* * * *
Thorn straightened, shaken. The airlock doors had been closed and oxy-generators were throbbing. And old Stilicha, her helmet off and face still flaming with battle-light, came forcing through the excited pirate throng with another woman.
'Found this fellow prisoned in a separate chamber,' the old pirate shrilled. 'She says he's—'
'Philippa Blaine!' Sua Av shouted.
Blaine, greatest of Earth physicists, the woman who had built the mysterious mechanism that towered over them!
She was a thin, frail-looking little woman, with disheveled gray hair and wide eyes frantic with anxiety.
'Trask made me a prisoner when her force captured the moon!' she babbled. 'She tried to make me tell her what my machine is, how it's operated—'
'Blaine, we've brought you the radite that will operate this thing!' Joan Thorn cried. 'But even now the Alliance navies are being cornered inside Mercury by the League fleet. Can you save them with this thing?'
Blaine's eyes flashed. 'You've brought the radite? But some of my generators have been damaged!'
The little physicist sprang forward, bending with wild anxiety over the fused generators that had been wrecked by Trask and her women in those last moments.
'Can you repair them in time?' Thorn asked with feverish tensity.
'I can try,' Blaine rasped. 'I have spare generators in my supply cavern, but it will take time to install them.'
'For God's sake, hurry!' Thorn begged. 'Gunda, take some women and bring in the radite from the Venture!'
Pirates under Thorn's direction hastened to carry in the spare generators from the supply cavern adjoining. Blaine began the task of installing them, the little physicist working alone, none of the hundreds of others in the cavern able to assist her.
Thorn looked up haggardly through the great window in the ceiling, at the blazing sun. Somewhere there in the burning reaches of space near the flaming orb, the combined navies of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars were seeking to elude the League armada bent on their destruction.
Sua Av came running up to where Thorn stood rigidly with Lann.
'Joan, I got a flash from Blaine's audio just now!' the Venusian panted. 'The League fleet has divided into two forces and is boxing our navies five million miles off Mercury!'
'Can't you hurry, Blaine?' Thorn begged the little scientist desperately.
'I'm ... almost through,' panted the physicist. She was gasping from exhaustion, as she made her last connections.
'This thing won't save our navies. It can't save them!' groaned Gunda Welk. 'How can a machine here inside the moon affect a space-battle sixty million miles away?'
'Ready ... now,' gasped Philippa Blaine. 'Bring me that radite!'
The Planeteers hauled forward the asterium-wrapped mass of radite. With tongs Blaine tore away the protective asterium sheets. The unveiled radite blazed with dazzling white radiance, like a solid chunk of the sun.
Blaine rolled it into the injector-hopper of her power-chambers, with the tongs. She slammed down the lid, and then stumbled toward the huge switchboard set in the cavern wall.
'Stand back, all of you!' she panted.
Her trembling hands moved rapidly among the switches and relays of the panel. And the power-chambers below the gleaming sphere began to throb with mounting energy.
Louder and louder throbbed the massive chambers as the radite was disintegrated inside them to produce such concentrated power as had never before been produced in one place. And now the proton-turbines of the great generators were droning loud, adding to the deafening throb of the chambers.
Blaine watched her gauges with feverish eyes, while the Planeteers and their companions stood rigid, watching
'Almost voltage enough,' Blaine murmured hoarsely. 'Almost—now!'
She closed another switch. And then—