The Cometeers, page 4
part #2 of Legion Series
The Invincible was now driving outward from the sun, away from yellow-red Mars and the greenish fleck of Phobos. Her humming geodynes – electromagnetic geodesic deflectors, in the language of the engineers – acted to deflect every atom of ship, load, and crew very slightly from the coordinates of the familiar continuum of the four dimensions, so that the vessel was driven around space-tune, rather than through it, by a direct reaction against the warp of space itself.
In that hidden room, however, even the vibrant droning of the geodynes was shut away, as if they ran in another space. Nothing gave any faintest sense of the ship’s tremendous acceleration and velocity. The crispness of the cooled artificial air suggested springtime in the woods of far-off Earth.
“Sit down, Bob.” Jay Kalam nodded at a great chair, but Bob Star felt too tense and breathless to sit. “I’m going to tell you about the prisoner we call Merrin, and the unfortunate circumstances that place this grave duty upon you.”
“This man – ” Bob Star was trying to seem calm, but his dry voice trembled and sank. “This man you call Merrin – is he – is he Stephen Orco?”
A shadow of troubled amazement crossed the commander’s lean face.
“That is a high secret of the Legion.” His low voice was taut and his dark eyes searching. “A secret you had no right to know, before today. How did you find out?”
“My mother described the prisoner, back there in the Jade Room,” Bob Star said. “I knew Stephen Orco, and knew there couldn’t be another like him. But I thought – ” His voice caught, and his troubled fingers came absently up to that pale, triangular scar on his forehead. “I thought he was dead.”
“I’m glad that’s how you knew.” The commander seemed to relax.
“Because Stephen Orco is dead – and buried – to all except a trusted few.” His face turned grave again. “When did you know him?”
“Nine years ago.” Bob Star’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “On Earth, at the academy. He was in the graduating section, during my first term. He was handsome, brilliant. At first I was attracted to him. But then – ”
He broke off abruptly, his face pale and hard.
“What happened, Bob?” Jay Kalam’s tone was warm with a puzzled sympathy. “Did you quarrel?”
“It was our affair.” Bob Star nodded bleakly. “For years I meant to find him, as soon as I graduated, and – settle it. But then he showed the Legion what sort he is, with the Jovian Revolt. And I thought he got death for his treason.” He peered at the tall commander. “Wasn’t that the sentence?”
“It’s what the public records show,” the commander said quietly. “But you must tell me about you and Stephen Orco.”
“I can’t!” A sort of panic shook Bob Star. “I haven’t told anyone – not even my own parents.”
“I need to know,” Jay Kalam insisted softly. “Because your singular duty now must be a consequence of that incident – whatever it was.”
Bob Star stood looking for a moment at Jay Kalam, his face hard with a long-remembered bitterness. He nodded soberly.
“You know the tradition of hazing at the academy?”
“The officers have always tolerated it,” Jay Kalam said. “It is believed to be good for discipline.”
“Maybe it is – usually.” Bob Star shrugged impatiently, as if to shake off the burden of that old bitterness. “Anyhow, you know the rule that each new cadet must accept and obey one command from each man in the graduating section?”
The commander nodded quietly.
“I suppose it isn’t bad, usually,” Bob Star went on. “The graduates are learning to be officers, and the new boys learning discipline. The commands are commonly harmless, and I suppose the custom usually makes for comradeship as well as discipline.”
A cruel emotion quivered in his voice.
“But Stephen Orco was no usual student. A giant of a man. He was remarkably good-looking, and a great athlete. His hair was red as flame. His eyes were peculiar – a bright, cold blue, and always shining with a clever malice. The instructors used to say he was the most brilliant cadet ever at the academy.”
Bob Star’s narrowed eyes were staring past Jay Kalam at the dark-hued patterns of a priceless Titanian hanging. In the pain of that old injury, he had forgotten his first awe of the tall commander. His words fell swiftly, hard as slivers of ice.
“Stephen Orco had no real friends, I think. All the boys must have been secretly afraid of him. Yet he did have a kind of popularity. His remarkable strength and his malicious wit made it uncomfortable to be his enemy. More than that, he had a kind of evil fascination.
“He was a born leader. His reckless audacity matched his uncommon abilities. He could dare anything. And he had a pride to match his capacities. It made him try to excel in everything – usually with success. It seemed to me that he had a jealous enmity toward every possible rival. He loved no one. He was completely selfish in every friendship.
“From the first day, he hated me.”
The commander looked faintly startled, beneath his grave reserve.
“Do you know why?”
“Jealousy, I suppose,” Bob Star said. “He knew I was John Star’s heir. He assumed that I would be chosen to take my mother’s place as keeper of the peace.” He shook his head. “There couldn’t have been any other reason.”
“Did he mistreat you?”
“From the first day.” Bob Star’s nervous fingers traced that scar again. “He injured me in every way he could. He tried to keep me from winning any honors – perhaps he wanted to keep me from qualifying to be keeper. He did his best to turn all the instructors and the other students against me. He used me for the butt of his cruel practical jokes. He made things pretty rough for me, until he graduated.”
He paused unhappily, biting his quivering lip.
“I’ve tried to forget what he did to me,” he whispered. “But there was one thing – ”
“Yes?” the commander urged him. “What was that?”
“It was one night, just before the end of the term,” he went on abruptly, his low voice quick and breathless. “I was walking alone on the campus – I was worn out from my first examination in geodesic navigation, and upset because somebody had poured ink over all my notes and a finished term paper in my desk – I suppose Stephen Orco was responsible for that, too, though I never really knew.
“Anyhow I met him in the dark, with three of his friends. Or perhaps I shouldn’t call them friends – it was fear that held them around him, not affection. They stopped me. Stephen Orco asked me if I had obeyed that customary command from him. I said I hadn’t. He turned to the others. They whispered. I heard the others snicker. Then he came back to me, and gave me his command.”
Bob Star paused, white-faced.
“What was that command?”
“He ordered me to repeat a statement after him. An ugly thing. He wanted me to say that I wasn’t John Star’s son. He wanted me to say that my father’s infamous cousin, Eric the Pretender, had been my mother’s lover, and that I was that traitor’s son. He wanted me to say that I was a coward and a weakling, unfit to be the keeper. He wanted me to swear, on my honor as a future officer of the Legion, that his monstrous lie was true.
“Of course I wouldn’t.” Bob Star’s low voice was hoarse again with that remembered pain. “One of his friends objected that the hazing tradition gave him no right to go so far, but one glance from Orco was enough to shut him up.
“We were near the academy museum. It was closed and dark, but one of the men had been doing research on the old weapons displayed there, and he had a key. Orco made him open the back door, and they dragged me into the building.
“They took me down into a little basement room, where they wouldn’t be interrupted – for I had made friends of my own, in spite of Orco. They did various things to me, but I didn’t speak. Stephen Orco’s terrible pride was burning cold in his eyes. I think my stubbornness made him angry – if you can imagine that.
“He exhausted the customary penalties, and thought of new ones. He was clever, and he had a taste for such work. Even after his three companions got frightened, he wouldn’t agree to let me go.
“Finally, he sent one of the others up to break open a display case and bring him down a rusty torture implement that dated from the last corrupt reigns of the Empire, when the democratic Greens were about to overthrow the power-rotted Purples. A device invented to break political prisoners. It was called the Iron Confessor.”
“Huh?” The commander peered suddenly at that pale scar, with dark, startled eyes. “I think I remember seeing that display. Isn’t the thing a sort of helmet?”
“There’s a wide iron ring that goes around the head,” Bob Star said huskily. “And a sort of three-edged blade that can be forced through a hole in it, as the screws are tightened, into the scalp and the skull of the victim.
“I think Stephen Orco was showing his jealousy, then. He couldn’t forget that I came from the old imperial family. If he had been John Star’s son – or the Pretender’s either – I think he would have been plotting to restore the Empire. Anyhow, he called that torture device the Purple crown, and I could see the savage envy in the way he made me wear it.”
Jay Kalam stood staring at the scar. “He didn’t do – that!”
“He made his men hold me,” Bob Star said. “He put that ring on my head, and tightened the screws until I felt the blood running down my face. He kept commanding me to repeat the wicked lie. Still I wouldn’t do it, and my silence seemed to goad him.
“The Iron Confessor was more than the ring and the blade. There was another part, that had been smashed before it was put in the museum. Orco repaired that, while his men held me there with that blade in my skull. I don’t know exactly what it was, or how it worked – I didn’t have much attention left, just then, for mechanical details. But Orco said it used supersonic vibration, tuned to stimulate the pain centers of the brain. It looked like a radio amplifier. A cable ran from it to that three-edged blade. What it did was to transform a voice into sensations of intolerable pain.
“Stephen Orco stood in front of me, when he got it hooked up. The room was dark, but I could see his face in the glow from the tubes of that device. The hair red like flame. The blue eyes triumphant and mocking and terrible. He began talking into a little microphone, and that thing turned his voice into great waves of red agony beating at my mind.
“It felt unendurable. But I was already exhausted from trying to get away. The others were all grown men, and trained athletes. I was twelve years old, growing weak from loss of blood, and already half-unconscious with pain. There was nothing I could do.
“Orco kept on talking, gradually twisting the dials of that fiendish device to step up the intensity of agony. The Iron Confessor had been invented by my own family, he said, to extract confessions from enemies. It was guaranteed, he said, to make anybody confess any-thing.
“He said it was based on the secret principles of political conversion first discovered by a party called the Reds, a thousand years ago. The tuned ultrasonic vibrations from that blade could destroy the synaptic patterns of my brain, he said – to break my will and make the truth of everything he told me.
“And I was terribly afraid for a while – afraid of yielding to him. But suddenly, even with that knife in my skull and his voice burning like a flame into my brain, I felt that I was strong enough. I felt that nothing he could do would beat me. I looked up at him, and told him to do his worst, and promised to kill him whenever I got the chance.
“That seemed to heighten his anger. He stepped up the pain of that vibration again, and he said he was going to fix me so that I’d be afraid to kill anybody. Then he repeated that wicked lie, and kept commanding me to swear that it was true.
“ ‘Say it, pup!’ he would shout at me, his voice trembling with his own fury and transformed to pure agony flaming out from that blade in my skull. Then he would turn up the amplifier. And then he would shout again, ‘Say it, pup!’
“I didn’t say it – not at least so long as I was conscious. But I’m not sure what really happened, toward the end. It was a kind of nightmare. That dark room, and his face proud and angry and dreadful in that faint glow of light, and his voice hammering at my mind with red agony.
“Say it, pup!”
“I knew at the end that my will was weaker than that machine. And I must have finally given in – I’m afraid I did.” Bob Star stood shuddering for a moment, his thin hands clenched. “I don’t know what happened,” he repeated huskily. “But it’s hard to imagine that Stephen Orco gave up before I spoke.”
“The next thing I really knew, I was in bed in the infirmary, with my head bandaged and a nurse giving me a shot of something to quiet my nerves. She told me that Stephen Orco and his friends had brought me there about dawn. Their story was that they had found me wandering on the beach, under the cliffs, with my head slashed open.
“I told everybody that I had fallen in the dark, and hurt myself accidentally.”
“Why did you do that?” Jay Kalam shook his head, in puzzled reproof. “Why didn’t you report the truth? Stephen Orco would have been punished and discharged from the Legion – he would never have had the opportunity to lead the Jovian Revolt.”
“It was our quarrel,” Bob Star whispered hoarsely. “Ever since those vibrations of pain were burning into my brain, I’ve meant to kill him, if I could.” He shook his head and muttered again, uncertainly, “ – if I could.”
“How’s that?” The commander gave him a long, troubled look. “Assuming that it became your duty to kill Stephen Orco, and that you had the means at hand, couldn’t you do it?”
“I don’t quite know.” Bob Star shivered again. “I can’t remember what happened at last, or whether I really gave up. He kept promising to break me, so that I could never kill anybody. I’m afraid – afraid he did. Because I think my brain was damaged by that ultrasonic vibration – if that was what it was. There’s still a pain throbbing in my head. A little hammer of red agony, pounding day and night. In nine years, it hasn’t stopped.”
Bob Star’s face was white, and sweat had broken out on his forehead.
“I wasn’t a coward – before that night,” he whispered hoarsely. “I wasn’t the weakling he wanted to make me.” He sank abruptly into the big chair, looking miserably up at Jay Kalam. “But now, commander – I don’t know.”
Chapter 5
The Honor of the Legion
The tall commander of the Legion stood for a time scraping thoughtfully with one lean finger at the lean angle of his jaw, studying Bob Star.
“I’m glad you’ve told me this,” he said at last, his voice quiet and very grave. “I understand the way you feel, because once I thought it would be impossible for me to kill a man.” His dark eyes closed for a moment, and his face drew stern as if with some memory of pain.
“But sometimes it must be done. I learned that long ago, and found that I could do it.”
He stepped abruptly forward.
“And so must you, Bob. You can – and must! As things stand now, it is very likely to become your duty to take the life of Stephen Orco.”
Those softly spoken words brought Bob Star out of his chair.
“How is that, commander?” He was trembling, and he had to gasp for his breath. “I’d give anything for the chance!” Something checked his eager voice, and something made him bite his Up. “But I’m afraid – afraid I couldn’t do it.”
Chimes rang softly, then. A massive door swung open, to admit once more the deep- toned, vibrant song of the geodynes that drove the battleship. A steward came in, pushing a little wheeled table. He saluted.
“Breakfast, commander,” he announced. “For two.”
Jay Kalam motioned silently for him to go. The heavy door closed behind him, and once more it seemed that the long, ivory-walled room was somewhere far from the racing ship.
“Why might it be my special duty to kill Stephen Orco?” Bob Star was whispering. “And how does it happen that he’s still alive, now so long after his execution was announced?”
“A strange affair.” Jay Kalam stood frowning gravely, ignoring the covered table the steward had left. “An unfortunate aftermath of the Jovian Revolt. The full history of that rebellion has never been made public, but I must outline it to you now – so that you will understand the peculiar status of Stephen Orco, and the supreme importance of your present duty.”
Bob Star nodded, listening breathlessly.
“Orco himself is a sinister riddle, from the very beginning,” the commander went on gravely. “Many people besides yourself have found him queerly inhuman. Perhaps he is. Our investigators have been at work ever since he turned traitor, and still they have discovered nothing whatever about his origin.”
“But I remember his parents,” Bob Star broke in. “They visited the academy, not long before – that night.” He found his fingers on that scar again, and dropped them self-consciously. “He gave a party for them. He made a point of inviting all my friends, and leaving me out.”
“They were only foster parents,” Jay Kalam said. “His adoptive father, Edward Orco, seems to have found him, when he was just an infant, under peculiar circumstances. Orco was a wealthy planter. He had extensive holdings through the asteroids. His home was on Pallas. Our investigators learned what we know about the finding of Stephen Orco, from his old servants.
“It happened nearly thirty years ago. Orco was cruising in toward Mars in his space yacht. He and his wife had been visiting some of their properties scattered through the smaller asteroids, and they were coming to Mars for the social season. Their route had taken them far off the usual space lanes.
