“And you think they are still enemies?” the grave Commander asked.
“Deathly enemies,” insisted Giles Habibula. “How could they be friends? When Brelekko must be madly jealous of all the wealth and power Hannas has found in the New Moon. When Hannas—aye, and justly—must hate Brelekko for knowing his past and his tricks, for hanging on him like a leech, and winning at his tables.
“Ah, so, Jay, hi either of them you have brains enough—and mortal evil, too—to make your Basilisk.”
“Possibly.” Jay Kalam frowned doubtfully. “Though there’s not a shred of evidence against any man except Chan Derron. We’ll see them again, below.”
When Hal Samdu had returned, with a guard of Legionnaires, to take charge of the robot for his crew of scientists, they went down again to the luxurious quarters that Caspar Hannas had placed at their disposal. The Commander sent for Amo Brelekko.
Yellow and almost skeletal, strutting in his gaudy silks, great jewels glittering, the gambler made a fantastic figure. The insolence of his swagger, Jay Kalam thought, must have been put on to cover a deep unease. His dark eyes shot an insanely malicious look at Giles Habibula.
“Brelekko,” asked the grave Commander, “as a clever man, on the spot from the beginning, intimately acquainted with the persons involved—what is your opinion about the Basilisk?”
The hawk-face remained a bleak tense mask.
“Obviously the criminal must be an able scientist,” the voiceless gambler replied.
“Obviously, he knows the New Moon intimately. Obviously, also, he dislikes Gaspar Hannas. I know one man, Commander, who fits those three conditions.”
“So?” wheezed Giles Habibula. “Besides yourself?”
The dark unblinking eyes darted at him, venomously.
“Who is that?” Jay Kalam prompted.
“The man who built the New Moon,” rasped Brelekko. “John Comaine.”
“But isn’t he employed by Hannas?”
“John Comaine is the slave of Gaspar Hannas,” Brelekko whispered. “I know the story—I alone, beside the two of them. A young man, a brilliant scientist but mad with the thirst for wealth, Comaine came to the battered hulk of a condemned space ship that was the first New Moon. He lost too much—money that was not his to lose.
Hannas let him pay the debt with his science—and then held the new crime over him.
Comaine tried at first to escape, but every effort left him deeper in the power of Hannas. Yet I think he still has the pride and the heart of a scientist. I know he first dreamed of the New Moon, Commander, not as a gambling resort, but as a super-observatory and laboratory of all the sciences, to be stationed out in Neptune’s orbit.
It was the ruthless power of Hannas that turned his dream of Contra-Neptune into this. Would it be very strange, Commander, if a scientist, revolting against half a lifetime of such slavery, should make his science strike back?”
“Perhaps not,” Jay nodded slowly. “Thank you, Brelekko.”
He detailed two plain-clothes men to shadow the gambler, and sent for John Comaine.
When the engineer appeared, stiffly awkward, the square stern mask of his slightly pop-eyed face hiding any emotion, the Commander asked him the same question about the Basilisk.
Comaine shook his big blond head, impassive as a statue.
“The Basilisk is a scientist,” said his flat harsh voice. “I know, Commander, because I have been attempting to set my own knowledge against his. And I have failed to match him. I have met only one mind equal in ability to the feats of the Basilisk—the mind of Dr. Max Eleroid.”
“But Eleroid is dead!”
“My only suggestion, Commander,” the engineer said flatly, “is that the cadaver in question was not accurately identified.”
Two more operatives were sent to follow Comaine.
An orderly, in the Legion green, was admitted.
“Commander Kalam.” He saluted. “We have reports from the principal stock exchanges on all the planets. As you surmised, sir, the shares and obligations of the New Moon syndicate fell precipitately with the news of what happened here—to about three per cent, in fact, of their former value.
“The financial reports confirm your belief, Commander, that a behind-the-scenes battle has been in progress for control of the syndicate. One group has now capitulated, evidently, so that the other is able to buy at its own price.”
Jay Kalam nodded gravely.
“Has the buyer been traced?”
“It has always been very difficult to discover anything about the affairs of the New Moon Syndicate, sir. They are handled by very devious means. The Legion has exerted pressure, however, upon several brokers. The reports indicate, almost surely, that the buyer is Gaspar Hannas!”
“Eh?” Old Giles Habibula started. “But Hannas is the New Moon’s master, already.”
“He is head of the syndicate,” Jay Kalam told him. “Originally he was sole owner of the enterprise. But the cost of constructing the New Moon, while the actual sum has never been revealed, must have been staggering—far beyond the resources of Hannas.
He was forced to sell a vast amount of stock, and the syndicate incurred tremendous obligations. Out of that situation comes the chief reason for suspecting that Hannas himself is the Basilisk.”
“Eh, Jay?” Giles Habibula turned pale and began to perspire. “And here we’re hi the New Moon, hi the very clutch of his mortal power! But why Hannas, Jay?”
“Even through the cloud of legal confusion that is always kept around the dealings of the syndicate, it’s clear that Caspar Hannas was about to lose the New Moon. Now the activities of the Basilisk have enabled him to buy back control at his own price.
There—in the difference between bankruptcy and the System’s greatest fortune —you have motive enough, I think.”
“Aye,” agreed Giles Habibula. “But you said this Basilisk must be a scientist—and Caspar Hannas is no scientist.”
“But he has a very able one—if Brelekko told the truth—completely under his thumb.
John Comaine.” Jay Kalam rubbed abstractedly at his jaw, and then his dark eyes went abruptly to Giles Habibula. “However,” he said, “all the weight of evidence still rests against Chan Derron.
“For Chan Derron took Dr. Eleroid’s invention—which is probably the very scientific agency that makes possible the feats of the Basilisk. He has been connected with every crime. He was here, loaded down with concealed instruments, when little Davian was taken. And once more he has mysteriously escaped.
“I was for a long time reluctant to believe that so fine a Legionnaire as Captain Derron was, could have turned to such a monster as the Basilisk. But the presence of the female android accounts for that. It may be that Luroa was the mysterious spy who first frightened Dr. Eleroid! And then she met Chan Derron.”
Somberly, his dark eyes looked far away.
“He would not be the first man degraded and destroyed by the fatal allure of those inhuman things.”
“So, Jay,” sighed Giles Habibula, “some of them were mortal beautiful!”
Jay Kalam’s glance came back to the old man, suddenly intent.
“Giles,” he said softly, “I’ve an idea!”
“Eh, Jay!” The fishy eyes blinked uneasily. “You’re getting too many ideas about a poor crippled old hero of the Legion, Jay.”
“You are ordered, Giles, to find Chan Derron.”
“But we’re all looking for Derron.”
“So we are.” Jay Kalam’s lips tightened sternly. “But I’m afraid you haven’t been exerting your full capacities.” His low voice lifted slightly. “Giles, as Commander of the Legion, I order you to find Derron and the woman with him. By any means you can. You will work alone—but keep in touch with us by ultrawave and call for any aid you need.”
“Find the Basilisk?” Giles Habibula paled and squirmed. “How do you think—?”
“Use your own methods,” Jay Kalam told him. “But you’ve been b
oasting enough of your cloudy past—you might pretend to be another criminal. Whatever you do, learn everything you can. Discover the location of the Basilisk’s headquarters—find a target for the keeper of the peace. Trap Derron and the android.”
Giles Habibula licked his fat blue lips. He gulped. His seamed face turned greenish-Page 244
yellow, and glittered with sweat. He gasped for breath, and mopped with a trembling hand at his bald brow.
“Jay!” he wheezed at last. “Are you out of your mind? In all these years, hasn’t Giles given enough to the System—aye, given all his precious genius!—without being flung into this web of fearful horror?”
His pudgy fingers quivered on Jay Kalam’s arm.
“In life’s name, Jay, stay your cruel command! Ah, think, Jay! Poor old Giles might be snatched from beside you at this very moment—to be found perhaps in the black Euthanasia vault, with the blade of the Basilisk in his poor dead back!”
“Remember,” Jay Kalam said gravely, “that it’s for the keeper.”
Giles Habibula caught a sobbing breath.
“For the keeper,” he wheezed, sadly. “For her, Jay—I’ll go.”
Then the Commander of the Legion went suddenly tense, and his lean face went a little white.
Km! Krrr! Km!
The tiny sound, peculiarly penetrating and insistent, was humming from the communicator hung by its thin chain about his neck. The Commander’s lean deliberate hands, drawing the little black disk from under his clothing, trembled slightly.
“It’s Legion Intelligence,” he told Giles Habibula. “An emergency call.”
Giles Habibula watched apprehensively as he touched the dial, whispered a code response, and lifted the little disk to his ear. The straining ears of the old Legionnaire failed to hear anything.
And the face of Jay Kalam didn’t lose its grave, contained reserve. But his failure to breathe, and his frozen stiffness, betrayed enough.
“You’ve had bad news, Jay,” whispered Giles Habibula, when at last the Commander lowered the disk and broke communication. “Aye, mortal bad!”
Jay Kalam nodded, very slowly. His lean face, beneath that one white lock on his forehead, looked the oldest that Giles Habibula had ever seen it.
“That was one of the subordinate officers calling from the depot of the cometary expedition at Contra-Saturn.” His voice was very quiet. “The depot has been robbed, Giles. All our files and specimens rifled.”
“Eh, Jay!” Giles Habibula blinked at him. “The secrets of the Cometeers!”
“All our most valuable—or most dangerous—notes were taken, Giles. Weapons and instrumentalities that we had planned to guard for centuries until our civilization might be mature enough to assimilate them safely. All gone!”
“Was it—the Basilisk?”
The stricken head nodded again.
“A little black clay snake was found on Bob Star’s desk, inside the vaults—none of the locks on the vaults, by the way, were disturbed. As usual, there was a clue.
Dropped on the floor was a yellow reservation check from the New Moon. It was dated yesterday. And the name on it was Dr. Charles Derrel.”
“Derrel?” gasped Giles Habibula. “But, Jay, it isn’t six hours since I picked that check out of Chan Derron’s pocket—and Contra-Saturn, by the swiftest cruiser, is three days away!”
“The best proof yet,” Jay Kalam said gravely, “that the Basilisk is Chan Derron.” His lean hand gestured sternly. “Get him, Giles.”
“But—Bob?” Giles Habibula was wheezing anxiously. “You say a subordinate was speaking?
Where was Bob Star?”
The face of Jay Kalam had stiffened bleakly.
“The office said that Captain Robert Star is mysteriously missing from the depot,” he said faintly. “Giles, I’m afraid Bob Star is already in the hands of the Basilisk. Alive or not—I’m.
afraid to guess.”
Giles Habibula lifted himself laboriously to his feet with the cane.
“Bob, the poor lad!” he sobbed. “Now my duty’s plain enough—but how am I to find the Basilisk?” His head shook hopelessly. “How can one poor old man track down the monster that strikes here at midnight and a billion miles away before the dawn?”
His pale eyes rolled.
“Or—in life’s precious name—what if I do find him? And the mortal android? One poor old soldier, to face the System’s two most frightful criminals. Aye, to face all the evil power of the Basilisk! And that woman, whose very beauty is a false mirage and a consuming flame and a poisoned blade!”
He blinked, and caught a gasping breath.
“But for all that, I must go. Farewell, Jay. Farewell! And please tell the keeper that poor old Giles Habibula was loyal to the end.” He thrust out a trembling hand, and the Commander grasped it. “For it is mortal likely, Jay, that Giles Habibula will never be seen alive again.”
And he waddled slowly out into the corridors of the New Moon.
11
The Unearthly Robot
Back in the rich, soft-toned simplicity of his hidden, ray-armored apartments aft the chart rooms of the mighty Inflexible , once more in the trim gold-and-green of his uniform, Jay Kalam sat waiting impatiently. The deep muffled song of the geodynes reached him briefly, as a door was opened. And Hal Samdu came stalking in, looking worried.
“Well, Hal?” The Commander’s quiet reserve did not conceal his eagerness. “What is your report on the robot?”
The big gnarled hands of the Admiral-General laid a thick green envelope on the desk. They clenched, as he raised them, with a savage force.
“If I could only get my fingers on this Derron—” His great voice was thick with an agony of frustration. “To think, Jay, that all the Legion can give the keeper no promise of safety!”
“I know it’s appalling.” The Commander nodded, white-lipped. “But your report?”
“In the envelope,” said Hal Samdu. “I got together twenty men, half of them veterans of the cometary expedition, all of them specialists in some field of science. They took the robot-thing apart, and studied every piece of it, by every possible means. The lab work was finished, twelve hours ago, at base. Since, they’ve been discussing and checking the meaning of their discoveries, and writing up the report.”
Jay Kalam leaned forward, anxiously.
“What did they find?”
Hal Samdu shook his rugged white head.
“I’m no scientist, Jay. You know that. It’s all in the envelope.”
“But,” the Commander asked, “in brief—”
“As you surmised, Jay, it’s an illegal robot. It makes use of biophysical principles forbidden in the same Green Hall statutes that outlawed the androids. The most similar illicit model in the museum was taken shortly after the war with the Medusae.
It was built by a young Dr. Enos Clagg, who was run down by the Legion and sentenced to three years on Ebron.”
“The details?”
Scowling with a painful effort to be clear, Hal Samdu touched one big knobby finger with another.
“First, Jay,” he rumbled, “they concluded that the thing was designed by a human engineer—a man trained on Earth or Mars.”
Jay Kalam nodded. “Why?”
“Because so many familiar engineering principles were used in its construction. There were none of those strange freaks of design—strange to us—that we found hi the machines of the Cometeers.
“The thing was driven by an atomic power tube. There were pinions, shafts, cams, cables, levers—all used precisely as a supremely good human engineer would use them, if you set him to build a mechanical imitation of—of whatever monster the thing was copied from.”
Jay Kalam was rubbing reflectively at his jaw.
“That fits Derron well enough,” he said. “He took high honors in the engineering section at the academy. But, for that matter, it also fits the female android, or Hannas, or Brelekko, or Comaine. What else, Hal?”
The
gigantic Captain-General bent down another gnarled finger.
“Second,” he said, “they agreed that the thing was built outside the System.”
Jay Kalam nodded again, without surprise. “Where?”
“On a planet somewhat larger than the Earth, they concluded, comparatively near a dying red sun—a star of the type designated as K9e. The surface gravitation of the planet is about 1.250g—about one and a quarter times Earth-gravity. The atmosphere is denser than Earth’s. It contains sufficient free oxygen to sustain human life —but also enough free chlorine to be very unpleasant.”
The Commander was listening intently.
“The basis of those conclusions—”
“The metals of the robot, in the first place. They are mostly aluminum and beryllium bronzes.
They are alloyed according to standard metallurgical formulae. But spectrographic analysis proves that they were not smelted from any ores mined in the System. The impurities are small in quantity, yet the metallurgists declare that the evidence is conclusive.
“The deposits of corrosion, in the second place, on the body of the thing. They contained chlorides, due to the action of free chlorine. And you recall the stink of chlorine in the air, when the thing appeared?”
Jay Kalam nodded, frowning intently.
“In the third place, Jay, there is the sort of life they found in the green slime clinging to the thing.
Micro-organisms of types unknown in the System. I’m no bacteriologist, and you’ll find details in the report. But those are queer things. They perish, in the normal conditions of the System, for want of chlorine. And thrive on the chlorine in some of the common bactericides. Some varieties break down chlorides, and liberate free chlorine. If such organisms ever get established in the oceans of Earth—” Hal Samdu’s rugged face set grimly. “I hope Derron doesn’t think of that!”
The Commander was asking, “What else?”
“They attacked the problem from another angle,” Hal Samdu continued. “The robot-thing was obviously a mechanical reproduction of a living original. It has many features, such as the scales, beak, teeth, gill, and nostril-vents, which, being useless to a machine, prove that conclusively. And those things also tell a great deal about the alien environment in which the original lived.”
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