Kim drove for them with a reckless exultation. He landed in the very center of a despairing small settlement which had believed itself dead and damned—or at any rate doomed. He shouted out his coming, and Dona cried out the news that the end of darkness was near, and men came surging toward her to listen. But it was Dona who explained, her eyes shining in the light of the torches men held up toward her.
Kim had gone back into the ship and was using the communicators to rouse out the mayors of every municipality, and to say he had just reached the planet from Terra- nova—there was no time to tell of adventures in between—and he needed atmosphere fliers to gather around him at once, with armed men in them, for urgent business connected with the restoration of a normal state of affairs.
They came swiftly, flittering down out of the blackness overhead, to land in the lights of huge bonfires built by Kim's orders. And Kim, on the communicators, asked for other bonfires everywhere, to help in navigation, and then he went out to be greeted by the bellowing Mayor of Steadheim.
"What's this?" he roared. "No sunlight! No stars! No matter-transmitter! No ships! Our ships took off and never came back! What the devil happened to the universe?"
Kim grinned at him.
"The universe is all right. It's Ades. Somewhere on the planet there's a generator throwing out a force-field. It will have plenty of power, that generator. Maybe I can pick it up with the instruments of the Starshine. But we'll be sure to find it with magnetic compasses. What we want is for everyone to flick their compasses and note the time of swing. We want to find the place where the swings get slower and slower. When we find a place where the compasses point steadily, without a flicker—not even up and down—we'll be at the generator. And everybody put on navigation-lights or there'll be crashes!"
He lifted the Starshine and by communicator kept track of the search. Toward the polar regions was the logical hiding-place for the generator, because there the chilly climate of Ades became frigid and there were no inhabitants. But it was a long search. Hours went by before a signal came from a quarter-way around the globe.
Then the Starshine drove through darkness—but cautiously—with atmosphere-fliers all about. And there was an area where the planet's magnetic field grew weaker and weaker, and then a space in which there was no magnetic field. But in the darkness they could find no sign of a depot!
CHAPTER IX
Gadget of Hope
GRIMLY Kim set the Starshine on the ground, in the very center of the dark area, and started the generator in the airlock. When it worked at its utmost, and nothing happened, Kim threw in the leads of the ship's full engine-power. There was a surging of all the terrific energy the ship's engines could give. Then the radio-loop went white-hot and melted, with a sputtering arc as the circuit broke.
Abruptly the stars appeared overhead, and simultaneously came the leaping flame of a rumbling explosion. Then followed the flare of fuel burning savagely in the night. The Starshine's full power had burned out the force-field generator, an instant before the loop melted to uselessness.
Kim was with the men who ran toward the scene of the explosion, and he would have tried to stop the killing of the other men who ran out of underground burrows, but the victims would not have it. They expected to be killed, and they fought wildly. All died.
Later Kim inspected the shattered apparatus which now lay in pieces, but he thought it could be reconstructed and perhaps in time understood.
"Night's nearly over," he announced to those who prowled through the wreckage. "It shouldn't be much more than an hour until dawn. If I hadn't seen sunlight for a week or more, I think, I'd go for a look at the sunrise."
In seconds the first atmosphere-flier took off. In minutes the last of them were gone. They flew like great black birds beneath the starlight, headed for the east to greet a sun they had not expected to see again.
But the Mayor of Steadheim stayed behind. "Hah!" he said, growling. "It's over my head. I don't know what happened and I never expect to understand. How are my sons in the new galaxy?"
"Fine when last we heard," said Dona, smiling.' "Come into the ship."
He tramped into the living space of the Starshine. He eased himself into a seat. "Now tell me what's gone on, and what's happened, and why!" he commanded dictatorially.
Kim told him, as well as he could. The Mayor of Steadheim fumed.
"Took over the twenty-one planets, eh?" he sputtered. "We'll attend to that. We'll take a few ships, go over there, and punish 'em."
"I suspect they've pulled out," said Kim. "If they haven't, they will. And soon! The Gracious Majesties and Magnificents, and the other planetary rulers who essayed some easy conquests, have other need for their soldiers now. Plenty of need!"
"Eh, what?" cried the mayor. "What's the matter? Those rulers have got to have a lesson! We didn't try to free the whole galaxy because it was too big a job. But it looks like we'll have to try!"
"I doubt the need," said Kim, amused. "After all, it's the disciplinary circuit which has enslaved the human race. When the psychogram of every citizen is on file, and a disciplinarian has only to put his card in the machinery and press a button to have that man searched out by disciplinary-circuit waves and tortured, wherever he may be—when that's possible—any government is absolute. Men can't revolt when the whole population or any part of it can be tortured at the ruler's whim."
Dona's expression changed.
"Kim!" she said accusingly. "Those things you got on Spicus Five and dropped on the planets the soldiers came from—what were they?"
"I'll tell you," said Kim. "The disciplinary circuit is all right to keep criminals in hand-not rebels like us, but thieves and such—and it does keep down the number of officials who have to be supported by the state. Police and guards aren't really needed on a free planet with the disciplinary circuit in action. It's a useful machine for the protection of law and order. The trouble is that, like all machines, it's use has been abused. Now it serves tyranny. So I made a device to defend freedom."
THE Mayor of Steadheim cocked a suspicious eye upon him.
"I procured a little gadget," said Kim. "I dropped the gadget in various places where it wasn't likely to be found. If one man is under disciplinary circuit punishment, or two or three or four—that's not unreasonable on a great planet—nothing happens. But if twenty-five or fifty or a hundred are punished at once, the disciplinary-circuit is blown out as I just blew out that force-field generator."
The Mayor of Steadheim considered this information.
"Ha-hmmm!" he said profoundly.
"Criminals can be kept down, but a revolt can't be suppressed," Kim went on. "The soldiers who are occupying the twenty-one planets will be called back to put down revolts, as soon as the people discover the disciplinary circuits on their planets are blowing out, and that they blow out again as fast as they're re-made and used."
"Hm!" said the Mayor of Steadheim. "Not bad! And the rebels will have some very tasty ideas of what to do to the folk who've tyrannized over them. No troops can stop a revolt nowadays. Not for long!"
"No, not for long," said Kim. "No government will be able to rule with a dissatisfied population. Not if it has a little gadget hid den somewhere that will blow out the disci plinary circuit, if it's used to excess."
"Good enough, good enough," grumbled the mayor. "When rulers are kept busy satisfying their people, they won't have time to bother political offenders like us on Ades, or start wars." He looked up. "Space!" he groaned. "Three hundred million planets! How long before we can have them all fitted out for freedom?"