But suddenly, even with that knife in my skull and his voice burning like a flame into my brain, I felt that I was strong enough.
I felt that nothing he could do would beat me.
I looked up at him, and told him to do his worst, and promised to kill him whenever I got the chance.
“That seemed to heighten his anger.
He stepped up the pain of that vibration again, and he said he was going to fix me so that I’d be afraid to kill anybody.
Then he repeated that wicked lie, and kept commanding me to swear that it was true.
“ ‘Say it, pup!’ he would shout at me, his voice trembling with his own fury and transformed to pure agony flaming out from that blade in my skull.
Then he would turn up the amplifier. And then he would shout again,
‘Say it, pup!’
“I didn’t say it—not at least so long as I was conscious.
But I’m not sure what really happened, toward the end.
It was a kind of nightmare.
That dark room, and his face proud and angry and dreadful in that faint glow of light, and his voice hammering at my mind with red agony.
“‘Say it, pup!’
“I knew at the end that my will was weaker than that machine.
And I must have finally given in—I’m afraid I did.”
Bob Star stood shuddering for a moment, his thin hands clenched.
“I don’t know what happened,” he repeated huskily.
“But it’s hard to imagine that Stephen Oreo gave up before I spoke.”
“The next thing I really knew, I was in bed in the infirmary, with my head bandaged and a nurse giving me a shot of something to quiet my nerves.
She told me that Stephen Oreo and his friends had brought me there about dawn.
Their story was that they had found me wandering on the beach, under the cliffs, with my head slashed open.
“I told everybody that I had fallen in the dark, and hurt myself accidentally.”
“Why did you do that?”
Jay Kalam shook his head, in puzzled reproof. “Why didn’t you report the truth?
Stephen Oreo would have been punished and discharged from the Legion—he would never have had the opportunity to lead the Jovian Revolt.”
“It was our quarrel,” Bob Star whispered hoarsely.
“Ever since those vibrations of pain were burning into my brain, I’ve meant to kill him, if I could.”
He shook his head and muttered again, uncertainly, “—if I could.”
“How’s that?”
The commander gave him a long, troubled look.
“Assuming that it became your duty to kill Stephen Oreo, and that you had the means at hand, couldn’t you do it?”
“I don’t quite know.”
Bob Star shivered again.
“I can’t remember what happened at last, or whether I really gave up.
He kept promising to break me, so that I could never kill anybody.
I’m afraid— afraid he did.
Because I think my brain was damaged by that ultrasonic vibration—if that was what it was.
There’s still a pain throbbing in my head.
A little hammer of red agony, pounding day and night.
In nine years, it hasn’t stopped.”
Bob Star’s face was white, and sweat had broken out on his forehead.
“I wasn’t a coward—before that night,” he whispered hoarsely.
“I wasn’t the weakling he wanted to make me.”
He sank abruptly into the big chair, looking miserably up at Jay Kalam.
“But now, commander—I don’t know.”
5 The Honor of the Legion
The tall commander of the Legion stood for a time scraping thoughtfully with one lean finger at the lean angle of his jaw, studying Bob Star.
“I’m glad you’ve told me this,” he said at last, his voice quiet and very grave.
“I understand the way you feel, because once I thought it would be impossible for me to kill a man.”