“It gives a lonely, friendless old soldier a tiny mite of happiness, Jay, to dandle Bob Star’s daughter on his knee.
And to see Kay herself still so lovely, after all the horror of the comet, and so eager for Bob’s visits home.
The next one, the doctors say, is sure to be a son —but that’s a secret, Jay!”
Leaning heavily back in his chair, the old man sighed again.
“Old Giles was happy on Phobos, Jay—happy as the shattered wreck of a dying Legionnaire can be.
He had his bit of supper, amid the dear familiar faces.
He sipped his precious drop of wine.
He dozed quietly away—ah, so, and it might have been into a poor old soldier’s well earned last repose!
But—no!”
His pale eyes stared accusingly. “He wakes up in a strange cramped bunk. And he finds he is upon a cruiser of the Legion, shrieking through the frigid gulf of space. Ah, Jay, and his dimming old senses feel the shadow of a frightful danger, rushing down upon him! That’s an evil way to serve a defenseless old man, Jay, in his miserable sleep. The shock might stop his heart!” His fat hands clutched the edges of the table.
“ ‘Tis a fearful thing, Jay, to alarm folks so!
Ah, it made me think of the Medusae.
And that evil man-thing Oreo, and the fearful Cometeers.”
He leaned forward, earnestly.
“Tell old Giles there’s no alarm, Jay!
Tell him it’s only a monstrous joke.”
His small eyes looked anxiously back and forth, between the grave face of Jay Kalam, and the grimly rugged one of Hal Samdu.
His wrinkled face faded slowly, to a paler, sickly yellow.
“Life’s name!” he gasped.
“Can the thing be so mortal serious?
Speak, Jay!
Tell old Giles the truth, before his poor brain cracks.”
Rising beside the table, Jay Kalam shook his head.
“There’s little enough to tell, Giles,” he said.
“We have to deal with a criminal, who calls himself the Basilisk.
He has got some uncanny mastery of space, so that distance and material barriers apparently mean nothing to him.
“He began hi a small way, nearly two years ago.
Taking things from secure places.
Putting notes and his little clay snakes in impossible places—I recently received one in my office in the Green Hall.
“He keeps attempting something bigger.
There have been murders.
Now he has served notice that he is going to rob and murder one of the New Moon’s patrons, every day.
If he goes on—well, Hal is afraid—”
“Afraid?”
Hal Samdu crushed a great fist into the palm of his hand, and towered to his feet.
“Afraid,” he rumbled.
“Aye, Giles, I’m sick and cold with fear.
For if this goes on, the Basilisk can take the keeper of the peace as easily as any luckless gambler—”
“The keeper?”
In his own turn, lifting himself with the table and his cane, Giles Habibula heaved anxiously to his feet. His pale eyes blinked at Jay Kalam.
“Then why can’t she use—AKKA?”
His voice had dropped, almost reverently, as he spoke those symbolic letters.
“And so end the danger?”
The Commander’s dark head shook regretfully.
“Because we don’t know who the Basilisk is, Giles,” he said.
“Or where.
Aladoree can’t use her weapon, without a target to train it on.
If we can ever discover the precise location of the Basilisk hi space —before he takes her—that is all we need to know.”
“Aye, Giles,” Hal Samdu rumbled urgently.
“And that is why we sent for you.