CHAPTER IX
Imprisoned Planeteers
THORN rose slowly to her feet, keeping her hands raised. A wrong movement, she knew, would mean instant death. Inwardly she was bitterly reproaching herself for letting herself be surprised.
'So, Planeteer,' said Kinne Queen in a deadly low tone, 'you and your comrades seem to be traitors. Less than an hour after you've been initiated into the Companions, we find you here rifling Lann's secrets.'
'Didn't I tell you, Kinne?' squeaked Jen Cheerly, the fat Uranian's little eyes glittering with beady triumph. 'Didn't I tell you this Thorn was up to something when she slipped away from the. feast, and that we ought to follow her?'
'Take her atom-pistol, Jen,' ordered Kinne Queen without removing her eyes from Thorn. 'Then go and get Lann and the others-and make sure you get the other two Planeteers!'
Jen Cheerly lifted the weapon from Thorn's belt, and then the obese Uranian waddled hastily out of the room. Thorn stood, her hands still raised, facing the other Earthwoman.
Kinne King's middle-aged, handsome face was dark with loathing, and there was a deadly expression in her brooding eyes as she watched the Planeteer.
'King, listen to me!' Joan Thorn said desperately. 'You're an Earthwoman, and I—'
'Be silent!' Kinne Queen hissed, her eyes narrowing to pinpoints. 'I'll blast you where you stand, traitor.'
In heavy silence, Thorn waited. She knew there was not the slightest chance for her to make a break under the muzzle of the other's weapon. To do so would be merely to commit suicide without gaining anything.
Presently there was a rapid tramp of many feet, an excited babel of voices entering the Council House. Into the lighted rooms came Lann Cain, and with him were old Stilicha, Brun Abe, the Jovian captain, and the waddling, gloating green-faced Uranian, Jen Cheerly.
With them came four pirates who held atom-pistols against the backs of Gunda Welk and Sua Av. Gunda's clothing was torn, her temple bleeding from a wound, her cold blue eyes like icy flames. Sua Av's ugly face was taut and watchful.
'They'd never have got us, Joan,' rumbled the big Mercurian as they entered, 'if they hadn't jumped us from behind.'
'It's all my fault,' Thorn said bitterly.
Lann Cain was looking at Thorn. The boy's face was white and stunned, his blue eyes wide and unbelieving. Then as his gaze swung from Thorn's face to the rifled papers on the floor, his expression changed to one of flaming wrath.
'It's true, then,' he whispered throbbingly to Thorn. 'You are a traitor to the Companions,, a paltry thief trying to steal my secrets. And I know. what you were after!' he flared. 'The secret of Erebus. Because I wouldn't tell it to you, you slipped in here, trying to steal it.'
'Lann, listen—' Thorn began with desperate earnestness.
Lann cut her off with a stinging slap across the face. The space dog Ool jumped forward, great eyes blazing.
'All the time you were listening to my plans, pretending sympathy, you were only thinking of how you could get that secret from me!' flamed Lann. 'I wouldn't tell it to you, because I didn't want you or anybody else to go to that terrible world. I almost wish now that I'd told you, that I'd let you go blundering out to Erebus to meet the horrible fate you'd meet there!'
'What are we waiting for? Why don't we blast these dogs down now?' demanded Brun Abo, the scarred-faced Jovian.
A fierce growl of approval of the suggestion went up from the other pirate captains. Even old Stilicha Keene was looking at Thorn and her two comrades with accusation in her face.
'Boy, I never thought you Planeteers would do a thing like this,' said the old pirate dismally.
Thorn was thinking with desperate rapidity. Should she tell Lann the truth, that they Planeteers were, agents of Earth who only sought the Erebus secret to get the radite that would save the Alliance?
She saw that it would gain nothing to tell. It would make no difference to the boy, who was so bitter against Earth he would do nothing to help that world. And it would give away the great secret that the Alliance had a weapon with which it might be able to resist the League attack.
'Lann, listen to me,' Thorn said rapidly. 'I'm not denying that we Planeteers came here seeking the secret of Erebus. We have a vital reason for wanting it, and when you wouldn't tell it, I had to try to steal it. I admit all that.
'But I want to warn you that there's someone else here, someone right here in this room now, if I'm right, who means to get that secret and use it to take millions of lives. You can save all those lives by giving us the secret and letting us go!'
'You pile one lie on another!' blazed Lann. 'You try to cover your own guilt by accusing innocent women!'
'Let's take them out and blast them down now!' cried Brun Abo,
'It's the penalty for treachery among the Companions,' old Stilicha said miserably. 'I guess we got to do it.'
Lann Cain paled a little. He shook his head.
'No, we'll not kill them now,' he said. 'Put them in the brig until morning.'
'And why shouldn't we kill them now?' demanded Brun Abo of him. 'Is it possible you've a tenderness for this Thorn?'
The boy turned on the Jovian, as though stung,
'I've only hate for such treacherous liars!' he flared. 'But we're going to execute them, not murder them. In the morning is soon enough.'
Surprisingly, Jen Cheerly supported him.
'Lann's right,' the Uranian squeaked and the boy glanced gratefully at her.
Thorn tried to speak again, but Brun Abo snarled an order, and the four pirates covering the Planeteers forced the three comrades to march out of the Council House into the night.
The brig, as the pirates called their prison, was a small, square, metal structure behind the main street of Turkoon Town. It had but one room, into whose dark interior they were rudely thrust. The heavy metal door slammed, and the wave-lock clicked.
'Make the best of your time till morning, Planeteers,' rasped Brun Abo as she and her women left.
'Joan, they didn't leave any guards outside,' said Sua Av quickly in the darkness. 'Maybe we can get out.'
They rapidly inspected their prison. But Thorn found that there was no chance whatever of escape from it.
The building was wholly constructed of inertrum, most intractable of metals. The two tiny, barred windows were mere loopholes, and the wave-lock of the door could only be operated by the secret frequencies of its wave-key applied from the outside.
'There's no getting out of here,' grunted Gunda Welk. 'Damn that fat Jen Cheerly! It was she who suspected you were up to something, Joan, and followed you with Kinne King—'
'Either Cheerly or Brun Abo must be the League spy here!' Sua Av declared tensely. 'And it looks to me as though Cheerly is the woman. She only joined the pirates recently, and it was she who tipped them off about the Jovian freighters, the League trap that, nearly succeeded in capturing Lann.'
'What the devil are we going to do?' demanded the big Mercurian. 'We can't break out of this place and we're due to be blasted at dawn.'
'There's only one chance left us,' Thorn rapped. 'When they take us out in the morning, we'll make a break and try to seize Lann. I don't think the pirates would take a chance of hurting his by firing at us then. We might get away with him.'
Gunda Welk's rumbling voice came slowly, 'But the boy might get hurt in the fight, Joan. I thought you were sort of in love with him.'
'Yes,' added Sua Av. 'and it looked to me as though he was beginning to feel the same way about you.'
'Are you two space-struck to say such things?' Thorn demanded fiercely. 'Me, in love with that wild pirate boy?'
Then her voice wavered a little. 'Even if I did love him, I'd have to forget it. For we have to get that secret out of his somehow, if the Alliance is to have a chance. That is bigger and more important than everybody in the entire zone.'
'All right, we'll try it,' rumbled Gunda Welk. 'It looks like our last bet.'