"Yes. Haskell Trask will not launch his attack until he hears from Cheerly that the radite has been secured,” Thorn told her. “If we get the stuff back to Earth's moon, and if Philip Blaine's weapon really works!"
He stopped, that goading doubt torturing his mind, that chilling, unvoiced fear that Blaine's mysterious invention might prove a failure.
The huge black top of the domed meteorite-mountain loomed slowly out of the shimmering blue mists, bulking darkly against the starry sky. They pressed toward its base, and were starting to climb up its rough asterium side, when a sound reached their ears. The roar of a ship's rockets tubes!
"Look!” Sual Av yelled frantically, pointing upward. ‘The Gargol."
The Saturnian cruiser was blasting off, rising from where it had been parked beside the Venture, with a reverberating roar of tubes. It shot up at dizzying speed, and disappeared in the dark
"God, Cheerly has got away in it, somehow,” Gunner cried hoarsely.
They scrambled frantically on up the mountain, driven by overmastering fear. When they came to where the Venture lay, they stopped, aghast.
A fight had taken place here. A half-dozen space-suited pirates lay in a scorched, dead heap. Other men in suits were running out from the Venture.
Out of that little crowd sprang a gray beast with blazing green eyes, that limped on a scorched leg as it bounded frantically toward Lana and nuzzled against her. After the space dog came Stilicho Keene, his wrinkled face recognizable through his glassite helmet.
"You brought the lass back!” he cried, joy lighting his faded eyes. Then as his face fell on the glowing forms of Clymer Nison and Chan Ora he gasped, “But who—"