"I… would have ruled the system for its own good,” he murmured. “I would have—” He sighed, and was still.
So a dictator died…
* * *
Thorn straightened, shaken. The airlock doors had been closed and oxy-generators were throbbing. And old Stilicho, his helmet off and face still flaming with battle-light, came forcing through the excited pirate throng with another man.
"Found this fellow prisoned in a separate chamber,” the old pirate shrilled. “He says he's—"
"Philip Blaine!” Sual Av shouted.
Blaine, greatest of Earth physicists, the man who had built the mysterious mechanism that towered over them!
He was a thin, frail-looking little man, with disheveled gray hair and wide eyes frantic with anxiety.
"Trask made me a prisoner when his force captured the moon!” he babbled. “He tried to make me tell him what my machine is, how it's operated—"
"Blaine, we've brought you the radite that will operate this thing!” John Thorn cried. “But even now the Alliance navies are being cornered inside Mercury by the League fleet. Can you save them with this thing?"