He ordered the three others of his own relief— Jay Kalam, Hal Samdu, and Giles Habibula—to remain on guard.
From him, John Star caught a sense of terror and impending doom which he was not to escape for many dark and dreadful years.
2 An Eye and a Murder
John Star found himself abruptly sitting bolt upright in his bunk, staring at his open window, beyond which lay the great courtyard.
It was no alarm that he could name which had aroused him; rather, a sudden chill of instinctive fear, an intuition of terror.
An eye!
It must be, he thought, an eye, staring in at him.
But it was fully a foot long, ovoid, all pupil.
Thin, ragged black mem-branes edged it.
It was purple, shining in the darkness like a great well of luminescence, somehow infinitely malignant.
Mere sight of it shook him with an icy, elemental dread.
For only the briefest instant it gazed at him, unutterably evil, and then it was gone.
Trembling, he scrambled out of bed to give the alarm.
But the shock of it had left him doubtful of his senses.
When he heard one sentry hail another in the court, as if nothing were amiss, he decided that the frightful eye had been no more than nightmare. He wasn’t given to nightmares.
But after all, he had heard nothing; and the thing had vanished the very instant he glimpsed it.
It was sheer impossibility; no creature in the System had eyes a foot long, not even the sea-lizards of Venus.
He went back to bed and tried to sleep—unsuccessfully, for the image of that fearful eye kept haunting him.
He was up before dawn, anxious to know more of the strange ship.
Passing the weary sentries in the court, he climbed the spiral stair in the old north tower, and looked out across the crimson landscape just as the sun rose abruptly above the horizon.
Dunes of yellow sand—shattered, weirdly eroded rock—he saw nothing else.
But crumbling walls, eastward, shut off his view; the vessel, he thought, might lie beyond them.
His curiosity increased.
If it were a friendly, Legion ship, why had the rocket-blasts been green?
If it carried enemies, why had they not already struck?
The girl was behind him when he turned: she whom he had glimpsed on the tennis court, and guessed to be keeper of AKKA.
He saw again that she was very lovely.
Slim and straight and cleanly formed; eyes cool gray, sober and honest; hair a lustrous brown that made magic of flame and color in the new sunlight.
She wore a sun-pie white tunic; her breast was heaving from the run behind him up the stairs.
It surprised him that the keeper of AKKA should be so young and lovely.
“Why—why, good morning.”
He felt confused, for Legion cadets have little time for the social graces, yet very delighted and eager to please her.
“It must be very near!” she cried, breathless.
Her voice, he perceived, was adorable—and alarmed.
“Beyond the walls, perhaps.”
“I think so.”
Her gray eyes studied him frankly, weighed him— wanning, he thought, with approval.
She said abruptly, voice lower:
“I want to talk to you.”
“I’m quite willing.”
He smiled.
“Please be serious,” she appealed, urgently.
“You are loyal?
Loyal to the Legion?
To the Green Hall?
To mankind?”
“Why, of course I am. What———”
“I believe you are,” she whispered, gray eyes still very intent on his face.
“I believe you really are.”
“Why should you doubt me?”