Part 25 (1/2)

”And that answer?” asked Russ.

”Revolution,” said Mallory. ”Simultaneous revolution in the Jovian confederacy, on Mars and Venus. Once free, the planets will stay free with your material energy engines. Spencer Chambers and his idea of Solar System domination will be too late.”

Greg's forehead was wrinkled in thought, his facial muscles tensed.

”First thing to do,” he said, ”is to contact all the men we can find ...

men we can rely on to help us carry out our plans. We'll need more televisor machines, more teleport machines, some for use on Mars and Venus, others for the Jovian moons. We will have to bring the men here to learn to operate them. It'll take a few days. We'll get some men to work on new machines right away.”

He started to rise from his chair, but at that moment the coffee and sandwiches arrived.

Greg grinned. ”We may as well eat first.”

Mallory looked grateful and tried to keep from wolfing the food. The others pretended not to notice.

Grim hours followed, an unrelenting search over two planets and four moons for men whom Mallory considered loyal to his cause--men willing to risk their lives to throw off the yoke of Interplanetary.

They were hard to find. Many of them were dead, victims of the purge.

The others were in hiding and word of them was difficult to get.

But slowly, one by one, they were ferreted out, the plan explained to them, and then, by means of the tele-transport, they were brought to the _Invincible_.

Hour after hour men worked, stripped to their waists, in the glaring inferno of terrible force fields, fas.h.i.+oning new television units. As fast as the sets were constructed, they were placed in operation.

The work went faster than could be expected, yet it was maddeningly slow.

For with the pa.s.sing of each hour, Stutsman clamped tighter his iron grip on the planets. Concentration camps were filled to overflowing.

Buildings were bombed and burned. Murders and executions were becoming too common to be news.

Then suddenly there was a new development.

”Greg, Craven has found something!” Russ cried. ”I can't get him!”

Supervising the installation of a new televisor set, Greg spun around.

”What's that?”

”Craven! I can't reach him. He's blocking me out!”

Greg helped, but the apparatus was unable to enter the Interplanetary building in New York. Certain other portions of the city adjacent to the building also were blanketed out. In all the Solar System, the Interplanetary building was the only place they could not enter, except the Sun itself.

Craven had developed a field from which their field s.h.i.+ed off. The televisor seemed to roll off it like a drop of mercury. That definitely ended all spying on Craven and Chambers.

Russ mopped his brow, sucked at his dead pipe.

”Light penetrates it,” he said. ”Matter penetrates it, electricity, all ordinary forces. But this field won't. It's ... well, whatever Craven has is similarly dissimilar. The same thing of opposite nature. It repels our field, but doesn't affect anything else. That means he has a.n.a.lyzed our fields. We have Wilson to thank for this.”