And he led the rush upon the white sphere beyond, to pit bare human flesh against its metal might.
It was a mad thing; Jay Kalam had made him see that.
These thousands behind him were weaponless, already once beaten.
Even if they took the ship, they were far indeed from the well-guarded secret that could kill Stephen Oreo.
But Bob Star led his crush of silent, empty-handed men against the metal sphere.
They lifted it, and surged with it toward the red wall of the corridor.
It was hooting a raucous alarm; and the white tentacles seized the bodies of men, to beat men down with living flails.
Others took the places of the fallen.
Bob Star had made death itself a victory to the men behind him.
And a supernal thing strode among the prisoners as they marched from the hold, something greater than any man.
It was that intangible, ineffable power that touched a few beasts in the wilderness of early Earth, and created the unity that is mankind and the glory of the far-flung System.
It was that something, transfiguring human flesh, that smashed the hooting sphere against the red metal wall, again and again, until the faceted eyes were shattered, and its surface was crushed in, until the deadly tentacles were still and the hooting ceased—and then tore it into fragments, to make weapons.
That same power led the ragged horde down the corridor, to meet the guard: Another argent sphere, hooting hoarse commands.
Three of the tall green cones, bouncing upon distended bases, booming their threats, flashing orange-red rays from their narrow, pointed heads. A full score of the red-armored, three-legged giants, with strange colors flashing from the stalked organs where their heads should have been, their tentacular limbs clutching golden weapons.
It was hopeless, as Jay Kalam had warned.
It was useless, utter folly…
But that supernal power would not be stopped.
Bob Star led the way to meet that alien band, shouting, flourishing one of the tentacles of the dismembered globe, which had stiffened now into a silver spear.
A great eager voice rolled up behind him.
That, for Bob Star, was the end of the battle.
He had flung his argent spear at one of the green, bounding cones.
He saw it strike the oily, glistening skin, and sink deep.
He plunged forward, to grasp it and strike again.
But he saw the green neck flex, so the narrow head pointed at him; he saw the beginning of an orange flash.
Then a red and merciless spear of pain drove through the pale old scar on his forehead, and thrust deep into his brain.
Red agony exploded through his skull, and faded slowly into darkness.
Faintly, as his sick consciousness went out like a dying flame, he heard the thundering, triumphant shout:
“Take the ship!”
17 The Human Rocket
Bob Star woke once more from the same strange dream.
Again his body had been the shining, weightless body of one of the Cometeers.
And again he was pursuing the eternal, supernal form of Stephen Oreo, who fled with a woman—his mother, sometimes, and sometimes Kay Nymidee.
Once more he had been crushed down by a great hammer of red pain, and overwhelmed by the old fear that yelled:
“You can’t—You can’t kill—”
His trembling hand was pressed against his forehead, when he woke.
There, above that old scar, the skin felt swollen and painful to his fingers—where that organic ray had struck him.
The old agony still throbbed beneath it, as if the three-edged blade of the Iron Confessor still stabbed intermittently into his brain.
Awake, he still felt as strangely weightless as he had been in that dream.
He found that he was floating in the air, and the lack of gravitation made him giddily uncomfortable.
He had to swallow a sudden sense of panic, when he found no support beneath him.
Groping desperately for something substantial, he looked around him blankly.
Around him were the hard blue walls of a shaft or pit, perhaps fifty feet square and a hundred deep—too large a chamber, he decided, to be part of the prison-ship.
After a moment of twisting and peering, he discovered his old companions.
Giles Habibula was clinging to what seemed the bottom of the pit, where a circle of slender rods of red metal projected from the polished wall.
His deft, sensitive ringers were sliding the rods in and out, twisting them; the yellow globe of his head was cocked as if to listen.
Jay Kalam and Kay Nymidee were near him, equally weightless, busy with some unfamiliar instrument.
From a rectangular case of red metal they were taking wires and coils and odd-looking parts of scarlet metal, and little round black cells.
It took him a moment longer to locate Hal Samdu.
Bruised somewhat, covered with bloodstained bandages, the giant was clinging to the edge of the pit, peering out as if on guard.
One great hand clutched a long rod of yellow metal—a weapon, Bob Star knew, that must have been taken from one of the lean, red-armored beings.