This clearly meant danger—the operation of some unknown and hostile agency.
But how was he to meet it?
Samdu’s guarding fleet must be somewhere not far beyond that bleak gray sky.
He would call the Admiral—
But his own signal was already humming from the little black disk of the ultrawave communicator, that hung by its cord from his neck.
He touched the receiver key and slapped the instrument to his ear.
“Help!”
It was Max Eleroid.
“Thith man—•” The lisping voice was queerly muffled, choked. “Thith man—he ith not—”
An odd purring hum came out of the communicator, and then it was silent.
2 Adequate Evidence
The same disturbing message had been picked up by the fleet.
When the Bellatrix landed, not an hour afterward, Chan Derron was found staggering aimlessly about the rock.
“My blaster’s gone!” he gasped to the Admiral-General.
“If it hadn’t been taken, I might have been able to cut a way in, in time to help.”
“Where is your vault?” demanded the rugged old spaceman.
His huge ugly face was ashen gray, and the anxious gestures of his great scarred hands had already set all the stiff white mass of his hair on end.
“We’ll have a look.”
Chan pointed out the scarcely visible seam.
“It’s locked.”
His voice trembled with the dread of the hour that he had waited.
“Eleroid locked it, on the inside. I tried it, after he called.
You’ll have to cut through the perdurite.”
“If we can—” Hal Samdu’s battered hands clutched, hi tortured indecision.
“If only old Giles Habibula were here!
He has a gift for locks—but he’s off on Phobos, beyond the sun from us now, eating and drinking himself to death at John Star’s table.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know quite what to do—”
“We can’t wait, sir,” Chan Derron urged him.
“I’m afraid to think what must have happened in that room.
Haven’t you equipment, on the battleship, that can cut through that door—”
His voice dropped into a chasm of incredulity.
For the huge Legionnaire had bent and seized the projecting knob of rock that formed a disguised handle for the massive slab of armor, balanced on its pivots in the doorway, as if he would break the lock with his own unaided muscles.
And the door swung smoothly open.
Hal Samdu straightened to stare grimly at Chan.
“Locked, eh?”
Chan Derron stepped dazedly back, and a black wind of terror blew cold about his heart.
“It was locked!” he gasped.
“I tried it!”
But a cold deadliness of doubt glittered abruptly in the blue eyes of the Admiral-General.
His big hand deliberately hauled out his own proton needle and he covered the weaponless Chan.
“Hold him, men,” he commanded.
“I’m going to look inside.”
Hal Samdu and his officers went down into the small square chamber.
In the garish light of the tube still burning against the ceiling, they found Dr.
Max Eleroid and the man in white.
They were both sprawled still, and the slighter body of the assistant was already stiffening into the rigor of death.
Rivulets and pools of darkening blood stained the new gray perdurite.
Both men had been stabbed.
And the weapon still protruding from the back of Dr. Max Eleroid was a service blaster, of the new Legion type, holster-stock and bayonet locked in place.