Next day the cruiser departed on the very stroke of noon.
Left alone among the settling birds, that soon covered even the hidden door, Chan Derron shuddered to something colder than the bitter south wind.
Beyond this black pinnacle, and the green-white chaos that forever roared about its foot, the polar sea ran empty and illimitable.
Low and yellowed in the gray northward sky, the sun glinted on the summits of a few icebergs.
So far as he could tell, he might have been the only man upon the planet.
And a sudden bleak fear rose in him, that all Commander Kalam’s elaborate precautions against the unknown spy had not been enough.
Once more, anxiously, he inspected his proton blaster.
Perfected since the cometary war to replace the lighter proton pistols that had served so long, it projected an intense jet of nucleonic bullets far swifter and more deadly than any solid projectile.
The holster became a stock, for accurate long range work.
A folding bayonet snapped out for use at close quarters.
Chan tried to find comfort in the fine, silent mechanism, in its chromium trimness and its balanced weight.
But the lonely wail of the bitter wind, the empty hostility of the cold sky and the ice-studded sea, awoke in his heart a brooding apprehension.
He shouted with relief when the Bellatrix—the long bright flagship of Admiral-General Hal Samdu—plunged down through a cloud of shrieking birds.
Two men were put off, and a heavy wooden box.
The Bellatrix roared back spaceward. In seconds, it had vanished.
Chan Derron had never seen Dr. Eleroid, but he knew the scientist now from his portrait in the geodesic text.
Eleroid was a big, slightly awkward, slow-moving man, with a red, rugged, genial face.
But for his eyes, he might have been taken for a butcher or a bartender.
His eyes, however, wide-set and seen through heavy lenses, possessed the magnetic power of genius.
Eleroid was still afraid.
That was obvious from his anxious peering about the islet, from a sudden start when the white-cloaked assistant touched him, from the relief on his broad face when Chan strode to meet him.
“Glad to thee you, Captain.”
His deep soft voice had an occasional lisp.
“Where ith the vault.
We must hathen!”
Chan indicated the door, disguised with a slab of natural rock, and returned to help the small, perspiring assistant with the box.
Dr. Eleroid watched it very anxiously, and lent his own strength to help them down the narrow stair. They set the box down in the middle of the bare, square, gray-armored room.
The assistant was rubbing at red weals on his thin hands.
Suddenly he began to sneeze, and covered his face with his handkerchief.
Max Eleroid gestured imperatively toward the stair.
“You are to stand guard, Captain.”
His voice was hoarse with ten-sion.
“We’ll lock the room.
I’ll call you, by ultrawave, when we are done.”
His trembling hand touched Chan Derron’s arm.
“Keep a vigilant watch, Captain,” he begged. “For the thafety of the System may be at stake.”
The massive door thudded shut.
Chan moved a little away, and the birds settled over it again.
Rock and sky and sea were empty as before.
The south wind was more biting, the northward sun feebler.
Pacing back and forth, he shuddered again.
His apprehension, he was trying to tell himself, was silly—when something touched him.
At first he thought that only a bird had brushed him.
Then he felt the fatal lightness of his belt and his hand flashed with well-trained swiftness for his blaster.
He found that it was gone!
He stared around him, bewildered.
Rock and sky and sea were ominously vacant as ever.
What could have happened to the weapon?
He could see no possible answer.
The screaming birds mocked his sanity.