“Akka?
Why, I think not, sir.”
“It isn’t ‘akka.’ AKKA. It’s a symbol.”
“Yes, sir.
What does it mean?”
At last, was he coming to it?
“Men have given their lives to learn that, John Ulnar.
And men have died for knowing.
Only one person in the System knows precisely what those four letters stand for.
That person is a young woman.
The most important single duty of the Legion is to guard her.”
“Yes, sir.”
A breathless whisper.
“Because, John Ulnar, AKKA is the most precious thing that humanity possesses.
I need not tell you what it is.
But the loss of it, I may say—the loss of the young woman who knows it—would mean unprecedented disaster to humanity.”
“Yes, sir.”
He waited, painfully.
“I could assign you to no duty more important than to join the few trusted men who guard that young woman.
And to no duty more perilous!
For desperate men know that AKKA exists, know that possession of it would enable them to dictate to the Green Hall—or to destroy it.
“No risk, nor any difficulty, will deter them from attempting to get possession of the young woman, to force the secret from her.
You must be unceasingly alert against attempts by stealth or violence.
The girl—and AKKA—must be protected at any cost.”
“Yes, sir.
Where is the girl?”
“That information cannot be given you, until you are out in space.
The danger that you might pass it on, unwittingly or otherwise, is too great.
The girl’s safety depends on her whereabouts being kept secret.
If they become known—the whole Legion fleet might be inadequate to defend her.
“You are assigned, John Ulnar, to join the guard of AKKA.
You will report at once, at the Green Hall, to Captain Eric Ulnar, and place yourself under his orders.”
“Under Eric Ulnar!”
He was astonished and overjoyed to know that he was to serve under his famous kinsman, the great explorer of space, just returned from his daring voyage beyond the limits of the System, to the far, strange planet of Barnard’s Runaway Star.
“Yes. John Ulnar, I hope you never forget the overwhelming importance of the duty before you… That is all.”
Queerly, John Star’s heart ached at leaving the old campus of the Academy, at parting from his classmates.
Queerly, for he was a-thrill with eagerness.
Mystery lay ahead, the promise of peril, the advea-ture of meeting his famous kinsman.
With native optimism, he ignored Major Stell’s grim hints of the possibility of disastrous failure.
From the ports of the descending strato-flier, that afternoon, he first saw the Green Hall—seat of the Supreme Council of the united planets.
Like a great emerald, it shimmered darkly cool in a waste of sunbaked New Mexico mesa—a colossal marvel of green, translucent glass.
Three thousand feet the square central tower leaped up, crowned with the landing stage to which the strato-plane was dropping.
The four great colonnaded wings spread over a full mile of luxuriantly verdant parkland—a solitary jewel hi the desert, under the rugged, mile-high wall of the Sandias.
John Star was a-throb with eagerness to see Eric Ulnar, then in the full radiance of his fame for commanding the first successful expedition beyond the System—if an expedition could be called successful when but a fourth of its members returned, and most of those dying of a fearful malady involving insanity and hideous bodily disfigurement.
Dark chapters, and silent ones, were in the story of the voyage.
But the public, like John Star, had ignored them.
Honors had been showered on Eric Ulnar, while most of his companions lay forgotten in hospital cells, gibbering of the horrors of that remote solitary planet, while their bodies rotted away unspeakably, beyond the aid or the understanding of medical science.
John Star found Eric Ulnar waiting for him in a private room hi the vast Green Hall.
Long golden hair and slender figure made the young officer almost femininely handsome.
Burning eyes and haughty airs proclaimed his passion and his insolent pride.