Rocket tubes were crushed, and a colossal proton gun had been hurled from its turret.
This murdered craft must have been a Legion battleship—
His heart came up in his throat.
He staggered back from the wreckage, and shook his head blankly.
He saw Giles Habibula and Hal Samdu staring at him.
“The Invincible—”
Numbing despair had paralyzed his voice, but he needed to say no more.
The mighty Invincible had been reduced to this battered fragment.
That meant that Jay Kalam’s gesture of friendship had failed.
It meant that the Cometeers had no friendly purpose—and now, since they had liberated Stephen Oreo, that arch-traitor could defend them against AKKA.
“Ah, so!” Giles Habibula moaned bitterly.
“It’s only a miserable bit of the great Invincible.
And the coffin, no doubt, of poor Jay—”
“Perhaps he’s still alive.”
Bob Star clutched eagerly at that faint hope.
“His quarters were forward, in this section.
And somebody must have been alive, to fire those rockets—”
“Before the crash,” the old man muttered.
“But now I see no sign of life.”
Yet it was he who spoke, after Bob Star and Hal Samdu had failed to get inside this fragment of the craft.
“Lad,” he asked, “you say the forward valve is clear?”
“It is,” Bob Star said.
“But locked.”
“Then help me reach it.”
They lifted him into the wreckage, to the mechanism of a great entrance valve.
He clung to a twisted beam before it, peering hi the darkness at the lock.
“Ah, me!” he whispered sadly.
“Why must a fighting ship be se-cured like a precious safe?
Have they no trust in the men of the Le-gion?”
Bob Star, watching, marveled at the quick, deft certainty of the old man’s pudgy fingers.
He was hardly surprised when something clicked beyond the blackened armor plate, and whirring motors began opening the outer valve.
“Do you know, lad,” Giles Habibula wheezed triumphantly, “there’s not another man in all the System who could pick such a lock?
The fact is that it might have troubled me—if Jay hadn’t called on me to help his experts design it!
But let’s look for him.”
The bridge was dark and empty.
They paused to read the last, neatly written entry in the log:
Wreck falling toward south pole of Neptune.
Geodynes gone and rockets crippled.
Will attempt to land at prison base.
General order: The Cometeers are our enemies, and the Legion will fight to the end.
Kalam
“Jay!” Hal Samdu’s great voice was booming apprehensively.
“Where are you, Jay?”
“In his den, of course!” Bob Star whispered suddenly.
“It’s soundproof.”
He ran back through the chart room to the hidden door, rang, and waited.
The little door opened.
Golden light spilled out, and then he saw the tall commander of the Legion.
“I thought I was alone—” Jay Kalam’s low voice rang with a sudden joy.
“Bob!