Collected Short Fiction, page 340
“Luroa knew that she had been made in my likeness. She planned to steal my identity! She was going to abduct me, from the laboratory where I was trying to carry on my dead father’s work. She was going to kill my brain with drugs, and let the members of her gang deliver me to the legion, for her own reward. And she would step into my shoes!”
“Ah, lass!” Giles Habibula leaned forward anxiously. “And what happened?”
“My father had once warned me of such a possibility.” the girl said gravely. “And a true scientist neglects no possible contingency, however remote its possibility. When Luroa came, I was ready. It was not she who won, but I.”
Giles Habibula surged to his feet and pulled her unceremoniously to him and set a very enthusiastic kiss upon her lips.
“Good for you, lass!” he cried. “Ah, blessed good, if you beat the android at her own mortal game! But why didn’t you report the matter to the legion and claim your just reward?”
The girl’s face grew very sober again.
“Besides the possible difficulty of proving that I was not Luroa, that same clay I learned that my father’s murderer had escaped from the Devil’s Rock.” Her voice was still and cold. “And the theft of a document from the laboratory that night proved that he was using my father’s geofractor. I knew that the legion had failed—and must continue to fail, against the terrible power of the geofractor.
“But Luroa, I thought, might not fail. So I became Luroa.”
“And mortal well you did!” applauded Giles Habibula. “But, lass, tell me about this geofractor?”
The girl sat down again on the edge of the bunk. Her platinum head inclined a moment, listening to the fighting whine of the geodynes. Her slender hand unconsciously touched the ready butt of her barytron blaster, and then the great white crystal at her throat.
“Don’t worry, lass,” Giles Habibula reassured her. “I gave our position and course to Commander Kalam and the fleet. Derron will have no time to look for stowaways. But this strange geofractor?”
“You know,” she told him deliberately, “that my father was the System’s greatest geodesic engineer.”
“Aye, lass.” agreed Giles Habibula. “His refinements made the old-type geodynes seem as primitive as mortal oxcarts. He invented the geopeller, that Derron is so ready with.”
“He’s good with stolen discoveries.” Her white hands clenched, relaxed again. “But the geofractor,” she said, “is based upon a principle totally new—affording a complete, controlled refraction of geodesics.
“The instrument utilizes achronic force fields. My father independently discovered the same new branch of geodesy that Commander Kalam’s expedition got some inkling of from the science of the cometeers.”
“Ah, so.” Giles Habibula nodded. “It was something like that that Kay Nymidee used to escape from the comet.”
“But the geofractor, as my father perfected it,” the girl said, “had a power and a refinement of control that the cometeers had never approached. Its achronic fields are able to rotate the world lines of any two objects within a range of several hundred light-years.”
“Aye, lass.” Giles Habibula smiled comprehendingly. “But, in other words, the—”
“The geofractor is in two units,” the girl told him. “Each unit is able to refract the geodesic lines of any object out of the continuum, and warp them back again at any point within its range. Which means,” she smiled, “that the object, in effect, is snatched out of our four-dimensional universe and instantly set back again at the other point.
“There are two coupled units,” she explained, “timed to perfect synchronism, so that each creates a perfect vacuum to receive the object transmitted by the other. That prevents the atomic cataclysms that would result from forcing two objects into the same space at the same time.
“That explains why the Basilisk”—she caught her breath—“why Derron has such a way of putting clay snakes and bricks and robots in the place of the things lie takes. It balances the transmitters.”
GILES JIABIBULA exhaled a long, amazed breath.
“So that’s the mortal geofractor!” he wheezed. “Ah, a fearful thing!”
“So Derron has made it,” the girl cried bitterly. “My father intended it for the purposes of peaceful communication. He dreamed of a timeless interplanetary express service. He even hoped to make wide stellar exploration possible, so that human colonists could spread across the Galaxy.
“Yet he realized the supreme danger of his discovery. I doubt that he would have finished it at all, but for the bitter straits of mankind in the cometary war. lie completed it only as a weapon of last resort—and he provided a shield against it.”
“Eh?” Giles Habibula stared at her. “A shield?”
The girl touched her white, six-pointed jewel.
“This contains a tiny, atom-powered achronic field coil,” she told him. “It is adjusted to create a spherical barrier zone, that the searcher rays and refractor fields of the geofractor cannot penetrate.
“It is all that has defended me, thus far, from Derron’s stolen power. And he has tried more than once to take it from me—as when he sent that robot to the New Moon to attack me—though he bungled, that time, by killing his monster too soon.”
Giles Habibula blinked and squinted at her.
“Now, lass.” he queried, “now that we know all this—what shall we do about it? Derron is driving out with us toward some unknown object in Draco, and the fleet is pressing mortal close behind us.”
“That object.” said Stella Eleroid, “must be the geofractor.”
“Eh!” Giles Habibula started. “But that was a small thing. Jay Kalam said. One man could carry it.”
“The model was. that Derron took,” the girl agreed. “It would have had power enough to carry one man—and itself—away from the island where my father was testing it. The only wonder is that Derron didn’t go with it, then, himself.
“But it had far too little power for these recent feats. A huge new machine must have been constructed—probably it was built on a planet of another star, possibly with the labor of such robots as the one sent to the New Moon. It has been four years, remember. And the model itself would have solved all problems of transportation.”
“But, lass—” Giles Habibula shook the bald globe of his head, doubtfully. “If Derron was in the New Moon, and this evil machine ten billions of miles away, then how could he have been the Basilisk?”
“Remote control.” said Stella Eleroid. “My father had worked out a perfect unit for that. The sensitive potentials of the achronic field make possible instant observation and control. You’ve seen the legion’s new visi-wave equipment. My father had something far more compact and powerful than that. And, with the tube field of his searcher beam, he was able to dispense with any transmitter instrument at the other end.
“Derron is loaded with hidden equipment,” she said. “I felt the wires in his sleeve. How it must have amused him, walking among those crowds in the New Moon, to know that he could hurt anyone about him to destruction in an instant—anyone but me!”
She touched the white jewel again.
“Then, lass,” said Giles Habibula, “shall we just wait and keep you hidden, till Derron brings us to his mortal machine—”
CRASH!
Abruptly the flimsy cabin door was splintered. Slivers flew about them. And Chan Derron’s wide-shouldered bulk was framed in the ragged opening. One hand clutched the little control spindle of his geopeller, and the other leveled the gleaming tube of a barytron blaster.
The girl’s hand leaped for her weapon. But Chan’s hand tightened on the spindle, and his big body came toward her with the fleetness of a shadow. The nose of his blaster caught hers, flung it against the wall. A simultaneous kick sent Giles Habibula’s thick cane spinning.
The geopellor lifted Chan back to the shattered doorway.
“Some spare blasters in the chest,” he panted. “And I’m not quite deaf!”
His weapon covered them while he caught his breath. His narrowed eyes swept the white, defiant beauty of the girl, and his grim face smiled a little.
“Listen,” his low voice said, “Miss Stella Eleroid—I’m glad you’re not Luroa—and Giles Habibula—I thought you had been a loyal legionnaire too long to desert! Listen!” His weapon gestured emphatically. “I heard everything you said. And we are going to be three together against the Basilisk.
For I am going to convince you that I didn’t murder Dr. Eleroid.”
A little shudder swept the girl’s white, tense body. The savage hate in her violet eyes drove Chan a step backward.
“I don’t think you will,” her voice whipped at him, “—Basilisk!”
“Ah, so.” The small eyes of Giles Habibula rolled at her, apprehensively. “But we’ll listen.”
“What you have told about the geofractor,” he said to the breathless, quivering girl, “explains what happened in that armored room. Your father and another man went into it, with the model geofractor. They locked the door, and I stood guard outside.
“Admiral General Samdu, not an hour later, found the door unlocked—that is the fact that convicted me. He found the dead bodies of Dr. Eleroid and his assistant. And all the equipment—the model geofractor—was gone.
“The body of the assistant was already stiff in rigor mortis. That was a point that they failed to explain, in the case against me. They simply disregarded it.” Chan Derron’s jaw set grimly. “But rigor mortis never begins in less than two or three hours after death. The other body found in that room with Dr. Eleroid must have been dead twelve hours or longer.”
His somber eyes went back to the girl’s intent white face.
“You have explained what happened, Miss Eleroid,” he told her. “The murderer had already killed your father’s assistant. He had secreted the body. He had taken the assistant’s place. It was the murderer who went down into that room with your father. Do you think that is possible?”
The platinum head of Stella Eleroid nodded very slowly, unwillingly, it seemed. Her violet eyes, still very dark, remained fixed on Chan Derron’s face with an intensity almost hypnotic.
“It is possible,” she whispered. “My father suffered from an extreme myopia—he couldn’t recognize anyone ten feet from him. And that day he must have been completely absorbed in his experiment.” She nodded again. “But go on.”
“THE MURDERER—the real Basilisk—is a very clever man.” Chan said. “We know that he had been spying on your father. He must have planned the thing very carefully. He took a great risk—but for a tremendous stake.
“Once in that locked room, he watched your father test and demonstrate the geofractor. And then, when he had learned all he wanted to know, he killed your father. He used the geofractor to bring the stiffened body of the real assistant from wherever he had hidden it. With the geofractor, he took the blaster out of my belt, and drove its bayonet into your father’s body. He unlocked the door. And then the geofractor carried him and itself to some place of safety—and I was left to be convicted of the crime.”
He searched the girl’s fixed white face.
“You believe me,” he whispered hoarsely. “Don’t you believe me, Stella?”
“I want to believe you, Chan Derron,” she said slowly. “But who is the Basilisk?”
“Ah, so,” wheezed Giles Habibula. “Perhaps you speak the truth, Captain Derron—and if you do, this Basilisk has done you a mortal wrong, indeed! But there’s a fearful mass of evidence against you. And who else could be the Basilisk?”
“Will you trust me?” Chan pleaded. “And aid me—just until we come to the geofractor? Perhaps, there, we can learn the Basilisk’s identity.”
“But my orders, from Jay Kalam,” the old man said, “are to bring you back. And the fleet is already close behind us.
You’d best surrender, and then—” Chan Derron’s face set grimly.
“I’ll not surrender,” he said. “I know the fleet is close behind. And we haven’t cathode plates to keep up full speed—they may soon be in range, with the vortex gun. But I’m going on to the geofractor. If you won’t help—”
His weapon moved abruptly. A dull-green gleam flashed from a finger of the hand that held it, and Giles Habibula’s small eyes blinked.
“Eli, lad!” he gasped. “Your ring—where’d you get that blessed ring?”
“It was my mother’s,” Chan Derron said. “She had the stone reset for me.”
“Let me see it.” The old man held out a trembling hand. “It’s Venusian malichite? Carved into a die? The spots all threes and fours?” He scanned Chan’s bag body with a queer intentness. “Tell me, lad—who was your mother? Was her maiden name Coran?”
Chan Derron nodded, wondering. “The ring was my grandmother’s.” he said. “She was a Venusian singer. Her name was Ethyra Coran.”
“Ethyra Coran!”
The eyes of Giles Habibula were suddenly brimming with tears. His big body heaved out of the chair. He pushed Chan’s blaster unceremoniously aside, and flung his arms around him.
“What’s this?” gasped Chan.
“Don’t you see?” wheezed Giles Habibula. “Your mother was my own blessed daughter! You’re my own blood, Chan Derron. The grandson of Giles Habibula!”
“Then—” Chan freed himself, stared into the beaming yellow face. “Then—will you help me?”
“Ah, so!” the old man cried. “And mortal gladly! For no grandson of Giles Habibula could be the Basilisk.” With a grave and silent question in them, the eyes of Chan Derron looked at the girl. For a long moment, her level violet eyes met his, dark with another question. At last she nodded slowly.
“We’ll give you a chance, Chan Derron.” she said. “If you can find the Basilisk.”
XVIII.
GILES HABIBULA’S appeal to the fleet, to abandon the chase, was ignored. When the Phantom Atom lurched and struggled in the deadly fields of the first etheric vortex fired from the great Inflexible: “Ah, lad,” the shuddering old man sobbed fearfully to Chan Derron, “let me to your geodynes! I’ve been an engine man for fifty blessed years, and there never was a generator but that would pull its precious heart out for old Giles Habibula!”
And. indeed, when his deft hands had retuned her geodynes, the tiny vessel began to draw ahead again. The second sun of atomic doom groped after them with weaker fingers, the third flamed and died far behind. And the Phantom Horn was many hours ahead of the fleet, when they came to the geofractor.
Chan Derron’s brain was staggered by that machine’s immensity, and baffled at its strangeness. Against the star-shot dark of space hung two great spheres of blacker blackness. Three colossal rings, set all at right angles, bound each of them; and between them, connecting them, was a smaller cylinder of the same dully gleaming metal.
“A little like a twenty-million-ton peanut,” he muttered. “But I never saw anything so black as those great globes!”
“They are not anything—nothing more than invisible energy fields,” said Stella Eleroid. “They are simply holes in the continuum. That blackness is the darkness of a lightless hyperspace, seen through the globes of force.
“It is through those spheres that the geodesics are refracted,” she said. “And they are maintained by the achronic field coils in the rings about them. There are four rings about each globe of force—the three that you see, and a fourth that has been rotated into hyper-space.
“Except for size—miles, to feet—this machine is almost identical with my father’s model. The controls, no doubt, and the atomic power tubes that activate the field coils, are in the central cylindrical structure.”
“Eli?” murmured Giles Habibula. “And we may find the Basilisk there?”
“We may.” the girl said. “But I think not. The remote control would make it needless for him to remain here. But doubtless the machine is safeguarded. We may meet some of his robots.”
“But that mortal power”—the eyes of Giles Habibula rolled tearfully—“that snatches men away—”
“It can’t reach us,” the girl touched her white jewel again. “So long as this is intact, and we keep close together. But if we separate—or it is lost—”
“Ah, lass, well cling to you!” cried Giles Habibula. “And defend it well!” Circling the dark mass of the geofractor, that hung in space like an elongated planetoid, they found an entrance valve in the wall of the great metal cylinder between the two black spheres. No weapon, nor any sign of alarm, met their approach. Magnetic anchors held the Phantom Atom beside the valve, and the three emerged, clinging close together, in white space armor.
A massive and intricate combination lock stopped them at the outer valve.
“Ah, here is a barrier that could halt all the blessed legion.” muttered Giles Habibula. His fingers, in their flexible metal gloves, began spinning the dials. He set his helmet against the heavy door, to listen. “All the legion!” he wheezed. “But not the precious dying genius of old Giles Habibula!”
The colossal armored door slid deliberately aside, and they hastened into the great chamber of the valve. Another lock, at the inner gate, yielded as readily, and they emerged into the mysterious interior of the cyclopean machine.
Chan’s impression was of staggering immensity. A dull-violet light, from endless banks of gigantic power tubes, gleamed dimly upon the square masses of huge transformers, black cables writhing like incredible serpents, and the maze of titanic girders that supported all the mechanism.
His armored hand gripped the butt of a barytron blaster. But no movement met them. No living thing was visible. There was no sound save that from generators and transformers—a humming so mighty and deep that it had to be called a roar.
Already, with a swift certainty of purpose, Stella Eleroid was leading the way along a narrow catwalk, out through that web of unknown power. Giles Habibula opened another locked door, and they entered a long dim-lit chamber that was obviously a control room. For illuminated dials and gauges shone in endless rows, signal lights flashed, signal bells rang, automatic switches made an endless muffled clicking.
