Cerberus Station was a square field, leveled, between ragged black pinnacles.
Red-glowing reflectors, spaced along the perimeter, radiated heat enough to keep the air itself from freezing into snow.
A long, low building of insulating blocks armored with white metal, housed barracks and storerooms.
The power plant, which gave energy to fight the enemy cold, must be somewhere underground.
The spidery tower of the ultra-wave radio station rose from a black peak beyond the building.
Farther, there was only frowning desolation: broken, ugly teeth of mountains, yawning crater-maws, cracked and riven and blasted rock, and strata of ice as old as the stone, all forever dead.
In a uniform which had belonged to Captain Madlok, John Star stepped out into the thin and bitter air, upon the little deck formed by the lowered outer valve.
Assuming a confidence which he hardly felt, he waited while two men approached, with a manner of apprehensive hesitation, from the low white building.
“Cerberus Station, ahoy!” he hailed them, his manner as sternly official as possible.
“Purple Dream, ahoy,” one of them responded, doubtfully—a very short man, very bald, very stout, very red of face, his appearance showing the careless neglect that sometimes comes of long isolation.
There was, John Star thought, the equivalent of an entire meal accumulated on the front of his tunic.
He wore the tarnished insignia of a Legion lieutenant.
“I am Captain John Ulnar,” John Star said briskly.
“The Purple Dream requires supplies.
Captain Kalam is making out the requisitions.
They must be aboard without delay.”
The short man scowled suspiciously, pig-eyes narrowed.
“John Ulnar?”
His voice was a nasal snarl.
“And Captain Kalam, eh?
In command of the Purple Dream, eh?”
His dirty, yellow-stubbled face held a smirk of sullen cunning.
John Star watched his shifty-eyed hostility, and suddenly knew that he must be one of Adam Ulnar’s men—knew that the web of un-guessed treason in the Legion had reached out even to this cold forgotten rock.
“We are.”
Boldness was the only way.
“We’re on a top emergency mission, and we must have these supplies at once.”
“I’m Lieutenant Nana, commandant of the station.”
The sullen voice was devoid of military courtesy.
With a knowing leer, Nana added cunningly: “The special orders in my file show the Purple Dream under Captain Madlok and Commander Adam Ulnar.
She’s listed as the Commander’s flagship.”
John Star didn’t pause to wonder what his game could be.
If he had been warned against them, it seemed strange that he had stayed to meet them peaceably—an unfortified supply base, Cerberus Station showed no evidence of any weapons heavy enough to challenge the Purple Dream.
If he had received no warning—but there was no tune for puzzles.
“There has been a change of command,” John Star informed him curtly.
“Now here is Captain Kalam.”
Jay Kalam appeared beside him, in another borrowed uniform.
They swung down the accommodation ladder from the tiny deck, and Jay Kalam offered a document, rapping sharply:
“Our requisition, Lieutenant!”
Glancing up at the ship’s low turret, John Star made a quick motion with his hand.
The ship’s long proton gun lifted instantly out of its housing, and swung out above their heads to cover the long white building.
Hal Samdu was at his post.
Nana looked up at the needle with small, blood-shot eyes.
His unwashed face showed neither surprise nor any great alarm.
He gave John Star a narrow-eyed glare of sullen hostility, and then reluctantly took the requisition.
“Sixteen tons of cathode plates!”
His astonishment sounded unconvincing.
“Not for one ship!”
“Sixteen tons!” John Star rapped.
“Immediately!”
“Impossible!”