Cold as sleet, her voice whipped at him:
“What did you do with Dr. Eleroid’s invention?”
Sick, helpless, he shook his head.
“Where is the machine you control with the instruments on your body—”
He knew she was going to fire, when he didn’t answer.
He could hurl himself at her with the geopellor.
Two deaths, instead of one.
But her pitiless beauty—
That monstrous purr came suddenly.
The girl and everything beyond her flickered abruptly, as if a wall of vitrilith had dropped between.
He saw her hand stiffen on the blaster, saw the white bolt’s flash.
The last thing he saw was her strained face, with its grim suspicion changed to amazed and bitter certainty.
Her image dissolved in a chasm of star-glinting darkness. And Chan Derron was hurled into black and airless cold.
10 The Clue on Contra-Saturn
“You say it’s dead?” quavered Giles Habibula.
“Jay, you’re sure the fearful thing is dead?”
High in the shadowy web of blue-lit metal beneath the New Moon’s shell, the grotesque monstrosity sprawled stiffly on the bare platform.
Jay Kalam and Hal Samdu and Caspar Hannas stood peering down at it, but Giles Habibula hung apprehensively back near the elevator that had brought them up.
“Quite dead,” Jay Kalam assured him.
“Chan Derron evidently beat us to it—who would have guessed he was wearing a geopellor under his cloak?
And then got away—with the girl!”
“Got away!”
It was a pained moan, from the gigantic, black-clad master of the New Moon.
“And all our guests know he did.
There’s a panic at the docks.
Every vessel going out is already booked to capacity.
In twenty-four hours there won’t be a visitor in the New Moon—and not many of our own employees—unless the Basilisk is caught.”
The great white hands of Hannas clenched, impotently.
“The Basilisk has mined me, Commander!” he rasped.
“Or Chan Derron has. Already.”
“Keep your men after him.”
Jay Kalam’s gesture swept the dusky labyrinth of shadow-clotted steel.
“He could be here—anywhere. With that woman—” His dark brow furrowed. “There was something about that woman—you observed her, Hal?”
“Aye, Jay,” rumbled Hal Samdu.
“She was beautiful—far too beautiful for any good.
She had the same evil beauty that belonged to those androids of Eldo Arrynu.”
“Android!” Jay Kalam started at the word.
“She could be!
She could be Luroa—Stephen Oreo’s last sinister sister!”
He set his lean fingers deliberately tip to tip. “The New Moon would be the natural hunting ground of such a creature, and Chan Derron the sort of confederate she would seek.
But she didn’t look like—”
“Ah, Jay, but she did!” protested Giles Habibula, plaintively.
“That was mortal evident!
The hair and the eyes were changed, and make-up cunningly used to alter the shape of her face—ah, it was a lovely one!
But still it was that she-monster’s.”
Jay Kalam spun on him.
“Why didn’t you speak?”
Lifting his cane defensively, Giles Habibula stumbled apprehensively back.
“Jay, Jay,” he whined plaintively, “don’t be too severe on a poor old soldier.”
He sighed heavily, and one fat yellow hand clutched at his heart.