It was hanging in the air, close beside them.
Floating low was a tiny star of red, veiled in a misty crimson moon.
Ten feet above it hung a violet star, wrapped in a violet fog.
The red seemed hot as the core of a sun, and the violet as cold as outermost space.
A mist swirled between the moons.
There was life in its motion; it was like a throbbing artery of light.
Red star and violet star beat like hearts of fire.
Girdling the misty pillar was a wide green ring.
It was the only part of the creature that looked at all substantial—and even it, Bob Star knew, could pass through the hard alloys of a space cruiser’s hull.
His dazed mind first received the thing with startled incredulity.
He blinked, and looked down at the dark plain, and rubbed his eyes.
But the thing had not gone, when he looked again.
And its hideous reality ate into his mind, like a corrosive poison.
He fought the queer, numbing horror that came flooding from it.
“Just colored lights,” he muttered.
“Moving mist.
Shouldn’t be afraid—”
But mind-frilling dread swept into him.
His numbed senses perceived a terrible entity within, beyond, those colored lights; an alien mind supernally powerful and completely evil.
Every atom of his body reacted to it with automatic, shocked revulsion.
And the incessant beat of that old, strange pain, behind the triangular scar of the Iron Confessor, was suddenly redoubled.
Every throb of it became a sickening, staggering blow against the naked tissues of his brain.
He braced himself against fear and pain.
Swiftly, half-uncon-sciously, his fingers had been slipping fresh cells into his two proton pistols.
The two weapons came up, now, together.
The emerald ring looked to be the most material part of the being.
He pointed the guns at that, and pulled the firing levers all the way, to exhaust the cells in one single blast.
Those two blinding swords of violet ruin would have cut through a solid foot of tempered steel. They would have electrocuted any living being—as the System knew life—at the distance of a mile.
But, like phantom swords, they flashed through the green ring, harmless.
Quivering to the shock of icy dismay, Bob Star recalled Jay Kalam’s opinion that no human weapon could Injure the Cometeers.
“Kay—” despair rasped from his leathery throat,
“Kay—”
His voice stopped, as if to the touch of death.
For out of the pillar of swirling light another voice had spoken, whose careless, mocking levity was the most appalling thing Bob Star had ever heard.
“That’s rather useless, Bob.”
It was the voice of Stephen Oreo.
Bob Star staggered backward.
That light, ringing voice was more terrible than all the shining horror in the air.
“You had your chance, Bob,” said the voice.
“When I was in prison on Neptune, you had only to touch a little red button.
But you failed.
I’m afraid you’ll never succeed.
For now, Bob, I’ve a body that cannot be destroyed.”
“You—” dread drew his tone to a quivering edge.
“You’re— that?”
“I am what you see, Bob.
One of the drivers of the comet.”
A low, mocking chuckle rang inside the shining being.
There was a little silence, and then the clear voice spoke again:
“Perhaps, Bob,” it suggested lightly, “you would be glad to hear of your mother?