In disregard of that warning, the Invincible landed three degrees from the pole.
Bob Star and his two bodyguards came down a ramp, to a dark frozen plain.
Already shivering, they ran away from the ship.
Rockets thundered behind them.
They dropped flat to escape the sudden hot hurricane of the jets.
The ship lifted and vanished in the cloudy, greenish twilight, carrying Jay Kalam forward on his mission to test the good will of the Cometeers.
A squad of Legionnaires came out of the foggy dark.
They challenged the three, examined their credentials, and guided them to a fortress standing on a low and barren hill.
They were almost upon it before Bob Star could see anything.
Abruptly, then, a vast and massive wall loomed out of the greenish gloom.
“The wall is ring-shaped, sir,” the guard officer informed him, with an awed respect for Jay Kalam’s signature upon his papers.
“There’s a circular field inside, where our four cruisers are lying now.
But you don’t see the real prison at all.
It’s a buried cylinder of perdurite.
Merrin’s cell is a thousand feet below the field.”
A ponderous, armored door admitted them to the hundred-foot thickness of the wall.
Bob Star asked immediately to see the prisoner.
And at last, beyond confusing, narrow passages walled with gray perdurite, behind huge cylindrical doors that were elaborately locked, beyond hidden elevators and grimly alert guards in turrets of vitrilith, he looked upon the man he must kill.
A huge door let him into a small square room, where two sentries watched.
Its farther wall was a thick, shining sheet of vitrilith.
Beyond that impregnable transparency was Stephen Oreo’s cell.
The prisoner sat in a big chair, reading.
He held a glass of some red drink in one great hand, and his splendid body looked relaxed hi a green dressing gown.
Bob Star could see the angle of his handsome face, and the light smile clinging to his wide, womanish mouth.
“This is Merrin, sir,” the officer said.
“He was sealed beyond that vitrilith wall when the prison was completed, two years ago.
No one has talked to him since.
The cell is soundproof, and the guards are ordered to ignore any sort of signal he may attempt.
All metal objects are kept from him.
Air, water, and liquid foods are pumped to him through screened tubes from another room accessible only to the commanding officer—”
He broke off to indicate a small red button on the gray wall beside him.
“I must warn you, sir.
Don’t touch that button.
It is connected to a valve that would fill the cell with a lethal gas.
Our orders, however, are to preserve the prisoner’s life as a trust of the Legion.”
Bob Star scarcely heard the man’s last words, above the sudden ringing in his ears.
Abrupt sweat chilled him.
He swayed with a sick faintness.
The little red disk stared at him, like a sinister eye.
He had to touch it—that was all.
And the score of nine years would be settled.
An intolerable burden would be lifted from him.
Even that old pain, he felt, would go, and the System would be safe from the malign genius of Stephen Oreo—
He was aware, then, that the prisoner had seen him.
The blue eyes, cold and burning with a reckless defiance, had lifted from the book.
The handsome face smiled mockingly.
Stephen Oreo got lazily to his feet and came strolling to that transparent, unbreakable wall.
He pointed at the red button, and slapped his leg with silent merriment.
His full lips formed a derisive, soundless greeting.
Bob Star felt a sudden desire to speak to him.