* * * *
Blackness! An utter darkness that enveloped them in a split-second of time, a rayless obscurity such as none of them had ever experienced before.
Thorn looked up bewilderedly, toward where the sun should be blazing down through the ceiling-window. But there was no sunlight now—no light of any kind—nothing but blackness.
'Blaine, what's gone wrong?' she cried hoarsely. 'This darkness—'
'Nothing has gone wrong!' shrilled Philippa Blaine's thin voice triumphantly. 'My neutralizer, my great invention, has succeeded! I knew it would if I had power enough!'
'You mean that it's this machine that has killed all the light here in the cavern?' Joan Thorn cried.
'It's done more than that!' Blaine exclaimed. 'It's killed all light everywhere! I've blacked out the whole Solanr System!'
A babel of cries of terror rose from the throng in the cavern, above the thunderous throb and drone of the great machine.
'Killed all light in the solar system?' Thorn gasped. 'Impossible!'
'The neutralizer has done it, I tell you!' Blaine shrilled exultantly.
'It broadcasts a damping wave that neutralizes and kills all vibrations in the electromagnetic spectrum from three to eight ten-thousandths of a millimeter in wave-length. That includes the whole range of visible light, and the terrific power of this radite-powered generator casts its vibrations out over a radius of eight billion miles, embracing the whole Solanr System.
'There is not one ray of light now in the whole system, on any world, anywhere-neither sunlight or starlight nor artificial light of any kind. Every world and every mile of space in the system has been plunged into utter darkness. And it will remain in darkness as long as the neutralizer is kept on!'
The stupefied Thorn felt Blaine shove something into her hand. It was a small pair of eye-lenses.
'Put those on!' Blaine's voice came in the darkness.
Joan Thorn put the lenses over her eyes. She cried out in amazement, She could see, through the lenses, by a dusky red light that seemed to permeate everything. The sun blazed crimson and weird in the heavens above the glassite window.
Sua Av and Gunda, and Lann and old Stilicha were also staring wildly up through the lenses the little physicist had given them. Blaine herself wore the lenses on her eyes.
'You are seeing by light normally invisible to your retinas, light above the wave-length of ordinary light,' Blaine told them. 'The so-called infra-red vibrations, which are unaffected by my neutralizer, and which are made visible to your eyes by these fluorescent lenses.'
'But what good will blacking out the whole solar system do the Alliance navies?' Gunda Welk cried. 'The League fleet won't be able to see or maneuver, but neither will our ships!'
'The Alliance ships will be able to see!' Blaine retorted. 'Each Alliance cruiser has been furnished with a supply of these fluorescent lenses, during the last year. They were given secretly to each cruiser's captain, without telling her anything except she was to use them in case of sudden darkness in space. They'll use them now, there off Mercury, and—'
'And they'll be able to see and to overpower the blinded League ships without a struggle!' Saul Av shouted.
Joan Thorn's heart bounded with wild, newborn hope. She clutched Lann feverishly to her side.
'If it works!' she prayed. 'If it only works!'
They gathered around Blaine's audio. Out of it, as the physicist turned it on, came panic-stricken calls from worlds plunged into absolute darkness, from blinded populations.
The whole system was seething in a turmoil of mad fear. Crowds stumbling blindly through the darkness of lightless streets were screaming that the end of the universe had come. Others were wailing that they had been suddenly stricken with blindness.
An hour passed. The intensity of the group around the audio increased. Appalling news of hysterical panic was growing.
'This can't go on!' Lann exclaimed shakenly. 'It's destroying all civilization in the system—'
'Listen!' Thorn cried suddenly.
Out of the audio came a hoarse, familiar voice—the voice of Richelle Hoskins, Chairwoman of Earth.
'Blaine! Philippa Blaine!' she was calling. 'This is the Chairwoman! We've won! Commander Leigh has just audioed me that her Alliance forces off Mercury have captured the whole League armada! Every League ship, its women utterly blinded, was forced to surrender under threat of being destroyed by our own cruisers.
'And I've called authorities on the outer planets. They've agreed to declare the war ended, to terminate Trask's rule and set up popular government again, and to dissolve the League of Cold Worlds into four independent planets again!'
'Trask herself is dead!' Joan Thorn called back into the instrument.
'You Planeteers are safe?' cried the Chairwoman's voice. It throbbed with emotion as she added, 'I knew you would bring the radite in time, Thorn. I knew you would!'
'Shall I turn off the neutralizer now?' Philippa Blaine asked, and the answer came back swiftly.
'Yes! Give the system light again, Blaine!'
The little physicist leaped to her control-panel. Her switches clicked. The droning of the generators and the throbbing thunder of the power-chambers died.
And suddenly light blazed about them! Not the dusky red infra-red rays by which they had been seeing through the lenses, but brilliant, blessed sunlight pouring through the window in the ceiling.
'We've won!' Sua Av was shouting, her ugly face wild with joy., 'The Alliance safe now—the menace of the League gone forever!'
'And that machine did it. That thing in front of us did it!' whispered Gunda Welk, incredulously staring.
Lann's blue eyes were shining as he looked up at Thorn.
'It means the realization of my dream and my mother's dream, Joan. A new independent world built up in the Zone. You'll help me build it?' She held his close, tears standing in her eyes, unable to speak for the moment in the flood of her emotions.
Then they all stared amazedly at Philippa Blaine, who had crumpled down beneath her switch-panel with her face buried in her hands. The little physicist looked up shakenly at them.
'I hope I never have to use the neutralizer to black out the system again!' she said hoarsely. 'I felt when it was on that I was trespassing against the command of the One who said, ‘Let there be light!’'