His big white hands made an unpleasant gesture.
But Kel Aran shook his yellow head. His gray eyes were cold and clear as polar ice, and there was something startling in their impact.
"No," he said flatly. "The very proclamation suggests that some refugees escaped the doomed planet. We're going to search. Until we find Verel and the Stone." Grief and dread shadowed his eyes. "Or until we find that she is dead and the Stone destroyed."
He went out with Jeron Roc, in the vacuum armor, to paint the hull of the Barihorn with a dead-black stuff that reflected no light, hence made the little craft all but invisible in the dark gulf of space—unless it chanced to be seen against some luminous body.
Then, hanging cautiously in the bleak abyss, avoiding the fleet of Gugon Kul, we began the weary search. The Moon had been flung away upon an independent orbit, when that incredible force checked the Earth. And there were new mountainous masses flying in the void that must have been torn from the planet itself.
With telethron-beam equipment coupled to the telescreen, we scanned the Moon and those hurtling fragments. In the rocky wilderness outside the domed cities of the Moon we found a dozen ships that had crossed before the planets had been torn apart.
But two great cruisers were already hanging beside the Moon. And swift patrol boats, looking like tiny gray comets with crimson tails, were darting down upon the refugees. Some tried to hide amid the rocks, or to defend themselves. But they were helpless against the blue, dazzling needles of the barytron rays, whose touch could explode a whole mountain into a frightful inferno.
Kel Aran boiled to witness such slaughter. He stalked up and down the narrow central corridor of the Barihorn, lean jaw white, fists clenched.
"Verel!" he kept muttering. "We must save ourselves, for Verel and the Stone!"
We cruised on to follow the fragments of the Earth. A few survivors clung to them, in the sealed hulls of aircraft, or in improvised breathing masks. But none that we saw bore any likeness to Verel Erin. And scores of quick little patrol boats were already hunting them down, turning flaming rays on every twisted scrap of wreckage that had escaped the greater cataclysm.