ONE AGAINST THE LEGION CONTENTS ONE AGAINST THE LEGION 1. THE DEADLY INVENTION 2. ADEQUATE EVIDENCE 3. THE SIGN OF THE BASILISK 4. THE PAWN OF MALICE 5. “AT THE BLUE UNICORN—” 6. “YOU’RE CHAN DERRON!” 7. THE LUCK OF GILES HABIBULA 8. THE MAN WHO FLICKERED 9. THE THING FROM NOWHERE 10. THE CLUE ON CONTRA-SATURN 11. THE UNEARTHLY ROBOT 12. THE PLUNDERED VAULT 13. THE HUNDREDTH MAN 14. MAN AND ANDROID 15. THE DREADFUL ROCK 16. THE GEOFRACTOR 17. THE FINAL GAMBLE NOWHERE NEAR 1. THE MAN WHO LIKED MACHINES 2. NORTH OF NOWHERE 3. ON THE BRINK OF ANOMALY 4. THE ENEMY MACHINE 5. THE IMPOSSIBLE ROCKS 6. THE BUBBLE OF DARKNESS 7. “OLDER THAN THE UNIVERSE” 8. THE ABSOLUTE—ZERO! 9. BACK DOOR TO NOWHERE 10. ANOMALY IN TIME 11. “THE MOTHER OF MACHINES!” 12. MULTIPLEX UNIVERSE ONE AGAINST THE LEGION The Deadly Invention “Unusual. Important. Indubitably dangerous.” The low grave voice of Commander Kalam, without losing its deliberate calm, had emphasized each word. “You have been selected for this duty, Captain Derron, because the Legion feels that you have earned implicit trust.” After four grim years, that scene was still as vivid in the mind of Chan Derron, as if a red-hot die had stamped it there. For that strange assignment had turned all his life, out of beckoning promise, into the dark incredible web of mystery and terror and despair. “Yes, sir.” Chan Derron saluted briskly. He stood eagerly at attention, waiting in that huge, simply furnished chamber in the Green Hall that was the office of the Commander of the Legion of Space. A big man, lean and trim and straight hi the green of the Legion, he looked steadfast as a statue of bronze. His hair, rebellious against the comb, was like red-bronze wire. His skin was deeply bronzed with space-burn. Even his eyes held glints of unchanging bronze. His whole bearing held a promise of uncrushable strength that it warmed the Commander’s heart to see. Beneath his military readiness, however, Chan Derron’s heart was thumping. He was proud of the uniform that had been his for less than a year; fiercely proud of the decorations he had already won, in the war with the Cometeers. And he was desperately eager to know what was coming next. His breath caught, and he watched the lean dark face of Jay Kalam. “I have ordered all of Admiral-General Samdu’s fleet to assist with this assignment— it is important enough to justify that,” the Com-mander was saying. “But the crucial duty is such that one ship—and one man, Captain Derron—must be trusted to carry it out.” Chan Derron tried to swallow the little lump of eagerness in his throat. A duly commissioned captain—he mustn’t tremble like a wide-eyed cadet. After all, he was twenty-two. But the low-voiced question startled him: “You know of Dr. Max Eleroid?” “Of—of course,” he stammered. “If you mean the geodesic engineer? The man who redesigned the geodyne, and invented the geopeller? At the academy we studied his text on geodesy.” “So you were an engineer?” The Commander faintly smiled. “Dr. Eleroid,” he said, “is probably the greatest physical scientist living— although his dread of publicity has kept him from becoming widely known. And he has just done something new.” Chan Derron waited, wondering. “This morning,” Jay Kalam said, “Eleroid came into this office, with an assistant behind him staggering under a box of equipment. He was frightened. He begged me to take him and his invention under the protection of the Legion. “The invention is his most important, he said, and his most dangerous. He had decided not to work it out at all, he told me—until the System was placed in danger by the coming of the Cometeers. “He set out to complete it, then, as a weapon. It is a little too late for the war. But he intends to entrust it to the Legion as an adjunct to AKKA in the defense of mankind. “Yesterday, anyhow, he found evidence that an intruder had been in his laboratory— that’s somewhere west, in the Painted Desert. This unknown spy has him baffled and very thoroughly scared. Only two people had been trusted with any details of his work, he said— his daughter, and this assistant, Jonas Thwayne. He has no clue to the spy’s identity; but he gives him credit for being a remarkably clever man.” The Commander straightened sternly. “That’s the background of the matter, Captain Derron. And here are your orders.” “Yes, sir.” “We are going to aid Dr. Eleroid with a field test of this invention —it has never been tested, he says, except on the minutest scale— and then, if the test is successful, he will leave it in your hands. “You will go back aboard your cruiser and proceed at once to Rocky Mountain Base. There you will find awaiting you twenty workmen, with atomotored excavating equipment, explosives, and building materials. You will take them aboard, and then rise without delay on a course for the New Moon. You follow me, Captain?“ “I do, sir.” “When you have reached an altitude of two thousand miles,” Jay Kalam continued, “you will open this envelope and proceed to the spot designated inside.” Chan Derron accepted a small green envelope, sealed with the wings of the Legion in dark green wax, and put it in an inside pocket of his tunic. “You will land at the designated spot, and disembark the workmen and equipment. At a point you will select, they are to dig an excavation twenty feet square and twenty deep. In that, working under your orders, they are to build a room armored with two feet of per-durite, provided with a stair and a concealed door with a special lock — you will be given the specifications. “This task must be completed by twelve noon, tomorrow, Legion time. You will put the men and equipment back aboard the Corsair. The cruiser will return at once, under your first officer, to Rocky Mountain Base. And you, Captain Derron—” Chan Derron caught his breath, as the Commander suddenly rose. “You will remain on guard, near the hidden door. You will keep your ultrawave communicator, emergency rations, and your proton needle and bayonet. You will stand guard while Dr. Eleroid and his assistant land, enter the hidden chamber, and test the invention. “Finally, if the experiment is successful, Dr. Eleroid will deliver his apparatus and notes into your care, for the Legion. You will call your cruiser to return, go aboard with Eleroid, the assistant, and the machine, and come back at once to Rocky Mountain Base. Is that all clear, Captain Derron?” “Clear enough, sir,” said Chan Derron. “If you feel that one man is enough—” “Samdu’s fleet will be on duty to see that there is no outside interference,” the grave Commander assured him. “For the rest, we must rely upon secrecy, precision of action, and division of knowledge. Upon you, Captain Derron, rests the final responsibility.” His dark eyes stabbed into Chan’s. “This is as great a trust as the Legion has ever given any man, but I believe you are equal to it.” Chan gulped. “I’ll do my best, sir.” “The Legion can ask no more.” The matter already appeared grave enough, perhaps, but Chan Derron was not used to being depressed by the details of his duty. The mystery surrounding this affair he found pleasantly exciting, and the faint hint of danger was like a tonic to him. On his way back to the Corsair—the trim little geodesic cruiser that was his proud first command—he was humming a song. He had never been to the New Moon, then. But he had often seen the artificial satellite, careening backward across the sky of Earth. And soon, no doubt, with Commander Kalam trusting him with such important assignments as this, he should have a furlough earned—his heart leapt at the promise—on the gay New Moon. Striding toward the vast space-port that sprawled brown across the desert mesa beside the Green Hall’s slender spire, he kept time to the popular tune, whose age-hallowed sentiments ran: Where first we danced, On the bright New Moon, Where we romanced, On the far New Moon, I lost a million dollars— But I found you, dear! He strode aboard the slim silver Corsair. In his bright expectations, this strange duty had already taken him to some far planet. When he came to open the sealed envelope, however, his ship two thousand miles out toward the New Moon, the destination he read was back on Earth—a barren islet in the bleak Antarctic Ocean. The Corsair dropped among screaming birds. Chan selected a level spot on the highest granite ledge, a hundred feet above the gray unresting sea. The twenty workmen fell to. Hamming atomic drills sliced into the living rock. A web of structural metal was flung across the pit. Rock debris was fused into massive walls and roof of adamantine perdurite. Next day the cruiser departed on the very stroke of noon. Left alone among the settling birds, that soon covered even the hidden door, Chan Derron shuddered to something colder than the bitter south wind. Beyond this black pinnacle, and the green-white chaos that forever roared about its foot, the polar sea ran empty and illimitable. Low and yellowed in the gray northward sky, the sun glinted on the summits of a few icebergs. So far as he could tell, he might have been the only man upon the planet. And a sudden bleak fear rose in him, that all Commander Kalam’s elaborate precautions against the unknown spy had not been enough. Once more, anxiously, he inspected his proton blaster. Perfected since the cometary war to replace the lighter proton pistols that had s...
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