THE COMETEERS CONTENTS 1. THE PRISONER OF PHOBOS 2. THE KEEPER OF THE PEACE 3. THE FULCRUM AND THE FORCE 4. THE MAN CALLED MERRIN 5. THE HONOR OF THE LEGION 6. THE GIRL IN THE WALL 7. THE BEAST OF THE MISTS 8. DEATH ON NEPTUNE 9. THE FIELD OF THE COMET 10. THE COMETEER 11. MURDERED ASTEROID 12. OUT OF THE WALL 13. FUEL FOR THE COMET 14. ORCO’S VOICE 15. THE CATTLE AND THE HERDSMEN 16. JOHN STAR’S SON 17. THE HUMAN ROCKET 18. AT THE EMPTY Box 19. THE MAN WHO BROKE The Prisoner of Phobos Phobos spun on the time of Earth—for the ancient conquerors of that moonlet of Mars had adjusted its rotation to suit their imperial convenience. They had clad its dead stone with living green, and wrapped it in artificial air, and ruled the planets like captive islands from its palaces. But their proud space navies had been beaten and forgotten long before these middle years of the thirtieth century. All the human islands around the sun were free again, and the youngest heir to the tarnished memories of that lost empire was a restless prisoner in the humbled Purple Hall. Night was fading now into an ominous dawn, as the long crescent of Mars came up like a blood-rusted scimitar before the sun. Beneath its reddish light, a glass door slid open and he came out of the towering central pylon into the wide roof-garden on the western wing. A slight young man, he wore the green of the Legion of Space, without any mark of rank or service decoration. With a frown of trouble on his boyish face, he paused to search the dark sky westward. Another man in green burst out of the door behind him. “Bob Star! Where—ah, lad, there you are!” The older soldier of space was short and bald and fat, his tunic patched with the emblems of a long career but now unbuttoned in his haste. “Can’t you wait a moment for poor old Giles Habibula?” “Sorry, Giles.” Bob Star turned quickly back, his thin, sunburned face warmed with a smile of amused affection for his panting bodyguard. “I tried to slip away, but only for a glance at the sky. Must you follow every step I take?” “You know I must,” the fat man puffed. “Hal and I have your fa-ther’s orders, to guard your life every instant with our own. And the great John Star is an officer who expects obedience.” “The great John Star!” A momentary bitterness edged the young man’s voice, before he saw the other’s outraged loyalty. “I suppose my father’s really great.” He nodded soberly. “I know he’s the hero of a terrible war and the owner of Phobos and my mother’s husband. “But why must he have me guarded like a criminal?” “Please, lad!” Giles Habibula came waddling anxiously to his side, through the transplanted shrubbery that made the garden a fragrant bit of the far-off Earth. “Perhaps your father’s sterner than old Giles would be, but he’s only trying to make a soldier of you. And you know why you must be guarded.” “For my own safety.” His trim shoulder lifted impatiently. “So my father says. But I’m a graduate of the Legion Academy, with honors enough. I’ve been taught how to fight. Why can’t he trust me to defend my own life, like everybody else?” “But the stake is more than your life, lad.” Giles Habibula looked quickly about the empty walks, and drew him cautiously farther from the door. “And your danger more than John Star’s doing. It’s no secret to Hal and me that you have been named by the Council to receive your mother’s trust.” Apprehension thinned Bob Star’s brown face. “You mean—AKKA?” His voice dropped with a wondering awe when he spoke of the mighty secret known by that brief symbol. The most precious possession of the united human planets, it was a weapon of most desperate resort, a power so awesome that each legal keeper of it was sworn to reveal it only to the next. “That’s your appointed duty, lad,” the old man was breathing solemnly. “The noblest destiny a man can dream of—to be sole custodian of that great weapon, as your precious mother is. It was the order of the Council that you be guarded, from the day you were chosen. Hal and I are proud to serve you. Why fret about it?” “But I’m not keeping any secret now,” he protested restlessly. “None except the fact that my mother is to give me AKKA when her doctors say it’s no longer safe with her—a day that I hope won’t come for another twenty years and more. Must I stay a prisoner all the4ime I wait?” “Perhaps the orders seem a trifle strict.” The old man’s bald head bobbed sympathetically. “But why fume about it? If we’re confined to Phobos, it’s still a precious scrap of paradise. We’ve all the comforts of the greatest palace in the System. To say nothing of the privilege of a noble cellar filled with famous vintages. Tell me, what’s so mortal bad about it?” “Nothing, really.” Bob Star’s ringers lifted nervously to touch a scar on his forehead, a pale triangular ridge that didn’t tan. “I know it’s a tremendous honor to be chosen keeper of AKKA, even though I didn’t want it. But I couldn’t sleep last night, and I suppose I got to brooding.” “Your head?” Giles Habibula had seen his ringers on the scar. “Is that the trouble, lad? Is that old concussion causing pain again?” He dropped his hand self-consciously, his face drawn stern against the old man’s sympathy. That throbbing pain had not come back— but only because it had never really ceased. The nature and the consequences of that old injury were secrets of his own, however, guarded as stubbornly as he meant to guard the weapon called AKKA. His lips tightened silently. “If it’s just a mood, I know the cure for that!” Giles Habibula beamed at him hopefully. “A platter of ham and steak and eggs, with hot brown bread, and a pot of coffee to wash them down. And then perhaps an apple pie. You got up too mortal early, dragging a poor old soldier out of his bed without a blessed bite to eat. Let’s go back to breakfast!” “Later, Giles.” Bob Star spoke absently, peered at the dark sky again. “But first I want to look for something.” “Whatever it is, we’ll never find it on an empty belly.” The old man was peering with a sudden dismay at the grim lines of strain, which made that searching face seem for a moment prematurely old. “But what’s the matter, lad? You’re too young to look so grave.” “I couldn’t sleep,” Bob Star kept looking at the sky. “I don’t quite know why. But my windows were open, and while I was lying there I happened to see something among the stars.” “Yes, lad?” The wheezy voice of Giles Habibula seemed curiously apprehensive. “And what was that?” “Just a little greenish fleck,” Bob Star said slowly. “In Virgo, near Vindemiatrix. I don’t quite know why, but it got on my nerves. It went out of sight, when Mars began to rise. I don’t know what it was, but I’m going to have a look at it, with the telescope yonder.” He started on toward the shining dome of the small observatory he had set up at the end of the garden—so that he could rove the stars with its electronic screens and his own restless mind, in spite of his imprisonment. “Wait, lad!” The fat man’s voice was sharper. “You wouldn’t drag a poor old soldier of the Legion out of his blessed sleep in the middle of the night, just to look at a star?” “But it isn’t any ordinary star.” He swung back to Giles Habibula, with a frown of disturbed perplexity. “Because I know it wasn’t there a few nights ago—I happened to be searching that same sector of the sky for an asteroid that seems to have strayed off the charts. It couldn’t be a nova—not with that strange, pale green color!” “Forget it, lad,” the old Legionnaire whined persuasively. “Any star can have a wicked look, to a man without his breakfast.” “I don’t know what to think.” He shook his head uneasily. “The object got to haunting me, while I lay there watching it. It got to seeming like an eye, staring back. It made me—afraid.” He shivered, in the thin wind across the roof. “I don’t know why, but I am really afraid.” “Afraid?” Giles Habibula gave the brightening sky a hurried, fishy glance. “I don’t see anything to fear. And we’re no cowards, lad. Neither you nor I. Not with the proper victuals in us—” “Perhaps it’s a comet.” Still frowning, Bob Star swung back toward the observatory. “It looked like one—it was a short streak of that queer, misty green, instead of the point a star would show.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “But then any comet should have been detected and reported long ago, by the big observatories. It hasn’t been—I’ve been reading all the astrophysical reports, with nothing else to do! I can’t imagine what it is, but I’m going to have a look.” “Don’t, lad!” The wheezy voice sharpened, with a puzzling urgency. “Let’s not meddle with fate.” “How’s that?” He peered sharply at the old man’s seamed bland face. “What’s wrong with you?” “I’ve seen trouble—and I don’t like it.” Giles Habibula nodded unhappily. “I know we’ve had a peaceful time this last year, since Hal and I came back with you from Earth. Ah, a happy time, with little to do but fill our guts and sleep. But I’ve lived through things to chill your blood.” Bob Star backed away, watching him anxiously. “I’ve known the mortal times some men call adventure,” he went on dolefully. “I was with your father, along with Commander Kalam and Hal Samdu, twenty years and more ago, when we went out to the Runaway Star, to fight the wicked Medusae for your dear mother’s life and her precious secret.” “I know,” Bob Star nodded. “The four of you were the heroes who rescued my mother’s ...
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