"We shall now find out why these Planeteers came here and who they are working for!” Haskell Trask declared.
"But they dared threaten you, sir!” protested the tall captain. “They deserve instant execution for that crime."
"The indignity to me is nothing, declared the dictator fanatically. “I am thinking only of the great cause we all serve.
"You Planeteers are not as cunning as I thought,” Jenk Cheerly told Thorn tauntingly, “or you'd have guessed that there would be a spyplate outside the entrance to the dungeon."
Thorn's heart sank. So that was how they had been detected — by a hidden spy-plate outside the dungeon entrance, by which a distant officer could keep watch over all who entered or left the prison. The spy-plate watcher had seen them forcing the dictator and the other two ahead of them, and had summoned guards with a damper to nullify the Planeteers’ weapons and make sure they had no chance to harm the Leader when they were captured.
Thorn's wild hopes had crashed in utter ruin. He could not face Lana. He felt with bitter self-reproach that he had failed her, and that he had failed the Alliance.
CHAPTER XIV
Under the Psychophones
A metallic voice was speaking.
"— distance from the sun to Mercury is thirty-six million miles. To Venus it is sixty-seven million miles—"