9 The Field of the Comet
Giles Habibula remained on guard, while the others tramped the frozen miles to the wrecked Invincible, and came back toiling to pull a makeshift sledge loaded with heavy drums of rocket fuel.
Then the old man primed the injectors, and Bob Star, navigator, took his stand on the bridge.
With jets roaring blue, the Halcyon Bird broke free of the frost and soared through green dusk to the wreck.
For many hours, then, they labored to carry cathode plates and more drums of fuel from the intact stores beneath the chart house of the dead Invincible.
Giles Habibula scoured the galley and stocked it again, and before they were ready for flight he had a hot meal waiting.
“So now we’re off for the Green Hall?” he whee/ed gratefully, as they ate.
“To gather all the fleets of the Legion against this traitor and his monstrous friends—” He peered at the commander, and started apprehensively.
“We are bound for the precious Earth, or at least the Legion yards on Mars—aren’t we, Jay?”
Sternly grave, Jay Kalam shook his head.
“I’d be afraid to try to go back,” he answered softly.
“In fact, I’m almost afraid to try to call any Legion installation.
Because I’m afraid we are the Legion.”
“We—” Giles Habibula gasped.
“In life’s sweet name what do you mean?”
“The Cometeers have destroyed the Invincible and liberated Stephen Oreo,” Jay Kalam said.
“That means war to the hilt.
They’ve nothing to gain by any more delay, and every reason for moving at once, with adequate forces, to wipe out the Legion and kill the keeper of the peace—”
“My mother—” Bob Star bit his trembling lip.
“What can we do?”
“I have been considering our action, and I have reached a decision.”
The tall commander straightened, rubbing thoughtfully at his unshaven chin.
“We’re going to take off at once, in the direction of the comet—”
“Please, Jay!” sobbed Giles Habibula. “Don’t make such ghastly jokes!”
“I think we’re safer for the time being on a course toward the comet than we would be on Earth.”
Jay Kalam sat looking at him sadly.
“With the keeper of the peace stalemated, our forces had nothing left to match whatever weapon it was that crumbled the fortress here into that pit.”
“Ah, don’t say such things!”
Giles Habibula squirmed and blinked at him.
“Can’t we even ask for help?”
“Not without a grave risk that the enemy will intercept our mes-sages—and answer them with that annihilating beam,” Jay Kalam said.
“It might be wiser not to attempt any signal at all, but I have decided that we must chance a call to the Legion relay station at the atmospheric engineering plants here on Neptune, as we take off.”
“And if—” Bob Star tried to swallow the croak in his throat.
“If they don’t answer?”
“Then we must take the further risk of sending a message to the Green Hall,” the commander said. “I think the safest channel for that would be tight-beam ultrawave, through the Contra-Saturn relay station.”
“But the answer will take many hours—” Bob Star protested.
“No matter who answers—the Legion or the Cometeers—we won’t be waiting,” Jay Kalam told him softly.
“If it does turn out that we are the only effective force the Legion has left, I want to keep in action.
If we could only kill or recapture Oreo, remember, that would still reverse the whole situation.”
Jay Kalam rose from the table, adding quietly,
“Please plot a course for the comet, at full power.
Don’t worry about hoarding any fuel for return.”
“But you tried it once!”
Giles Habibula started to rise and sank back weakly, his pale eyes rolling.
“You had a ship with a thousand times our fighting power.”
He shuddered apprehensively.
“Out there is the mortal wreckage of it.”
But elation was surging up in Bob Star.
In spite of all the commander’s forebodings, the means to escape bleak Neptune had lifted his spirits.
He wanted the clean freedom of high space and the blood-hastening song of speeding geodynes—and one more chance.