“Ah, lass—wait!”
The small eyes of Giles Habibula rolled at her apprehensively.
“We’ll listen.”
“What you said about the geofractor,” he told the trembling, defiant girl, “explains the circumstances of your father’s murder.”
“Then tell me how it happened,” she challenged him coldly.
“You ought to know!”
“I had that armored room ready, when your father and another man landed with the working model they were to test,” he said quietly. “They went inside and locked the door.
I stood guard outside.
Admiral-General Samdu, not an hour later, found the door unlocked—that fact is what convicted me.
He found Dr. Eleroid’s body, and another, but the working model was gone.
“The body of the assistant was already stiff hi rigor mortis.
That was a point they failed to explain, in the case against me.
They simply disregarded it.” Chan Derron’s jaw set grimly.
“But rigor mortis never begins hi less than two or three hours after death.
The other body found in that room with Dr. Eleroid had been dead probably ten or twelve hours.”
His somber eyes went back to the girl’s intent white face.
“You have explained how it must have happened,” he told her.
“The murderer had already killed your father’s assistant.
He had hidden the body, and taken the assistant’s place.
It was the murderer who went down into that room with your father.
Don’t you think that is possible?”
The platinum head of Stella Eleroid nodded very slowly, as if unwillingly.
Her violet eyes, still very dark, remained fixed on Chan Derron’s face with an intensity almost hypnotic.
“It is possible,” she whispered reluctantly.
“Because my father suffered from an extreme myopia—he couldn’t recognize anyone ten feet from him.
And that day he must have been completely absorbed hi his experiment.”
She nodded again.
“But go on.”
“The murderer—the real Basilisk—is obviously a very clever man,” Chan continued.
“We know he had already been spying on your father.
He must have planned the thing very carefully.
His risk was great—but taken for a tremendous stake.
“Once in that locked room, he watched your father test and demonstrate the invention.
And then, when he had learned all he had to know, he killed the inventor.
He used the geofractor to bring the stiffened body of the actual assistant from wherever he had hidden it.
He used it again to take the blaster out of my belt. He drove the bayonet into your father’s body, and unlocked the door, and finally removed himself and the working model—leaving everything arranged to convict me of the crime.”
He searched the girl’s fixed white face.
“You believe me,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Don’t you, Stella?”
“I—I don’t know.”
She shook her head.
“I want to—but who is the Basilisk?”
“Ah, that’s the mortal question!” Giles Habibula gasped.
“Perhaps you speak the truth, Captain Derron—and if you do, this criminal has done you a fearful wrong indeed.
But there’s still a monstrous mass of evidence against you.”
“Won’t you trust me?” Chan begged hopelessly.
“Just until we reach the geofractor.
I think it will tell us who our enemy really is.”
“My orders are to bring you back,” the old soldier said bleakly. “And the fleet is already close behind us.
But, if you’re willing to surrender, I’ll take your case to Commander Kalam—”