His remarkable strength and his malicious wit made it uncomfortable to be his enemy.
More than that, he had a kind of evil fascination.
“He was a born leader.
His reckless audacity matched his uncommon abilities.
He could dare anything. And he had a pride to match his capacities.
It made him try to excel in everything—usually with success.
It seemed to me that he had a jealous enmity toward every possible rival.
He loved no one.
He was completely selfish hi every friendship.
“From the first day, he hated me.”
The commander looked faintly startled, beneath his grave reserve.
“Do you know why?”
“Jealousy, I suppose,” Bob Star said.
“He knew I was John Star’s heir.
He assumed that I would be chosen to take my mother’s place as keeper of the peace.”
He shook his head.
“There couldn’t have been any other reason.”
“Did he mistreat you?”
“From the first day.”
Bob Star’s nervous fingers traced that scar again.
“He injured me in every way he could.
He tried to keep me from winning any honors—perhaps he wanted to keep me from qualifying to be keeper. He did his best to turn all the instructors and the other students against me.
He used me for the butt of his cruel practical jokes.
He made things pretty rough for me, until he graduated.”
He paused unhappily, biting his quivering lip.
“I’ve tried to forget what he did to me,” he whispered.
“But there was one thing—”
“Yes?” the commander urged him. “What was that?”
“It was one night, just before the end of the term,” he went on abruptly, his low voice quick and breathless.
“I was walking alone on the campus—I was worn out from my first examination in geodesic navigation, and upset because somebody had poured ink over all my notes and a finished term paper in my desk—I suppose Stephen Oreo was responsible for that, too, though I never really knew.
“Anyhow I met him in the dark, with three of his friends.
Or perhaps I shouldn’t call them friends—it was fear that held them around him, not affection.
They stopped me.
Stephen Oreo asked me if I had obeyed that customary command from him.
I said I hadn’t.
He turned to the others. They whispered.
I heard the others snicker. Then he came back to me, and gave me his command.”
Bob Star paused, white-faced.
“What was that command?”
“He ordered me to repeat a statement after him.
An ugly thing.
He wanted me to say that I wasn’t John Star’s son.
He wanted me to say that my father’s infamous cousin, Eric the Pretender, had been my mother’s lover, and that I was that traitor’s son.
He wanted me to say that I was a coward and a weakling, unfit to be the keeper.
He wanted me to swear, on my honor as a future officer of the Legion, that his monstrous lie was true.
“Of course I wouldn’t.”
Bob Star’s low voice was hoarse again with that remembered pain.
“One of his friends objected that the hazing tradition gave him no right to go so far, but one glance from Oreo was enough to shut him up.
“We were near the academy museum.
It was closed and dark, but one of the men had been doing research on the old weapons displayed there, and he had a key.