You must remember that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Instinctively, Bob Star stood straighter.
“While the politicians on the Council stalled for time and debated how to answer Oreo’s ultimatum, we set out to build our own atomic gun.
We had our spectrographic observations of those hurled suns, and a few hints your father found in the Pretender’s private papers, in the library of the Purple Hall.
“That information was incomplete and some of it inaccurate.
But your father made a brilliant guess about how the deformation of space-time increases nuclear instability.
I did what I was able.
It was your mother—aided, perhaps, by her own secret science—who showed us how to control the movement and growth of the field of instability.
“We built, and set up on Ceres, an atomic gun fully equal to the one on Callisto.
Stephen Oreo had been organizing his new empire and dispatching his ultimatums without much haste, because he thought we were completely at his mercy.
The successful erection of our atomic gun on Ceres was a surprise that defeated him.
“Neither weapon could destroy the other, for the control fields of each could deflect approaching shots.
Stephen Oreo’s weapon was powerful enough, given time, to desolate every planet in the entire System—one shot from Callisto reduced ten thousand square miles of Mercury to smoking radioactive lava.
“But our weapon was equally effective.
It was a simpler task to blot life from the moons of Jupiter than from the rest of the System.
We should have finished first.
And Stephen Oreo, as you say, is a remarkably brilliant man.
He saw at once that he was defeated.
He was too intelligent to carry on a clearly hopeless battle.
He immediately offered to surrender, when our first vortex struck Callisto.
“He demanded, however, that we guarantee his life.
He required the personal word of every member of the Green Hall, and of myself, for the Legion, that we would protect his life at every cost.
He made an odd exception, however, with regard to you, Bob—until today, I didn’t understand why.”
Bob Star leaned forward, to ask hoarsely,
“What was that?”
“I think I recall his words,” said Jay Kalam.
“Here’s what he said:
“ ‘Leave out Robert Star.
He and I already have an engagement regarding my life.
If that young pup has the guts to kill me, let him do it.’”
That challenge jerked Bob Star forward.
He was trembling.
His thin face tightened, and his nails dug into his palms.
The triangular scar on his forehead turned white.
“He needs killing,” he whispered harshly.
“But I’m afraid—afraid I couldn’t do it.”
His mouth had fallen a little open, and he stood mopping at the sweat on his pale face.
“I can’t remember all that happened, but I know the Iron Confessor did something to my brain.
Oreo said he was going to break me.
And I’m afraid—afraid—”
“So am I.” The commander smiled bleakly.
“But we are soldiers of the Legion.”
For a moment he was silent, his dark face stern and grave.
“The word of an officer of the Legion has seldom been broken, except by a few such men as the Pretender and Oreo himself. Mine will not be broken. I am not going to kill Stephen Oreo.”
His somber eyes dwelt upon Bob Star.
“But since he made that mocking exception in your case, Bob, it may become necessary for us to take advantage of it.
Understand, I’m not commanding you to kill him.
What I’m going to do is to leave you at his prison, with an independent authority to take whatever action you see fit.
Your orders will be simply not to let Stephen Oreo escape.”