A little bit like our proton needles—but they must be enormous, to be visible at this distance!
One of them stands under each one of those three purple beams, between the planet and the captive sun—”
“I believe I get it!”
Jay Kalam’s low voice quivered with restrained excitement.
“The captive sun can’t be any ordinary star—not with that purple color.
I believe it’s artificial—an atomic power plant.
“That triple beam is probably the transmission system that taps its power.
And, if that’s true, the blue planet must be the control room of the ship.
Those smaller machines around the three large ones probably distribute the energy, to operate it.
“It must take enormous power, to hold and propel all these planets and protect them with that barrier of repulsion.
Atomic fission wouldn’t be enough.
That plant must annihilate matter—”
His breath caught, and his lean face tightened.
“I couldn’t find Pluto, among all those planets,” he whispered hoarsely.
“I think that’s the reason why.”
Bob Star peered at him blankly.
“I think the Cometeers wanted it for fuel,” he said.
“I think they have already stripped it of whatever they wanted to preserve, and flung what was left into that atomic furnace.”
He was silent for a little time.
His face looked haggard and rigid as a mask of death.
“That seems to complete our picture of the Cometeers.”
His voice remained oddly calm.
“They are universal marauders.
They rove space from sun to sun.
They pillage planets, and feed upon the life they find.
They seize the planets themselves, to build into the swarm, or to burn for fuel—”
“And that’s what they want with this asteroid?” Bob Star shivered.
“I think so.”
Jay Kalam nodded, curiously quiet.
“The Cometeers have already once raided the asteroid.
Probably they have no further interest in it, except as a speck of fuel.” Absently, he was stroking his lean jaw.
He asked presently, very softly, “How long have we, Bob?”
Bob Star remained standing for a moment in a dark reverie; he started nervously, and turned to busy himself hastily with tele-periscope, calculator, and chronometer.
He straightened at last, and wiped cold sweat from his forehead.
“Three hours—” he whispered, huskily.
“Just three hours—”
14 Oreo’s Voice
Jay Kalam closed the door of the bridge room with a weary finality.
For a moment he leaned heavily against it.
Then, with dragging feet, he followed Bob Star across the deck, and out through the open airlock.
Kay Nymidee and Hal Samdu and Giles Habibula were still outside, on the gravel of the rocket field, beside that deserted mansion.
They looked ghost-like in the pale green radiance that shone from all the sky.
Hal Samdu stood bolt upright.
His great, gnarled hands were clenching and opening again, convulsively.
His shaggy head was flung back, and his blue eyes were fixed upon the indigo disk of the master planet.
His rugged face was grimly savage.
“If Stephen Oreo is there,” he was rumbling, harshly, “we must go after him—and kill him.
For Aladoree—”
Giles Habibula and Kay Nymidee sat side by side on the gravel.
The girl was marking little diagrams with her finger, on the ground, and talking urgently at the old man.