Not thirty feet long, and weighing too few tons to have perceptible effect on the mass-detectors of a Legion cruiser beyond ten million miles, the ship had power to race the fleetest of them.
Her geodynes were of the new type designed by Max Eleroid.
Far more powerful than the old, they were yet so delicately matched and balanced that the ship could be landed on a planet, or even worked into a berth, without the use of auxiliary rockets.
The Phantom Atom had compact accommodations for a crew of four.
But only one man was aboard—now staring grimly at his own picture, fastened beside another on the metal bulkhead behind the tiny, vitrilith-windowed pilot bay.
ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD!
That was the heading, in bold crimson letters, above the full color picture.
Beneath it was a block of smaller black type:
This sum will be paid by the Legion of Space, for aid and information leading to the capture or the death of Chan Derron, escaped convict, believed to be known also as the “Basilisk.”
Description: Stands six feet three.
Earth-weight, two hundred ten.
Hair, bronze.
Complexion, deeply space-tanned.
Eyes, gray.
Slight scars on face, neck, and back, such as due to extreme interrogation.
This man is physically powerful, intelligent, and desperate.
A former captain in the Legion, he was convicted of murder and treason.
Two years ago he escaped from the Legion prison on Ebron.
Clues of him have been found on several planets.
Officers of all planets are warned that Derron is a dangerous man.
He was trained in the Legion academy.
He is believed to be armed with a mysterious and deadly instrumentality.
It is ad-vised that he be disabled before he is accosted.
Jay Kalam Commander of the Legion of Space
Four years had made a difference between the picture and the man.
The picture, taken after his arrest, looked bleak and grim enough.
But Chan Derron, in those four bitter years, had grown harder and leaner and stronger.
Some frank boyish simplicity was gone from his dark-tanned face, and in its place was something— savage.
He turned from the picture to another posted beside his own.
His great brown hand saluted it, and a brief, sardonic grin crossed his square-jawed face.
“Comrades, eh, Luroa?” he muttered.
“Together against the Legion!”
He had taken the other notice from the same Legion bulletin board, in old mud-walled Ekarhenium, on Mars, where he had found his own.
The two notices were displayed side by side, at the top of the board—offering the two biggest rewards.
And he had been dazzled by the sheer, startling beauty of the other face.
A woman’s face, wondrous with something beyond perfection.
Be-neath the dark, red-gleaming hair, her features were regular and white—and something shone from them.
Her eyes were a clear green, wide apart, with the slightest hint of a slant.
Full-lipped and red, her long mouth smiled with a hidden mockery. A woman’s face—but she was no woman.
For the text beneath her picture ran:
Rewards totalling two hundred and fifty thousand dollars will be paid by the Legion of Space, the Green Hall Council, and various planetary governments, for the being named Luroa, pictured above, living or dead.
She is not a human being, but a female android.
The history of the android traffic is perhaps not generally known.
But for many years, at his laboratory hidden on a remote planetoid, a gifted criminal biologist, Eldo Arrynu, engaged in the manufacture of these illegal synthetic beings.
He headed a ring of criminals that made a vast income through smuggling these dangerous creatures to wealthy purchasers throughout the system.
Stephen Oreo, the male android whose unprincipled cunning came near destroying the system during the war with the Com-eteers, is typical of these illicit creations: perfect of body, brilliant of brain, but morally monstrous.
The entity Luroa was the last creation of Eldo Arrynu, and she is believed to be the last android in existence.
The scientist refused to sell her.
He kept her with him, until the attack of the Cometeers.
She escaped, however, when all others on the planetoid were killed.