They all stirred a little, drew breaths of awed relief.
Aladoree moved to touch the screws again, the key.
“Wait,” she said once more, her voice still terribly—divinely— serene.
“In twenty seconds… the Moon…”
They gazed on that red and baleful globe.
Earth’s attendant for eons, though young, perhaps, in the long time-scale of the Medusae.
Now the base of their occupation forces, waiting for the conquest of the planets.
Half consciously, under his breath, John Star counted the seconds, watching the red face of doom—not man’s now, but their own.
“… eighteen… nineteen… twenty———”
Nothing had happened.
A breathless, heartbreaking instant of doubt.
Then the red-lit sky went black.
The Moon was gone.
“The Medusae,” Jay Kalam whispered, as if to assure himself of the unbelievable, “the Medusae are gone.”
A long moment of silence, and he whispered once more:
“Gone!
They will never dare—again!”
“I saw—nothing!” cried John Star, breathlessly.
“How———?”
“They were annihilated,” said Aladoree, strangely serene.
“Even the matter that composed them no longer exists in our universe.
They were flung out of all we know as space and time.”
“But how———?”
“That is my secret.
I can never tell—save to the chosen person who is to keep it after me.”
“Mortal me!” wheezed Giles Habibula.
“Ah, the blessed System is safe at last.
Ah, dear life, but a mortal desperate undertaking it’s been to save it.
You must be precious careful not to fall into hostile hands again, lass.
Old Giles will never be able to go through all this again, sweet life knows!
“Ah, me!
And here we’re left in the middle of the desert, in tne wicked dark—and the Moon will never rise again!”
His voice had snapped the tension that held them.
“John———” breathed Aladoree. No longer was it the voice of a goddess.
Its awful serenity was gone.
It was all human, now, weak and shaken, appealing.
John Star found her in the darkness.
He made her sit down, and she sobbed against his shoulder, with happy sobs of relief.
“Ah, lass,” groaned Giles Habibula, “good cause you have to weep.
We all may perish yet, for want of a mortal bite of food!”
The Green Defender, newest cruiser of the Legion of Space, flashed down to the Purple Hall, on Phobos, nearly a year later.
Though one red gas shell had fallen on that tiny moon of Mars, during the Medusa’s bombardment, the great building had not been injured.
The neutralizing solution had cured those affected by it; it had dissipated, combined into harmless salts, until the dark sky of the little world was free from any stain of red.
The cruiser dropped on the landing stage that crowned the central purple tower.
The new Commander of the Legion came gravely down the accommodation ladder, and John Star came eagerly to meet him.
Greetings over, they paused, looking down at the luxuriantly green convexity of the little planet, with grim memories of the last time they had been together here, when they took the Purple Dream.
“Not much trace left of the invasion,” remarked Jay Kalam.
“No, Commander,” replied John Star, with a little smile at the title.
“Not one case of the madness left uncured, in all the System, I understand.
And the red gone from the skies.