The Saturnian was silent, helpless rage and fear contending in his face.
"Tell, or I'll make you walk out there by yourself!” Thorn menaced. The threat crumpled the captain's spirit.
"I'll tell!” he gasped. “It means a hideous doom if you venture off this mountain without protection. For all the matter of those deserts and mountains out there, all the matter of Erebus except this single metal mountain, is radioactive matter.
"Erebus is a radioactive world. That's the secret the pirate girl knew, that no one else guessed. A ship that landed anywhere except on this mountain would instantly itself become radioactive by induced radioactivity from the soil on which it landed. The same fate would befall an unprotected man who stepped off this mountain. This metal mountain is the only non-radioactive matter on the whole planet!"
CHAPTER XVII
In the Shining Waste
A radioactive world! A world, every atom of which was throbbing with natural or induced radioactivity, constantly emitting streams of deadly radiation, changing slowly and spontaneously through the long ages into different elements farther down the atomic scale! This, then, was the secret of Erebus!
The thing was so stupefying that the Planeteers and old Stilicho and his pirates were silent, stunned. Every man there looked wildly at his neighbor, bewildered by the incredible assertion the Saturnian captain made.
"It's impossible!” John Thorn burst, finally. His eyes were almost dazed in expression. “A whole world of radioactive matter — it can't be true!"
"It is true!” cried the Saturnian captain fearfully. “The girl knew it all the time. Her father, that old space pirate, Martin Cain, discovered it when he came here a generation ago. If he hadn't landed on this mountain, he'd have met the same doom as everyone else who has come here, his ship and his body riddled by the terrific radiation the moment he landed."