Where had it come from?

  Then delicate hands trembling a little, he unfolded the heavy red sheet. The impression of a black serpent, at the top of it, formed another B. Beneath it, in a black script precise as engraving—the ink still damp enough to blot his fingers—was written:

  My Dear Kalam:

  Since you are going out to the New Moon, will you kindly take Caspar Hannas a message from me? Will you tell him that nothing—not even the protection of the Legion of Space—will protect his most fortunate patron, every day, from the fate of Clovis Field?

  The Basilisk

  The Pawn of Malice

  The Solar System is curiously flat. The two dimensions of the ecliptic plane are relatively crowded with worlds and their satellites, and the cosmic debris of meteors, asteroids, and comets. But the third is empty.

  Outbound interplanetary traffic, by an ancient rule of the spaceways, arches a little to northward of the ecliptic plane, inbound, a little to the southward, to avoid both the debris of the system and danger of head-on collisions. Beyond these charted lanes, there is nothing.

  A tiny ship, however, was now driving outward from the sun, parallel to the ecliptic plane and two hundred million miles beyond the limits of the space-lanes. Its hull was covered with thin photo-electronic cells capable of being adjusted to absorb any desired fraction of the incident radiation—making the vessel, when they were in operation, virtually invisible in space.

  Not thirty feet long, and weighing too few tons to have perceptible effect on the mass-detectors of a Legion cruiser beyond ten million miles, the ship had power to race the fleetest of them.

  Her geodynes were of the new type designed by Max Eleroid. Far more powerful than the old, they were yet so delicately matched and balanced that the ship could be landed on a planet, or even worked into a berth, without the use of auxiliary rockets.

  The Phantom Atom had compact accommodations for a crew of four. But only one man was aboard—now staring grimly at his own picture, fastened beside another on

  the metal bulkhead behind the tiny, vitrilith-windowed pilot bay.

  ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD! That was the heading, in bold crimson letters, above the full color picture. Beneath it was a block of smaller black type:

  This sum will be paid by the Legion of Space, for aid and information leading to the capture or the death of Chan Derron, escaped convict, believed to be known also as the “Basilisk.”

  Description: Stands six feet three. Earth-weight, two hundred ten. Hair, bronze. Complexion, deeply space-tanned. Eyes, gray. Slight scars on face, neck, and back, such as due to extreme interrogation.

  This man is physically powerful, intelligent, and desperate. A former captain in the Legion, he was convicted of murder and treason. Two years ago he escaped from the Legion prison on Ebron. Clues of him have been found on several planets.

  Officers of all planets are warned that Derron is a dangerous man. He was trained in the Legion academy. He is believed to be armed with a mysterious and deadly instrumentality. It is advised that he be disabled before he is accosted.

  Jay Kalam

  Commander of the Legion of Space

  Four years had made a difference between the picture and the man. The picture, taken after his arrest, looked bleak and grim enough. But Chan Derron, in those four bitter years, had grown harder and leaner and stronger. Some frank boyish simplicity was gone from his dark-tanned face, and in its place was something— savage.

  He turned from the picture to another posted beside his own. His great brown hand saluted it, and a brief, sardonic grin crossed his square-jawed face.

  “Comrades, eh, Luroa?” he muttered. “Together against the Legion!”

  He had taken the other notice from the same Legion bulletin board, in old mud-walled Ekarhenium, on Mars, where he had found his own. The two notices were displayed side by side, at the top of the board—offering the two biggest rewards. And he had been dazzled by the sheer, startling beauty of the other face.

  A woman’s face, wondrous with something beyond perfection. Beneath the dark, red-gleaming hair, her features were regular and white—and something shone from them. Her eyes were a clear green, wide apart, with the slightest hint of a slant. Full-lipped and red, her long mouth smiled with a hidden mockery. A woman’s face—but she was no woman. For the text beneath her picture ran:

  Rewards totalling two hundred and fifty thousand dollars will be paid by the Legion of Space, the Green Hall Council, and various planetary governments, for the being named Luroa, pictured above, living or dead. She is not a human being, but a female android. The history of the android traffic is perhaps not generally known. But for many years, at his laboratory hidden on a remote planetoid, a gifted criminal biologist, Eldo Arrynu, engaged in the manufacture of these illegal synthetic beings. He headed a ring of criminals that made a vast income through smuggling these

  dangerous creatures to wealthy purchasers throughout the system.

  Stephen Oreo, the male android whose unprincipled cunning came near destroying the system during the war with the Cometeers, is typical of these illicit creations: perfect of body, brilliant of brain, but morally monstrous.

  The entity Luroa was the last creation of Eldo Arrynu, and she is believed to be the last android in existence. The scientist refused to sell her. He kept her with him, until the attack of the Cometeers. She escaped, however, when all others on the planetoid were killed. Since, she has been the gifted and ruthless leader of the remnants of this interplanetary gang.

  Beyond the single picture above, discovered in the records on the planetoid, no description of the android Luroa is available. Nothing is known of her surviving associates.

  Officers are warned that this sinister being possesses a mind of phenomenal keenness, that she is pitilessly free of all human scruples, and that her alluring beauty is her most deadly weapon. She is fully trained in many lines of science, physically more powerful, and far quicker than most men, and skilled in the use of all weapons.

  Officers are advised to destroy this being upon identification.

  Jay Kalam

  Commander of the Legion of Space

  “A quarter of a million, darling!” Chan Derron whispered. “And I think you’re worth it—on looks alone!” The hard grin seamed his dark face again. “For your own sake, I hope they haven’t got you overestimated as much as they have me.”

  He blew the smiling picture an ironic kiss, from his big brown hand, and then bent again to the hooded view-plate of the chart cabinet. Miles of microfilm, within the instrument, intricate reels and cams and gears, ingenious prisms and lenses, could give a true stereoscopic picture of the System, as it would appear from any point in its stellar vicinity, at any desired telescopic power, at any time within a thousand years. The integrators could quickly calculate the speediest, safest, or most economical route from any one point to any other.

  The big man found the light fleck that was Oberon, outermost satellite of cloudy-green Uranus. His great hands deftly moved the dials, to bring it into coincidence with the tri-crossed hairs in the view-plate. He read the destination from the indicators and set it up on the keys. And then, while the humming mechanism was analysing and re-integrating the many harmonic factors involved in moving the Phantom Atom across a billion miles of space, to a safe landing on that cold and lonely moon, his bronze-glinting eyes went back to the smiling picture on the bulkhead.

  “Well, Luroa,” he said slowly, “I guess it’s going to be goodbye.” He waved a grave farewell, to her white and mocking loveliness. “You know, we could have made quite a couple, you and I—if I had just been what the Legion takes me for!”

  His bronze head shook, his brown face wistful.

  “But my lady, I’m not. I’m no reckless pirate of the spaceways— unless by dire necessity. I’m just a plain soldier of the Legion, in incredibly and peculiarly bad luck.

  I haven’t got any ‘mysterious and deadly instrumentality.’”

  His head lifted a little. His eyes lighted. His voice softened, confidentially.

  “But I’ve one secret, Luroa!”

  Smiling again, he pointed at a series of figures on the log-tape beside the hooded glass.

  “No secret weapon,” he whispered. “And nothing like the secret of your life, Luroa. But it’s enough to mean new hope to me.” His great head lifted, with a fierce little gesture of pride. “It means one more chance.”

  A moment he looked silently at the smiling picture and the green-eyed loveliness of Luroa looked back, he thought, almost with a mocking comprehension.

  “It was like this, my dear,” he said. “The last time Hal Samdu chased me, I got a hundred million miles ahead of his fleet, running out north. I got far beyond visual range. Or beyond the normal range of the mass-detectors. I was rigging up a new hook-up, trying to find if old Hal was still on the trail, when I found—something else.”

  He shook his finger at her.

  “Don’t ask me what it is, Luroa. It’s too far off, with whatever albedo it has, to show even a point in the system’s best telescope. But the mass is of the order of ten million tons, and the distance approximately ten billion miles, estimated by triangulation.

  “Doesn’t matter, what it is. A chunk of rock, or a projectile from Andromeda. I’m going out there. Just one more landing first, at some out-station, to get food and cathode plates. And then I’m off. I’ll find out what it is. And do a bit of research I have in mind. And —well, wait.”

  Chan Derron’s air of lightness was growing very thin. A hoarse little break came in his voice.

  “Wait,” he whispered slowly. “With all the equipment on the little Phantom Atom to manufacture food and air and water with atomic power, I can last a lifetime—if I must. I can wait and listen. Even at that distance, I ought to pick up something with the visiwave— enough to know if Chan Derron can ever come back.”

  He tried to grin, again, and waved his hand at the picture of Luroa.

  “Till then, my darling,” his voice came huskily, “I guess it’s goodbye. To you and the Legion and the System. To every man and woman I ever knew. To every street I ever walked. To every bird and every tree. To every living being I ever saw.

  “Goodbye—”

  Chan Derron gulped suddenly. He turned quickly away from the two pictures on the bulkhead, and looked out into the depthless dark of space. His eyes blinked, once or twice. And his great tanned hands stiffened like iron on the vernier-wheel of the Phantom Atom.

  The geodynes made a soft musical humming. There was a slow muffled clicking from

  the automatic pilot. Chan Derron stared northward, into the star-shot dark. There— somewhere in Draco—lay that unknown object, the only possible haven left.

  It would be like this, always, he thought. Silence and darkness. He would hear the murmur of his machines, and his own rusty voice, and nothing else. He would talk too much to himself. He would look across the cold dark at the bright points of other worlds. And wonder—

  Tchlink!

  It was a soft little sound. But Chan Derron stiffened as if it had been the crash of a meteor’s impact. He spun, and his hand flashed for the blaster hanging in its holster on the bulkhead. Then he saw the thing that had made the sound, lying on the view-plate of the star-chart cabinet.

  The breath went out of him. His hand dropped from the weapon, helplessly. His great shoulders sagged a little. For a long time he stood staring at it, with all the strength and hope running out of him like blood from a wound.

  “Even here!” His bronze head shook, wearily. “Even out here.” Slowly, at last, he picked up the sheet of heavy red paper, that had been pinned beneath the crude little serpent of black-burned clay.

  He read the neat black script:

  My Dear Captain Derron:

  Congratulations on the brilliance and the daring of your last escape. Samdu has long since turned back, to try to guard the New Moon—from me! For the moment, you are safe. But I must give you two points of warning.

  You will find alarm and danger waiting for you on the moons of Uranus. For the Legion base there has been tipped off that you are on your way.

  And you will be held responsible, Captain, I fear, for the things that are going to happen on the New Moon at every midnight—whether you are there or a billion miles away.

  Your faithful shadow, The Basilisk

  Stark dread had driven its stunning needle into Chan Derron’s spine. He stood dazed, motionless. The mockery of that message swam and blurred upon the red page. And a slow, deadly cold crept into his paralyzed body.

  It was more than frightening to know that his every act was followed by a sinister and inescapable power. Frightful to know that the incredible arm of the Basilisk could reach him, even here. Omniscience! Omnipotence! The powers, almost of a god, in the hands of—what?

  Almost he could feel that fearful presence with him. He peered about the tiny pilot bay. It was dimly lit with the shaded instrument lights and the faint starlight that struck through the ports. He snapped on a brighter light. He wanted to search the ship. But of course that was no use. There couldn’t be anybody here. The mass-detectors with his new hook-up would have given automatic warning of the approach of the mass of a man’s body, within a million miles of the ship.

  He caught his breath, trying to shake off that shuddery chill, and in spite of himself he began to talk.

  “Why keep after me?” he begged the empty air. “I suppose you picked me to take the blame at first, just because I happened to be there outside when you murdered Dr. Eleroid. But haven’t I suffered enough—for nothing at all?”

  His great clenched fists came up against his breast. He choked back the words— trying doggedly to keep loneliness and strain from cracking his mind. But he couldn’t stop the stream of bitter recollection. Ever since his escape in the light cruiser he had since rebuilt into the Phantom Atom, he had been in flight from that merciless and omnipotent tormentor. All he wanted was a chance—half a chance—to find a new identity and begin a new life—anywhere!

  But that man—if it was a man—who hid behind the name of a fabulous dragon and confused his other victims with a trail of clues pointing always at Chan himself—the Basilisk wouldn’t let him get away.

  There was the time he landed at a lonely plantation on Ceres, hoping to buy supplies with a few pounds of platinum he had mined from a chance strike in the meteor drift. He found the planter and his wife murdered, their mansion plundered, and a Legion cruiser approaching. He barely got away—to find the loot in his own cabin aboard the Phantom Atom.

  His bronze-gray eyes began to blink when he thought of the time in old Ekarhenium, when he had left the little ship hidden hi the desert and found an honest laboratory job. The first day he worked, his new employer’s office safe was robbed—and the plunder found in Chan’s own desk.

  “And that’s not half!” In spite of him, his savage emotion burst into speech again. “There was the time I left the Phantom Atom on an eccentric orbit around Venus, and dropped down the shadow cone with a geopeller. Buried my space suit hi the jungle and slipped into New Chicago. That time you let me think I had got away—”

  He tried to laugh, and caught a sobbing gasp of breath.

  “Until I began seeing my face on all the telescreens! Wanted for another killing—” He shrugged heavily. “That murdered guard at the Terrestrial Bank, with my face on the film of his gun-camera—I don’t know how you did it.

  “But isn’t all that enough?”

  Choking back the useless words, he stared around the pilot bay again. He was alone. There was only the automatic pilot, clucking softly now and then as it set the cruiser back on course, and the silent serpent of black clay lying on that thick red sheet, and the cold feel of mocking eyes upon him.

  “All right, Mr. Basilisk!”

  He snatched the serpent, suddenly, and hurled it to shatter into black fragments on the deck. A savage anger took his breath and shook his limbs and roared in his ears.

  “Look out!” He gasped harshly. “Because I’m through running away. I don’t quite know what I can do—or how—against you and all the Legion. But—look out!”

  He stopped the geodynes, and swung grimly to the chart cabinet. The view-plate showed him the greenish point of Earth, and presently the silver atom of the New Moon beside it. He read its position on the calibrated screen, and turned to the calculator to set up his first hopeless move against his unknown tormentor.

  5 ‘At the Blue Unicorn—’

  The mighty Inflexible slipped gently into a berth against one of the six vast tubular arms of the New Moon’s structure. Massive keys locked her trim hundred thousand tons of fighting strength into position. Her valves opened, to communicate with the artificial satellite.

  Three men hi plain clothes were sitting at a table in a long, richly simple chamber hidden aft the chartroom of the flagship. The slender man had chosen conservatively dark, exquisitely tailored civilian garb. The white-haired, rugged faced giant had attired himself hi lustrous silks that reflected every bright hue of the New Moon’s mirrors; he had left behind his tinkling sheaf of medals with a visible reluctance. The careless gray cloak of the third fell loose on his short but massive figure; a heavy cane was gripped in his pudgy yellow hand.

  “For life’s sake, Jay, what’s the mortal haste?” The round, blue-nosed face of Giles Habibula looked imploringly at the tall Commander. “Here we’ve just sat down to get our precious breath, after that frightful dash across the void of space. We’ve had but a whiff of dinner, Jay. And now you say that we must go!”

  Great Hal Samdu looked at him grimly.

  “The dashing could have harmed you little, Giles,” he rumbled, “when you were fast in a drunken sleep. And if you’ve had but a whiff of Jay’s good food—then a whole taste would founder a Venusian gorox!”

  Jay Kalam nodded gravely.

  “We’re at the New Moon, Giles. Caspar Hannas is waiting for us, at the valve. And we’ve a job to do.”

  Giles Habibula shook the wrinkled yellow sphere of his head, and turned fishy pleading eyes to the Commander.

 

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