But they came on with the cones, spreading out as if to encircle the five by the sledges.
Bob Star broke at last out of his trance of horror, reaching automatically for his proton guns.
“Wait, Bob,” Jay Kalam muttered wearily.
“Our weapons have all been ruined.
We can’t resist—”
“But, Jay—” protested Hal Samdu, “we can’t give up—without a fight!”
“We must,” Jay Kalam insisted quietly. “We must preserve our lives, and hope for some opportunity—”
The giant made a mute, hurt sound.
“Surrender?” he rumbled incredulously.
“Legionnaires don’t surrender!”
Catching up a dead proton pistol, like a club, he strode out to meet the nearest bounding green cone.
“We can’t give up,” his voice came back.
“Not with Aladoree still in danger—”
Kay Nymidee ran after him, as if to catch his arm, calling urgently.
“Pahratee!”
She was too late.
The thin, flexible upright tip of the green cone whipped over toward him.
From the dark, tapered organ at the tip of it, which was like a pointed head, there flashed a thin and blinding ray of orange light.
Hal Samdu crumpled down, groaning with helpless agony.
“We can’t resist,” Jay Kalam repeated hopelessly.
“Help me carry him, Bob.
We’ll go aboard—if that’s what they want.
There’s nothing—”
His quiet voice broke off, with a breathless exclamation.
And Bob Star was amazed when he turned and spoke to Kay Nymidee, with strange words as soft and liquid-toned as her own.
The prison-hold filled nearly all the lowest level of the disk-ship.
The vast circle of it, some five hundred feet across, was broken only by a doorless wall, perhaps enclosing the engine rooms, which shut off a part of the center.
There were no ports, and the only light was a dim red glare reflected from the high metal ceiling.
The ventilation was bad, sanitary conveniences were few, and the hold reeked with the odors of its occupants.
The entrance was a massive grille of red metal bars, at the top of a long ramp.
One of the white spheres remained on guard beyond the grille, but none of the cometary beings came into the hold.
The five new prisoners were pushed through the door, and left upon the ramp.
Examining Hal Samdu, who was still unable to speak or to sit up, Bob Star and Giles Habibula found a small, circular inflamed patch on his temple.
Bob Star and Jay Kalam had attempted to carry him as they came aboard, but one of the thin red giants had taken the limp body from them, in its fringe of clustered arms. And they had meekly followed.
The miserable thousands imprisoned in the hold were mostly sitting or lying on the bare metal floor.
They were clad in haphazard fragments of clothing; only a few had odd little bundles of their possessions.
Their unwashed faces were haggard with fatigue and despair, and the sound that rose up from all of them was a weary murmur of hopeless apathy, without any light or laughter.
On the ramp, Bob Star was accosted by a gaunt, gray-faced man who had been stalking like a tired specter, across the great floor, stepping over recumbent bodies to look at the face of every slumbering or weeping child.
“Have you seen my son?” the weary stranger rasped.
“A blue-eyed lad, with curly yellow hair.
His name is John—after the great John Star.
Have you seen him?”
Bob Star shook his head, and saw hope extinguished by despair.
“Where do you come from?” he asked.
“From Pluto.”
The blood-shot eyes looked at him with a dull curiosity.
“My name if Hector Valdin.
I was a worker in the platinum mines of Votanga.”
His gnarled hands made a heavy gesture.
“These people—they were my friends and neighbors there.