Thorn snapped on the aura. But something was wrong. The aurachart did not come on. The device was dead.
"What the devil?” Sual Av muttered astonishedly. “Something must be jamming the ether to kill our aura like that."
"All our other instruments are dead, too!” burst out Stilicho, looking up worriedly from the panel. “The gravitometers and space-sextants and even the audio!"
"Is it some trick of Cheerly's?” Sual Av cried.
"It couldn't be — he wouldn't have power enough to jam the ether like this,” Thorn declared.
Gunner Welk swung around from his instrument, his massive face puzzled.
"John, there's something wrong with this spectro-telescope, too,” he said. “I adjusted its limits to the field of radioactive elements, but all of Erebus still shows up in it."
Old Stilicho looked anxiously from the faintly shining blue ghost-world ahead, to the puzzled Planeteers.
"We'll soon be close to Erebus,” the old pirate said. “What are we going to do? Land and hunt for Lana on foot?"
There was lurking terror in his faded eyes as he made the proposition, yet he kept his shrill voice steady.