“That’s the background of the matter, Captain Derron.
And here are your orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We are going to aid Dr. Eleroid with a field test of this invention —it has never been tested, he says, except on the minutest scale— and then, if the test is successful, he will leave it in your hands.
“You will go back aboard your cruiser and proceed at once to Rocky Mountain Base.
There you will find awaiting you twenty workmen, with atomotored excavating equipment, explosives, and building materials.
You will take them aboard, and then rise without delay on a course for the New Moon.
You follow me, Captain?“
“I do, sir.”
“When you have reached an altitude of two thousand miles,” Jay Kalam continued, “you will open this envelope and proceed to the spot designated inside.”
Chan Derron accepted a small green envelope, sealed with the wings of the Legion in dark green wax, and put it in an inside pocket of his tunic.
“You will land at the designated spot, and disembark the workmen and equipment.
At a point you will select, they are to dig an excavation twenty feet square and twenty deep.
In that, working under your orders, they are to build a room armored with two feet of per-durite, provided with a stair and a concealed door with a special lock —you will be given the specifications.
“This task must be completed by twelve noon, tomorrow, Legion time.
You will put the men and equipment back aboard the Corsair.
The cruiser will return at once, under your first officer, to Rocky Mountain Base.
And you, Captain Derron—”
Chan Derron caught his breath, as the Commander suddenly rose.
“You will remain on guard, near the hidden door.
You will keep your ultrawave communicator, emergency rations, and your proton needle and bayonet.
You will stand guard while Dr. Eleroid and his assistant land, enter the hidden chamber, and test the invention.
“Finally, if the experiment is successful, Dr. Eleroid will deliver his apparatus and notes into your care, for the Legion.
You will call your cruiser to return, go aboard with Eleroid, the assistant, and the machine, and come back at once to Rocky Mountain Base.
Is that all clear, Captain Derron?”
“Clear enough, sir,” said Chan Derron.
“If you feel that one man is enough—” “Samdu’s fleet will be on duty to see that there is no outside interference,” the grave Commander assured him.
“For the rest, we must rely upon secrecy, precision of action, and division of knowledge.
Upon you, Captain Derron, rests the final responsibility.”
His dark eyes stabbed into Chan’s.
“This is as great a trust as the Legion has ever given any man, but I believe you are equal to it.”
Chan gulped.
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“The Legion can ask no more.”
The matter already appeared grave enough, perhaps, but Chan Derron was not used to being depressed by the details of his duty.
The mystery surrounding this affair he found pleasantly exciting, and the faint hint of danger was like a tonic to him.
On his way back to the Corsair—the trim little geodesic cruiser that was his proud first command—he was humming a song.
He had never been to the New Moon, then.
But he had often seen the artificial satellite, careening backward across the sky of Earth.
And soon, no doubt, with Commander Kalam trusting him with such important assignments as this, he should have a furlough earned—his heart leapt at the promise—on the gay New Moon.
Striding toward the vast space-port that sprawled brown across the desert mesa beside the Green Hall’s slender spire, he kept time to the popular tune, whose age-hallowed sentiments ran: Where first we danced, On the bright New Moon, Where we romanced, On the far New Moon, I lost a million dollars— But I found you, dear!
He strode aboard the slim silver Corsair.
In his bright expectations, this strange duty had already taken him to some far planet.
When he came to open the sealed envelope, however, his ship two thousand miles out toward the New Moon, the destination he read was back on Earth—a barren islet in the bleak Antarctic Ocean.
The Corsair dropped among screaming birds.
Chan selected a level spot on the highest granite ledge, a hundred feet above the gray unresting sea.
The twenty workmen fell to.
Hamming atomic drills sliced into the living rock.
A web of structural metal was flung across the pit.
Rock debris was fused into massive walls and roof of adamantine perdurite.