Thorn peered up through the bars into a short blue-lit corridor, along whose walls were the inertrum doors of cells. Almost all of the cells seemed unoccupied, their doors half-open. No prisoner stayed long in Haskell Trask's dreaded private dungeon!
"It's Trask's dungeon, all right,” Thorn whispered. “And no guards in sight. Go back down the pipe a little."
The other two Planeteers obeyed, all three backing down the tube a little way. Thorn drew his pistol, sighted carefully at the grating above, and pulled the trigger.
The little atom-shell exploded in a small, brilliant flare of atomic energy, with a thudding reverberation. The flare burned away a mass of cement at one side of the grating, completely exposing the ends of the imbedded inertrum bars.
Thorn clambered eagerly up to the grating at once. At the same moment he heard a cry of alarm from up in the corridor. Two Saturnian guards came rushing out of one of the cells, dropping a flask of fungus wine they had been secretly drinking, and drawing their atom-pistols. The thud of the atom-shell had roused them.
They saw Thorn's head below the grating and fired at him instantly. Their shells struck the floor in front of the grating and a flare of blinding light and scorching heat hit Thorn's face. He fired his own atom-pistol, triggering quickly. More flares of energy burst brilliantly beside the two Saturnian guards, down the corridor.
The two green-faced soldiers crumpled and lay still, in a scorched and lifeless heap. Thorn waited, his face wild in the pale blue light, gripping his weapon. But the swift thudding of the shells was not followed by any further alarm.
"Those must be the only guards on duty. inside the dungeon,” Thom panted, tearing away the freed inertrum bars with quivering hands.
The Planeteers scrambled hastily up out of the drain into the short single corridor of the dungeon.
"Listen! I hear someone!” Sual Av exclaimed.