He heard the excited voice of the executive officer.
“We’ve got it, Commander!
Derron’s ship.
Dead ahead, toward that object in Draco.
Only forty tons—which is why it took us so long to pick it up.
But it has power enough, apparently, to hold its lead.
We have the range.
What is your order?”
Jay Kalam’s hand tightened on the communicator.
A cold wind seemed to blow around him, blowing away the ship, and blowing away the years.
He saw Giles Habibula, a stout little man, strutting, grinning, as he had been when they were privates together.
He knew Habibula was on the ship ahead.
But the rushing of that wind became the rusty whisper of the Basilisk, jeering at him.
No man, not even a friend, could be weighed against his duty to the Legion.
“Do you hear me, Commander?” the executive officer was insisting.
“What is your order?”
Jay Kalam slowly closed his eyes, and opened them again.
His lean hand made a slow salute.
Low and forced, his voice said:
“Fire at once with the vortex gun.
Destroy the vessel ahead.”
Samdu’s battleship, the long Bellatrix, was slipping in beside the mighty flagship when the first vortex was fired.
Watching through the ports of an air lock, the Admiral-General saw the great blinding knot of atomic disruption spinning out ahead, flaming wider as its expanding fields of instability consumed all the matter in its reach.
“Well, Mr. Derron,” the gigantic spaceman muttered with a grim satisfaction, “or Mr. Basilisk—now let’s see you get away!”
Hard-driven geodynes were pushing the two colossal ships through space—or, more accurately, around it—at effective speeds far beyond the velocity of light.
But they came together so gently that their crews could feel no shock.
Air valves were joined and sealed.
And Hal Samdu stalked impatiently aboard the great flagship.
“Quick!” he boomed to the officers who received him.
“Take me to Commander Kalam at once.”
But, when swift elevators and moving cat-walks had brought them to the hidden door behind the chartroom, the Commander of the Legion failed to answer their signal.
The alarmed executive officer came to unlock the armored door.
Hal Samdu stalked ahead into the soft-lit luxurious apartments of Jay Kalam.
Silence met him, and emptiness.
The Commander of the Legion was gone. “Poor old Jay,” rumbled Hal Samdu.
“The hundredth man!”
He turned abruptly upon the officers about him.
“Derron’s ship is still in range?
Then fire again with the vortex gun. Keep firing till you get it.”
14 Man and Android
Facing Giles Habibula in the narrow space within the valve of the Phantom Atom, Chan Derron caught his breath.
Still he was weaponless—and the black tiny hole in the tip of the old man’s level cane looked at him like a deadly eye.
“Habibula?” his startled voice echoed.
“Not the great Giles Habibula?”
Chan was weaponless—but the heavy little pack of the geopellor was still strapped to his shoulders, its control spindle still gripped in his hand.
It could make a living projectile of his body.
His hand began to close.
“Wait, lad!”
The old man lowered the menacing cane.
His fishy eyes rolled fearfully and his wheezing voice was hoarse with a desperate appeal.