“There’s no danger, but to the winner.
None, I think, if we surround this Dr. Derrel—”
“My mortal life!” It was an apprehensive croak from Giles Habibula.
Trembling, his arm was pointing at a table where the play had stopped.
A tall man dressed in white was setting upon it some bulky object wrapped in brown canvas.
Giles Habibula stared anxiously, as he uncovered it.
A square black box was revealed, with polished brass rods projecting from the sides and the top.
A little instrument-board was wired to the box, and a set of phones that the man slipped off his head.
“Who is he?”
Giles Habibula had caught the arm of Hannas.
“In life’s precious name, what is that machine?”
His thin voice quavered.
“I don’t like the look of such strange machines—not when we’re dealing with such an unknown monster as the Basilisk!”
“That’s only John Comaine,” said the rusty voice of Caspar Hannas.
“We’ll speak to him.”
He lead them to the man whose brain had conceived the New Moon.
Comaine, in his white laboratory jacket, looked robust and athletic.
His stiff blond hair stood on end.
He had a square stern mask of a face, with slightly protruding, emotionless blue eyes.
He nodded to Caspar Hannas, in stiff and uncordial greeting.
“Comaine,” said Hannas, “this is Commander Kalam and his aides; they have come to hunt the Basilisk.”
The glassy, bulging eyes looked at them briefly, coldly.
“Gentlemen.” His voice was dry, metallic, inflectionless. “I am attacking the problem in my own way.
I built the New Moon.
I am going to defend it.”
Giles Habibula was gaping at the black box.
“Ah, so, Dr. Comaine.
And what is that?”
“The operations of the Basilisk,” Comaine said briefly, “display the use of an unfamiliar scientific instrumentality.
The first step, obviously, is to detect and analyze the forces used.”
And he turned abruptly back to his instrument panel.
“Ah, so,” wheezed Giles Habibula.
“You are right.
And that is that!”
And they went on among the tables, watchfully scanning the thousands of players. An increasing tension charged the air.
Play had almost stopped.
A nervous hush was spreading, broken now and then by a voice too loud, by a laugh that jangled with unadmitted fear.
Many who had come to watch the work of the Basilisk seemed to regret their early courage, and there was an increasing trickle of silent men and women toward the doors.
Abruptly Giles Habibula stopped again.
“I know that man!”
He pointed furtively ahead.
“Aye, forty years ago, at the Blue Unicorn!
He is Amo Brelekko!”
“Naturally you know him,” rasped the great voice of Caspar Hannas.
“For you and he and I were three of a kind, in those old days.”
“Ah, what’s that?”
Giles Habibula inflated himself, indignantly.
“In life’s name, Hannas, I’ll not have you say three of a kind!”
His fat lips made a sharp, startling sound, as if he had spat.
“Neither you nor the Eel ever did a mortal thing, but Giles could do it quicker and smoother and more silently, with precious less danger from the law!”