"No time to get back to that drain!” Thorn rapped. “Quick, into one of these cells! Drag those bodies in, too!"
In an instant, he and the Venusian and Mercurian had seized the scorched bodies of the two dead guards and had dragged them into an empty cell across the corridor from Lana's cell. As they swung shut the door of their hiding place, the door at the end of the corridor opened, and men entered the prison.
John Thorn, peering through the grating in the door of the hiding place, stiffened in every muscle as he saw the men. One of them was a tall Saturnian captain of guards. Another was an obese, waddling figure with a puffy green face and pig-like little eyes — Jenk Cheerly.
But it was the third man of the group, the one who strode in front, upon whom Thorn's eyes riveted. This man was a middle-aged Saturnian of tall stature, with a bony, nervous green face and very deep, dark eyes that stared gloomily straight ahead.
"Haskell Trask!” murmured Sual Av in Thorn's ear, his faint whisper surcharged with excitement.
Haskell Trask, self-appointed Leader of the League of Cold Worlds, absolute dictator of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune! Thorn's pulse pounded at sight of that bony, nervous face.
"Why are no guards on duty here as I ordered?” Jink Cheerly was asking the captain of guards in his squeaky voice.
"I did station two here, sir,” replied the officer, worriedly, to the fat spymaster. “They must have sneaked out for some reason. I'll have them court-martialed for it."
"I should have put my own, Secret Police here instead of depending on you,” said Cheerly in vicious anger. “You've failed in your duty, Captain."
"No man must fail in his duty now!” declared Haskell Trask in his harsh, high, fanatical voice. “In this great hour when we approach our fated destiny, every man in the League worlds must give his all for the tremendous and glorious work that faces us!” Haskell Trask spoke as though he were exhorting a crowd a thousands, his voice incongruously declamatory. His gloomy eyes flashed with a deep fire, his tall, bony figure rigid.
John Thorn felt a chill as he heard. The voice and face of Trask were those of a madman, a man utterly convinced of the rightness of his actions and the wickedness of his enemies.
The captain hurried ahead to the door of Lana's cell and was turning the invisible beam of a wave-key on its lock. Trask and the fat Uranian spymaster halted and waited.
"John, we can gun down Trask from here!” Sual Av whispered excitedly, tensely fingering his atom-pistol.
"No. Killing Trask now wouldn't stop the League, for there are a hundred of his underlings ready to take his place,” Thorn muttered tautly. “Wait, I have a better plan."
The door of Lana's cell clicked open. Watching through the grating, the Planeteers saw the dictator stride into the girl's prison-room, followed by Jenk Cheerly and the captain.
"— almost morning. Days and nights are so short on Saturn,” the psychophone was speaking forth Lana's thoughts.
Thorn understood. Lana was trying to avoid giving away the presence of the Planeteers, by thinking of other things.
Haskell Trask surveyed the girl bound in the chair, his gloomy eyes meeting her defiant blue ones.
"Are you ready yet to tell us what we want to know, girl?” he demanded harshly.
Lana made no vocal answer. But the psychophone spoke her thoughts.
"I'll never tell them! Never!"
Trask's nervous face twitched violently and he seemed seized by a raging passion. He flung his arms out widely.
"Everything is against me in my great task. Everything!” he cried with theatrical self-pity. “But I shall persevere and conquer in spite of everything! The system shall see!"
"Perhaps the girl has given away the secret to the psychophone by now, sir,” Jenk Cheerly suggested hastily. “Shall I examine the record?"
Trask nodded curtly. The fat spymaster reached up and touched a switch of the recorder. Instantly from it, began speaking the recorded thoughts of Lana, as spoken by the psychophone in the preceding hours and phonographically recorded on the tape.
John Thorn soundlessly opened the door behind which he and his comrades were hidden, and whispered tautly to them,
"Come on, but don't shoot Trask, yet!"
Haskell Trask and Cheerly were so intently listening to the record that they did not see the armed Planeteers appear silently at the open door of the cell. But the captain saw, and uttered a startled cry. Trask and the fat spymaster spun around.
"Hands high!” John Thorn rapped, his atom-pistol leveled. “Quick, or we'll blast you down!"
Stupefiedly, the three men in the cell raised their hands. Haskell Trask's bony face went livid with rage.
"You dare turn weapons upon me!” he choked to the disguised Planeteers. “Upon me, your Leader!"
But Cheerly's pig eyes suddenly widened as the fat spymaster's gaze searched Thorn's green-stained face.
"These aren't men of ours, sir!” he cried to the dictator. “I know them — they're the Three Planeteers!"
"The Planeteers!” exclaimed Trask. His deep eyes blazed. “The outlaws whose brazen robberies have made us so much trouble in the past, who have stolen so many of our secrets—"
Thorn interrupted in a hard, cold voice. “Take their guns, Sual Av. Gunner, release Lana. Careful with those nerve connections."
In a moment the girl was freed, and the Venusian had the weapons of Cheerly and the captain. Trask had been unarmed.
"We're going out of here with this girl,” Thorn told the Saturnians icily. “We're going to that court nearby where the space-cruisers are parked. You three are going to lead us there, by the shortest and least-used route. If we are challenged by anybody, or if there is any alarm, your leader here will die first."
The captain gasped with horror at the threat, and Cheerly's pig eyes narrowed. But Trask's bony face was unmoved.
"You cannot kill me,” the dictator told Thorn harshly. “Destiny has reserved me for a great work."
"My trigger-finger can change destiny pretty quick, Saturnian!” warned Gunner Welk, his voice throbbing with hate.
Thorn motioned to the door at the end of the corridor.
"Get going, and remember my warning! Lana, keep beside me."
They started, Haskell Trask and Cheerly and the captain moving with hands upraised, the Planeteers following with weapons leveled. Lana staggered, her limbs numbed by long confinement in her bonds, the back of her head aching. Thorn helped her along tenderly with his free arm.
They passed thus through the door at the end of the corridor, out of the dungeon into the dusky, diverging corridors that ran in a labyrinth here beneath the great citadel. No one was in sight in these passages as they went forward. Thorn's hopes soared.
If they could get away with Lana to where old Stilicho's ship waited out in the rings, they would soon be racing toward Erebus! And with Lana's secret knowledge to help them—
They were passing a dark cross-corridor at this moment. And Sual Av suddenly whirled around to face it.
"Look out — a trap!” he yelled wildly.
"They've got a damper!” shouted Gunner Welk, leveling his atom-pistol swiftly to fire.
Too late! The Mercurian's atom-pistol only clicked futilely. Thorn pulled trigger, but his weapon too was dead.
A score of Saturnian guards had been lying in wait in that shadowy cross-passage! And one of them held a cylindrical damper pointed toward them — an electrical mechanism that generated a short-range beam of vibratory force which damped or neutralized the electric propulsion-currents of any atom-gun's barrel solenoid, rendering it useless. The damper's beam covered the Planeteer's guns.
The Saturnian soldiers poured out of the cross-passage onto the Planeteers. Thorn clubbed his useless gun and tried to get at Haskell Trask, but went down under a smothering mass of green-faced men. He heard Lana scream as he fought fiercely.