As they rounded a turn in the crooked chasm, they saw ahead a place where the sand had been beaten down by many feet, over a long time. There was a small natural niche in the chasm wall there-but there was no radite in it.
'The radite's gone!” cried Clymer Nison in amazement, staring unbelievingly at the empty niche in the rock.
'Gone?” exclaimed John Thorn. His heart sank with despair. “Then Cheerly has been here ahead of us. He's taken the radite, and—'
'Listen!” Sual Av cried, turning his helmeted head sharply. “Hear that?'
'They heard, then. A dim uproar of raging voices from farther along the chasm, punctuated every few moments by the rumbling thunder and crash of great rocks falling.
'What can it be?” Nison wondered, his radiant face perplexed.
'I have an idea what it is!” Thorn cried. “Come on!'
They pressed on along the gloomy gorge. In a few minutes they had rounded another turn in it, and stopped short, petrified by the astounding scene ahead.
A few hundred feet ahead in the chasm was gathered a mob of dozens of glowing men. Radioactive men like Nison and the Martian, garbed in ragged remnants of clothing that showed they were of every time in the last nine centuries, of every world. Glowing men who had come to Erebus in past centuries and had been trapped here, transmitted into radioactive beings!
This crowd of glowing men was wildly seeking to storm a narrow ledge that jutted from the chasm wall a dozen feet up from the floor. With shrill, raging cries, the radioactive mob would scramble up to win the ledge, but would be repelled by the rocks rolled down upon them by the defenders.
The defenders of the ledge were three men clad in asterium-coated space-suits like those of the Planeteers. Behind them was another figure in a coated space-suit, but with arms bound together. And also on the ledge was a rude sledge of black asterium, upon which was tied a small mass of something that had been carefully wrapped in thick sheets of asterium.
'It's Cheerly and his men, and the bound figure is Lana!” Thorn exclaimed hoarsely. “And that mass on the sledge—'
'Must be the radite!” Gunner Welk cried. “Cheerly got the stuff from the niche, but the radioactive men caught him taking it!'
CHAPTER XIX
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
