“I advise,” said Jay Kalam, “that you examine some of your own employees.
You say that Admiral-General Samdu is with you? Please put him on.”
The smooth white face was replaced by a cragged ugly red one, equally gigantic.
Beneath his snow-white hair, the features of Hal Samdu were stiff with an awed bewilderment.
The Commander smiled a greeting.
“Well, Hal, what is your emergency?”
The battered red face twisted, and the blue eyes of Hal Samdu grew dark as if with pain.
“I don’t just know, Jay.”
His deep voice was worried.
“There’s not much you can put a finger on.”
His own big fingers were clenched into baffled fists.
“But it is an emergency, Jay!
I know it.
I can feel it.
The beginning of something—dreadful!
It may turn out to be as bad as the Cometeers!”
Jay Kalam shook his tired dark head.
“I don’t see anything that grave—”
Hal Samdu leaned forward and his great battered impotent fist came up to the screen.
“Well, Jay,” he rumbled, “maybe you’ll listen to this!”
His voice sank, with an unconscious caution.
“I’ve been on the Derron case you know, ever since we got back from the comet.
Well, I haven’t caught him—there was never such a man!
But I’ve got clues. And, well—”
His tone dropped lower still.
“Commander, I’ve got evidence enough that this Basilisk is Chan Derron!”
“Quite possible.” Jay Kalam nodded.
“There was no Basilisk until after Derron got out of prison,” argued Hal Samdu.
“Soon after, there was.
He began with small things.
Experiments.
He’s trying out his power—the weapon he mur-dered Max Eleroid to get!
Time knows how he hid the thing on that rock, when we combed every square inch—unless he could have used a geopeller.
But he has it—some frightful unknown thing!”
The great hands twisted together, in a baffled agony.
“And he’s getting more confident with it.
Bolder!
Every job he tries is more daring. And tune knows where he will stop!” The great rugged knob of his Adam’s apple jerked.
“I tell you, Jay, the man who robbed and murdered Clovis Field can do anything—anything!”
Hal Samdu’s voice dropped again.
It was cracked and shaken with alarm.
“I don’t like to speak of this, Jay, on the wave.
But if this Basilisk —if Derron—can do what he did tonight, then she isn’t safe!
Or— it!”
Jay Kalam stiffened.
He could not fail to know what Hal Samdu meant by she and it.
He and the giant, with old Giles Habibula, had been too long the guards of Aladoree Anthar and the priceless secret that she guarded; the mysterious weapon, designed by the symbol AKKA, whose very existence was the shield of mankind.
If the keeper of the peace was—
“All right, Hal,” he said.
“I’ll come out to the New Moon—”