CHAPTER XIII
Dictator of Worlds
THE boy's white face flushed crimson, as the machine over him head blared forth his secret thoughts. Then he raised his gold head and looked at Thorn with brave steadiness.
'I would not have told you, Joan Thorn.' he whispered. 'But since the psychophone has spoken it, I must admit it—I do love you.'
Thorn's green-stained face worried, and in the rush of her mingled emotions, it was a moment before she could speak,
'Lann, I love you, too,' she said unsteadily. 'I have, since that night of the feast at Turkoon.'
'You do?' he whispered, incredulous, wondering joy dawning in his eyes. 'You do, Joan Thorn?'
There was a long moment in which Lann's shining blue eyes clung to hers, as she stared through the door-grating. And in that moment, the psychophone attached to the boy was speaking metallically on, stiltedly trying to voice his rush of joyous emotions.
Sua Av stirred restlessly beside Thorn. She and Gunda Welk had listened in silence until now.
'Joan, we'd better not be lingering here,' the Venusian cautioned.
'Yes, this is no place for love talk,' rumbled Gunda. 'God help us if Cheerly catches us here before we get Lann out!'
'Cheerly!' The psychophone spoke the boy's blazing thought as he heard the name. 'I hate that traitor!'
'Lann, what have Cheerly and Hasna Trask done to you?' Thorn exclaimed, her face hardening. 'Have they harmed you.'
'Since they brought me here they've had this attached to me,' Lann said bitterly. 'All these days I've sat here trying not to think of the secret of Erebus that they want. And I've known that sooner or later I'd slip and think of it.'
Each time Lann spoke, the psychophone was metallically speaking also, voicing the thought behind his words.
'They mustn't get that secret!' he cried. 'On the way here I learned by overhearing Cheerly's talk, why they want it. There's a mass of radite on Erebus, and that's what they're after. They plan to use that radite against the Alliance in their coming attack. They intend to make atomic bombs of the radite!'
'Radite bombs?' exclaimed Thorn, her face blanching under its stain. 'Good God, one atom bomb charged with that super-powerful stuff would destroy a whole Metropolis!'
'Then that is the terrible new agent of destruction we heard the League was planning!' hissed Gunda Welk. 'That is why Hasna Trask is delaying her attack on the Alliance until she gets the radite from Erebus!' Lann exclaimed. 'She wants to follow up her expected naval victory by a terrific bombing that will break all the inner world's resistance. That's why I'd rather die then give them the secret of Erebus!'
The boy looked at Joan Thorn through the grating with pleading earnestness in his worn white face.
'Joan, I told you I hated Earth for what it had done to my mother, that its fate didn't concern me. But when I heard what Trask plans to do to Earth and the other Alliance planets, I realized Earth is still my native world, that I couldn't let that happen.
'And it's your native world, too, Joan. Even though you Planeteers are outlaws, you're bound to the inner worlds by blood and birth. Just as I am. We mustn't let Trask's plan succeed!'
Now was the moment to explain. 'Lann, we Planeteers are not really outlaws at all!' Thorn said eagerly. 'We're secret agents of the Alliance, and we're after that radite on Erebus because it can save the Alliance from defeat when the League attacks.'
'Then I'll tell you the secret of Erebus!' the boy cried joyfully. 'If it means saving the Alliance worlds from conquest, as you say—'
'Hush, Lann! Don't think of it now! Wait!'
Sua Av had been searching the bodies of the two slain guards. The Venusian hastened back now to Thorn's side.
'Joan, there's no wave-key on those guards,' she reported anxiously. 'How are we going to get Lann out?'
'We'll have to break through this cell-door somehow!' Thorn exclaimed urgently.
'Break through an inertrum door?' said Gunda Welk incredulously.
A quick examination of the door justified the big Mercurian's doubt. The heavy inertrum of the door would resist even their atom-pistols. And the wave-lock was wholly invulnerable.
'We've got to get him out somehow!' Thorn cried.
'Joan, listen to me,' said Lann quickly. 'You can't get me out. But you Planeteers can get away, by the way you came. I'll tell you the secret of Erebus, the way to land on that world safely, and you three can get the radite.
'But we can't leave you here, Lann!' Thorn cried desperately. 'Just when you and I have found each other—'
'You must!' he declared, his blue eyes bright with purpose. 'What is my safety against that of all the inner Worlds?'
'She's right, Joan,' said Sua Av in a low, strained voice. 'God knows I hate to go and leave his here. But remember, we promised the Earth Chairwoman we'd do anything to get that radite.'
'We've got to do it, yes,' muttered Gunda, her huge fists clenched. 'But we'll come back, and if they've harmed her—'
Joan Thorn faced crucial decision, her mind torn by conflicting emotions. Her heart throbbed with desperate anxiety for Lann. Yet clear before her came the weary face of the Earth Chairwoman, telling her the Alliance's last hope was in the Planeteers.
'We'll do it,' Thorn said hoarsely. She could not say more. She could only stare haggardly into Lann's eyes.
'Then listen to the secret of Erebus that my mother told me, Joan!' the boy cried. 'It's doom, hideous and ghastly doom, to land anywhere on Erebus except—'
'Listen!' Sua Av cried suddenly. 'Someone is coming!'
From beyond the locked door at the end of the short corridor came a sound of voices and approaching footsteps.
'It must be the captain of guards on her inspection!' exclaimed Lann fearfully.
'No time to get back to that drain!' Thorn rapped. 'Quick, into one of these cells! Drag those bodies in, too!'
In an instant, she and the Venusian and Mercurian had seized the scorched bodies of the two dead guards and had dragged them into an empty cell across the corridor from Lann's cell. As they swung shut the door of their hiding place, the door at the end of the corridor opened, and women entered the prison.
Joan Thorn, peering through the grating in the door of the hiding place, stiffened in every muscle as she saw the women. One of them was a tall Saturnian captain of guards. Anothers was an obese, waddling figure with a puffy green face and pig-like little eyes—Jen Cheerly.
But it was the third woman of the group, the one who strode in front, upon whom Thorn's eyes riveted. This woman was a middle-aged Saturnian of tall stature, with a bony, nervous green face and very deep, dark eyes that stared gloomily straight ahead.
'Hasna Trask!' murmured Sua Av in Thorn's ear, her faint whisper surcharged with excitement.
Hasna Trask, self-appointed Leader of the League of Cold Worlds, absolute dictator of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune! Thorn's pulse pounded at sight of that bony, nervous face.
'Why are no guards on duty here as I ordered?' Jink Cheerly was asking the captain of guards in her squeaky voice.
'I did station two here, sir,' replied the officer, worriedly, to the fat spymaster. 'They must have sneaked out for some reason. I'll have them court-martialed for it.'
'I should have put my own, Secret Police here instead of depending on you,' said Cheerly in vicious anger. 'You've failed in your duty, Captain.'
'No woman must fail in her duty now!' declared Hasna Trask in her harsh, high, fanatical voice. 'In this great hour when we approach our fated destiny, every woman in the League worlds must give her all for the tremendous and glorious work that faces us!' Hasna Trask spoke as though she were exhorting a crowd a thousands, her voice incongruously declamatory. Her gloomy eyes flashed with a deep fire, her tall, bony figure rigid.
Joan Thorn felt a chill as she heard. The voice and face of Trask were those of a madman, a woman utterly convinced of the rightness of her actions and the wickedness of her enemies.
The captain hurried ahead to the door of Lann's cell and was turning the invisible beam of a wave-key on its lock. Trask and the fat Uranian spymaster halted and waited.
'Joan, we can gun down Trask from here!' Sua Av whispered excitedly, tensely fingering her atom-pistol.
'No. Killing Trask now wouldn't stop the League, for there are a hundred of her underlings ready to take her place,' Thorn muttered tautly. 'Wait, I have a better plan.'
The door of Lann's cell clicked open. Watching through the grating, the Planeteers saw the dictator stride into the boy's prison-room, followed by Jen Cheerly and the captain.
'-almost morning. Days and nights are so short on Saturn,' the psychophone was speaking forth Lann's thoughts.
Thorn understood. Lann was trying to avoid giving away the presence of the Planeteers, by thinking of other things.
Hasna Trask surveyed the boy bound in the chair, her gloomy eyes meeting his defiant blue ones.
'Are you ready yet to tell us what we want to know, boy?' she demanded harshly.
Lann made no vocal answer. But the psychophone spoke his thoughts.
'I'll never tell them! Never!'
Trask's nervous face twitched violently and she seemed seized by a raging passion. She flung her arms out widely.
'Everything is against me in my great task. Everything!' she cried with theatrical self-pity. 'But I shall persevere and conquer in spite of everything! The system shall see!'
'Perhaps the boy has given away the secret to the psychophone by now, sir,' Jen Cheerly suggested hastily. 'Shall I examine the record?'
Trask nodded curtly. The fat spymaster reached up and touched a switch of the recorder. Instantly from it, began speaking the recorded thoughts of Lann, as spoken by the psychophone in the preceding hours and phonographically recorded on the tape.
Joan Thorn soundlessly opened the door behind which she and her comrades were hidden, and whispered tautly to them,
'Come on, but don't shoot Trask, yet!'
Hasna Trask and Cheerly were so intently listening to the record that they did not see the armed Planeteers appear silently at the open door of the cell. But the captain saw, and uttered a startled cry. Trask and the fat spymaster spun around.
'Hands high!' Joan Thorn rapped, her atom-pistol leveled. 'Quick, or we'll blast you down!'
Stupefiedly, the three women in the cell raised their hands. Hasna Trask's bony face went livid with rage.
'You dare turn weapons upon me!' she choked to the disguised Planeteers. 'Upon me, your Leader!'
But Cheerly's pig eyes suddenly widened as the fat spymaster's gaze searched Thorn's green-stained face.
'These aren't women of ours, sir!' she cried to the dictator. 'I know them—they're the Three Planeteers!'
'The Planeteers!' exclaimed Trask. Her deep eyes blazed. 'The outlaws whose brazen robberies have made us so much trouble in the past, who have stolen so many of our secrets—'
Thorn interrupted in a hard, cold voice. 'Take their guns, Sua Av. Gunda, release Lann. Careful with those nerve connections.'
In a moment the boy was freed, and the Venusian had the weapons of Cheerly and the captain. Trask had been unarmed.
'We're going out of here with this boy,' Thorn told the Saturnians icily. 'We're going to that court nearby where the space-cruisers are parked. You three are going to lead us there, by the shortest and least-used route. If we are challenged by anybody, or if there is any alarm, your leader here will die first.'
The captain gasped with horror at the threat, and Cheerly's pig eyes narrowed. But Trask's bony face was unmoved.
'You cannot kill me,' the dictator told Thorn harshly. 'Destiny has reserved me for a great work.'
'My trigger-finger can change destiny pretty quick, Saturnian!' warned Gunda Welk, her voice throbbing with hate.
Thorn motioned to the door at the end of the corridor.
'Get going, and remember my warning! Lann, keep beside me.'
They started, Hasna Trask and Cheerly and the captain moving with hands upraised, the Planeteers following with weapons leveled. Lann staggered, his limbs numbed by long confinement in his bonds, the back of his head aching. Thorn helped his along tenderly with her free arm.
They passed thus through the door at the end of the corridor, out of the dungeon into the dusky, diverging corridors that ran in a labyrinth here beneath the great citadel. No one was in sight in these passages as they went forward. Thorn's hopes soared.
If they could get away with Lann to where old Stilicha's ship waited out in the rings, they would soon be racing toward Erebus! And with Lann's secret knowledge to help them—
They were passing a dark cross-corridor at this moment. And Sua Av suddenly whirled around to face it.
'Look out—a trap!' she yelled wildly.
'They've got a damper!' shouted Gunda Welk, leveling her atom-pistol swiftly to fire.
Too late! The Mercurian's atom-pistol only clicked futilely. Thorn pulled trigger, but her weapon too was dead.
A score of Saturnian guards had been lying in wait in that shadowy cross-passage! And one of them held a cylindrical damper pointed toward them—an electrical mechanism that generated a short-range beam of vibratory force which damped or neutralized the electric propulsion-currents of any atom-gun's barrel solenoid, rendering it useless. The damper's beam covered the Planeteer's guns.
The Saturnian soldiers poured out of the cross-passage onto the Planeteers. Thorn clubbed her useless gun and tried to get at Hasna Trask, but went down under a smothering mass of green-faced women. She heard Lann scream as she fought fiercely.
The one-sided fight ended. Thorn was jerked to her feet by four Saturnians who gripped her. Sua Av and Lann were similarly held. Gunda Welk lay unconscious on the floor.
'We shall now find out why these Planeteers came here and who they are working for!' Hasna Trask declared.
'But they dared threaten you, sir!' protested the tall captain. 'They deserve instant execution for that crime.'
'The indignity to me is nothing, declared the dictator fanatically. 'I am thinking only of the great cause we all serve.
'You Planeteers are not as cunning as I thought,' Jen Cheerly told Thorn tauntingly, 'or you'd have guessed that there would be a spyplate outside the entrance to the dungeon.'
Thorn's heart sank. So that was how they had been detected—by a hidden spy-plate outside the dungeon entrance, by which a distant officer could keep watch over all who entered or left the prison. The spy-plate watcher had seen them forcing the dictator and the other two ahead of them, and had summoned guards with a damper to nullify the Planeteers’ weapons and make sure they had no chance to harm the Leader when they were captured.
Thorn's wild hopes had crashed in utter ruin. She could not face Lann. She felt with bitter self-reproach that she had failed him, and that she had failed the Alliance.