"John, I gave up the secret to them. I couldn't keep from thinking of it longer! And now they're taking me with them to Erebus. Everything is lost, and it's all my fault!"
"Lana, it's not your fault!” Thorn cried hoarsely. “Lana,"
But she was gone. For a moment Jenk Cheerly's fat, green face grinned in at them through the grating. His eyes were sinister and hateful.
"Goodbye, Planeteers,” the Uranian squeaked mockingly. “Wish me a pleasant voyage to Erebus — for by the time I get back with the radite, you three will be dead!"
CHAPTER XV
Through the Tempest
Storm raged over nighted Saturnopolis. Dazzling sheets of weird light seared across the sky, and thunder bawled hoarsely like a hubbub of giants. Torrents of rain and of big hailstones battered the dark metropolis. This was one of the periodic “satellite storms” which occur whenever three or more of the ringed planet's moons are in conjunction, exerting their combined gravitational pull to set up tidal disturbances in the deep atmosphere.
The great citadel of the dictator loomed vague and black in the tempest, its windows shining with blue light. Even night and storm could not lessen the intense activity that was going on in this nerve-center of the League of Cold Worlds, as Haskell Trask and his lieutenants drew up their final plans for the greatest, conquest in history.
Deep down in the dungeon below the citadel, the roar of the raging storm was muted to a deep, continuous rumbling. And down here in the blue-lit cell, John Thorn was working feverishly.
He was hitching his chair across the floor, an inch at a time, by throwing his body forward in his leather bonds. Slowly, he was edging toward the chairs of his two sleeping comrades.