Old Stilicho was shooting with two weapons, his faded eyes burning inside his glassite helmet with fierce battle- light. “They've jammed the airlock!” Thorn yelled. “At them!'
The retreating League soldiers could not all pass through the airlock quickly enough. Down among those who were congested at its entrance swept Thorn and his wild followers.
The League men, hopelessly outnumbered, refused to surrender. Only when all lay dead could Thorn and his party advance through the door of the airlock, which led downward.
They poured into it, forcing open the inner door. Air whistled out past them, and from the blue-lit depths below atom-shells whizzed up at them. But they pressed savagely on, down the ramp below the airlock, down into the vast and gloomy lunar cavern.
CHAPTER XXII
Blaine's Weapon
The cavern into which the Planeteers and their companions had fought their way was of huge dimensions, a thousand feet across and two hundred in height. It was illuminated by krypton lamps and by the flood of brilliant sunlight that poured in through the big glassite window in the rocky ceiling.
At the center of the cavern, under that window, loomed a colossal and unfamiliar mechanism. It was a great, gleaming chromaloy sphere, supported by girders above a massed complexity of power-chambers and generators. Everything else in the cavern was dwarfed by that towering, gleaming globe.
The space-suited League soldiers, both those who had retreated from outside and those in the cavern who had hastily donned their suits, were firing savagely at their attackers.
Thorn tried to keep Lana behind him as he advanced with Gunner and Sual Av at the head of the pirates, his atom-pistol hot in his gloved hand from firing.
'Gun them all down!” old Stilicho's shrill voice was crying from his suit audio.
'John, look — they're destroying the machine, over there!” Sual Av yelled, wildly pointing.
Thorn glimpsed where the Venusian pointed, far on the other side of the colossal mechanism. A little group of space-suited men there were firing into Blaine's huge machine with their atom-pistols, endeavoring to destroy its generators.
'Forward!” Thorn shouted. “We've got to stop them.'
They rushed forward. And ahead of them bounded the space dog, Ool, great-fanged jaws yawning wide!
Reckless of their own lives, maddened with apprehension, the Planeteers shot their way forward through the disorganized mob of League defenders.
With Lana Cain now close behind them, they forced through to the other side of the gigantic machine.
Thorn recognized the tall, spacesuited figure of the leader of the little group who were trying to destroy the mechanism. The face inside that glassite helmet was the bony green face and insanely raging eyes of Haskell Trask.
'Throw down those guns!” ‘Thorn yelled through his suit-audio. “Surrender!'
'I'll surrender
The dictator shot at Thorn in the same instant. The little shell flicked past Thorn and exploded behind him — and Lana Cain sank to the floor as the blinding flare touched her side.
Wild with rage, Thorn raised his gun to fire. But Ool was ahead of him. The big space dog, eyes terrible as it saw its mistress fall, arced through space in a leap straight at Trask.
The huge jaws closed upon the throat of the dictator's space-suit and tore. The other League men beside Trask shrunk back appalled, raising their hands in surrender.
The battle in the cavern behind the Planeteers was over. The remaining League defenders, seeing their Leader fall, raised their hands in surrender also, dropping their weapons.
Thorn was bending frantically over the fallen pirate girl.
'Lana!” he cried.
'I'm… not much hurt,” the girl stammered, stumbling up with his help. “The side of my suit is scorched. I threw myself aside to avoid the shell, and that's why I fell.'
She sprang unsteadily forward, and gripped Ool's collar to pull him off the prostrate dictator. But it was too late. The space dog's great tusks had ripped through Haskell Trask's suit and torn his throat.
Trask looked up at them with pale eyes curiously drained of emotion.
'I… would have ruled the system for its own good,” he murmured. “I would have—” He sighed, and was still.
So a dictator died…
Thorn straightened, shaken. The airlock doors had been closed and oxy-generators were throbbing. And old Stilicho, his helmet off and face still flaming with battle-light, came forcing through the excited pirate throng with another man.
'Found this fellow prisoned in a separate chamber,” the old pirate shrilled. “He says he's—'
'Philip Blaine!” Sual Av shouted.
Blaine, greatest of Earth physicists, the man who had built the mysterious mechanism that towered over them!
He was a thin, frail-looking little man, with disheveled gray hair and wide eyes frantic with anxiety.
'Trask made me a prisoner when his force captured the moon!” he babbled. “He tried to make me tell him what my machine is, how it's operated—'
'Blaine, we've brought you the radite that will operate this thing!” John Thorn cried. “But even now the Alliance navies are being cornered inside Mercury by the League fleet. Can you save them with this thing?'
Blaine's eyes flashed. “You've brought the radite? But some of my generators have been damaged!'
The little physicist sprang forward, bending with wild anxiety over the fused generators that had been wrecked by Trask and his men in those last moments.
'Can you repair them in time?” Thorn asked with feverish tensity.
'I can try,” Blaine rasped. “I have spare generators in my supply cavern, but it will take time to install them.'
'For God's sake, hurry!” Thorn begged. “Gunner, take some men and bring in the radite from the
Pirates under Thorn's direction hastened to carry in the spare generators from the supply cavern adjoining. Blaine began the task of installing them, the little physicist working alone, none of the hundreds of others in the cavern able to assist him.
Thorn looked up haggardly through the great window in the ceiling, at the blazing sun. Somewhere there in the burning reaches of space near the flaming orb, the combined navies of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars were seeking to elude the League armada bent on their destruction.
Sual Av came running up to where Thorn stood rigidly with Lana.
'John, I got a flash from Blaine's audio just now!” the Venusian panted. “The League fleet has divided into two forces and is boxing our navies five million miles off Mercury!'
'Can't you hurry, Blaine?” Thorn begged the little scientist desperately.
'I'm… almost through,” panted the physicist. He was gasping from exhaustion, as he made his last connections.
'This thing won't save our navies. It can't save them!” groaned Gunner Welk. “How can a machine here inside the moon affect a space-battle sixty million miles away?'
'Ready… now,” gasped Philip Blaine. “Bring me that radite!'
The Planeteers hauled forward the asterium-wrapped mass of radite. With tongs Blaine tore away the protective asterium sheets. The unveiled radite blazed with dazzling white radiance, like a solid chunk of the sun.
Blaine rolled it into the injector-hopper of his power-chambers, with the tongs. He slammed down the lid, and then stumbled toward the huge switchboard set in the cavern wall.
