CHAPTER II
Cold-World Menace
THE career of the Three Planeteers had begun four years previously, in 2952.
That year had seen the splitting of the eight independent inhabited worlds of the Solanr System into two hostile alliances. The great and powerful League of Cold Worlds had been formed by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, under a ruthless, ambitious dictator. Feeling themselves menaced, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars had formed the Inner Alliance. The Alliance had sent out many spies to gain information of the League's threatening plans, but nearly all of them had rapidly been detected and executed.
Then Joan Thorn, captain in the Earth Navy, had conceived her patriotic plan. She and two friends, Sua Av, Venusian engineer, and Gunda Welk, Mercurian adventurer, would go forth into the underworld of the system as outlaws. And as fugitives from the law, they would never be suspected of being agents of the Alliance.
The three friends had deliberately established criminal records. Thorn had deserted from the Earth Navy. Sua Av had fled after supposedly embezzling a great sum—a sum which was being secretly held in trust for its rightful owners. Gunda Welk had broken jail after a brawl on Mercury.
The three fugitive friends had foregathered, and thus had been born the three Planeteers. They had performed one daring exploit after another. Each time, their exploits seemed mere criminal raids or robberies. Yet each time, their real purpose had been the securing of information as to the purposes and plans of the hostile, threatening League of Cold Worlds.
Now, the Three Planeteers were the most famous outlaws in the system. Three lone wolves of the void, extravagantly admired by all criminals and pirates, bitterly condemned by all law-abiding women. Only one man—the Chairwoman of the Earth Government—knew that the notorious Planeteers were really undercover spies.
Now that woman, Richelle Hoskins, faced the three comrades with gladness in her eyes. Her powerful face, deeply lined by strain of responsibility, quivered with emotion.
'Thank God, you're here!' she repeated. 'It's been days since I sent out that call to you on the secret audio-wave. I was beginning to fear something had happened to you.'
'We were almost picked up by the Earth Police tonight, sir,' Joan Thorn said quietly. 'I was recognized.'
The Chairwoman hastily closed the metal shutter of the window. There was a look of deep anxiety in her haggard eyes.
'Thorn, I knew I was summoning you three into danger when I called you here. But I had to do it, for I've something to tell you which I dared not trust even to the secret wave. Something upon which the fate of the whole Inner Alliance may depend!
'But first, what can you report?' the Chairwoman asked tensely. 'The League is still preparing to attack us?'
Thorn nodded tightly. 'Yes, sir. Every dock and arsenal from Jupiter to Neptune is humming with activity. The League will have at least ten thousand cruisers ready in a few weeks, the story goes. They're working their mining bases out on Pluto at full capacity, digging fuel ores. And there's a rumor that they've planned some new and terrible agent of destruction with which they will blast our worlds into submission, after they've smashed our fleet!
'Furthermore,' Thorn added, 'the League dictator, Hasna Trask, is constantly broadcasting inflammatory speeches to her four worlds. She's stirring up their war fever to frenzy, telling them that since the worlds of the Inner Alliance refuse to cede any territory, it must be taken from them by force.'
Chairwoman Hoskins nodded somberly. 'I've heard Trask's broadcast speeches. It's that cursed power-lusting dictator who's driving the system toward war. If we'd only recognized sooner what a menace she is, we wouldn't have let the League get so far ahead of us in armaments. As it is, when their attack comes, they'll outnumber our combined navies by two to one. They'll overwhelm our fleet, unless—'
'Unless what, sir?' Thorn asked tensely.
'Unless we can use a new weapon we have,' the Chairwoman finished. 'A weapon such as the system never heard of before.'
She paced the little study for a few moments, and then turned back to the rigidly watching Planeteers.
'You've heard of Philippa Blaine, our famous Earth physicist?' she asked.
Sua Av's bald head bobbed. 'I have, sir. She disappeared, a year ago. No one knows where she is now.'
'Blaine,' said the Chairwoman, 'is in Earth's moon. For a year, she's been working in secret laboratories in the lunar caverns. She's developed a radical, revolutionary new weapon. I dare not tell even you the nature of that weapon. But it will enable us to defeat an overpowering attack of the League fleet-if we can use it!'
'If we can use it, sir?' puzzled Gunda Welk.
'Yes. For Blaine's weapon is useless, as it stands now. To operate the thing requires concentrated power of incredible volume. Atomic energy from ordinary fuels is insufficient. The only fuel that will furnish enough atomic energy to operate this thing is radite, that rare isotope of radium. To make use of Blaine's great weapon, we must have a ton of pure radite.'
'A ton of pure radite?' exclaimed Thorn incredulously. 'Why, not one of the eight worlds has more than a few pounds of the stuff! It takes thousands of tons of ore to yield an ounce!'
'There is a ton of pure radite in the system,' the Chairwoman affirmed. 'But it's not on any of the eight inhabited worlds.'
'It can't be on Pluto, surely,' protested Sua Av. 'The League mining bases there would have found it long ago.
'It's farther than Pluto,' the Chairwoman said.
Joan Thorn stared. 'You mean, it's on Erebus?'
The Chairwoman nodded slowly. 'Yes, it's on Erebus, the tenth and outermost planet, that mysterious, unexplored world that swings out there in space a billion miles beyond even Pluto's orbit.'
'How can anyone know the radite's there?' Gunda Welk demanded unbelievingly. 'Why, no one knows what's on Erebus! Not one of the expeditions that sailed for that planet ever came back. For centuries, no one has even tried to explore that mystery world!'
'Years ago,' the Chairwoman said 'astronomers detected the presence of a mass of pure radite on Erebus, through their spectroscopes. Supervaluable as radite is, no one has tried to go after it, for all know it's suicide to try to visit Erebus.'
The Chairwoman's lined face quivered.
'But now we've got to have that radite! It alone will operate Blaine's new secret weapon. It alone will enable us to resist the League's attack, and preserve the liberty of these four inner worlds.'
She looked at the three comrades solemnly. 'We have sent five big secret expeditions to Erebus during the last year, in desperate hope of getting, the radite. Not one ship, not one woman, not one message has ever come back from them. The sinister mystery there swallowed them up, as it has swallowed all who tried to visit Erebus.
'Now I am calling on you Planeteers. If anybody in the system can reach Erebus and bring back the radite, you can. The chances are a thousand to one you'll perish there as mysterious air hives—all other would-be explorers of that world. But that thousandth chance that you might succeed and bring back the radite, is the last chance of the Alliance worlds to preserve their liberty—'
'We'll go, lady, of course!' Gunda Welk exclaimed instantly. 'Hell, whatever's on Erebus, it can't stop us!'
Sua-Av scratched her baldhead. 'I wonder what is really there? Anyway, if human women can bring that radite back—'
'Wait a minute!' Thorn exclaimed, her lean brown face suddenly eager. She turned to the Chairwoman. 'You said nobody had ever landed on Erebus and returned, sir. But one woman did land there and come back. Martina Cain, the great space pirate of, a generation ago.'
The Chairwoman nodded. 'Yes, I remember the story now. Cain is supposed to have made for Erebus alone in a lifeboat when her ship was gunned to a wreck outside Pluto's orbit. They say she spent two weeks there and returned safely, the only woman ever to do so.'
'Martina Cain,' Thorn pointed out tensely, 'must have discovered the secret of how to land safely on Erebus. If we knew tha
t secret, we could land there safely and lift the radite!'
'But Cain has been dead for years,' the Chairwoman reminded. 'And she never told anyone what was on Erebus, they say.'
'She told one person the secret of Erebus, if what I've heard in the underworld is true,' Joan Thorn persisted. 'Her son, Lann Cain.'
The Chairwoman stared. 'Lann Cain, the boy who's leader of the space pirates out in the Zone? The boy they call the pirate prince?'
'That's right.' Thorn said tautly. 'They say that Martina Cain, his mother, before she died told his the secret of how to visit Erebus safely, so he could take refuge there if ever he had to. She's never told anyone the secret. But he knows it!'
Sua Av's green eyes glistened. 'If we could get that secret from Lann Cain—'
'That's my idea!' Thorn exclaimed. 'If we three go straight to Erebus to get the radite, the chances are a thousand to one as you say that we'll simply meet the same mysterious fate as all other explorers, and never come back. Our lives don't matter, of course, but the Alliance wouldn't get that precious radite.
'Our only real chance, as I see it, is to make first for the Zone, and get this boy Lann Cain's knowledge of Erebus, by trickery or force. With that knowledge, we can go on to Erebus and have a fighting chance of winning through and bringing back the radite.'
A flame of eager hope leaped into the haggard eyes of the Earth Government executive.
'It's the best plan yet, Thorn! But dare you enter the Zone and seek out this pirate boy? Those corsairs are ferociously hostile and suspicious of all strangers.'
'You forget, sir,' flashed Joan Thorn, 'that we are the Three Planeteers!'
'Yes,' rumbled Gunda Welk, cold blue eyes gleaming. 'We have a reputation of our own among the outlaws of the system, sir.'
Sua Av grinned.
'I always did have a hidden longing to be a pirate.'
'Thorn, you give me new hope!' declared the Chairwoman. 'If you can do this, in the little time left us—'
'Listen!' commanded Gunda Welk suddenly.
Through the locked door and metal-shuttered window of the study penetrated a rising tumult, the roar of rocket-cars racing up to the mansion. Then came a rush of running feet through it, and a loud knock on the door.
'Ms. Hoskins!' called a secretary anxiously to the Chairwoman through the door. 'The police are here! They say the Three Planeteers are in the city tonight, and were glimpsed by spy-plates heading toward this mansion. They want to make sure you're safe.'
'The cursed Earth Police!' flared Gunda Welk in a hoarse whisper. 'We overlooked some of their spy-plates.'
Thom's eyes were black pinpoints, her brown face taut. She knew the Mercurian was right, that they had been glimpsed by some of the hidden visiplates planted cunningly throughout the metropolis for the benefit of the police.
'I'm all right, Ames!' called the Chairwoman to her secretary. 'Tell the police not to bother me.'
But in the next moment came a loud cry from a police officer outside the shuttered windows.
'The Planeteers are in there with the Chairwoman!' the woman shouted. 'Their tracks lead to the window-they must be making her say she's all right!'
'Break down the door!' roared another officer's voice. 'Quick, before they kill the Chairwoman!'
A resounding battering began against the locked door and another banging at the metal shutter that closed the window.
The Chairwoman looked helplessly at Thorn. 'I'll have to tell them the truth, that you Planeteers are really my agents, or they'll haul you off to prison,'
'No!' said Joan Thorn fiercely. 'Once the secret that we're Alliance agents gets out, it would spread swiftly over the whole system. Our chance of getting the secret of Erebus from that pirate boy would be wrecked—our whole plan ruined.'
'But you can't escape from here the Chairwoman exclaimed. 'They're at both window and door!'
'We can escape,' Thorn said swiftly. 'But we've got to make it look as though we came here for a criminal purpose. Otherwise, people will ask why the Planeteers came to the Chairwoman's mansion, and it will be guessed that we're really your agents after all.'
Thorn drew a roll of flexible metal cord from her pocket, and sprang toward the Chairwoman.
'Forgive me for this, sir,' she cried.
The bewildered Chairwoman did not resist as Thorn bound her arms and legs tightly. Then the young Earthwoman straightened.
'Tell them we tried to kidnap you, sir,' she said swiftly to the Chairwoman. 'That we meant to hold you for ransom.'
Gunda Welk stood ready now to open the window shutter. And Sua Av had taken a little metal sphere from her pocket.
'You're right-the light-bomb is our best chance,' Thorn clipped. 'Throw it when Gunda opens the window.'
Gunda Welk suddenly flung open the shutter. Before the police hammering outside it could enter, the bald Venusian flung out the tiny sphere. The Planeteers clapped their hands in front of their eyes. The sphere burst out on the terrace amid the pressing group of police. A terrific glare of blazing white light exploded from the bomb. A tiny charge of atoms inside it had been suddenly broken down, not into energy, but into pure radiation in the frequency of light. The awful glare of radiation instantly paralyzed the optic nerves of the unprepared police, temporarily blinding them.
The glare died swiftly. Thorn and her two comrades were already plunging out through the blinded women.
'This way!' Thorn cried.
'They're escaping!' yelled a blinded officer.
The Planeteers plunged around the corner of the huge mansion, toward the long, low rocket-cars parked in front.
Sua Av jumped into one, whose power-chamber was throbbing. As the others leaped in after her, the bald Venusian yanked back the throttle. The car rabbited out through the dark grounds with a rising roar from the rocket-tubes at its rear.
'Straight for the spaceport!' Thorn yelled.
'Hold tight!' called Sua Av, with a throaty laugh. 'I always did want to let one of these things out!'
A whizz and roar, a spuming flash of fire—that was the stolen rocketcar as it shot through the streets. Its speed was suicidal, but streets were almost empty at this late hour.
Now the spaceport was close ahead. Thorn could see the soaring tower of the starter, flashing varicolored landing signals to a huge freighter that was sinking ponderously down out of the stars with all its blasts braking.
The audio speaker in the car broke into frantic voice. 'All police! The Planeteers have stolen a police rocket-car and are making for the spaceport, after making an attempt to kidnap the Chairwoman! Shoot on sight!'
'Look ahead!' yelled Gunda Welk.
Women in white uniforms were running across the spaceport toward them, between the great docks and the big freighters and liners that rested like huge torpedoes on the tarmac.
'They're too late!' the Venusian chuckled. 'Here's our ship.'
Before them loomed the three-man scout cruiser that had brought them to Earth, a long, torpedo-slim craft of gleaming inertrum, on its nose the number N-77. The thick-clustered tubes at its stern told of immense powers of acceleration and speed.
Joan Thorn and her comrades tumbled into the little ship, as atom-pistols coughed, and shells exploded in white proton-fire around them. Sua Av spun the heavy, round door shut while Thorn and the Mercurian leaped into the control-room in the nose.
Thorn's hands flashed amid the bewildering array of controls, and the power-chambers in the stern began a soft, rising roar of atomic energy.
Thorn jammed down two firing keys. With thunderous blast, white fire burst from the keel tubes of the cruiser. It lurched upward, riding its columns of proton-flame, then shooting obliquely up across the spaceport as Thorn cut in all the stern tubes.
She was flung back, deep into the cushioned pilot chair, her entrails seeming crushed by the terrific acceleration. The shadowed convexity of Earth fell away appallingly beneath them, as the sharp clang of the friction-alarm
told of walls being dangerously overheated by the too-rapid rush through the air. Then the roar of air outside the walls died rapidly away. They were out in space.
'We're clear!' shouted Sua Av, stumbling into the control-room, her grin twisted by pain of shock.
'Clear, yes—but every Earth cruiser in space will be after us now for trying to kidnap the Chairwoman!' Thorn rapped. 'We've got to reach the Zone before they catch us!'