But why didn’t you report the matter to the Legion? And claim your just reward?”
The girl’s face grew very sober again.
“It might have been hard to prove that I was not Luroa.
Besides, that same day I learned that my father’s murderer had escaped from the Devil’s Rock.” Her voice was still and cold.
“And the theft of a document from the laboratory a few days later proved that he was using my father’s geofractor.
I knew that the Legion had failed—and must continue to fail, against that terrible invention.
“But Luroa, I thought, might not fail.
I became Luroa.”
“A well-played part,” applauded Giles Habibula.
“But, lass, tell me about this stolen invention.”
The girl sat down again on the edge of the bunk.
Her platinum head inclined a moment, listening to the fighting whine of the geodynes.
Her slender hand unconsciously touched the ready butt of her proton blaster, and then the great white crystal at her throat.
“Don’t worry, lass,” Giles Habibula urged her.
“I gave our position and course to Commander Kalam and the fleet.
Derron will have no time to look for stowaways.
But this mortal invention?”
“You know,” she told him deliberately, “that my father was a geodesic engineer.”
“Ah so, the greatest,” wheezed Giles Habibula.
“His refinements made the old-type geodynes seem primitive as ox-carts.
He invented the geopellor, that Derron is so ready with.”
“Derron’s good with stolen discoveries.” Her white hands clenched, and slowly relaxed again.
“But the geofractor,” she said, “is based upon a principle totally new—affording a complete, controlled refraction of geodesic lines.
“The instrument utilizes achronic force-fields.
My father independently discovered the same new branch of geodesy of which Commander Kalam’s expedition got some inkling from the science of the Cometeers.”
“Ah, so,” Giles Habibula nodded.
“Kay Nymidee used something of that sort to escape from the comet.”
“But the geofractor, as my father perfected it,” the girl said, “had a power and a refinement of control that the Cometeers apparently never approached.
Its achronic fields are able to rotate the world lines of any two objects within a range of several hundred light-years.”
“Aye, lass.”
Giles Habibula smiled as if he understood.
“But in other words—?”
“The geofractor projects two refractor fields,” the girl told him.
“Each unit is able to deflect the geodesic lines of any object out of the continuum, and wrap them back again at any point within its range.
Which means,” she smiled, “that the object, in effect, is snatched out of our four dimensional universe, and instantly set back again at the other point.
“There are two coupled units,” she explained, “timed to perfect synchronism, so that each creates a perfect vacuum to receive the object transmitted by the other.
That prevents the atomic cataclysms that might result from forcing two objects into the same space at the same tune.
“That explains why the Basilisk—” she caught her breath, “why Derron has such a way of putting clay snakes and bricks and robots in the place of the things he takes.
It balances the transmitter circuits, and saves power.”
Giles Habibula exhaled a long, amazed breath.
“So that’s the geofractor!” he wheezed.
“Ah, a fearful thing!”
“So Derron has made it,” the girl whispered bitterly.
“But my father intended it for purposes of peaceful communication. He dreamed of a timeless interplanetary express service.
He even hoped to make wide stellar exploration possible, so that human colonists could spread across the galaxy.
“Yet he realized the supreme danger of his discovery.
I doubt that he would ever have finished it at all, but for the bitter straits of mankind hi the cometary war.
He completed it only as a weapon of last resort—and he provided a shield against it.”
“Eh?”
Giles Habibula stared at her. “A shield?”