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 men 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, John 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 Stilicho's pirates had labored almost unceasingly to construct the new chambers. Lana 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 Jenk Cheerly was millions of miles farther toward Saturn with the radite. No one of them all, except Thorn himself, believed there was the slightest chance to overtake the spymaster now,
Gunner Welk and Sual Av, reeling with fatigue, stumbled up to where Thorn was superintending the last preparations.
"All ready, as far as I can see,” Gunner said hoarsely.
Stilicho Keene and Lana came up anxiously as he spoke.
"Boy, are ye crazy to think that you can overtake the Gargol when it's got days’ start of us?” averred Stilicho.
"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!” Stilicho exclaimed.
"That's what we're going to do!” Thorn clipped.
They stared at him, as though they believed his 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,” Lana 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!” Gunner exclaimed excitedly. “If the power doesn't make our rocket-tubes back-blast."
"We'll have to take that chance;” John Thorn said harshly. He turned. “Here come Clymer Nison and Chan Gray now. They volunteered to bring the radioactive fuel we'll need."
The two glowing figures of the radioactive men 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 men.
"We're ready to start,” he told Clymer Nison haggardly. “We want you to come back with us, to Earth,"
Nison shook his 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 men in the system's history, you whom Earth would welcome with joy."
Clymer Nison's haunted, shining eyes looked past them, far away into tragic memory.
"To Earth I am dead, now,” he 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 men, 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 his throat. It was moments before he could answer,
"It shall be done,” he choked. “A party of scientists will be sent here to do what you ask."
He turned toward the awe-stricken group behind him who were staring in deep silence at the tragic, glowing men.
"We must start,” Thorn said unsteadily. ‘Into the ship!"
Inside the Venture, the Planeteers climbed again with Lana and Stilicho to the control-room, while the door was ground shut. They removed their space-suits, and then Stilicho 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.
Stilicho'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,
Sual Av was hanging tensely over the instrument panel, and the Venusian's green eyes flashed at he turned.
"Instruments are operating again!” he reported. “But our audio was permanently wrecked by the radiation of Erebus."
"Lay a course straight for Saturn,” Thorn ordered Stilicho. “Cheerly will be making straight for that world, and we'll be following him directly."
Gunner Welk grunted.
"And if we catch up to him,” he 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, his 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!"
Lana came silently to Thorn's side, looked up at him with a deep anxiety in her blue eyes.
"John, you must sleep a little,” she 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.
* * *
As the next hours passed, the rocket-tubes of the Venture continued to roar unceasingly, the ship quivering and creaking sickeningly. Their speed was mounting to momentous heights — already they were traveling faster than the fastest ship in the system's history.
And still the stern tubes roared, the Venture's velocity accelerated. Erebus faded to a dim speck behind them, vanished. The sun-star was brighter and bigger ahead, and the yellow spark of Saturn was largening dead, ahead.
Time passed, slow, tense hours that dragged into a full day, and then another. The exhausted Planeteers and pirates took turns sleeping and watching. They could not know how fast they were traveling now — the instruments were not calibrated for such tremendous velocity — but knew their speed must be an appalling one.
They neared the orbit of Uranus, and by now Saturn presented a perceptible disk ahead. Thorn haggardly watched the little glowing sphere of the aura-chart.
"Cheerly's ship can't be far ahead of us now,” he estimated. “The highest speed the Gargol could attain would bring it about this far by now."
Lana stood with her gold head by his shoulder, watching as tensely as he.
"There, John!” she cried in a moment, pointing.
In the fore of the aura-chart a red speck had appeared, a ship a million miles ahead of the Venture.
"That's the Gargol— it must be!” Thorn cried. “Cut the stern tubes, Gunner!"
Gunner Welk, standing turn at the firing-keys, obeyed instantly. But the aura-chart showed they were still rushing after their quarry with such speed that they would flash past it. Thorn ordered the bow-tubes fired for the purpose of slowing them down.
As the ship rocked and quivered to the blasting brake-thrust of the tubes, Sual Av came up into the control-room, sleepily rubbing his eyes. Old Stilicho's anxious face was behind him.
"We'll come up to Cheerly soon,” Thorn rapped. “That means a fight. He'll never give up that radite willingly."
"The Gargol has heavier batteries than we do, and a bigger crew,” reminded Stilicho Keene.
"But we can outmaneuver them!” Lana said. She cried into the interphone to the pirate crew, “On suits and prepare for action, men!"
"Go down and take command of our batteries, Gunner,” Thorn ordered. “I'll take the controls. Suits on, everyone!"
In a few moments Thorn, in his space-suit now like the others, was poised over the firing-keys. Sual Av tautly watched the aura-chart, while Lana and old Stilicho peered ahead.
"We're close,” muttered the Venusian, his eyes on the chart.
"There's the Gargol!" Lana cried suddenly, pointing ahead through the glassite window. “And they've spotted us!"
Thorn saw the Saturnian cruiser in the black, starry vault ahead-a long torpedo-like shape pluming white fire from its rocket-tubes as it put on all possible speed to escape. Jenk Cheerly obviously had no desire to risk battle.
But the Venture, imbued with its unprecedented potential speed, swiftly came up on the tail of the naval cruiser. Now atom-shells began to burst in blinding flares near Thorn's ship as the Gargol cut loose with its stern guns.
"I'm going to run up under their keel!” Thorn called into the inter-phone. “Try to score a hit on their stern tubes, Gunner!"
The Gargol veered around suddenly ahead, to bring its broadside batteries into play. The heavily-gunned cruiser loosed a brief hail of shells in the direction of the Venture.
But the pirate ship shot clear like lightning as Thorn smashed down a key. Swiftly, it veered after the Saturnian ship, seeking to run beneath its keel.
The Gargol rolled, to keep presenting its guns toward its enemy. For a brief moment the two ships rushed side by side through space, their rocket-tubes flaming and their guns pouring shell at each other.
Whizzing white flares of energy burst around the Venture, and it rocked wildly as it was hit. Red lights flashed on the panel before Thorn, warning that two keel compartments had been holed.
But Gunner's pirates were not idle. They were concentrating all their fire upon the Gargol's stern, hoping to wreck its tubes and completely disable the cruiser. The Saturnian ship volleyed upward through space in a sharp veering turn to escape that fire.
"We didn't get ‘em!” Stilicho muttered. “But they'll get us if we come too close quarters again. Their guns and inertrum armor are too heavy for us!"
"We're closing in again!” Thorn exclaimed, his black eyes blazing now. He called down to Gunner, “Stand ready! And get those stern-tubes!"
Like two fighting hawks of space, locked in a death combat out here in the lonely immensity of starry space, the two ships maneuvered. Then again, using his superior speed, Thorn drove the Venture in close against the Saturnian ship.
Guns of the Gargol vomited shell that blinded Thorn as they broke around the Venture. He clung with wild recklessness to the side of the enemy, as Gunner's batteries let go.
"They're hit!” Lana cried, her blue eyes blazing with electric excitement.
The Gargol's clustered stern rocket-tubes had, been struck by a salvo of atom-shells that had blasted the tubes into a fused, horribly twisted mass of inertrum.
They saw the Saturnian cruiser rock wildly as the fused rocket-tubes backblasted. An instant later, they saw a vastly greater explosion rip out the whole stern wall of the Gargol, blowing mangled men and twisted metal into space.
"Their tubes back-blasted into the power-chambers, and the chambers themselves let go!” cried Sual Av, momentarily aghast. “It must have killed almost everyone aboard!"
"We're going aboard the wreck!” John Thorn exclaimed. “Take over, Stilicho, and run us alongside."
The old pirate brought the Venture quickly alongside the silent, drifting wreck. Magnetic grapples hooked on, and then the Planeteers and Lana and a dozen pirates donned space-suits and clambered through the great hole that had been torn in the stern of the Saturnian ship.
The interior of the Gargol was a scene of utter devastation. The terrific violence of the explosion had bent solid inertrum like tin, had slain most of the crew outright. A few space-suited Saturnians who had survived dazedly raised their hands in token of surrender.
"The radite? Where is it"” Thorn demanded fiercely of them.
"In the lower bow-compartment,” answered the stunned, shaking men.
The Planeteers pushed through the wreck toward that compartment. They burst into it, and Thorn sprang forward with a cry.
The asterium-wrapped mass of radite was in this metal chamber. But toward the precious element was crawling Jenk Cheerly, his body badly crushed inside his space-suit, but with a heavy atom-gun in his hand. The Uranian, fatally injured by the explosion, was making a dying attempt to destroy the radite.
Thorn tore the gun from his hand. Cheerly looked up, his face livid graygreen inside his glassite helmet, his small eyes glistening with undying hatred.
"You've not won, Planeteers!” he choked. “You're too late. I notified the Leader days ago by audio that I had the radite, and the League fleet rocketed then to conquer the Alliance! Already they're driving the Alliance navies sunward!
"And what is more,” he gloated in a dying whisper, “Haskell Trask himself and a picked strong force have landed on Earth's moon and seized Philip Blaine and his weapon! The radite is useless to you now!"
A last flicker of life throbbed in Cheerly's little eyes, a last gleam of triumph.
"I was always too clever for you Planeteers!” he choked. And then his broken body relaxed as death came.
Thorn looked up at the others, his brown face grave inside his helmet. “If what he said is true—"
"I'll find out with the Gargol's audio!” Sual Av cried, and sprang toward the control-room.
When the Venusian came back, his face was pale, his green eyes stricken. He spoke unsteadily.
"It's true, John! I heard the audiocalls. The Alliance navies have retreated sunward past the orbit of Venus, attacked by the League's tremendous fleet. The inner worlds are in wild panic, and Haskell Trask is directing the League operations from the advanced base he's established on Earth's moon!"
Thorn's body sagged inside his space-suit. For the first time, ultimate despair claimed him.
"Then this radite that might have saved the Alliance is useless,” he said hoarsely. “With Trask holding the moon — Blaine's weapon in his possession — the Alliance is doomed!"