I might remark, by the way, that I don’t intend to let the care of the secret become any sort of distressing mortal burden to me.
The trouble with you, Bob, is just that you weren’t big enough for the job.”
He shook his head mockingly, at Bob Star’s trembling impotence.
“Anyhow,” he continued easily,
“I simply followed the methods of investigation that should have suggested themselves to any person of intelligence.
I collected the data available, formulated hypotheses to explain them, tested the hypotheses by experiment, and so finally arrived at a satisfactory conclusion.
“While I was still at the academy, I obtained secret access to a secret library, and studied there all the existing accounts of the use of AKKA, since the time of its discovery by your mother’s great ancestor, Charles Anthar—while he himself was a prisoner, guarded almost as carefully as I am.
“The last recorded use of the weapon had been to destroy Earth’s old satellite—after it had been seized and fortified by the Pretender’s unsuspecting allies.
With my foster father’s space yacht, I searched the orbit the satellite had followed.
I finally found three small metallic buttons.
“No larger than the end of my thumb, they were all that remained of the Moon.
I have since come to realize how very fortunate I was to find a single atom.
It was only because your mother was working hastily, with a crudely improvised instrument, that the annihilation of the heavy elements was not quite complete.
“Some months of careful work, in a laboratory financed from my foster father’s funds, revealed the nature of the partial effect of AKKA upon those metallic specimens.
From effect to cause was a matter of mathematical reasoning.
It remained but to test alternative hypotheses, and elaborate the surviving construction—and the secret was mine.”
The prisoner paused, smiling again.
“Don’t you agree with me, Bob, that such abilities merit reward?
I am certainly the most gifted of men; reason assures me that I am therefore their rightful ruler.
And I should have been that already, Bob—but for one blunder.“
Hoarsely, Bob Star whispered,
“What was that?”
“I failed to kill your mother.”
Stephen Oreo shrugged carelessly.
“The trouble was that I didn’t see, until too late, the singular limitation of the weapon.
I didn’t try to use it until she was also trying.
It failed for both of us, and that blunder put me here.
But it’s one I shan’t repeat, when I find another chance.”
He chuckled maliciously.
“I’m not afraid to tell you that,” he added cheerfully. “Because I know you can’t touch that red button—not even to save your mother’s life.”
Bob Star knew then what he must do, but still he couldn’t do it— at any rate, not yet.
Wearily, he signalled for the guards and had the telephone disconnected.
With the prisoner sealed again in that tomb of silence, he waited alone in the little outer room, bleakly resolved to stay there until he could press that button—or until the need was gone.
Stephen Oreo had calmly returned to his chair and his book.
He relaxed in the green robe, sipping at his drink, apparently oblivious of any danger to his life.
Twice again Bob Star left the hard bench where he waited, trying to touch that button.
The simple act was utterly impossible.
The effort did nothing but accelerate that unceasing throb of pain inside his head and turn him faint with illness.
He gave up for the time, desperately hopeful that the stimulus of emergency would nerve him for the deed, if any crisis came.
Hopelessly, he stumbled back to the bench.
His eyes, as he sat there, widened abruptly.
His breath sucked in, and his lean hands clenched.
He leaned forward, staring at the hard gray wall.
For he thought that its surface had begun to shimmer with vague, moving shadows.
The massive door was still locked behind him.
The alarm gongs were silent.
The sheet of vitrilith was still intact, and the lounging giant beyond it still ignored him.
There was no hint of another presence with him—none save the creeping shadows on the wall.
He watched them, breathtaken.
A misty blue circle flickered against the gray.