I think our only hope—”
Km!
Km!
Krrr!
The tiny, piercing beat of the emergency signal checked him.
It came from the instrument he had handed Aladoree.
Wonderingly, she gave it back. What he heard, when he put it to his ear, was the muted and distorted whisper of the Basilisk.
“My dear Commander,” it said,
“I am forced to interfere with your reckless sacrificial scheme.
For quick annihilation from the keeper’s weapon is not what I had planned for ninety-nine of you.
I prefer to let you live long enough to pay for all the insults and injuries that have been heaped upon me.
I want to give you time to realize that the person who suffered so long as the smallest and the most scorned of men is now the greatest—the Basilisk.
And when you know the truth, when you have made adequate atonement, I want to watch you perish in the manner I shall choose.
“As for the hundredth man,” that gloating whisper continued, “his death by AKKA would spoil my victory.
For I intend to return him alive to the System, to tell mankind of my sweet revenge.
You may assure your companions—if you wish to revive their hopes—that one of them is destined to survive.”
The whisper ceased.
Jay Kalam dropped the little instrument, and stared about the bare black rock.
He saw the little circle of kneeling men and women, still intent upon their game of futile chance.
He saw Bob Star’s wife, who had been Kay Nymidee, rising weakly to take their sobbing little child into her arms.
He saw Bob Star himself, a lean lonely figure at the end of the rock, standing guard against the monstrous winged things that soared and dived upon the wind beyond.
“I wonder—” He choked and coughed and gasped for breath.
“I wonder if the Basilisk isn’t somewhere near, with his base and whatever equipment he uses.
Because we got his voice by ultrawave, without any relay.”
The choked little gasp from Aladoree brought his eyes back to her haunted, stricken face. Her slender arm was pointing, trembling. And Jay Kalam saw that the half-completed instrument of AKKA was gone from the bench of rock before her.
In its place was a little black serpent, crudely shaped of clay.
16 The Geofractor
“But I am not Luroa.”
The violet-eyed girl had closed the door of the tiny cabin upon the racing Phantom Atom, and now the keen endless whine of the hard-driven geodynes came but faintly to her and Giles Habibula.
“Eh, lass?” The old man blinked his colorless eyes.
“But you are!”
Perched earnestly on the edge of the narrow bunk in front of him, for his mass overran the only chair, the girl flung back the lustrous mass of her platinum hair, and peered gravely back into the old sol-dier’s face.
“I’m no android, Giles Habibula,” she insisted.
“I’m as human as you are.
I’m Stella Eleroid. I’m the daughter of Dr. Max Eleroid— who was murdered by the Basilisk.”
A cold light flashed in her violet eyes, and her white face was hardened with a grimness of purpose that seemed to freeze its beauty into marble.
“When I knew the Legion had failed,” her cold, low voice ran on, “I set out to track down this killer and to recover the geofractor— that was his last and greatest invention, the thing that Derron killed him for.”
“Geofractor?” echoed Giles Habibula.
“What in life’s name is that?”
He lurched ponderously forward, his small eyes squinting into her face.
“But you’re Luroa, lass,” he insisted.
“I saw your picture on the posters.
There’s a difference in your eyes and your hair, and I’ll grant you to be a gorgeous actress—but you’ll never fool old Giles.”
“I can explain.” With an impatient gesture, the girl caught his massive shoulder.
The old man looked a long time into the white, taut beauty of her face, and at last all the doubt melted from his eyes as he smiled.
“You see, Giles,” she said, “my father and Dr. Arrynu were boyhood friends.
They roomed together at Ekarhenium.
Each had a vast respect for the abilities of the other.
My father used to say that if Arrynu had chosen to live within the law, he could have been the greatest biologist or the greatest artist in the System.
Sometimes, during his long exile, Arrynu paid secret visits to the earth, and my father always entertained him.