“I made that one from bits of wreckage from the bombed Green Hall, and parts of a broken toy.”
Bob Star leaned closer, dazedly.
“It seems impossible that you could destroy anything so vast as the comet—with only that!”
“Size doesn’t matter,” she said quietly.
“Neither does distance.
This little device you see is only the lever, remember, through which that force can be applied to any object hi the universe.”
She glanced up again, still frowning with her preoccupation.
“The effect is a fundamental, absolute change in the warp of space, which reduces matter and energy alike to impossible absurdities.”
Bob Star was silent for a moment, breathless.
He shrank back a little, shaken with a startled dread, from this gravely smiling woman.
She was his mother no longer, but something as strange and terrible as the Cometeers must be.
Shining on her face was a calm, passionless serenity.
“Mother—mother,” he whispered huskily. “You’re like—like a goddess!”
It seemed strange that she should hear him, in her remote detachment.
But she turned to him soberly, and said:
“It’s lonely, Bob— being a goddess.”
Her eyes left him.
For a few moments she worked in silence, assembling the device.
But presently she paused again, to look up at him.
“Bob, there’s one thing you ought to know now, since you’ve been chosen to be the next keeper.
That’s the reason there must be only one keeper—the reason you must wait for the secret, until the doctors find that it is no longer safe with me.” He stood listening, cold with a troubled expectation. “There is one limitation to the use of AKKA.” She hesitated, frowning at him soberly. “Even the existence of that limitation is a high secret, which you must not repeat.”
He nodded, waiting breathlessly.
“To use the same figure of speech,” she said quietly, “there is only one fulcrum.”
“Huh?”
His breath caught.
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s just one fulcrum,” she repeated quietly.
“That is not a literal statement, but it’s all I can say before you are to be entrusted with the secret.
What you must understand is simply this: If two people know the secret, and try to use their levers at the same time, neither can succeed.
It would be entirely useless to the two of us, if we tried to use it independently.”
“I see.”
He stepped toward her quickly, moved by a sudden dread.
“What happens to you?” he whispered sharply.
“After you have told me?”
“Nothing painful.”
Her gray eyes looked up again, shining with a serenity that he couldn’t understand.
“You can see that the knowledge must not be left where it might be unsafe.”
“You mean—” He knew what she meant, but suddenly he couldn’t say the words.
“Aren’t you afraid?”
She shook her head.
To his amazement, she was smiling.
“I don’t mind,” she whispered softly.
“You won’t, after you have been the keeper of the peace as long as I have.
I suppose that last duty of the keeper must seem a terrible penalty, to you today.
But there comes a time when you see that it is the final, most fitting and most precious reward for our special service.”
“I—I can’t see that.”
That waiting duty became suddenly vast and dreadful in his mind, and he felt small with a new humility.
“But I’m sorry—mother.”
He reached out to touch her arm with a diffident caress.
“I’m sorry I’ve been fretting so—about waiting here with nothing much to do.”