We’ll be leaving Phobos within two hours.
As for communication—”
Cautiously, John Star lowered his voice.
The woman who was also the keeper of the peace moved quickly to meet her son.
Her tall loveliness caught his heart with a sharp pang of yearning affection, and the tender softness of her voice, when she spoke, brought back to him all the bittersweet of childhood.
She took both his hands in hers, and drew him to her with a quivering urgency.
Her eyes swept fondly up and down him, and he saw her swelling tears.
“Bob,” she breathed, “kiss your mother!
You haven’t kissed me, Bob, since the day you went away to the academy—nine years ago.
And I think—” Her clear voice shuddered.
“I’m afraid, Bob, that we shall never be together again!”
He kissed her.
A sudden cruel tension had closed on his chest.
Her troubled loveliness swam in his tears.
“My beautiful, beautiful mother!” he whispered.
He drew back to look at her, with a puzzled unease.
“But you didn’t want to destroy the comet,” he said quickly.
“I thought you weren’t afraid, even—to die.”
“That?”
She shrugged away the penalty of her secret.
“But I wish —I almost wish that Commander Kalam had landed half a minute later.
Because I’m still afraid your father is right.”
“Why?”
She stood silent for a moment, fear cold on her face.
“Jay will tell you about the man we call Merrin,” she said huskily.
“I saw him only once.
That was after he became the prisoner of the Legion.
He was shackled and well guarded.
Yet, somehow, he was terrible.”
She stood staring toward the jade-and-silver wall, her eyes fixed and somber as if her mind were seeing something more disturbing.
“He was a giant, Bob.”
Dread still trembled in her voice.
“There was a kind of splendor in him, and a terrible strength.
He was a helpless captive, yet his face was shining with an unconquered power.
He seemed like—well, something more than just a human being.”
She caught Bob’s arm, her strong hand quivering.
“He seemed superhuman—immortal and almost invincible and entirely contemptuous of mankind.
His mind must be as powerful as his magnificent body—but his emotions can’t be quite human.
You have to admire him.
But you must fear him, too.
I don’t quite know why, because there certainly isn’t much harm left that he can do.
“He didn’t speak to me, Bob.
He simply turned for an instant to look at me, as they were leading him across to his cell—taking mincing little steps, because of the leg irons.
His blue eyes were burning —and they were cold as ice.
They were undefeated, carelessly unafraid.
“He laughed at me, as he went on, from a distance I could never reach across.
Something in him hadn’t been beaten—and never will be!
You must guard him well, Bob.
For in him you are guarding the lives and the happiness of all your honest fellow men!”
Astonished and puzzled, he whispered,