The inner valve was open. A crew of silver-armored technicians were just marching out. Chan entered, as the last of them came through, and made an urgent gesture to the man at the controls. That man had already stiffened, however, listening.

  “Warning!” a magnetic speaker was crackling. “Close all locks— until Derron is caught. This man is now attempting to escape from the New Moon. There is a half million reward for him, dead or alive. Derron is six feet three, believed—”

  Chan saw quick suspicion change to deadly certainty in the eyes of the valve-keeper. He heard the beginning of a shout and caught the glint of weapons. But the geopellor was already lifting him toward the lock. His bright-clad fist shattered the glass over the emergency lever—intended to be used only if the great valve was closing on a man’s body. He pulled down the lever.

  The gate before him flung open, as the one behind automatically clanged shut in the

  face of pursuit. A blast of air spewed him out. The geopellor stopped his spinning flight, and brought him up to the platform where he had landed. He found the wire marked Sector 17-B, snapped the belt of his suit to it, and squeezed the little spindle. The geopellor flung him out along the wire.

  Five hundred miles to go. The great sign spread its web about him, silver wires shining bright against the dark of space. Great mirrors flashed against the sun; filters glowed red and blue and green. He glimpsed the gibbous Earth, huge and mistily brilliant, so near that he felt he could almost touch the ragged white patch that was a cyclonic storm over Europe.

  Five hundred miles—but he pushed the geopellor to a reckless pace, for a warning must be flashing out, he knew, over the wires about him. In four minutes—no more— he had released himself from the pilot wire, beside the silver ball of the control house.

  His searching eyes found the Phantom Atom. The tiny ship was safe, still hidden behind the great foil mirror. The geopellor carried him to its valve and he flung himself inside.

  The first intimation of disaster came when he saw that the prisoner he had left there, space armor welded to the housing, was gone. His heart stood still. Was this some new trick of the Basilisk? He opened the inner valve, and came face to face with a man waiting for him in the corridor.

  A very short fat man, with protruding middle and bald spherical head and wrinkled yellow skin. The same man—no mistaking him! —whom Jay Kalam had sent to pick his pockets in the Diamond Room. The intruder was blinking ominously, with pale small eyes. His fat hands held a thick cane pointing at Chan’s body—and a deadly little black orifice was visible in the ferrule that tipped it.

  “Come on in, Mr. Basilisk!” he wheezed triumphantly. “And match your mortal wits against Giles Habibula!”

  13 The Hundredth Man

  Hope came to the Legion with the first ultrawave message from Giles Habibula. Uncharacteristically laconic, it ran: Aboard Derron’s ship. Bound for mysterious object near Thuban in Draco. For life’s sake, follow! And the Legion followed. Jay Kalam put the mighty Inflexible at the head of Hal Samdu’s fleet of ten geodesic cruisers. At full power they reached northward, toward Alpha Draconis—which once had been the pole star of Earth. Toward what destination?

  Every officer in the fleet was trying to answer that question. Every electronic telescope and mass detector was driven to the utmost of its power searching for any mysterious object. By the time they were one day out from the New Moon, part of the answer had been discovered.

  Jay Kalam, tired and pale from the long strain of the chase, restlessly pacing the deep-piled rugs of his sound-proofed and ray-armored chambers in the heart of the Inflexible, paused at the signal from his communicator, and lifted the little black disk to his ear.

  “We’ve found it, Commander!” came an excited voice from the bridge. “Forty-four minutes of arc from Alpha Draconis. It’s still invisible—albedo must be very low. But

  the mass detectors indicate an object of nearly twenty million tons.

  “A puzzling thing, Commander. This object, whatever it is, must be a newcomer to the System. We estimate the distance from the sun at a little less than ten billion miles. Any object of that size would surely have been discovered by the Legion’s survey expedition, five years ago—if it had been there then!”

  Jay Kalam put the communicator to his lips.

  “Can you identify the object?”

  “Not yet,” came the reply. “Until we can pick it up on the screens, we won’t know whether it’s just a rock—or something else.”

  “Keep tele-periscopes focused on the spot,” Jay Kalam ordered. “And use every instrument to search space ahead of us, until we pick up Derron’s ship. Keep communications standing by for another message from Giles Habibula, and the vortex gun ready for action.”

  Shift and changing shift, the gun crew stood ready about the ponderous weapon. In every observatory on every racing ship, men searched the dark void amid the stars of the Dragon ahead. And the communications men waited for further word from Giles Habibula.

  But the weary Commander of the Legion, sleeplessly pacing the silent empty luxury of his apartments upon the flagship, restlessly combing his white forelock back with anxious thin hands, received other messages. They came by visiwave from the System behind— for the hard-driven fleet was already beyond the range of ultrawave communication. Their import was all of alarm.

  The first message came from the captain in charge of the plain-clothes men who had been detailed to shadow the three suspects on the New Moon—Amo Brelekko and John Comaine and Gaspar Hannas. All three had vanished.

  “John Comaine mysteriously disappeared from his laboratory, with two of our men on duty outside the only door,” the report stated. “Gaspar Hannas had locked himself in his empty treasure vault. His scream for aid was heard by communicator. When associates opened the vault, he was gone. Amo Brelekko was removed from the floor of the Diamond Room, as the little gambler Davian had been—and in his place, before the few appalled spectators left on the New Moon to see it, was dropped a decaying human skeleton which has been identified as that of a female android.”

  That made little sense to Jay Kalam. He pondered the implications of it, and then dispatched a message to the captain, asking for further information. The reply, relayed from Rocky Mountain Base, informed him that this officer had now also vanished.

  Km! Krrr! Krrr!

  The penetrating beat of his emergency signal announced the next message, and he heard the ragged voice of a distraught Legion Intelligence officer reading a note from Lars Eccard, Chairman of the Green Hall Council. All sixty members of the Council had been threatened with abduction, by the Basilisk. No ransom was demanded, and no escape was offered—

  “Chairman Eccard’s dictation was interrupted at that point,” the shaken voice

  continued. “Staff members rushed into his chambers and found him gone. Reliable reports from subordinate officers already confirm rumors that every member of the Council has disappeared.”

  The whole Green Hall—kidnapped! Staggered by that blow, Jay Kalam slumped heavily behind his desk. Those sixty men and women had formed the supreme government of the System. The chosen representatives of the local planetary governments, of capital and labor, of the various professions and sciences—they had all been snatched away.

  “Why?” The tired red eyes of the Commander stared across his great empty desk, at the black bunkhead. “Why take them?”

  With an uncanny promptness that startled him, the beat of his emergency signal answered. What he heard, when he put the communicator to his ear, was a rasping whisper, distorted in transmission,

  “I’ll tell you why, Commander,” it mocked him. “I took them because I want the System to know my power. I want every man on every planet to shudder and grow pale when he thinks of the Basilisk. I want men to look on me as they once regarded angry gods.

  “For I have suffered injuries that must be avenged.

  “To establish my new supremacy, I am taking one hundred men and women from the System. They have been the leaders of the foolish attempt to destroy me, and therefore I can deal with them without compunction. I shall use them without remorse for the text of a lesson to mankind. One, out of the hundred, will be allowed to survive and return, to bring that lesson to the rest of mankind.”

  An unpleasant chuckle rasped from the instrument.

  “One hundred, Commander!” croaked that thin, mad voice. “You already know the most of them. Aladoree, the keeper of the peace. John Star. Bob Star, and his wife and their child. A few more of your most conspicuous Legionnaires. Two dozen private individuals —among them three men from the New Moon, Hannas and Comaine and Brelekko, The sixty members of the Green Hall Council —to let them consider all they have done to the Purples.”

  The humming whisper gave way again to that sardonic chuckle, Jay Kalam’s hand tensed and trembled on the little black disk, and his aching body was cold with sudden sweat.

  “The total now is ninety-nine,” that husky rasping ran on. “I need one more to complete my hundred. Knowing the other ninety-nine, Commander Kalam, I need not tell you who the other is to be.”

  With that, the humming whisper ceased. Jay Kalam dropped the Communicator. His swift hand snatched the blaster from his belt; he spun to search the empty room— knowing all the time that such precautions were futile.

  Nothing happened, however, in the long moment that he held his breath. He made himself holster the weapon again, and groped for the communicator to call Rocky Mountain Base, now a billion miles behind and more, through the visiwave relay.

  “Did you pick up that message?” he asked hoarsely. “Is triangulation possible?”

  And back across that void, that light would have taken many hours to bridge, the voice of the operator came instantly, consternation not hidden by its humming distortion.

  “We heard it, Commander. But triangulation was impossible— because the message was transmitted from our own station! We haven’t yet discovered how our transmitter circuits picked it up. But guard yourself, Commander Kalam. You got the threat against yourself?”

  “I did,” Jay Kalam said. “If I am kidnapped, Hal Samdu will take my place and the Legion will carry on.”

  He dialed off, called Hal Samdu on the Bellatrix, and told that veteran spaceman of these disastrous new developments.

  “Draw up beside the Inflexible, Hal,” he said, “and come aboard. You will take command if I become the hundredth man.”

  “Aye, Jay.” The rumble of Hal Samdu came thinned and furred through the communicator. “But what of Giles—have you heard anything?”

  “Not yet,” Jay Kalam told him.

  “I’m afraid for Giles, Jay.” The deep voice seemed hoarse with alarm. “It’s true he’s an old man, now, and not so clever as he used to be. This Derron is powerful and desperate—and it’s a whole day, now, since we heard anything.”

  Jay Kalam lowered his communicator, with a helpless shrug—and instantly the throb of the emergency signal bade bun take it up again. He touched the dial, and put the little black disk to his ear.

  “Jay! Do you hear me, Jay?” It was the long-awaited voice of Giles Habibula, thinned, muffled with the hum of the instrument, and hoarse with some desperate anxiety.

  “I do, Giles,” he said into the little disk. “What is it?”

  “Turn back, Jay,” came the faint, wheezing voice. “For life’s sake, turn your fleet back to the System. Call off your bloodhounds of space, and leave us be.”

  “Turn back?” cried Jay Kalam. “Why?”

  “Ah, Jay, there’s been a monstrous error. This is not the Basilisk I’ve caught. My companion is but an honest, luckless man. And your chase is a fearful blunder, Jay. It is drawing you far out into space, and leaving the System defenseless.

  “In Earth’s name, Jay, I beg you to turn back.”

  “Giles!” the Commander shouted. “If you’re speaking under torture—”

  A dead click told him that the other instrument had been dialed off. He was trying to call back when the softer note of the ship’s signal rang. He heard the excited voice of the executive officer.

  “We’ve got it, Commander! Derron’s ship. Dead ahead, toward that object in Draco. Only forty tons—which is why it took us so long to pick it up. But it has power enough, apparently, to hold its lead. We have the range. What is your order?”

  Jay Kalam’s hand tightened on the communicator. A cold wind seemed to blow around him, blowing away the ship, and blowing away the years. He saw Giles Habibula, a stout little man, strutting, grinning, as he had been when they were privates together. He knew Habibula was on the ship ahead. But the rushing of that wind became the rusty whisper of the Basilisk, jeering at him. No man, not even a friend, could be weighed against his duty to the Legion.

  “Do you hear me, Commander?” the executive officer was insisting. “What is your order?”

  Jay Kalam slowly closed his eyes, and opened them again. His lean hand made a slow salute. Low and forced, his voice said:

  “Fire at once with the vortex gun. Destroy the vessel ahead.”

  Samdu’s battleship, the long Bellatrix, was slipping in beside the mighty flagship when the first vortex was fired. Watching through the ports of an air lock, the Admiral-General saw the great blinding knot of atomic disruption spinning out ahead, flaming wider as its expanding fields of instability consumed all the matter in its reach.

  “Well, Mr. Derron,” the gigantic spaceman muttered with a grim satisfaction, “or Mr. Basilisk—now let’s see you get away!”

  Hard-driven geodynes were pushing the two colossal ships through space—or, more accurately, around it—at effective speeds far beyond the velocity of light. But they came together so gently that their crews could feel no shock. Air valves were joined and sealed. And Hal Samdu stalked impatiently aboard the great flagship.

  “Quick!” he boomed to the officers who received him. “Take me to Commander Kalam at once.”

  But, when swift elevators and moving cat-walks had brought them to the hidden door behind the chartroom, the Commander of the Legion failed to answer their signal.

  The alarmed executive officer came to unlock the armored door. Hal Samdu stalked ahead into the soft-lit luxurious apartments of

  Jay Kalam. Silence met him, and emptiness. The Commander of the Legion was gone.

  “Poor old Jay,” rumbled Hal Samdu. “The hundredth man!”

  He turned abruptly upon the officers about him.

  “Derron’s ship is still in range? Then fire again with the vortex gun. Keep firing till you get it.”

  14 Man and Android

  Facing Giles Habibula in the narrow space within the valve of the Phantom Atom, Chan Derron caught his breath. Still he was weaponless—and the black tiny hole in

  the tip of the old man’s level cane looked at him like a deadly eye.

  “Habibula?” his startled voice echoed. “Not the great Giles Habibula?”

  Chan was weaponless—but the heavy little pack of the geopellor was still strapped to his shoulders, its control spindle still gripped in his hand. It could make a living projectile of his body. His hand began to close.

  “Wait, lad!”

  The old man lowered the menacing cane. His fishy eyes rolled fearfully and his wheezing voice was hoarse with a desperate appeal.

  “For life’s sake, lad, forget your mortal tricks. There’s no need for you to crush old Giles Habibula to a bloody pulp with your blessed geopellor. For he’s no enemy, lad. Ah, no! He comes to you as a precious friend!”

  Chan Derron studied the old man with a grim suspicion. And then he saw, behind Giles Habibula, the money stacked on the deck. Thick packets of new Green Hall certificates, bound into great bales and piled high against the bulkheads. The wrapper on every packet was printed with a yellow crescent. Here was the treasure of Caspar Hannas, taken from the New Moon’s vaults!

  His hand jerked tense on the little black spindle.

  “You aren’t—” he gasped hoarsely. “You aren’t the Basilisk?”

  Giles Habibula quivered. The seamed moon of his face turned slightly green. He caught a croaking, asthmatic breath.

  “No, lad!” he gulped. “In life’s name—no! I’m just a poor old soldier. Ah, but a hunted fugitive, lad. A friendless deserter from the Legion.”

  “Deserter, eh?” The dark-stained eyes of Chan Derron narrowed. “If you really are the famous Giles Habibula, why should you desert? And what are you doing here?”

  Giles Habibula blinked his colorless eyes.

  “Thank you, lad,” his thin voice quavered. “Ah, so, lad, from the bottom of my failing old heart, I thank you for calling me famous. For the Legion has forgotten me, lad.”

  He wiped his eyes with the back of a fat hand.

  “Once old Giles Habibula was the hero of the Legion,” he sighed. “Aye, of the whole precious System. For his noble courage, lad, and his blazing genius, have twice saved the very life of mankind—once from the hateful Medusae, and again from the frightful Cometeers. And what reward has he got, lad?”

  He choked and sobbed and gasped for breath.

  “A beggar’s reward, lad. Old Giles is forgotten. His precious medals tarnish hi a box. The few miserable dollars they gave him are all drunk up. A lonely, hopeless old soldier, dying on the ungrateful charity of those who had been friends—ah, lad, but life was mortal black—until he heard of your exploits!”

  A brighter look came over his yellow face.

  “Ah, so, lad!” he cried. “You’re the sort that old Giles was, in the days when he was young. A bold man, aye! Reckless and dashing. Not caring whether he drove to sunward of the law, or to spaceward. Taking his wine and his gold and his love wherever he found them! Ah, lad, old Giles has come to you, to beg you to help him find his own lost youth.”

  The hand of Chan Derron tightened again on the spindle.

  “Don’t lad!” gasped Giles Habibula. “Don’t—for life’s sake. It’s known to all the Legion that you’re the Basilisk. Ah, so, and that’s a thing of which you should be precious proud—to stand alone against the law of all the planets, and mock the Legion of Space.”

 

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