He paused to shake his head, at Bob Star’s stifled gasp of unbelief.
“What I read,” he went on soberly, “I have kept to myself until now—because of its unpleasant aspects.”
“Let’s have it,” rapped the voice from the pillar of light.
“My colleague will not submit to much longer restraint.”
“That fantastic exile,” the commander went on, still deliberately grave—“was a man named Eldo Arrynu.
A native of Earth, he was educated there and on Mars in biological science.
Eldo Arrynu was peculiarly brilliant, in artistic as well as scientific directions.
His early career was distinguished, until he was sentenced in disgrace to a Martian prison for conducting illegal biological experiments.”
Jay Kalam paused to get his breath—still fighting, Bob Star realized, for time.
“Within a year after his imprisonment, he was pardoned, in reward for a brilliant emergency operation that saved the warden’s life.
He vanished.
And the Legion was never able to find him again— although we had evidence enough of his diabolical activities.
“What he did, of course, was to take refuge upon this uncharted asteroid.
In prison, apparently, he had formed connections with a powerful ring of space pirates and interplanetary smugglers, who had used it as a base.
He soon became the leader of the ring, evidently, and turned its criminal activities in a new and terrible direction.
“On that asteroid, he became the source of the most insidious traffic that has ever disgraced the System, one the Legion has fought in vain to suppress.
It’s the profits of that monstrous traffic that transformed a barren rock into a hidden paradise—”
“Be brief,” warned the voice of Stephen Oreo. “Or die.”
“The illegal experiments of Eldo Arrynu,” Jay Kalam continued, still gravely unhurried, “had been in the synthesis of life—the grisly consequences of such efforts long ago forced the council to outlaw them.
Working on that asteroid, Arrynu carried his forbidden work to a triumphant completion.
The business that brought him such enormous wealth was the manufacture and sale of androids.”
For a moment the nearer shining thing seemed frozen.
Red star and violet star ceased their regular beat.
And the misty spindle between them was congealed into a pillar of green-white crystal.
Then it broke into quivering motion, and one startled word came out of it:
“Androids!”
“Eldo Arrynu,” amplified Jay Kalam, “had come upon the secret of synthetic life.
He generated artificial cells, and propagated them in nutrient media, and learned how to control their development by radiological and biochemical means.
“He was an artist, as well as a scientist.
The genius of creation must have possessed him.
The medium of his great art was living, synthetic flesh.
He achieved miracles—diabolical miracles—”
The commander’s lean face had grown dark and hard, as if with the pain of festering memory.
“It is a sorry commentary upon human civili/ation,” he said grimly, “that a wealthy man should give half his fortune for a hundred pounds of synthetic protoplasm.
But many did—enough to give Eldo Arrynu the wealth he desired.”
His hard jaws clenched suddenly, until they went pale.
“Nor can I blame them, altogether,” he whispered.
His dark eyes seemed to stare into a terrible window of the past.
“For there was one, arrested by the Legion for her owner’s murder.
She was the spirit of beauty, made real; she was a true artist’s dream of grace.
To look at, she was the very soul of womanly innocence.
To listen to, her golden voice—”
His lean throat worked to a convulsive swallow.
“It became my duty to destroy her.
But—almost—” His dark eyes looked suddenly, gratefully, at Bob Star. “But for the memory of your mother, Bob, I might have brought disgrace upon the Legion—”
He collected himself, and his eyes swept back to the restless shining forms.
“The criminal activities of the ring did not stop with the mere sale of the androids,” he said.
“Because the flawless, enthralling perfection of their bodies frequently concealed the most unspeakable evil.
The luckless purchaser of their matchless loveliness often found that the price included the remainder of his fortune, even if not his life.
“Eldo Arrynu wrote black pages into the records of the Legion—