Trying to cut across after their quarry without aid of the wave-code navigation signals, they had blundered into the edge of one swarm.
The other League ships slackened speed, and tried to grope their way ahead. But the Lightning, dashing on at full speed and then changing course abruptly to cut up across a 'family'of whirling, planetoids, soon lost them from sight.
'Off suits. We're safe from them now!' Lann called into the interphone.
Thorn and her two comrades divested themselves with relief of their suits and helmets, as the boy did likewise.
Lann turned toward the Planeteers. The boy's bronze-gold hair was tossed in disorder, his face flushed, his dark blue eyes blazing with excitement. There was something vital and dynamic about him, and there was a throbbing, eager emotion in his eyes as he faced Thorn, impulsively holding out his hand.
'You Planeteers saved me down there!' he exclaimed. 'If you hadn't rammed in between ships and broken those grapple-lines—'
Joan Thorn felt a queer sense of shame as his warm little hand grasped hers. If he knew her real reason for taking such desperate chances to save him, she thought—But it was for four great worlds.
'I'll never forget this, Joan Thorn,' Lann was saying earnestly.
'I'll never forget it, either,' growled Gunda Welk, rubbing a bruised shoulder. 'When we wedged, between the two ships it nearly threw me right through a wall of the gun-deck.'
Sua Av grinned ruefully. 'I'm not so sure I want to be a raid pirate, if this kind of thing happens often.'
'It was a cunning trap set for us Companions by the League navies,' declared Lann. 'They even actually loaded those freighters with rich cargo, knowing we'd have spies watching who would report that, and that we'd make an attack when we heard. And they had those cruisers disguised as tankers, ready to gun us as soon as we were busy looting the freighters.'
His blue eyes flashed. 'But we escaped their trap! We didn't lose more than four of our ships, and we've got a good portion of the freighters’ cargoes—the cargoes that were to be the bait of the trap!'
'If old Stilicha Keene watched those freighters and tankers sail from Jupiter why didn't she suspect their game?' Thorn asked his keenly. 'A close look at the tankers would have showed her that they were disguised cruisers.'
Lann looked troubled. 'I can't understand why Stilicha didn't see that.' He added loyally, 'But it can't be any fault of hers. And, anyway, we, got out safely.'
'If that League cruiser that grappled onto you had gunned you, it would have been the end of you,' Joan Thorn told him. 'I can't understand why they didn't when they had you helpless.'
'Neither can I,' Lann confessed. 'They must have wanted to capture me, and take me to be tried and executed as a lesson to the whole system. If so, they overreached themselves!'
He turned to the Jovian pilot, and ordered, 'Straight to Turkoon, now. There's no danger of more pursuit.'
As the Lightning throbbed on through the Zone, homing toward the jungle asteroid like all the other scattered pirate ships, Joan Thorn drew her two comrades unobtrusively back down into the privacy of the narrow corridor below the control-room.
'There was something damned queer about that trap the League set!' Thorn declared. 'Their whole object seemed to be to capture this ship—to capture Lann—and they took good care not to fire once at his craft, lest they kill him.'
Sua Av stared, perplexed. 'But why would the League set such an elaborate trap as that to capture him?'
'Why did we come here to seek out the boy?' Thorn countered meaningly. 'Because he has a secret that we want.'
Gunda Welk started. 'You mean that the League may be after the secret of Erebus, too? That the League may be trying—'
'Trying to get that radite on Erebus, the same as we are?' Thorn finished. She frowned. 'It's possible. Remember, we heard that the League planned some frightful new agent of destruction to use on the Alliance worlds, to beat them into submission after they smash our fleet. Maybe the radite has something to do with that!'
Sua Av's green eyes widened. 'Then it might be a League agent who put that Ear in your pocket yesterday, who is working from inside the pirates as we are and helped plan this trap? But who is it? Brun Abo, or Jen Cheerly, or old Stilicha, maybe?'
'Whichever it is, if a League agent is after the boy's secret, we've got to beat her to it!' burst Gunda. ''But how?'
'He'll never tell me the secret, I'm sure of that, even though he feels grateful to me now,' Thorn said, frowning. 'But he may have written down what his mother told him about Erebus. He may have the secret among his papers.'
Sua Av's ugly face stiffened. 'You mean to search his papers? Joan, it's too dangerous! If these pirates caught you—'
'I've got to take the chance,' Thorn rapped. 'With the League working against us, there's no time to lose now!'