His voice was dull with fatigue.
“Not tonight.”
For he was deadly tired.
In command of the great research expedition to study the sciences and the arts of the half-conquered comet, he had spent three strange, exhausting years among those scores of amazing worlds beyond the barrier of green.
For months more, at the permanent depot of the expedition at Contra-Saturn Station, he had toiled to direct the first preliminary analysis and classification of the results of the expedition—recording the hundreds of tremendous discoveries gleaned from those ancient captive worlds.
Then another, more urgent duty had called him back to Earth.
A few apprehensive statesmen in the Green Hall were gaining support for a movement to order the destruction of the departing comet with AKKA.
The Commander, in return for the free cooperation of the liberated peoples of the comet, had promised to let them go in peace. Leaving young Robert Star in command of the half-secret, heavily fortified depot, he came back to fight before the Green Hall for the life of the comet.
Now at last the victory was won.
The new Cometeers were gone beyond the range of the greatest telescope, pledged never to return.
And Jay Kalam felt slow and heavy now with his long fatigue.
A few more reports to complete—secret documents dealing with the dreadful matter-annihilating weapon of the Cometeers—and then he was going to John Star’s estate on Phobos, to rest.
“But Commander—” The distressed, insistent voice of the orderly hummed through the communicator.
“Caspar Hannas is owner of the New Moon.
And he says this is urgent—”
The Commander’s lean face grew stern.
“I’ll talk to him when I get back from the Purple Hall,” he said.
“We’ve already sent Admiral-General Samdu, with his ten cruisers, to help Hannas catch his thief.”
“But they’ve failed, sir,” protested the orderly.
“An urgent message from Admiral-General Samdu reports—”
“Samdu’s in command.” Jay Kalam’s voice was brittle with fatigue. “He doesn’t have to report.”
He sighed, and pushed thin fingers through the forelock of white that he had brought back from the comet.
“If the thief is really Chan Derron,” he muttered, “they may fail again!”
Settling limply back in the chair behind his crowded desk, he let his tired eyes look out of the great west window.
It was dark.
Beyond the five low points of the dead volcanoes on the black horizon, against the fading greenish afterglow, the New Moon was rising.
Not the ancient satellite whose cragged face had looked down upon the Earth since life was born—that had been obliterated a quarter-century ago, by the keeper of the peace when Aladoree Anthar turned her secret ancestral weapon upon the outpost that the invading Medusae had established there.
The New Moon was really new—a glittering creation of modern science and high finance, the proudest triumph of thirtieth century engineering.
The heart of it was a vast hexagonal structure of welded metal, ten miles across, that held eighty cubic miles of expensive, air-conditioned space.
Far nearer Earth than the old Moon, the new satellite had a period of only six hours.
From the Earth, its motion appeared faster and more spectacular because of its retrograde direction.
It rose in the west, fled across the sky against the tide of the stars and plunged down where the old Moon had risen.
The New Moon was designed to be spectacular.
A spinning web of steel wires, held rigid by centrifugal force, spread from it across a thousand miles of space.
They supported an intricate system of pivoted mirrors of sodium foil and sliding color niters of cellulite.
Reflected sunlight was utilized to illuminate the greatest advertising sign ever conceived.
The thin hand of the Commander had reached wearily for the thick sheaf of green-tinted pages headed: REPORTS OF THE COMETARY RESEARCH EXPEDITION, J. KALAM, DIRECTOR. REPORT CXLVIII: PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF METHODS AND EQUIPMENT FOR THE IRREVERSIBLE REDUCTION OF MATTER TO RADIANT NEUTRINOS.
But the rising sign, as it had been designed to do, held his eyes.
A vast circle of scarlet stars came up into the greenish desert dusk.
They spun giddily, came and went, changed suddenly to a lurid yellow.
Then garish blue-and-orange letters flashed a legend:
Tired, Mister?
Bored, Sister?
Then come with me—The disk became a red-framed animated picture of a slender girl in white, tripping up the gangway of a New Moon liner.
She turned, and the gay invitation of her smile changed into burning words: Out in the New Moon, just ask for what you want.
Caspar Hannas has it for you.
“Anything.” Jay Kalam smiled grimly.
“Even the System’s foremost criminals.”
Find health at our sanatoria! flamed the writing in the sky.
Sport in our gravity-free games!