“I’m going to kill you.
I think you well deserve to die.
Have you anything to say?”
He waited, shuddering and stiff with cold.
Suddenly he was afraid that he could not strike this serene, smiling man, whose personality roused instinctive admiration and quick pride in their kinship—for all his black treason.
“John!” protested the other, his voice urgently persuasive.
“You misunderstand.
I’m really delighted that you came.
My unfortunate nephew told me, a little while ago, that you had been here, and had drowned in the sewers.
Knowing you and your companions, I could scarcely believe that all of you had perished.
I was still hoping to be of some assistance to you.”
“Assistance!” echoed John Star harshly, still threatening his throat with the dagger.
“Assistance!
When you are responsible for everything that’s wrong!”
“I want all the more, my boy, to help you, because I realize my own responsibility.
It’s true that you and I have differing political views.
But I never had any desire to help the Medusas to colonize our planets.
I have no other purpose, now, than to undo what I’ve done.”
“How’s that?” demanded John Star, with a sick fear that this smooth, compelling voice might win his confidence, and betray it again.
Adam Ulnar made a gesture to include the ship about them.
“I’ve already done something.
You must admit that.
I’ve had the cruiser raised and repaired, in the hope that it might carry AKKA back to the System in time to avert total disaster.”
“But the Medusa; raised it.”
“Of course.
They tricked me; it was my turn—if I could do it.
I got back in communication with them, and asked to join them.
I agreed to aid them with my military skill, in the conquest of the System.
And I asked them to raise the Purple Dream, fit it up for my maintenance.
“They raised the cruiser, and repaired her, well enough, but I’m afraid they haven’t a very high opinion of humanity.
They don’t seem to trust me as far as we Purples trusted them.
The black flier outside has been standing guard over me, day and night.
You know the sort of armament it has—those guns that fire atomic vortices.”
“You’ve seen Eric?” demanded John Star suspiciously.
“He’s with you?”
“No, John.
He isn’t with me now.
He told me how the Medusae had made him try to force the girl to reveal her secret.
He told me all about your arrival and escape.
And he told me how he went back to warn the Medusae—he didn’t think you had a chance to get away, and he hoped to earn their favors.”
“The cowardly beast!” muttered John Star.
“Where is he?”
Adam Ulnar nodded, a shadow of pain on his handsome face.
“That’s what he was, John.
A coward.
Even though his name was Ulnar.
A pitiful coward.
He made the first, foolish alliance with the Medusae, because he was a coward, because he was afraid to trust my own plans for the revolution.
“I knew, then, John, that I’d made a mistake.
I knew it was you who should have been Emperor, not Eric.