“Doing what she can for those injured men.”
I clung to a chrome rail in that zero-G space, still shaken from my giddiness.
The riddle of the soldier and the girl spun crazily in my mind.
“Is she—?” I gasped. “Who is she?”
“My niece,” he said.
“Bob’s youngest daughter. Her real name is Lilian Star—Lilith Adams is her own invention.
She and her two sisters are keepers of the peace.
Chosen guardians of the absolute weapon.”
Awe struck me, cold as the black space beyond the transite dome.
“I guess that explains a queer detached aloofness I felt about her —a feeling that almost frightened me.
So she isn’t a nurse at all?”
“She is a nurse,” Star told me.
“She says she needs some humane interest, just to balance her power to destroy.
She has done original medical work. She led the research team that developed the longevity serum she’s testing on Giles Habibula.”
Hot humiliation flashed over me.
“And I’m the one who turned them away,” I breathed bitterly.
“When they came with Scabbard, I wouldn’t let them aboard— because I couldn’t believe Habibula’s tale about how he loved machines!”
“A cover story,” Star said. “But Giles does have a feeling for machines.”
“Why didn’t they tell me?
Scabbard’s men could have murdered them!”
“They’re both more competent than they look.” Star grinned faintly in the dim red dark.
“Their scheme to get aboard Nowhere Near worked well enough, without compromising anything.”
“What is the weapon, sir?”
“Its code designation is the letters AKKA.
That’s about all you’ll need to know about it.”
Floating behind that cold chrome rail, I glanced out through the dome at the round black shadow growing in the core of Nowhere.
Something alien as space breathed oa my spine.
“Is it—good enough?”
“It’s absolute—at least hi ordinary space.
Just the threat of it, three hundred years ago, was enough to overthrow the Ulnar Emperors and their Purple Hall.
With one stroke, in the last century, it destroyed Earth’s old satellite and the invading Medusae there.
I don’t know what will happen when it hits the anomaly.”
He peered uneasily at the dome.
“Can you call Lilith from here?”
I tried to call, but the mutineers had evidently wrecked the intercom.
“Let’s get her here,” he said.
“Though the Green Hall has forbidden any needless or premature use of her weapon, I think the time has come to set it up.”
The station hospital spun in a half-G ring section, almost grazing the crust of the ice asteroid.
Breathless with haste, I burst out of the elevator there.
Old Habibula challenged me with a proton-pistol I hadn’t known he carried.
“Sorry, Captain.” His murky eyes searched me.
“What do you want?”
“Commander Star wants Nurse Adams in the north dome,” I blurted.
“He says it’s time to set her weapon up.”
“So Ken has told you?” His pink baby-grin was warily friendly.
“Now we can stop playing silly games.
I’ve been telling Lil that we’ve been waiting too mortal long for those fearful invaders to make a gesture of friendship.
Wait. I’ll bring her.”
He waddled into the hospital and returned with Lilith.
She turned to smile back toward her patients.