All that came flashing through his mind, while he clutched that cold black cube.
He was John Star’s son – and Stephen Orco had been the one who broke.
Somehow, his fingers were suddenly steady.
He lifted the cube, twisting at that tiny scarlet knob.
A pale beam of silver light shone from the opposite face of the cube.
He twisted the little instrument, to sweep that beam toward the shining things.
“Bob!
You can’t – ”
But he could.
That startled, apprehensive outcry became a harsh scream.
It faded into a bubbling note of ultimate agony – which might have come from a dying victim of the Iron Confessor. His glance had followed that beam of silver light. Even before it struck those two shining beings, they seemed to freeze. For an instant they hung motionless. Their radiance died. They became two ghostly wisps of pale gray dust. The dust swirled, and then there was nothing. Stephen Orco and the emperor of the Cometeers were dead. The green walls rushed away from Bob Star, and time seemed to pause. For an instant his very victory was somehow appalling, because it had shattered the whole orientation of his life. But then he knew that the old throb of pain had died behind that scar – perhaps, Jay Kalam later suggested, the painful thrust of that organic ray had somehow helped erase the marks of the Iron Confessor. The cold walls came back, and he heard the glad little sob of Kay Nymidee. An eager smile had swept the shadows of ominous foreboding from her face, for the first time since he had known her. She was suddenly in his arms, almost hysterical at first, and then happily relaxed. Wonderingly, Jay Kalam picked up the black cube, which Bob Star had dropped back into the empty box. It had become covered with feathery crystals of frost. He brushed them away, and tried the red knob again. Nothing happened. “It seems to be dead,” he said. “Exhausted.” “Perhaps I turned the knob too far,” Bob Star said. “The thing seemed to kick back in my hands. I think the mass of it decreased. It was growing very cold, before I dropped it.” The commander nodded, watching the white frost come back. “I suspect,” he said thoughtfully, “that you released a great deal of energy, of some sort that we can’t perceive – ” He caught his breath. “Did you notice?” His low voice had quickened, with more emotion than he often showed. “Both those creatures were stricken – or seemed to be – before the white ray touched them!” “Huh?” Bob Star peered at the mass of glittering frost, and back at the commander’s grave face. “Do you think – ” “A very little of that energy was enough to kill these two.” Jay Kalam’s lean finger scraped at the dark stubble on his bloodstained chin. “We don’t know how. But Orco told us the Cometeers were stable fields of energy. Perhaps this instrument generated some key vibration, adjusted to destroy that stability. If that is so – and if the range of this weapon is as great as it should have been to enforce the authority of that shining emperor – then I imagine that we have won a very decisive victory.”
Deftly juggling the frosty cube, he replaced it in the box.
“Where did you get it?” he asked Giles Habibula.
“We thought the box was empty.”
“Ah, so it was.” The old soldier blew his nose again.
His fat hands still clung to the box, his pudgy fingers caressing the oddly intricate designs on its sides.
His illness had vanished.
“Then,” Bob Star whispered, “how – ?”
“This pattern was the key,” wheezed Giles Habibula.
“It made me wonder from the beginning, for the makers of this safe had wasted none of their cunning on useless ornament anywhere else.
The figures of it led my fingers to a hidden lock. The combination rods are set level with the surface – to make the black circles in the design. I had just found it, when those fearful creatures came upon us. I gave Jay a signal to distract them, while I set out to open it. “Mortal me!” He shuddered. “The precious genius of Giles Habibula could never endure another such trial. His poor old heart would stop. As it was, death was breathing on him when he found the combination – and saw that queer device lying where there had been nothing!”
“Where had that been?” Star asked.
“Under a false bottom, do you think?”
“Nothing so simple!”
Giles Habibula shook his head.
“I can see through false bottoms, blindfolded. Life knows where it was!” He peered at the commander. “What do you think, Jay?” Reflectively, Jay Kalam rubbed his chin. “The Cometeers knew more of space and time than we do,” he said slowly. “Their tubular force-fields are evidence of that – as their own bodies were.
That weapon may have been hidden somewhere across our universe, linked to a field that would draw it back when the lock was worked.
Or it may have been outside our frame of space and time altogether – such a thing would not have been impossible for them.” “It’s lucky you had read that diary.” Bob Star looked up at him, frowning. “But still I wonder why they let you delay them so long. When the ruler of the Cometeers found us here so near his secret, I wonder why he didn’t kill us instantly.” “I was wondering, while I was talking to Orco.” The commander nodded gravely. “And I’ve a guess to offer. I don’t think the shining emperor had been quite frank with his new ally. Orco seems to have been allowed to believe that his wonderful new body was entirely in-vulnerable. And you recall that he referred to this place as the chamber of generation – he had probably been deceived about the nature of the secret guarded here. I suspect that the ruler of the Cometeers kept quiet about the weapon, holding it in reserve to counter Orco’s knowledge of AKKA. “If that’s the way it was, Orco must have been quite confident of his new-found immortality, and free of any alarm, until the end. His imperial companion was obviously apprehensive, and impatient to be done with us. But, in such circumstances, he would have been unable to take any very precipitate action without the danger that Orco would find out the truth – and the Cometeers have a new emperor – ”
Jay Kalam was interrupted by a bulky missile that came plunging down the square well of the entrance, and thudded heavily against the coldly glowing metal.
It gasped for breath, and straightened, and became the body of Hal Samdu. It still bore the marks of battle, but joyous blue eyes were shining through the reddened bandages.
“Aye, Bob,” the giant rumbled.
“I told your mother you would be here.”
“My mother?” Bob Star whispered.
“Is she – safe?”
“Aye,” said Hal Samdu. “She’s waiting on that saucer-ship, outside. And your father, too.
The strange slaves of the Cometeers are all around them, but you needn’t mind them now. They’re our friends, now that we have killed their shining masters – ” “The Cometeers?” Jay Kalam broke in. “How many did we kill?” “Every one,” boomed the bandaged man. “So John Star has learned from the slaves. I don’t know what you did, but the slaves are rejoicing because the monsters are all destroyed, out to the limits of the comet.” “I had begun to hope so.” Jay Kalam’s dark eyes fell to the small black cube, which looked more than ever harmless now, with the film of frost thawing from it. “Yet I scarcely dared – ” Hal Samdu’s great hand caught Bob Star’s arm.
“Come, Bob,” he said, “to your mother.”
John Star was waiting at the entrance valve, to welcome them to the ship. His hard body looked trim and soldierly as ever in the green of the Legion. Bob Star was secretly amazed when his father kissed him. And a lump came up in his own throat when John Star called him, for the first time in many years, not Robert, but Bob. They entered the ship, and climbed to the upper deck. Far back, beyond the central dome, were ranked a score of the strange slaves of the Cometeers: silvery globes, slim green cone-shaped things, lank, many-limbed red giants. The creatures stood motionless and silent, and Bob Star could sense their awe of these insignificant bipeds, who had wiped out their shining masters – an awe that had good cause, now that Stephen Orco was dead, and Aladoree’s weapon effective once more. She came to meet them, walking with the light, quick grace he remembered. Even in the gloom of this hollow world, her brown hair shone with reddish glints and her cool gray eyes were luminous with joy. Rejoicing to the comfortable pull of the ship’s gravity cells, which swept away his lingering vertigo, Bob Star ran to take her in his arms.
“My son!”
She kissed him, laughing.
“You’ve grown a frightful beard!” She embraced Jay Kalam and Giles Habibula, who long ago had been her bodyguards.
And then Bob Star presented Kay Nymidee, with his arm around her waist.
“Kay here’s a stranger.
She’s alone.
All her people were murdered by the Cometeers.
She doesn’t speak much English – but she will, soon.
I want you to make her welcome.
For it was she who showed us where to find the weapon that killed the Cometeers.
And because – because I love her.”
Kay whispered something, softly, smiling at his mother.