Cheerly's Cunning
The scene was one out of nightmare. The gloomy chasm of shimmering blue haze, the shining cliff upon a ledge of which the three spacesuited men desperately defended themselves, and the insanely shouting, raging mob of weirdly glowing radioactive men who attacked them.
John Thorn, his heart hammering at having come within actual sight of both Lana Cain and the precious raw radite, leaped forward. But the upraised warning hand of Clymer Nison stopped him.
"No!” said the glowing man. “That raging crowd of doomed ones would tear you to pieces if you tried to make your way through them. For very many of my fellow-sufferers on this world are crazed, made mad by our horrible existence."
"We've got to get Lana and the radite out of there quickly!” Thorn cried. “Cheerly and his men can't hold that mob off much longer!"
Cheerly and his two men were plainly being hard pressed. Only by snatching up shining rocks that lay strewn on the narrow ledge, and dashing them down at their attackers, could they keep the radioactive men from winning up to them,
"You run out of rocks soon and that'll be the end of them!” Sual Av exclaimed.
"Why the devil don't they use their atom-pistols?” Gunner demanded.
"They would be useless against such men as myself,” Clymer Nison declared sadly. ‘I know a way to get onto that ledge farther back along the chasm. Follow me!"
The Planeteers raced back along the chasm after Nison and his companion. The glowing men swerved and started climbing up a narrow crack in the shimmering cliff.
Thorn and his comrades struggled to follow. By tremendous effort, they hoisted their heavy figures up after the two glowing men. They found themselves on a precariously narrow shelf of the rock wall.
Nison and the glowing Martian led the way now back along the chasm to the battle, following this narrow shelf. There were places where it was hardly a yard wide. But in a few minutes, they had followed it to a point where it connected with the ledge upon which Cheerly and his men were defending themselves.
Cheerly turned, appalled, as the Planeteers and their two glowing guides appeared. The Uranian, unrecognizable in his shapeless spacesuit and coated helmet, made himself known by the cry that vibrated from him as he saw them.
"Have you come from the ship to help?” Cheerly cried, not recognizing the Planeteers. “How did you get here with those two glowing devils?"
"We came after you, Cheerly,” Thorn cried throbbingly. The Uranian shrank back as he heard Thorn's voice.
"The Planeteers!” he exclaimed wildly.
Lana stumbled forward, unrecognizable in her ray-proofed suit, but her silver voice wildly glad from inside it.
"John! John Thorn!” she cried. “I knew you would follow somehow."
Thorn, gripping her tightly for a moment, saw beyond her the little asterium sledge, and the mass upon it which was wrapped in the sheets of asterium Cheerly had prepared and brought. That mass was no more than four feet in diameter each way, and a corner of it that protruded through the hastily wrapped sheets showed that it was a huge chunk of dense matter blazing with intolerable white brilliance.
There was the radite, at last! The isotope that was the rarest element in existence, the block of blazing matter that contained locked within it incalculable power that might sway the future of the whole system!
"I knew you would escape from Saturn and come after us,” Lana was sobbing wildly. “But I feared—"
"John, here they come!” Gunner Welk yelled wildly.
The radioactive mob below were scrambling up to the attack again. And this time, as though enraged by the appearance of the newcomers with two of their own glowing kind, the maddened mob of radiant men came with ferocious determination.
There was no time for Thorn to deal Cheerly the fate he deserved, no time for anything. The first of the glowing men was already scrambling onto the ledge!
Gunner fired his atom-pistol at them viciously. But the flare of blinding energy did not harm the glowing men. The emanations from their radioactive bodies simply repelled that energy.
"Use rocks!” Thorn yelled, stooping and picking up a chunk of shimmering stone and hurling it.
It knocked one of the glowing men off the ledge. But others were scrambling onto it. It became a wild battle to hold the ledge against them.
Clymer Nison and Chan Gray, the glowing Martian, fought by the side of the Planeteers and Cheerly's men. They seized glowing attackers and hurled them down. But still others gained the ledge, and it became a crazy hand-to-hand melee.
Thorn, struggling in the insane grip of one of the glowing men, saw others tear the helmet off one of Cheerly's followers. As the terrific radiation omnipresent on this planet struck the luckless Saturnian's unprotected face, he screamed like a hurt animal. And almost instantly, his face and body began to glow with that ghastly blue emanation.
The Planeteers fought with their metal-clad fists. Gunner Welk's great arms swept a clear circle around him, the big Mercurian roaring. Sual Av pulled off a glowing attacker who had leaped on Thorn's back and was trying to wrench away his helmet.
For minutes the crazy struggle went on. A fight with maddened lost souls on a planet of the damned! But with Nison and the Martian helping, the Planeteers forced, the radiant men back off the ledge. They gathered below, howling with fury.
Thorn turned quickly. Lana was stumbling to her feet from the back of the ledge.
"John, Cheerly's gone!” she cried. “While you were fighting, he and his remaining man slipped away along the ledge with the sledge of radite! They struck me down—"
Thorn whirled, wild with rage and apprehension. The cunning Uranian, seizing the opportunity when the Planeteers were engaged in the wild melee, had with his remaining follower stolen away with the radite. They could, be seen now in the distance, hurrying along the shelf by which the Planeteers had come to the ledge.
"After them!” Thorn cried.
They rushed back along the shelf, Nison and Chan Gray following joining in pursuit of the two fugitives. Rapidly they gained on the two fugitives who were encumbered with the sledge.
They saw Cheerly and his follower round a narrow place in the shelf ahead. As they rushed after them, atomic shells burst ahead and a mass of the shimmering cliff was dislodged by the flare of energy and fell in an avalanche across the shelf. It blocked the narrow way completely, halting the Planeteers.
"Cheerly used their pistols to cause that rock-fall!” Sual Av cried furiously.
"Down to the floor of the chasm! We'll follow that way and beat them back to the ship!” Thorn shouted.
"We can't!” the Venusian cried. “Look, that mob has followed us!"
The maddened crowd of radioactive men below, seeing the Planeteers’ party moving away along the narrow ledge, had followed along the floor of the chasm. They were gathered now below, preparing to climb up in furious attack once more.
"We're trapped!” Gunner Welk yelled. “We can't go further along the ledge and we can't go down through that crazy mob!"
Already the crazed radioactive men were climbing up to the ledge. Lana uttered a hopeless cry.
Thorn swept her behind him, and he and his comrades and their two glowing friends sprang to repel the assault of the shining horde. With rocks, with their fists, with their clubbed atom-pistols, they beat back their insensate attackers.
But again and again the radioactive men came up at them. Time was dragging past. Thorn felt as though he were struggling in an endless nightmare of horror and despair.
The radioactive attackers had limbs broken, bodies crushed in many places — yet still they came on. The flame of strange energy and life that throbbed in every atom of their bodies could not be extinguished or dimmed by any bodily harm.
As the glowing men below gathered for another charge up the rock wall,
Clymer Nison spoke to the exhausted, staggering Planeteers.
"I may be able to turn them,” said the space-pioneer. “It is a chance to stop Cheerly.."
Thorn saw Nison step to the edge of the ledge and speak to the radioactive horde gathering again below. “There is no use in attacking us any longer!” Nison cried to them. “We do not have the radite. Those who took it from the niche have fled with it, and are escaping!"
A chorus of insanely raging yells answered him, as the half-crazy horde started forward to climb again to the attack. But a huge Jovian among the glowing horde held back his companions.
"Clymer Nison speaks truth!” he shouted. “See, the radite is gone from the ledge and so are some of the men. We must scatter and search for the thieves!"
"Scatter and search!” went up the husky, furious shout from the radioactive mob.
They began to split up, starting along the chasm in both directions, searching carefully for Cheerly and the radite,
"By heaven, Nison, your idea worked!” panted John Thorn. “Quick, now — we've got to get back to the meteorite-mountain. That's where Cheerly will have headed with the radite."
"There's nothing for us to fear, since Stilicho and his men hold Cheerly's ship and crew prisoner,” Sual Av gasped.
"Cheerly must know something has happened to his ship,” Thorn retorted. “That Uranian is a devil for cleverness."
Thorn helped Lana as they scrambled down the rook wall, to the floor of the chasm.
And as they started at a trot back eastward, he half-supported, half-carried the staggering girl.
* * *
Their two radioactive allies, Nison and the Martian, led the way out of the barren mountains. They saw none of the glowing horde, which had split in all directions to search furiously for the takers of the radite.
Lana, suffering from exhaustion and nervous reaction, could hardly walk. Yet she trudged valiantly with the last of her strength as they hastened over the dim desert.
"John, if we get the radite away from Cheerly now, will it be in time to save the Alliance?” she panted.
"Yes. Haskell Trask will not launch his attack until he hears from Cheerly that the radite has been secured,” Thorn told her. “If we get the stuff back to Earth's moon, and if Philip Blaine's weapon really works!"
He stopped, that goading doubt torturing his mind, that chilling, unvoiced fear that Blaine's mysterious invention might prove a failure.
The huge black top of the domed meteorite-mountain loomed slowly out of the shimmering blue mists, bulking darkly against the starry sky. They pressed toward its base, and were starting to climb up its rough asterium side, when a sound reached their ears. The roar of a ship's rockets tubes!
"Look!” Sual Av yelled frantically, pointing upward. ‘The Gargol."
The Saturnian cruiser was blasting off, rising from where it had been parked beside the Venture, with a reverberating roar of tubes. It shot up at dizzying speed, and disappeared in the dark
"God, Cheerly has got away in it, somehow,” Gunner cried hoarsely.
They scrambled frantically on up the mountain, driven by overmastering fear. When they came to where the Venture lay, they stopped, aghast.
A fight had taken place here. A half-dozen space-suited pirates lay in a scorched, dead heap. Other men in suits were running out from the Venture.
Out of that little crowd sprang a gray beast with blazing green eyes, that limped on a scorched leg as it bounded frantically toward Lana and nuzzled against her. After the space dog came Stilicho Keene, his wrinkled face recognizable through his glassite helmet.
"You brought the lass back!” he cried, joy lighting his faded eyes. Then as his face fell on the glowing forms of Clymer Nison and Chan Ora he gasped, “But who—"
"What happened here? Who was in the Gargol when it took off?” Thorn cried fiercely.
"Cheerly — and that there radite!” groaned the old pirate. “He fooled us, neat. He and his man came up here a half-hour ago, dragging the radite on their sledge. They were wearing suits like yours, ray-proofed and with even the helmets coated, so we couldn't see their faces plain enough. And Cheerly imitated your voice so that I thought he was you, John Thorn!
"He said that he and Sual Av had brought the radite back, and that Gunner was following with Lana. We never suspected him, he imitated your voice so well, and we couldn't even recognize his fat figure in that shapeless suit. He took the radite into the Gargol, saying we'd use the Saturnian ship to return to Earth in. He even went into the Venture for a few minutes, I suppose to see if you'd any papers or secrets worth stealing."
He fell silent.
"Go on, man!” Thorn cried. “How did he get away with the Gar gol, when you had its crew under guard?"
"He did it easy,” groaned the old man. “He and his man, posing as you and Sual Av, went into the Gargol. We didn't follow, never suspecting. And Cheerly and his man blasted down our guards in there, set free his Saturnian crew, and took off, with a blast of their guns that killed six of our men!"
"And now he's on his way back to Saturn with the radite!” Gunner cried. “We've got to catch him!"
"We'll catch him. The Venture can overhaul him!” Thorn cried. “Into the ship, all of you! We're blasting off!"
They tumbled into the Venture, leaving the two radioactive men standing staring. Inside the craft, its doors closed, the Planeteers and Lana and Stilicho climbed to the control-room. The old pirate yelled urgently into the interphone.
"Power chambers on!” he ordered.
They heard the clash of the injectors below, and then the rising roar of the power chambers.
A terrific explosion shook the ship next moment. They were all thrown from their feet, and heard cries of pain and terror from below.
"Good God, something's let go!” Gunner yelled,
Thorn led as they hastily climbed down to the stern compartment that housed the four big power-chambers.
The compartment was a wreck. The power-chambers had exploded with frightful force, killing three pirate engineers.
"That damned Cheerly must have done this when he came into the Venture!" a wounded, staggering engineer gasped. “The power-chamber safety was jammed— deliberately jammed!"
"Cheerly's won again, curse him!” Gunner yelled wildly. “It'll take us days to rebuild these power-chambers, if we can do it at all. And by that time he'll be half-way back to Saturn!"