ABOUT THIS AUTHOR AND BOOK

Jules Verne Award winner Edmond Hamilton (1904–1977) was one of the three formative pioneers of what some dismissively refer to as “space opera” and others as “the novel of intra- and interstellar adventure.” His earliest works, like the Federation of Suns or Interstellar Patrol series (1928-30), or Comet Doom (1927), The Three Planeteers (1940), and The Star Kings (1949), available from Renaissance E Books), are colorful, pell-mell adventure stories as befits Hamilton's youth. Later, in the 1960s, he would return to his roots for a series of novels and stories that combined the vivid interstellar settings early work with the more thoughtful perceptions and the moody, poetic style he had developed as he matured. These include The City at World's End (1957, available from Renaissance E Book), The Star of Life (1959), and The Haunted Stars (1961). What Hamilton did best, according to Donald Tuck's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, “involved the creation and popularization of the classic early space operas [presenting] galaxy-spanning conflicts between humans and other races, piratical or merely monstrous, [which in turn] did much to define the field's sense of wonder…” That Hamilton did all this without ever losing the human scale, indeed, the human touch, is a tribute to his genius and evident in such a thundering adventure as The Three Planeteers (which, as the title implies, is his homage to one of his favorite childhood novels, as The Star Kings pays homage to The Prisoner of Zenda, only in Hamilton's version of The Three Musketeers, his D'Artagnan, fittingly for a man married to a tomboy who grew up to be a celebrated writer of tough-guy fiction, is a woman!).

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

TOMORROW'S WORLD'S WORLDS

Instead of talking about myself, I'd like to talk a little about The Three Planeteers. A very common supposition in science fiction seems to be that when interplanetary travel is finally achieved, and there are populations of colonizing Earthmen on the other worlds, they will all be ruled by the same government and law, and that war and strife will be forgotten. Now, I never could see that as inevitable. In fact, it always seemed more reasonable to me to suppose that every world would have its own government. And here's why:

Just think of what an effect distance has right here on Earth. Englishmen migrate to America, and a century or so later they find they just can't get along with the parent country any more, and declare their independence. The same thing happens to the Spaniards who colonized South and Central America. It's happening right now to South Africa and Australia.

Now, if that is true right now on Earth, surely it will be even more true in the future in the Solar System! Think of yourself, a few hundred years from now, on Mars. Your father was born on Mars, and your grandfather. You know that several generations back one of your ancestors came here from Earth, but you don't feel any loyalty to Earth. Mars is your world. And yet here you are, with a government on Earth making the laws by which you live. Those Earth people don't know Martian conditions, and don't know what is or is not practical out here on your world. What would you do, in a situation like that? If precedent or history mean anything, ten to one you'd shine up your trusty atom-gun and go out with a lot of your fellow Martians to win your independence from Earth. And the chances are that you'd win it.

And in the centuries that followed, your descendants would be more and more true Martians, wouldn't they? They'd be modified by generations of life in a new environment. Free people of the different worlds, all of the same Earth stock, would grow more and more unlike each other. If they couldn't settle their differences they'd go to war. That's the speculative background of The Three Planeteers. But it isn't any history of the future. It's a story. I hope it's a good story.

Edmond Hamilton

1940

CHAPTER I

Comrades of Peril

They sauntered through the crowded, krypton lit street bordering the great New York spaceport, casually, as though there was not a reward on their heads. An Earthman, a Venusian, and a huge Mercurian, looking merely like three ordinary space-sailors in their soiled, drab jackets and trousers.

But inwardly John Thorn, the lean, dark-headed Earthman of the trio, was queerly tense. He felt the warning of that sixth sense which tells of being watched. His brown, hard-chinned face showed nothing of what he felt, and he was smiling as though telling some joke as he spoke to his two companions.

"We're being followed,” he said. “I've felt it, since we left the spaceport. I don't know who it is."

Sual Av, the bald, bow-legged Venusian, laughed merrily as though at a jest. His bright green eyes glistened, and there was a wide grin on his ugly, froglike face.

"The police?” he chuckled.

Gunner Welk, the huge Mercurian, growled in his throat. His shock of yellow hair seemed to bristle on his head, his massive face and cold blue eyes hardening belligerently.

"How in hell's name would the Earth police spot us so quickly after our arrival?” he muttered.

"I don't think it's the police,” John Thorn said, his black eyes still smiling casually. “Stop at the next corner, and we'll see who passes us."

At the corner gleamed a luminous red sign, “THE CLUB OF WEARY SPACEMEN.” In and out of the vibration-joint, thus benevolently named, were streaming dozens of the motley throng that jammed the blue-lit street. Reedy-looking red Martians, squat and surly Jovians, hard-bitten Earthmen-sailors from all the eight inhabited worlds, spewed up by the great spaceport nearby. There were many naval officers and men, too — a few in the crimson of Mars, the green of Venus and blue of Mercury, but most of them in the gray uniform of the Earth Navy.

John Thorn and his two comrades paused on the corner as though debating whether or not to enter the vibration-joint. Inwardly, Thorn was tautly alert to everyone who passed in the shuffling throngs. Every moment, his sense of peril grew greater. He was now certain that they were being watched from close at hand.

Sual Av suddenly grinned. “Look at that, John. It's a new one."

The Venusian nodded his bald head toward the corner of the chromaloy building, which was plastered with advertisements and official notices. Among them was a bright new poster.

WANTED — THE THREE PLANETEERS Reward of one million dollars offered by the Earth Police for any information leading to the arrest of the outlaws known as the Three Planeteers.

Sual Av's green eyes gleamed with droll humor in his froglike face.

"They've raised the price on us, John. We ought to feel flattered."

Gunner Welk was reading the rest of the notice in a low, rumbling voice.

"The identities and descriptions of the Three Planeteers follow: John Thorn, Earthman, twenty-eight years old, deserter from the Earth Navy—"

"That's enough,” Sual Av chuckled. “The rest is just a long list of our heinous exploits."

John Thorn took a long, green cigarette of Martian rail leaf from his pocket and scratched its tip against the wall, thus igniting it. As he puffed on it, Thorn spoke under his breath.

"Get ready, boys — here comes our shadow, if my guess is right."

Neither the grinning, bald Venusian nor the big Mercurian changed expression. But their hands casually dropped to the side of their jackets, where atom-pistols bulged their pockets.

A man in the gray uniform of a noncom of the Earth Navy was shouldering toward them out of the passing throng. He was a middle-aged man with a flat, grizzled face.

"Can you spare a smoke, sailor?” he asked Thorn.

"Of course,” John Thorn answered calmly, and fished one of the green cigarettes from his pocket. He kept his face bent as he handed it over.

"Thanks,” muttered the man, and was gone in the throng.

"A false alarm, after all,” grunted Gunner Welk.

"No,” clipped Thorn. “I know that man. He was one of my non-coms before I deserted the Navy. He knows I'm John Thorn, which means that he knows we're the Planeteers. He's gone for the police."

Thorn's gaze swiveled rapidly. Then he pushed his companions toward the swinging door of the vibration-joint.

"In here!” he exclaimed. “We can go out another door."

Thrumming music hit John Thorn and his comrades in the faces as they entered the place. It was a room clogged with greenish smoke. Men at tables in the center were arguing in bull voices as they drank black Venusian wine or brown Earth whisky. In the booths around the walls, many more men sprawled, somnolent, sleepy faces relaxed under the pale violet rays of the brain-soothing happiness vibrations."

Thorn's lean figure shouldered through the noisy, crowded tables, the bald-pated Venusian and the towering Mercurian following closely. They were half-way across the crowded place toward the back door, when there was a rush of feet through the front entrance.

Thorn twisted his head. Two men in the white uniform of the Earth Police had just burst in. With them was the grizzled non-com. The latter instantly pointed at Thorn and his two companions.

"There they are!” he yelled. “The Three Planeteers!"

For a moment, the noisy throng in the place was petrified. Even that motley, hard-bitten crowd was frozen by the sudden declaration that there in their midst stood the three half-legendary interplanetary outlaws.

Then the foremost of the two policemen, drawing his atom pistol, yelled to Thorn.

"Stand where you are!"

Thorn's pistol was already in his hand, as was the big Mercurian's.

"The lights, Gunner!” Thorn cried.

At the same moment, Thorn shot up toward the ceiling with the quickness of a wolf's snap.

The pellets from his and the Mercurian's pistols hit the big cluster of krypton lights in the ceiling. The flare of white proton fire from the exploding pellets was followed by an abrupt extinguishing of the lights. The place was plunged into darkness, except for the faint blue glow of the “happiness vibration” booths.

Scores of voices yelled in the darkness, and shadowy figures surged forward in a melee of reeling, clutching shapes. Some shouted for lights, others to guard the door. Everyone in the room had suddenly remembered the big reward for the capture of the Planeteers.

"This way,” chuckled Sual Av's throaty voice in the darkness. The Venusian was stolidly clearing a path through the crowd.

Men sought to hold the three in the darkness, cried out that they were escaping. Gunner Welk's huge fists thudded down in resounding blows, while Thorn struck with the heavy barrel of his atom-pistol.

Suddenly Sual Av was pulling them out of a shadowy riot, through a door. They stumbled out into an unlighted alley. As they did so, they heard the whiz and roar of rocketcars racing up to the front entrance of the Club of Weary Spacemen.

"Police,” grunted Gunner Welk. “They'll be around here in a minute."

"Come on!” cried Thorn, starting down the dark alley in a run. “We're all right now if we keep clear of spy-plates."

"Yes,” came the Venusian's chuckle as he ran beside them. “The last place they'll look for the Planeteers is the mansion of the Chairman!"

* * *

A half-hour later, the three comrades were two miles across the city from the spaceport, having threaded devious ways to avoid the omnipresent spy-plates of the police.

"Spy-plates” were televisor eyes mounted throughout the city, some openly but many more cunningly concealed, by which police headquarters could keep watch on all parts of the metropolis.

The Planeteers entered the deep shadow of tall trees that bordered extensive grounds. Through the trees glimmered the lighted windows of a magnificent metal mansion. The three comrades moved soundlessly as phantoms toward it.

The mansion was the official residence of the Chairman of the Earth Government. It was on a scale commensurate with the dignity of the elected executive of the planet. The huge tower that housed the Earth Government itself soared into the starlight from a great park nearby.

The Planeteers met no guards as they slipped cautiously toward the rear of the impressive mansion. There was a broad terrace here, splashed with blue-white light from a single window. John Thorn and his comrades stole up onto the terrace toward that window.

Thorn peered tautly into the lighted room. It was a small, paneled study. The only furniture was a big desk which lay in the blue-white pool of a krypton lamp. A gray-haired man sat at this desk, writing.

"It's the Chairman,” Thorn whispered. “And he's alone."

"Good,” muttered Gunner Welk. “That makes it easier!"

Thorn gently reached and pushed on the window. It was unlocked, and swung inward on soundless hinges. He stepped silently in upon the soft rug, and Sual Av and Gunner Welk followed as noiselessly.

The man at the desk suddenly looked up. His haggard, aging face stiffened as he beheld, ten feet from him, the three silent men — the lean, browned young Earthman, the bald, bow-legged Venusian, and the towering, hard-faced Mercurian.

"The Planeteers!” exclaimed the Chairman, rising to his feet. “Thank God, you're here!"

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 Solar 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 John Thorn, captain in the Earth Navy, had conceived his patriotic plan. He and two friends, Sual Av, Venusian engineer, and Gunner 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. Sual Av had fled after supposedly embezzling a great sum — a sum which was being secretly held in trust for its rightful owners. Gunner 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 men. Only one man — the Chairman of the Earth Government — knew that the notorious Planeteers were really undercover spies.

Now that man, Richard Hoskins, faced the three comrades with gladness in his eyes. His powerful face, deeply lined by strain of responsibility, quivered with emotion.

"Thank God, you're here!” he 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,” John Thorn said quietly. “I was recognized."

The Chairman hastily closed the metal shutter of the window. There was a look of deep anxiety in his 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 Chairman 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, Haskell Trask, is constantly broadcasting inflammatory speeches to his four worlds. He'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."

Chairman 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 he 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 Chairman finished. “A weapon such as the system never heard of before."

He paced the little study for a few moments, and then turned back to the rigidly watching Planeteers.

"You've heard of Philip Blaine, our famous Earth physicist?” he asked.

Sual Av's bald head bobbed. “I have, sir. He disappeared, a year ago. No one knows where he is now."

"Blaine,” said the Chairman, “is in Earth's moon. For a year, he's been working in secret laboratories in the lunar caverns. He'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 Gunner 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 Chairman affirmed. “But it's not on any of the eight inhabited worlds."

"It can't be on Pluto, surely,” protested Sual Av. “The League mining bases there would have found it long ago.

"It's farther than Pluto,” the Chairman said.

John Thorn stared. “You mean, it's on Erebus?"

The Chairman 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?” Gunner 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 Chairman 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 Chairman'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."

He 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 man, 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, sir, of course!” Gunner Welk exclaimed instantly. “Hell, whatever's on Erebus, it can't stop us!"

Sual-Av scratched his baldhead. “I wonder what is really there? Anyway, if human men can bring that radite back—"

"Wait a minute!” Thorn exclaimed, his lean brown face suddenly eager. He turned to the Chairman. “You said nobody had ever landed on Erebus and returned, sir. But one man did land there and come back. Martin Cain, the great space pirate of, a generation ago."

The Chairman nodded. “Yes, I remember the story now. Cain is supposed to have made for Erebus alone in a lifeboat when his ship was gunned to a wreck outside Pluto's orbit. They say he spent two weeks there and returned safely, the only man ever to do so."

"Martin Cain,” Thorn pointed out tensely, “must have discovered the secret of how to land safely on Erebus. If we knew that secret, we could land there safely and lift the radite!"

"But Cain has been dead for years,” the Chairman reminded. “And he never told anyone what was on Erebus, they say."

"He told one person the secret of Erebus, if what I've heard in the underworld is true,” John Thorn persisted. “His daughter, Lana Cain."

The Chairman stared. “Lana Cain, the girl who's leader of the space pirates out in the Zone? The girl they call the pirate princess?"

"That's right.” Thorn said tautly. “They say that Martin Cain, her father, before he died told her the secret of how to visit Erebus safely, so she could take refuge there if ever she had to. She's never told anyone the secret. But she knows it!"

Sual Av's green eyes glistened. “If we could get that secret from Lana 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 girl Lana 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 girl? Those corsairs are ferociously hostile and suspicious of all strangers."

"You forget, sir,” flashed John Thorn, “that we are the Three Planeteers!"

"Yes,” rumbled Gunner Welk, cold blue eyes gleaming. “We have a reputation of our own among the outlaws of the system, sir."

Sual Av grinned.

"I always did have a hidden longing to be a pirate."

"Thorn, you give me new hope!” declared the Chairman. “If you can do this, in the little time left us—"

"Listen!” commanded Gunner 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.

"Mr. Hoskins!” called a secretary anxiously to the Chairman 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 Gunner Welk in a hoarse whisper. “We overlooked some of their spy-plates."

Thom's eyes were black pinpoints, his brown face taut. He 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 Chairman to his 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 Chairman!" the man shouted. “Their tracks lead to the window-they must be making him say he's all right!"

"Break down the door!” roared another officer's voice. “Quick, before they kill the Chairman!"

A resounding battering began against the locked door and another banging at the metal shutter that closed the window.

The Chairman 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 John 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 girl would be wrecked — our whole plan ruined."

"But you can't escape from here the Chairman 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 Chairman's mansion, and it will be guessed that we're really your agents after all."

Thorn drew a roll of flexible metal cord from his pocket, and sprang toward the Chairman.

"Forgive me for this, sir,” he cried.

The bewildered Chairman did not resist as Thorn bound his arms and legs tightly. Then the young Earthman straightened.

"Tell them we tried to kidnap you, sir,” he said swiftly to the Chairman. “That we meant to hold you for ransom."

Gunner Welk stood ready now to open the window shutter. And Sual Av had taken a little metal sphere from his pocket.

"You're right-the light-bomb is our best chance,” Thorn clipped. “Throw it when Gunner opens the window."

Gunner 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 his two comrades were already plunging out through the blinded men.

"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.

Sual Av jumped into one, whose power-chamber was throbbing. As the others leaped in after him, 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 Sual 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 Chairman! Shoot on sight!"

"Look ahead!” yelled Gunner Welk.

Men 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.

John Thorn and his comrades tumbled into the little ship, as atom-pistols coughed, and shells exploded in white proton-fire around them. Sual 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.

He was flung back, deep into the cushioned pilot chair, his 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 Sual Av, stumbling into the control-room, his grin twisted by pain of shock.

"Clear, yes — but every Earth cruiser in space will be after us now for trying to kidnap the Chairman!” Thorn rapped. “We've got to reach the Zone before they catch us!"

CHAPTER III

Into the Zone

"Oh, the gloom of outer space,

Where the tailless cornets race,

And the sun's a star that almost disappears

When our rockets’ steady roar.

Sings the good old song owe more,

We're outward bound again, oh, Planeteers!"

Sual Av's throaty bass reverberated through the little control-room of the cruiser, in which he sat with Gunner Welk. It rose above the soft hissing of the rocket-tubes.

"Curse me if I can see anything to make up songs about,” growled the big Mercurian.

"You have no poetry in your soul, Gunner,” retorted the little Venusian with a grin. “A poetic genius like myself doesn't make up his songs — they come to him out of the great ether."

"They sound uncommonly like the bellowing of a Jovian marsh-calf when they do force themselves out,” said Gunner Welk dourly. “Besides, you'll wake up John."

"I'm awake,” came a voice behind them, and they turned.

Thorn came into the control-room, rubbing his eyes. Then he peered tautly through the broad window that framed a magnificent vista of black space and stars.

"What about the cruisers on our tail?” he asked quickly.

The big Mercurian shrugged. “They're hanging on — we've heard their audio calls. And they've called up every Alliance cruiser in this part of the system. We've stirred up a hornets’ nest this time, John!"

John Thorn cut in the switch of the audio. From the speaker came a weird jumble of meaningless sound. All naval calls were always “scrambled” to prevent eavesdropping; only an official unscrambler could translate them.

There was such an unscrambler in this little ship. Thorn had built it, out of his own naval experience. He hastily snapped it on, and the incoherent jumble of sounds from the speaker at once became a crisp, understandable voice.

"— our auras, which shows that present course of the fugitives is straight toward the Zone. Undoubtedly they're hoping to hide out there. It is imperative that we cut them off before they enter the Zone. Flagship Gull, signing off."

"The Gull!" Thorn exclaimed, his brown face strange for a moment. “I know that ship. It was old Commander Leigh speaking. He commands the Alliance patrol squadrons out here."

His thoughts swept him back into memory for a moment. He had, only four years before, commanded a cruiser of the Earth Navy that helped patrol this very sector of space, out here beyond the orbit of Mars, against a surprise League attack.

"They've guessed that we're making for the Zone,” Thorn went on. “It's where all outlaws head for when things get too hot for them."

"The whole system is too hot for us right now,” observed Sual Av. “You should have heard the audio news bulletins going back and forth while you were sleeping. Three Planeteers try to kidnap Earth Chairman! Notorious outlaws foiled in daring attempt.’ The system's ringing with it!"

"It'll ring with the news if we're gunned out of space by those cruisers converging on us,” grunted Gunner Welk sourly. “Do you think we can slip through them, John?"

"I think so,” Thorn clipped. “We've got to keep straight on. Turkoon, the asteroid that's the pirates’ main base, lies in the part of the Zone almost directly ahead."

Thorn stared with narrowed eyes through the broad window, into the magnificent star-flecked vault.

The little ship of the Planeteers was roaring out through the void at top speed, millions of miles outside the orbit of Mars. The bright, small disk of the sun was dead astern, its rays hiding the gray blob of Earth, away from which they had been fleeing for so many long hours.

Ahead of them, the void was thick with bright stars. Brilliant among them gleamed the big yellow topaz of Saturn, and beyond, and to the left, the fainter green sparks of Uranus and Neptune. Pluto was somewhere farther away, off to the right. And Erebus, their mysterious, ultimate goal, lay invisible still farther off — the dark, enigmatic outpost of the solar system.

Directly ahead of the racing little ship, only a few million miles away, extended a wide band of countless tiny specks of light, stretching parallel with the equator of the system. That broad band of light-specks was the Zone, the great asteroidal belt whirling between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Thorn gazed tautly into the Zone. That mighty wilderness of countless planetoids and meteor-swarms, which all ordinary shipping avoided by running above or below, was the No Man's Land of the Solar System. In it the space pirates had long had their lairs, from which they still sallied forth to levy ton on the interplanetary shipping. Countless naval expeditions had tried to clean the place out, and had been baffled by the shifting swarms of meteors and tiny planets which made it impossible to conduct organized operations in there without prohibitive losses.

John Thorn's brown hands clenched. In there, in the Zone, at the pirates’ asteroid base, was the girl who alone in the system, held the secret of mysterious Erebus, the secret that would make possible the securing of the precious radite from that far, dark planet. Somehow, that girl's secret must be secured.

"Calling flagship Gull!” suddenly boomed a deep voice from the audio speaker. “Cruiser Tharine, reporting. Our aura shows the Planeteers’ ship four hundred thousand miles from us, eighteen degrees counter-sunwise."

"Orders to Tharine," rapped back Commander Leigh's hard voice swiftly. “Close in before they slip past you into the Zone. Calling cruiser Rantal!"

" Rantal speaking!” came a quick voice.

"Change your course to eighty-six degrees sunwise,” hammered the Commander. “You and the Tharine can catch the Planeteers between you if you put on all speed."

Sual Av scratched his bald head and looked at Thorn. “They're converging on us from two sides, John."

"Damn them!” growled the huge Mercurian angrily. “If they only knew that we Planeteers are risking our necks for the sake of the Alliance—"

"But they don't know. To them, we're outlaws who must be either captured or gunned,” John Thorn clipped. “We've got to outrun those two cruisers! Turn the injectors on full, Gunner."

The Mercurian quickly obeyed. Thorn leaned toward the bank of firing-keys, his eyes on the power gauges.

All modern space ships were propelled by the atomic disintegration of copper or a similar metal. The powdered metal's atoms were broken down by terrific electric voltages, in power chambers of heavy inertrum. Only inertrum, that artificial metal whose atoms were synthetically “crystallized,” could stand the awful strain.

Much of the atomic energy generated in the chambers had to be fed back into them as electric voltage, to continue the process. But there was enough surplus to eject streams of protons at high speed from the inertrum rocket-tubes, propelling the ship.

John Thorn cut in all stern tubes. The little ship jerked forward with the deafening roar of the blast.

"Check the aura-chart,” he ordered Sual Av. “See if we're losing those cruisers."

The Venusian snapped on their ship's aura. The “aura” was a field of electromagnetic vibrations radiated for a million miles in all directions by a projector in the ship. The vibrations were reflected back by any object within that radius of space, and automatically plotted and recorded on the aura-chart.

The chart was a sphere of pale light, poised above the window. At the center of the luminous sphere was a black dot representing their ship. Off to right and left of the black dot moved two red sparks, cutting in obliquely toward them as all advanced.

"They're close — no more than a quarter of a million miles,” reported Sual Av.

"The Zone isn't much farther than that ahead,” Thorn declared.

"But there's a big meteor swarm in the Zone directly ahead of us!” Gunner Welk exclaimed. “We can't run into that!"

In the fore of the aura-chart sphere glimmered a cloud of very tiny crimson flecks, whirling, seething. It was the edge of a great cloud of meteors at the lip of the Zone, stretching across a million miles of space in front of their fleeing little ship.

Thorn could see the swarm in black space ahead. Not the myriad meteors themselves, but a constant winking and flashing of tiny flares, where meteors in the whirling storm of stone struck and fused every few minutes.

" Rantal reporting!” rapped the audio speaker. “Planeteers are now keeping their lead on us, and running straight on toward the Zone."

"Keep after them!” ordered the Commander's grim voice. “Swarm six-sixty-two is just ahead of them and they won't dare enter that. We'll have them boxed."

"You heard, boys,” said John Thorn tightly. “There's just one thing to do — run the swarm."

"Let her go!” grinned Sual Av. “It takes more than a few meteors to stop the Planeteers."

"One thing sure,” said Gunner grimly. “If we do run it safely, we'll lose those cruisers. They won't dare follow."

John Thorn knew the peril into which their little ship was roaring. The chance of their winning through that vast, whirling stone-storm was less than one in two.

But the naval cruisers would not follow them in there, he was sure. And if he could run the swarm, he would be well inside the Zone and could turn and run counter-sunwise toward the asteroid Turkoon without fear of further pursuit.

"Here goes!” Sual Av breathed, as the aura-chart showed their ship approaching the edge of the great swarm.

The chart showed the two converging cruisers making a frantic effort to head them off. But it was too late. Already, in the chart, the Planeteers’ ship was entering the swarm.

Thorn looked forth tensely through the window. The aura was useless, now that they were actually in the swarm. His only chance now was in the quickness of his eyes and hands.

Space outside the window still looked empty, for the density of even the densest meteor swarm is not high. But Thorn could glimpse all around them the quick red glows, quickly fading and re-appearing, of meteors colliding and fusing.

A jagged black oblong mass turning over slowly, expanded with lightning speed in front of him. His hand smashed a starboard-tube firing key, and the little ship lurched wildly aside from the oncoming monster.

A moment later, two smaller black masses passed some distance on the right, revolving around each other. Then there was a rattle, as of hail, as tiny particles struck the ship walls.

Scree-e-e! The tiny scream of air escaping through a pierced wall reached their ears with startling suddenness.

"Hull punctured!” rasped Thorn, without turning.

"I'll get it!” panted Sual Av, grabbing up the electro-fusing kit and darting toward the tiny hole in the wall.

"Better get our space-suits on,” Thorn continued rapidly without turning his head. “We may get holed again."

Gunner Welk hastily hauled in the suits from a cabinet amidships. The Mercurian took over for a moment while Thorn struggled into the suit and glassite helmet, and then Thorn went back to his tense watch while his two comrades donned their suits.

A soundless flash of red light burgeoned on the left in space, faded, and then blazed up again and veered toward the ship as a third meteor struck the two that had just collided.

Thorn frantically swung the ship upward. The fusing, swiftly-cooling mass passed close underneath.

Another mass of bullet-like particles struck the racing ship. Air screeched out through new holes, and the airgauge on the panel started flashing a warning red light as pressure diminished. Sual Av was working hastily with the fusing kit to close the new hull-punctures.

Thorn glimpsed a peculiar gleaming meteor directly ahead, coming dead on at the ship. He had plenty of time to curve the ship aside. But as he did so—

"Above you!” yelled Gunner Welk wildly.

Thorn looked up, just glimpsed the huge, ponderous mass thundering down on the ship from above-a tiny planetoid, black and jagged and massive, spinning on its axis as it bore noiselessly down on them.

Thorn's hand on the keys blasted the ship to starboard with the speed of light. But he knew, even as he acted, that he was too late. He could not quite get clear.

There came a grinding shock, a scream of riven metal. He and Gunner Welk were thrown crazily together at a side of the control-room. His head rang inside his helmet.

He scrambled up, clutching a stanchion. There was a dead, unusual silence. He looked back into the stern of the ship, past Sual Av, who was scrambling unsteadily to their side.

"'We're wrecked!” Thorn exclaimed, his heart plummeting.

The little planetoid had crumpled up the whole stern half of the ship like cardboard. The air inside it was gone. The crumpled little craft was drifting silently in space, revolving slowly around the jagged planetoid that had been its Nemesis.

"Hell!” swore Gunner Welk, his voice coming to the other two in their helmets through the short-range audio with which all space-suits were equipped. “We were almost through, too!"

"What do we do now?” Sual Ay asked, his green eyes perplexedly staring through the glassite of his helmet.

Thorn shrugged heavily. “I don't know. I was a fool to try to run the swarm. But it looked like our best chance."

"It was,” said the big Mercurian loyally. “Even though we didn't quite make it."

"We've got to get out of here somehow to Turkoon, that pirate asteroid,” Thorn said. “We can't just cling to this wreck until the oxygen in our suit tanks gives out."

He examined the audio and other instruments. All wrecked by the shock. “I suppose we're lucky to escape with our lives. But we've merely postponed death if we can't get away from here."

Sual Av peered out through the cracked window, into the black abyss in which they were floating. The Venusian stiffened as he glimpsed something beyond the jagged, spinning planetoid about which their wreck was revolving.

"John, a ship is running up along the edge of the swarm!” he exclaimed. “I can see its lights!"

Thorn and the Mercurian leaped to the window. They stared at the little blob of light, coming slowly closer.

"If it's one of those cruisers that pursued us, we're done for,” said Gunner Welk tautly.

"It's not!” cried Thorn suddenly. “It's a pirate ship!"

CHAPTER IV

Pirate Princess

They saw the distant ship coast the edge of the vast meteor swarm for some minutes and then come to a halt in space, with a prolonged flash of its bow rocket-tubes halting it.

A moment later a cracked, shrill voice sounded from the little audiospeakers inside their helmets.

"Ahoy, Planeteers! Are any of you alive in that wreck?"

Thorn answered instantly. “We're all alive — John Thorn speaking."

"I figgered it'd take more than, a meteor-swarm to finish you three,” retorted the cracked voice, chuckling.

"Who's speaking? What ship is that?” Thorn demanded.

"Cautious, ain't ye?” said the shrill voice, with a cackle of mirth. “I don't blame you’ seeing how you boys was chased. But you needn't worry-this ain't no naval cruiser. We're Companions of Space. Want to come aboard?"

"Companions of Space? Pirates, eh?” Thorn said. “Yes, we'll come aboard."

"Figgered you would,” cackled the other. “We'll stand by, and you can come across with your impellers."

Thorn switched off his suit-audio and spoke to his two companions, clutching their arms to conduct his voice to them.

"Cut your audios and listen,” he said tautly. “These pirates may plan some kind of treachery, but I don't think so. This looks like our chance to get to their base at Turkoon. But if we get there, don't mention Erebus or the radite, whatever you do,

"We understand,” Gunner Welk muttered.

They each got a torch-like metal impeller from a locker, and then wrenched open the door amidships. Bracing his feet’ against its edge, John Thorn leaped out into the abyss.

He shot floatingly away from the wreck. As his momentum faded and he began to float back toward the wreck, Thorn switched on the impeller in his hand. The blast from it kicked his space-suited figure on through space.

Sual Av and the big Mercurian were following closely. The three progressed thus, with frequent flashes from their impellers thrusting them on toward the distant waiting pirate ship.

Bright stars gleamed like millions of watching eyes all around Thorn. He glimpsed the ominous red flash of colliding meteors, nearby. He had to turn constantly to make sure that they were moving toward the waiting craft. Soon they were very close to it, moving faster, now that its slight gravitational field drew them.

Thorn eyed the long, grim ship that floated here in space just outside the edge of the vast swarm. He judged that it had once been a Neptunian or Uranian naval cruiser-the design one adapted to great distances, and ominous muzzles of atom-guns peering forth along its sides spoke of heavy armament.

The Planeteers bumped the side of the vessel. They scrambled along it and into the waiting open air-lock.

* * *

A minute later they were inside, unscrewing their helmets and gazing about a lighted metal chamber. A half-dozen armed men were here, and one of them came forward to the three.

"So you're the famous Three Planeteers, eh?” he asked in the same cracked, quavering voice they had previously heard.

The speaker was an old, snow-haired Martian, his thin figure stooped, his red face incredibly wrinkled with age, his faded, rheumy eyes peering at them shortsightedly. He wore two atom-pistols in his belt, and was chewing rial leaf whose green juice he spat occasionally into a floor receptacle.

"Curse me if it doesn't do me good to look at you,” quavered the oldster, his oath making astounding contrast with his cracked voice and senile appearance. “Aye, it warms my heart to look at men the like of which I was myself, in the old days."

"Who are you?” Thorn asked steadily. “How did you happen along to pick us up?"

"As for who I am, the name is Stilicho Keene. Ever hear of it?” the old pirate answered shrilly.

"Stilicho Keene?” repeated Sual Av incredulously. “The notorious pirate of forty years ago?)

"The same,” answered the old Martian complacently. “Aye, long before you Planeteers was ever born, I was one of the leaders of the Companions of Space, back in the days when there were men in space and not the kind of milksops I have to give orders to now."

"You still haven't told us how you happened to be near to pick us up,” Thorn reminded.

Stilicho Keene turned his rheumy eyes on the young earthman. He chuckled as he spat rial juice.

"Sharp and curious, ain't ye? Well, I'd expect it of you. I was the same at your age, smart and quick and bold. But you were asking how we happened along. Well, this is the Venture, and we've been to Jupiter on a little errand for Princess Lana. Coming back, we heard the audio-calls of them cruisers chasing you Planeteers.

"We heard them give up the chase after you ducked into that meteor swarm. So I gave order to lay a course near the swarm, hoping we might meet you-and then we sighted your wreck. It looks like you'll have to go on to Turkoon with us now."

The old pirate continued admiringly, “I've heard a lot of you lads and the fine things you've done. The time you raided the governor's office at Titan and stole all that platinum, and the time you three alone held up that big Martian liner and robbed all the passengers of their valuables."

The old pirate could not know, Thorn thought grimly, that that raid on Titan had been really to secure League naval secrets and the platinum a mere blind, or that the hold-up of the Martian liner had had as its real objective the securing of a valuable new atom-gun drawing among the effects of a Jovian engineer.

"So when we get to Turkoon,” old Stilicho Keene was continuing eagerly, “maybe you Planeteers would think of joining up with us Companions, eh? It would be good to have some real men with us again, men such as I used to rocket with when I was young."

John Thorn's pulses leaped at the offer. But he kept his excitement hidden, and frowned a little.

"The Three Planeteers join an outfit led by a girl?” he returned a little disdainfully.,

"You wait till you meet this girl,” the old Martian told him. “You'll find she's a real leader, is Lana Cain."

"We'll talk of it when we get to Turkoon,” Thorn told him. “Anyway, we're damned grateful to you for picking us up."

"Aye, you bit off a little more than even you could chew, didn't you, on Earth?” cackled the hoary old sinner. “It warmed my heart to think of it. Kidnapping the Chairman of Earth! Only the Planeteers would have thought of trying that!"

Old Stilicho Keene led the way up through the dusky corridors and catwalks of the ship. The Planeteers shouldered past members of the crew who stared admiringly at them.