He heard Jay Kalam whisper:
“We’re about to strike that green barrier.”
A thin wail quavered from the lips of Giles Habibula.
“A frightful time!” he sobbed.
“What use is genius now?”
Bob Star put his arms around Kay Nymidee, and moved her a little into the shelter of the shining ship.
What would happen when they struck?
Would they ever know?
He waited, breathless.
He could feel the quick beat of the girl’s heart, against his side.
There was an odd little flicker in the green vault of the sky.
But nothing happened.
Waiting became unendurable.
Shakily, he whispered:
“When, Jay?
When—”
He heard Jay Kalam draw a deep, even breath.
“We’ve passed the green barrier,” the commander said.
“We’re already inside the comet.
Just look at the sky!”
Bob Star walked unsteadily beside Kay Nymidee, away from the hull of the Halcyon Bird.
His bewildered eyes swept the sky.
It still was green, an inverted bowl of pale, weird-hued flame.
But it was swarming, now, with strange heavenly bodies.
His startled glance swept them.
They were mottled disks like dark moons, strung across the green.
They were of many sizes, colored with a thousand merging shades of red, orange, yellow, and brown, all splashed with an eerie green.
They were clustered planets, crowd-ing the green sky.
The patches were continental outlines.
The vast areas of green, he thought, must be seas, reflecting the sky.
“A sun!” Jay Kalam was gasping.
“A captive sun!”
And following his gravely pointing arm, Bob Star saw a great ball of purple flame.
Its hot color was fantastically strange, against the green.
It was huge—it looked three times the size of the System’s sun, as seen from his home on Phobos.
Kay Nymidee had stepped quickly a little away from him.
Her slender white arm, trembling, was pointing at one of the swarming dark planets, which was not mottled like the rest, but a smooth disk of indigo.
Between that planet and the captive sun, Bob Star saw three glowing, purple lines.
“Bob, Jay! Hal, Giles!” The girl was calling them all by their names, softly accented.
And still she was pointing at that featureless disk of violet-blue.
“Aythrin!” she cried urgently.
“Staven Or-rco!”
She ran to touch the green-glinting hull of the Halcyon Bird, and then gestured as if it had risen toward the indigo world.
“Staven Or-rco!” she repeated, and ground her small hands together, as if obliterating something.
“See!” Bob Star whispered.
“She wants us to go to that blue planet.
Stephen Oreo is there, with the Cometeers—she calls them aythrin.
She wants us to go there, and kill him.”
The girl had watched him as he spoke, brown eyes shining.
Now she seized his arm, speaking at him furiously hi her own language.