The Three Planeteers

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 this way!” Trask's crazed, harsh voice came back.

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 Venture!"

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.

"Stand back, all of you!” he panted.

His trembling hands moved rapidly among the switches and relays of the panel. And the power-chambers below the gleaming sphere began to throb with mounting energy.

Louder and louder throbbed the massive chambers as the radite was disintegrated inside them to produce such concentrated power as had never before been produced in one place. And now the proton-turbines of the great generators were droning loud, adding to the deafening throb of the chambers.

Blaine watched his gauges with feverish eyes, while the Planeteers and their companions stood rigid, watching

"Almost voltage enough,” Blaine murmured hoarsely. “Almost — now!"

He closed another switch. And then—

Blackness! An utter darkness that enveloped them in a split-second of time, a rayless obscurity such as none of them had ever experienced before.

Thorn looked up bewilderedly, toward where the sun should be blazing down through the ceiling-window. But there was no sunlight now — no light of any kind — nothing but blackness.

"Blaine, what's gone wrong?” he cried hoarsely. “This darkness—"

"Nothing has gone wrong!” shrilled Philip Blaine's thin voice triumphantly. “My neutralizer, my great invention, has succeeded! I knew it would if I had power enough!"

"You mean that it's this machine that has killed all the light here in the cavern?” John Thorn cried.

"It's done more than that!” Blaine exclaimed. “It's killed all light everywhere! I've blacked out the whole Solar System!"

A babel of cries of terror rose from the throng in the cavern, above the thunderous throb and drone of the great machine.

"Killed all light in the solar system?” Thorn gasped. “Impossible!"

"The neutralizer has done it, I tell you!” Blaine shrilled exultantly.

"It broadcasts a damping wave that neutralizes and kills all vibrations in the electromagnetic spectrum from three to eight ten-thousandths of a millimeter in wave-length. That includes the whole range of visible light, and the terrific power of this radite-powered generator casts its vibrations out over a radius of eight billion miles, embracing the whole Solar System.

"There is not one ray of light now in the whole system, on any world, anywhere-neither sunlight or starlight nor artificial light of any kind. Every world and every mile of space in the system has been plunged into utter darkness. And it will remain in darkness as long as the neutralizer is kept on!"

The stupefied Thorn felt Blaine shove something into his hand. It was a small pair of eye-lenses.

"Put those on!” Blaine's voice came in the darkness.

John Thorn put the lenses over his eyes. He cried out in amazement, He could see, through the lenses, by a dusky red light that seemed to permeate everything. The sun blazed crimson and weird in the heavens above the glassite window.

Sual Av and Gunner, and Lana and old Stilicho were also staring wildly up through the lenses the little physicist had given them. Blaine himself wore the lenses on his eyes.

"You are seeing by light normally invisible to your retinas, light above the wave-length of ordinary light,” Blaine told them. “The so-called infra-red vibrations, which are unaffected by my neutralizer, and which are made visible to your eyes by these fluorescent lenses."

"But what good will blacking out the whole solar system do the Alliance navies?” Gunner Welk cried. “The League fleet won't be able to see or maneuver, but neither will our ships!"

"The Alliance ships will be able to see!” Blaine retorted. “Each Alliance cruiser has been furnished with a supply of these fluorescent lenses, during the last year. They were given secretly to each cruiser's captain, without telling him anything except he was to use them in case of sudden darkness in space. They'll use them now, there off Mercury, and—"

"And they'll be able to see and to overpower the blinded League ships without a struggle!” Saul Av shouted.

John Thorn's heart bounded with wild, newborn hope. He clutched Lana feverishly to his side.

"If it works!” he prayed. “If it only works!"

They gathered around Blaine's audio. Out of it, as the physicist turned it on, came panic-stricken calls from worlds plunged into absolute darkness, from blinded populations.

The whole system was seething in a turmoil of mad fear. Crowds stumbling blindly through the darkness of lightless streets were screaming that the end of the universe had come. Others were wailing that they had been suddenly stricken with blindness.

An hour passed. The intensity of the group around the audio increased. Appalling news of hysterical panic was growing.

"This can't go on!” Lana exclaimed shakenly. “It's destroying all civilization in the system—"

"Listen!” Thorn cried suddenly.

Out of the audio came a hoarse, familiar voice — the voice of Richard Hoskins, Chairman of Earth.

"Blaine! Philip Blaine!” he was calling. “This is the Chairman! We've won! Commander Leigh has just audioed me that his Alliance forces off Mercury have captured the whole League armada! Every League ship, its men utterly blinded, was forced to surrender under threat of being destroyed by our own cruisers.

"And I've called authorities on the outer planets. They've agreed to declare the war ended, to terminate Trask's rule and set up popular government again, and to dissolve the League of Cold Worlds into four independent planets again!"

"Trask himself is dead!” John Thorn called back into the instrument.

"You Planeteers are safe?” cried the Chairman's voice. It throbbed with emotion as he added, “I knew you would bring the radite in time, Thorn. I knew you would!"

"Shall I turn off the neutralizer now?” Philip Blaine asked, and the answer came back swiftly.

"Yes! Give the system light again, Blaine!"

The little physicist leaped to his control-panel. His switches clicked. The droning of the generators and the throbbing thunder of the power-chambers died.

And suddenly light blazed about them! Not the dusky red infra-red rays by which they had been seeing through the lenses, but brilliant, blessed sunlight pouring through the window in the ceiling.

"We've won!” Sual Av was shouting, his ugly face wild with joy., “The Alliance safe now — the menace of the League gone forever!"

"And that machine did it. That thing in front of us did it!” whispered Gunner Welk, incredulously staring.

Lana's blue eyes were shining as she looked up at Thorn.

"It means the realization of my dream and my father's dream, John. A new independent world built up in the Zone. You'll help me build it?” He held her close, tears standing in his eyes, unable to speak for the moment in the flood of his emotions.

Then they all stared amazedly at Philip Blaine, who had crumpled down beneath his switch-panel with his face buried in his hands. The little physicist looked up shakenly at them.

"I hope I never have to use the neutralizer to black out the system again!” he said hoarsely. “I felt when it was on that I was trespassing against the command of the One who said, ‘Let there be light!’”