Tell me, Hal, what did you see—or feel?”
Hal Samdu shook his head.
“I saw nothing.
A monstrous shadow crept into the ship.
Then the green mist was hi my eyes, and I couldn’t see anything.
This stiffness seized my body, and I couldn’t move.
That’s all I know.”
Bob Star was descending toward the power room, when a strangled whimpering led him back to the brig.
He looked through the bars, at Mark Lardo.
Shocked horror spilled out his strength.
Gasping, trembling, he clung weakly to the bars, staring at the thing hi the cell.
Mark Lardo had been big—a shaggy, powerful human brute.
But this shrunken creature looked hardly larger than a child.
Its skin was uncannily white and hideously shriveled.
It lay inert on the deck, mewing feebly.
“Lardo.”
Bob Star’s voice was thick with his horror.
“Mark Lardo —can you hear me?”
The thing moved a little.
The shrunken head rolled back, and Bob Star staggered away from the bars.
He had seen its eyes.
They were sunk deep into that tiny skull, and queerly glazed.
He thought they must be blind.
Smoky, yellow shadows swirled through them.
They were the eyes of nothing human.
Sick to the very heart, Bob Star stumbled away.
Even though insane, the Mark Lardo of an hour ago had been a man, massive and powerful, his great, wild voice ringing through the ship.
This wasted horror was no longer human.
It had less than half the bulk of Mark Lardo, and little indeed of the savage, animal life.
Bob Star stumbled down the steps into the power room, and stood swaying at the bottom.
“Giles,” he called hoarsely, “have you any wine?”
Giles Habibula was leaning disconsolately against one of the geodyne generators. His fat arms were flung across it in a sort of sick caress.
He was sobbing, and he didn’t seem to hear.
“Giles,” Bob Star called again, “I want a drink.”
He heard, then, and came slowly across the room.
“Ah, lad!”
He was drunk no longer, but weeping bitterly.
“You find me at an evil hour, lad.
My poor geodynes—like a dear friend murdered!
I think we both need a drink.”
He found a full bottle, in a box that should have held tools.
Bob Star gulped down half of it.
He finished what was left, and wiped a forlorn yellow face with the back of his hand.
“I’m an old generator man,” he muttered huskily. “But never did I run a set of geodynes so powerful as these were, and so sweetly tuned.
They always answered my touch as if they were alive, lad.
They sang me a song.
They loved me, lad—more than any woman ever did.
“But now they’re dead, lad—dead.
Killed and mutilated.
Every coil has been cut into a thousand useless bits of wire.