"Got to make it tonight or never!” Thorn's psychophone was droning. “They'll read my plan from the record when they next take and examine it. We've got to make it before then—” Thorn's face was haggard, his eyes burning with a febrile light. His brain had conceived a desperate hope of escape.
Days and nights had passed since Jenk Cheerly had sailed for Erebus, with Lana Cain his prisoner. How many days and nights, Thorn could not estimate exactly. Time had become a blur to him as he and his comrades sat bound here beneath the psychophones.
Thorn had felt his mind cracking from strain as the hours and days dragged He had almost felt that if he had known what Trask wanted to know, the nature of the Alliance's secret weapon, he would have told it. He had been glad then they did not know it.
Most agonizing of all in those blurred hours had been the thought of Cheerly, on his way to far Erebus with Lana. The Uranian would come back with the radite. But he would not bring Lana back, once all her possible usefulness was ended!
Tonight, an hour before, Trask's men had removed from the Planeteers’ psychophones the spools of tape which contained the record of their thoughts for the last day and night. New spools had been inserted and the men had left. It had been then that Thorn's feverish mind had suddenly conceived his crazy plan of escape.
As he thought of the plan, the psychophone had spoken it and the recorder had transcribed it. And so Thorn knew that he must put the plan into effect before the record was examined again, or his plan would be read from the record and forestalled:
Thorn, convulsively rocking his chair forward, prayed inwardly that the rumble of the storm would keep the two guards out in the corridor from hearing. He inched on, his chair moving slowly, the thin black wires that connected his skull to the psychophone above, slowly lengthening out. Finally Thorn had got his chair close to those in which Gunner Welk and Sual Av were sleeping exhaustedly.
"Gunner!” Thorn whispered fiercely. “Wake up!"
"The big Mercurian slowly opened bleared, red-rimmed eyes. Sual Av also awoke, yawning. Their psychophones started droning their awakening thoughts.
"Gunner, I want you to tip your chair over to bring your head down on my chair,” Thorn whispered. “Then maybe you can chew through one of these leather straps that bind my arms."