The Three Planeteers

It had, indeed, seemed like a strange dream to all of them as their craft had, for days, crept out into the trackless, forbidding immensities. Stilicho's pirate crew had whispered fearfully, only the hope of rescuing their idolized girl leader keeping them from mutinying. An alien chill gripped all except John Thorn.

Thorn had become more and more feverishly anxious each day, as he thought of Jenk Cheerly speeding on with Lana to seize the precious radite — the radite whose taking would signal Lana's death and the launching of Trask's attack on the Alliance!

'Shall I try the spectro-telescope?” Gunner was asking. “We're near enough to Erebus for it to detect the radite.'

Thorn nodded quickly. “The radite should show up clearly. I'll check our aura again for Cheerly's ship.'

Thorn snapped on the aura. But something was wrong. The aurachart did not come on. The device was dead.

'What the devil?” Sual Av muttered astonishedly. “Something must be jamming the ether to kill our aura like that.'

'All our other instruments are dead, too!” burst out Stilicho, looking up worriedly from the panel. “The gravitometers and space-sextants and even the audio!'

'Is it some trick of Cheerly's?” Sual Av cried.

'It couldn't be — he wouldn't have power enough to jam the ether like this,” Thorn declared.

Gunner Welk swung around from his instrument, his massive face puzzled.

'John, there's something wrong with this spectro-telescope, too,” he said. “I adjusted its limits to the field of radioactive elements, but all of Erebus still shows up in it.'

Old Stilicho looked anxiously from the faintly shining blue ghost-world ahead, to the puzzled Planeteers.

'We'll soon be close to Erebus,” the old pirate said. “What are we going to do? Land and hunt for Lana on foot?'

There was lurking terror in his faded eyes as he made the proposition, yet he kept his shrill voice steady.

'We dare not just sail in and land,” Thorn muttered. ‘It might mean the end of us, right there.'

His face worked. “Yet we daren't lose time either! If Lana had only been able to tell us the secret.'

'John, remember what Cheerly told Trask in. our cell on Saturn, after he'd got the secret from Lana!” Sual Av said eagerly. “That he'd learned from Lana that there was only one spot on Erebus where men could land without meeting a ghastly fate!'

'One spot, but where is it?” Gunner demanded. “There's no use of our hunting for that spot, for we wouldn't know it if we saw it.'

'Yes, we would know it!” Thorn cried suddenly. “Cheerly's ship would have landed in that one safe spot. If we can find where Cheerly has landed here, we can land safely beside him!'

He swung around to Stilicho Keene. “We'll reduce speed and circle around Erebus looking for Cheerly's ship. Don't go lower than a hundred miles above the surface.'

Unutterable tension gripped the Planeteers and the old pirate as the Venture swept in closer toward the mysterious planet from which only one man in all history had returned. Erebus slowly expanded ahead, a small world hardly larger than Mercury. At last the ship dropped to within a hundred miles of its surface.

It was a strangely luminous planetscape they looked down upon, a world shimmering everywhere with the dusky blue radiance they had noticed from afar. They had thought that faint luminescence a trick of reflected sunlight, but they saw now that it was somehow inherent in this world. Through that dusky blue haze they looked down upon a weirdly forbidding landscape.

Low, jagged, barren mountains rose like fangs bared at the dark, star-studded sky. Beyond their rocky slopes stretched dim deserts, wide blank wastes upon which moved little whirls of dust. And all this dreary landscape of eternal twilight was wrapped in the uncanny faint blue radiance.

'It's queer, the way it all shines,” muttered Sual Av. “But I can't see anything dangerous down there.'

'There's something dangerous there — terribly so,” Thorn said tautly. “If there weren't, this world wouldn't have swallowed up so many hundreds of explorers in the last nine centuries!'

'There's air of some kind down there, anyway,” old Stilicho quavered. “See them there whirling dust- devils?'

'But there can't be an atmosphere here!” Gunner declared. “That would mean that Erebus is comparatively warm, and what would keep it warm at this distance from the sun?'

'Everything about this world is wrong, somehow,” Thorn muttered. “The way it shines, its warmth and atmosphere, the way our instruments went dead when we neared it.'

* * *

The Venture was now moving on an even keel a hundred miles above the surface of the ghostly blue planet. Stilicho handled the controls as they moved at reduced speed around the equator of the mystery world. Gunner Welk swept the terrain beneath with the ‘scope as they sped along.

The cruel, barren mountains swept back and disappeared in the glowing blue haze behind them. They moved on above the endless wastes of faintly shining desert.

'Thought I saw something shiny moving down there,” Gunner exclaimed in a moment. “My eyes must be playing me trick!'

'Cheerly's ship is what we want to find,” Thorn rapped. “It's somewhere here. He hasn't had time to lift the radite and leave, considering how fast we followed him.'

Within a few hours, they had completely circumnavigated the equator of the little mystery world. They had seen nothing but the deathly deserts and mountains, wrapped in. the unchanging, shimmering blue haze.

'Run north and circle the planet again midway between the equator and the pole,” Thorn ordered Stilicho.

'It's kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack, hunting one ship on a whole world,” Stilicho muttered.

'This world isn't big. We'll sweep every mile of it if necessary,” John Thorn declared.

Soon they were again circling Erebus, midway between the equator and the northern pole. Before they had gone far, Gunner pointed to a black speck on the northern desert horizon.

'Something odd about that black mountain yonder!” he reported from the ‘scope eyepiece. “It has none of the shining haze over it — the only place I've seen here that hasn't.'

'Steer toward it, but keep high,” John Thorn told the old pirate.

'We'll take a look.'

The black speck on the horizon expanded rapidly as the ship rocketed north. It grew into a big black mountain that loomed in solitary majesty out of a wide expanse of the haze-wrapped desert. brooding beneath the star- flecked dark sky.

It was a mountain almost perfectly dome-shaped, the regularity of its outline startling. It was two miles across at the base and a mile in height. It stood out bold and black because none of the shining blue haze hovered over it.

'Queer, the symmetrical shape of that mountain,” Sual Av muttered. “Is it possible that it is—'

''There's a ship parked on that mountain!” Gunner Welk yelled suddenly in high excitement,

Thorn leaped to the ‘scope eyepiece. The huge, frowning black mass of the domed mountain jumped into close view. Upon the curved, rough eastern side of the great mass, near the top, rested a long, torpedo-like metal shape.

'It's Cheerly's cruiser!” Thorn exclaimed. “If they landed on that black mountain, it must be the one spot on Erebus where it's safe to land. We're going to land there and seize his ship!'

He swung, his pulses hammering. “Veer off, Stilicho, and run back toward the mountain from the west at a mile altitude. Cheerly can't have seen us yet. We'll land on the west side of the mountain and take him by surprise!'

The old pirate swung the Venture in a wide detour, and soon they were rocketing low toward the mountain from the west, hidden by the domed mass from the ship parked on the other side. Expertly, the old Martian brought the ship down to a landing on the rough, curved western side of the great mass.