“You have that enemy machine!”
“Mortal—mortal me!” Old Habibula croaked and sputtered.
“Let’s not speak of that fearful machine!”
“I think we must,” Lilith said.
“Not all machines were made by men. Or designed to help men.
If enemy machines made this anomaly, I think they may be worse than men or nature either—”
We all started when my intercom whined.
“C-c-c-captain, sir!”
Ketzler was stammering with tension and fatigue.
“We’ve got another message from Commander Star, sir. S-s-s-s-something you should know. He says he is under a new attack from that enemy machine.
The Quasar Quest is wrecked.
He’s attempting to abandon ship. I th-th-th-thought you’d want to know, sir.”
“Thank you, Ketzler.
Is Star still aboard?”
“I believe so, sir—though his signal was suddenly broken off.
Most of his men had left the wreck in an escape capsule.
Star and a few others stayed aboard to cover them.
But their capsule was shot to pieces.”
I heard him draw a ragged, rasping breath.
“Wh-wh-wh-what shall we do, sir?”
“Duty as usual,” I told him.
“Keep the station going.”
He paused a long time, while I shared his agony.
“Y-y-y-y-y-yes, sir.”
More faintly, a confusion of other lifted voices from the control drum came over the open intercom.
Though the words were blurred, the tones were sharp with shock and consternation.
“A light, sir!” Ketzler’s voice came shrill with excitement, his stammer gone.
“A queer light in space!
We can see that enemy machine!”
The terror of his words ringing in my brain, I stared at Lilith.
Though the rest of us were on our feet by then, she sat rigid and pale, staring down at the dull black skull on her ring as if its glittering ruby eyes had somehow hypnotized her.
6 The Bubble of Darkness
Old Habibula and Lilith came with me down to the north observatory.
Though he was acting half paralyzed with fear, she appeared desperately eager to see that strange light and the enemy machine.
I let them come because the riddle of their visit was not yet solved.
Perhaps I had sensed a connection I could not understand, between the problem they had brought to the station and the peril outside— between those asteroids vanishing from the dark heart of the anomaly and those able spacemen vanishing from Scabbard’s geodesic flyer.
The men on duty in the zero-G dome seemed unnerved when they saw us flying in on the cable, almost as if they had taken us for mechanized invaders.
“Captain, you sort of startled me.” The dome chief hushed a harsh, unnatural laugh.
“There’s the light—whatever it is!”
A gaunt and fearful ghost in the blood-colored glow from the instruments, he pointed a pale crimson arm at the transite dome.
In a moment I found the light—it looked like a yellow star hung in the black pit of Nowhere.
“It’s going out, sir,” he added huskily. “Estimated magnitude two point three when we first observed it.
Now about three point six. But still bright enough to show that—thing!” The fan-jets lifted us into the greenish glow of the projection cell.
We hung to the cold chrome rail at the back of the long narrow tube, watching the huge luminous screen that amplified the image from the electronic telescope.
Here that light was a tiny, bright-green disk.
The rest of the screen was only a faintly greenish blankness, until the nervous dome chief adjusted the controls.
Shadowy shapes flickered and dissolved, and suddenly we saw the enemy machine.
Old Habibula made a low, hollow moan.
I felt Lilith start and stiffen.
A numbing something tingled at the back of my neck. The thing covered half of that enormous tube. We saw it in shades of glowing green, outlined by that fading star. I felt stunned by its size, utterly baffled by its shape.