The white, distinguished head made him a slight and half-ironic bow.
“Thank you for the very touching measure of your trust in me.
But it’s true that I don’t want to die, and true that Eric has blundered very foolishly in his management of the enterprise I planned—for the girl should never have been brought here at all.
“So I’ll do what I can.”
Sharply, John Star studied that proud face, etched with years but handsome still.
For all his hatred of what his kinsman had done, he could see sincerity there, and honor, and reassuring strength.
“Very well,” Jay Kalam said.
“You can hail them from on board?”
“With the ultra-wave transmitter.” The Commander nodded.
“The Medusa?, you see, are not sensitive to sound—though Eric’s men named them for some terrestrial jellyfish, they’re really like nothing in the System.
They communicate with short radio waves, directly.
I know the code of signals that Eric’s men worked out—I used to talk, from the Purple Hall, with the agents they sent to the System.“
“Go ahead,” Jay Kalam told him.
“Get that ship to give us a line, before we crash.
Get them to bring Aladoree Anthar safe on board, and to give us what we need to repair the geodynes.
And make them open the barrier so we can get away—I don’t think we’d survive another passage through it.
Promise what you like—but you had better be convincing.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
And Adam Ulnar sat down at the compact panel of the ship’s transmitter, his hollowed face visibly strained and eager.
He quickly tuned the frequency he wanted, and then began making sounds into the microphone—sounds instead of words, awkward grunts and clicks and whistles.
The reply which came presently from the receiver was stranger still.
The voices of the Medusae were shrill whisperings, dry and eerie, so utterly unearthly that John Star, listening, shuddered to a chill of undiluted horror.
Adam Ulnar, too, seemed to find amazed horror in what he heard.
His lean jaw slackened with surprise.
He was suddenly trembling, his lax face very white and abruptly pearled with sweat.
His staring eyes were black, glazed.
Again he made queer little sounds into the transmitter, his voice so dry that he could scarcely form them.
Dry rustlings came back from the receiver.
He listened a long time, staring at nothing.
At last the alien chirping ceased.
Mechanically he reached a white and shaking hand to snap off the transmitter, and he came woodenly to his feet.
“What was it?” breathed John Star.
“What did they say?”
“Nothing good,” Adam Ulnar muttered blankly.
Shakenly he clutched at a handrail to steady himself.
“The worst that could have happened.
Yet it’s something I’ve dreaded—ever since I heard of Eric’s foolish alliance.”
His sick eyes gazed at the bulkhead, seeing nothing.
“What has happened?” John Star demanded.
Adam Ulnar rubbed a trembling hand across his sweat-beaded forehead.
“I scarcely dare to tell you, John.
Because you’ll blame me for it.
And I suppose I am to blame—it was I who sent Eric out here with the expedition, so he’d have a chance to make himself a hero.
Eric the Second!”
He chuckled, without mirth.
“Yes, I’m to blame.”
“But what have they done?”
His glazed eyes came to John’s face in mute appeal.
“Please don’t think I planned it, John!
But the Medusaj have tricked Eric—and the rest of us, it seems.