The Three Planeteers For All

CHAPTER XX

  At Uranus’ Orbit

  THE cruel stars above Erebus looked down upon a scene of strange activity. Out of the dimly shining deserts of that terrible world, out of the shimmering blue hazes that perpetually wrapped its surface, rose the huge black bulk of a rounded metal mountain. And on the top of that mountain, space-suited women who staggered from days of frantic labor were now nearing the end of their toil,

  The Venture was being made ready for blast-off. New power-chambers had been built into the ship in the days that had passed. Lacking in inertrum with which to build the new chambers, Joan Thorn had used the metal of the mountain, the black asterium which was fully as strong as inertrum itself. With atomic furnaces and atomic welding-torches, the Planeteers and Stilicha's pirates had labored almost unceasingly to construct the new chambers. Lann Cain's order had been enough to make the pirates obey Thorn utterly.

  Thorn had been torn with almost unbearable apprehension in these days of terrible toil. Each day, each hour, meant that Jen Cheerly was millions of miles farther toward Saturn with the radite. No one of them all, except Thorn herself, believed there was the slightest chance to overtake the spymaster now,

  Gunda Welk and Sua Av, reeling with fatigue, stumbled up to where Thorn was superintending the last preparations.

  'All ready, as far as I can see,' Gunda said hoarsely.

  Stilicha Keene and Lann came up anxiously as she spoke.

  'Boy, are ye crazy to think that you can overtake the Gargol when it's got days’ start of us?' averred Stilicha.

  'We'll overtake them,' Thorn said fiercely. 'We've got to!'

  'But to do it, we'd have to travel three times as fast as any spaceship ever traveled before!' Stilicha exclaimed.

  'That's what we're going to do!' Thorn clipped.

  They stared at her, as though they believed her mind had been strained by the days of superhuman toil and anxiety.

  'We're going to use radioactive matter for fuel in our power-chambers!' Thorn explained. 'It will yield several times as much power as ordinary metallic fuel. We can get up to a speed no ship has ever attained before!'

  'But no one's ever dared use radioactive fuel before,' Lann whispered, stunned. 'It would crumble any power-chamber it was used in.'

  'You forget we've got asterium power-chambers in the Venture now!'

  Thorn cried. 'And asterium is proof against radioactivity. The daring originality of Thorn's plan burst upon the others, taking their breath away.

  'By heaven, it may work!' Gunda exclaimed excitedly. 'If the power doesn't make our rocket-tubes back-blast.'

  'We'll have to take that chance;'Joan Thorn said harshly. She turned. 'Here come Clyme Nison and Chana Gray now. They volunteered to bring the radioactive fuel we'll need.'

  The two glowing figures of the radioactive women were coming up onto the top of the metal mountain, dragging after them the asterium sledge. Upon the sledge, in a rudely forged asterium box, was a great mass of shining mineral.

  Thorn's quick orders superintended the pirate engineers as they carried the asterium box of minerals into the Venture, and prepared it for use, then Thorn turned to the two radiant radioactive women.

  'We're ready to start,' she told Clyme Nison haggardly. 'We want you to come back with us, to Earth,'

  Nison shook her shining head, sadly. 'That cannot be. We would be death to you. The radiation from our bodies would slay you, in time, and would disintegrate your ship.'

  'But you can't stay here, wandering this hellish world forever!' Thorn cried. 'You, one of the greatest of women in the system's history, you whom Earth would welcome with joy.'

  Clyme Nison's haunted, shining eyes looked past them, far away into tragic memory.

  'To Earth I am dead, now,' she said slowly. 'And the Earth I knew nine centuries ago, is dead, too. It must remain that way. But one thing you can do for us.'

  'Anything you mean!' Thorn exclaimed.

  'You can give us poor damned souls upon this world, us radioactive women, the boon of real death,' Nison said.

  'If scientists of Earth came here with the needed mechanisms, they could end the game of unhuman life within us by using forces to transmute the radioactive atoms of our bodies into pure energy, dissipating our atomic structure, our life and consciousness, forever. That is the greatest gift you could give us—the peace of death.'

  Thorn felt a hard lump in her throat. It was moments before she could answer,

  'It shall be done,' she choked. 'A party of scientists will be sent here to do what you ask.'

  She turned toward the awe-stricken group behind her who were staring in deep silence at the tragic, glowing women.

  'We must start,' Thorn said unsteadily. ‘Into the ship!'

  Inside the Venture, the Planeteers climbed again with Lann and Stilicha to the control-room, while the door was ground shut. They removed their space-suits, and then Stilicha nervously gave the order into the interphone.

  'Power-chambers on!'

  All stiffened, as from below came the soft, rising roar of the chambers, growing rapidly to a thunderous throbbing that shook the whole fabric of the cruiser. The radioactive fuel, being broken down in the power chambers, was yielding such unprecedented torrents of energy as to threaten a new explosion.

  'Blast off!' Thorn told the old pirate.

  Stilicha's thin hands descended on the firing-keys. With a raving roar of released titanic energy, a spuming plume of fire from their rocket-tubes, the Venture shot skyward.

  Up from the domed metal mountain, up from the shimmering blue hazes of Erebus, the cruiser arrowed; picking up speed with appalling acceleration. Air screamed briefly outside, then faded away.

  Night black space, starred with the bright yellow speck of the far-distant sun, lay ahead. Rocketing faster and faster, shuddering and creaking to the thrust of its tubes, the Venture flashed on,

  Sua Av was hanging tensely over the instrument panel, and the Venusian's green eyes flashed at she turned.

  'Instruments are operating again!' she reported. 'But our audio was permanently wrecked by the radiation of Erebus.'

  'Lay a course straight for Saturn,' Thorn ordered Stilicha. 'Cheerly will be making straight for that world, and we'll be following her directly.'

  Gunda Welk grunted.

  'And if we catch up to her,' she gritted, 'I've got plans for what I'll do to that Uranian.'

  'Shall I cut some of the tubes now?' the old pirate asked nervously. 'We're shaking now like we're fit to come apart.'

  'No! Leave all stern tubes on for utmost acceleration!' Thorn rapped, her haggard, worn, brown face stiff with desperate determination. ‘We'll either wreck this ship by back-blasting, or we'll overtake Cheerly—one of the two!'

  Lann came silently to Thorn's side, looked up at her with a deep anxiety in his blue eyes.

  'Joan, you must sleep a little,' he begged. 'For days you've been toiling and worrying. You'll collapse unless you rest.'

  'Rest? How can I rest when the radite we've come through hell to get is millions of miles ahead of us!' Thorn said rawly.