Ghostly shadow shapes darted through it.
Abruptly then, as if some tri-dimensional projector had come suddenly into focus, the hard armor of the wall melted into an amazing scene.
He looked into a curious chamber, sunk now like a deep niche into the cell wall.
Its surface followed tapering spiral curves, and the color of it was an absolute black, spangled with small crystals of brilliant blue that were various as snowflakes.
The girl stood inside that sudden hollow in the wall, upon a many-angled pedestal of blue transparency.
An unsteady flame burned deep within that great sapphire block, and its fitful light danced against the tiny flakes of blue.
Vividly real against that spiral shell of darkness and blue fire, the girl stood watching him.
Her expression had a desperate, almost agonized intentness.
One slim white arm was thrust out and upward, in what seemed a gesture of warning.
The pale oval of her face was grave with the expectation of danger, and her bright lips parted, as he watched, as if she had spoken some warning word. No sound reached him, however, and the silence brought him a sudden doubt of what he saw. With a bewildered shrug, he got up from the bench and started uncertainly toward the wall. Her solemn brown eyes following his movement, in a way that made him sure that she was really watching, and she stopped him with an imperative gesture.
She turned, then, to point through the transparent slab at Stephen Oreo, who now seemed absorbed in his book and drink.
Keeping her distressed golden eyes on Bob Star, she gestured urgently toward the red button that he had failed to touch.
He started toward it again, and again all the agony of the Iron Confessor rose up out of the past to stop him.
He turned helplessly back toward the girl, with a sick misery in his eyes.
She plainly wanted him to kill Stephen Oreo—and he wondered suddenly if her panic-stricken loveliness could be nothing more than hallucination, the vivid symbol of his own impotent desire.
She saw him turn, and a tragic sadness shadowed her face.
The light died in her golden eyes.
White knuckles lifted to her mouth, in a gesture of bleak frustration.
Suddenly then, she started as if she had heard some silent voice.
She shuddered, beckoning him toward the red button again, desperately and hopelessly.
Then, as the urgent pleading of her face changed to sad compas-sion, a bomb of cold flame exploded in the blue pedestal.
Sapphire sparks danced across the crystal rime upon the spiral walls.
Blue radiance filled the niche, and slowly died.
Dark shadows thickened, and silently dissolved.
The gray wall was whole again.
And Bob Star was once more alone.
He swayed, trembling. Tears of defeat and despair burned his eyes.
He flung his head and looked sharply at Stephen Oreo, who was just setting down his empty glass, his attention still lost in the book.
Confusion roared in Bob Star’s mind.
Had she been real?
All his doubts had been suspended, in that last moment of his useless effort and her sad departure, but now the question hammered at him.
A living person—where?
Or only a tormented projection of his own unendurable predicament.
He jumped, when the gong shattered the silence in the room.
Harshly, from a speaker beside it, rasped a hoarse command:
“Emergency stations!
Secure all doors!
Stand—” The voice choked strangely.
“Quick!”
It was a ragged whisper now.
“Invisible things— I can’t see—” Now!
Bob Star’s breath gasped out.
He must act now, or betray the Legion.
Fighting a numbing inertia, he swung toward the gray wall.
The push button winked at him, a red, malicious eye.
He was aware that Stephen Oreo had laid aside the book, to watch him with a careless amusement.
He contrived to take another halting step.
Abrupt sweat chilled him.
His ears were roaring again.
For the effort had plunged him back into the grasp of the Iron Confessor.