For the Legion base there has been tipped off that you are on your way.
And you will be held responsible, Captain, I fear, for the things that are going to happen on the New Moon at every midnight—whether you are there or a billion miles away.
Your faithful shadow, The Basilisk
Stark dread had driven its stunning needle into Chan Derron’s spine.
He stood dazed, motionless.
The mockery of that message swam and blurred upon the red page.
And a slow, deadly cold crept into his paralyzed body.
It was more than frightening to know that his every act was followed by a sinister and inescapable power.
Frightful to know that the incredible arm of the Basilisk could reach him, even here.
Omniscience!
Omnipotence!
The powers, almost of a god, in the hands of—what?
Almost he could feel that fearful presence with him.
He peered about the tiny pilot bay.
It was dimly lit with the shaded instrument lights and the faint starlight that struck through the ports.
He snapped on a brighter light.
He wanted to search the ship.
But of course that was no use.
There couldn’t be anybody here.
The mass-detectors with his new hook-up would have given automatic warning of the approach of the mass of a man’s body, within a million miles of the ship.
He caught his breath, trying to shake off that shuddery chill, and in spite of himself he began to talk.
“Why keep after me?” he begged the empty air.
“I suppose you picked me to take the blame at first, just because I happened to be there outside when you murdered Dr. Eleroid.
But haven’t I suffered enough—for nothing at all?”
His great clenched fists came up against his breast.
He choked back the words—trying doggedly to keep loneliness and strain from cracking his mind.
But he couldn’t stop the stream of bitter recollection.
Ever since his escape in the light cruiser he had since rebuilt into the Phantom Atom, he had been in flight from that merciless and omnipotent tormentor.
All he wanted was a chance—half a chance—to find a new identity and begin a new life—anywhere!
But that man—if it was a man—who hid behind the name of a fabulous dragon and confused his other victims with a trail of clues pointing always at Chan himself—the Basilisk wouldn’t let him get away.
There was the time he landed at a lonely plantation on Ceres, hoping to buy supplies with a few pounds of platinum he had mined from a chance strike in the meteor drift.
He found the planter and his wife murdered, their mansion plundered, and a Legion cruiser approaching.
He barely got away—to find the loot in his own cabin aboard the Phantom Atom.
His bronze-gray eyes began to blink when he thought of the time in old Ekarhenium, when he had left the little ship hidden hi the desert and found an honest laboratory job.
The first day he worked, his new employer’s office safe was robbed—and the plunder found in Chan’s own desk.
“And that’s not half!”
In spite of him, his savage emotion burst into speech again.
“There was the time I left the Phantom Atom on an eccentric orbit around Venus, and dropped down the shadow cone with a geopeller.
Buried my space suit hi the jungle and slipped into New Chicago.
That time you let me think I had got away—”
He tried to laugh, and caught a sobbing gasp of breath.
“Until I began seeing my face on all the telescreens!
Wanted for another killing—” He shrugged heavily.
“That murdered guard at the Terrestrial Bank, with my face on the film of his gun-camera—I don’t know how you did it.
“But isn’t all that enough?”
Choking back the useless words, he stared around the pilot bay again.
He was alone.
There was only the automatic pilot, clucking softly now and then as it set the cruiser back on course, and the silent serpent of black clay lying on that thick red sheet, and the cold feel of mocking eyes upon him.
“All right, Mr. Basilisk!”
He snatched the serpent, suddenly, and hurled it to shatter into black fragments on the deck.