Return to the Stars cotsk-2

by Edmond Hamilton

  It was a long time before Varren came back down. When he did, he looked sick.

  "I talked with them," he said, and then repeated that as though he didn't quite believe it. "I talked with them. Oh, yes, I could understand them. You see, a few thousand years ago they were our own people."

  Gordon looked at him incredulously. "Those creatures? But..."

  "The colonists," said Varren. "The ones Captain Burrel read about in the log, who were driven away from here by harmful conditions. They didn't all go away. Some had already become victims of the danger... a chemical constituent in either the air or the water here which, after a few generations, makes the human body evolve toward smallness."

  Varren shook his head. "Poor little beggars. They couldn't tell me that but I could guess it from the few scraps of legend they did tell me. It's my guess that they mutated toward that semi-transparency as a camouflage defense against other creatures here."

  Gordon shivered. There was beauty and wonder in the stars, but there was also horror.

  "One thing I learned." Varren added. "They're terribly afraid of something out there in the west. I got that out of them, but no more."

  When they went back to the ship, it was the last statement that interested Hull Burrel the most.

  "It checks," he said. "We've been making a sweep with the sub-spectrum radar and it definitely showed large metal constructions several hundred miles to the west. On this world, that can only be the place we're looking for."

  The Antarian thought for a little, then said decisively, "We'd never make that distance on foot. We'll have to wait until night and move the ship closer. If we hug the treetops, it might fool their radar."

  Night on Aar was a heavy darkness, for this world had no moon. The phantom purred along over foliage glistening in the light of the stars, the scattered, lonesome stars of the Marches. Hull Burrel had the controls. Gordon stood quiet and watched through the viewer-window.

  He thought he saw something, finally, something far ahead that glinted a dull reflection of the starlight. He started to speak, but Hull nodded.

  "I caught it. We'll go down."

  Gordon waited. Instead of going down at once, the little ship slipped onward, he supposed in search for a clear opening for descent into the forest.

  He put his eye to the 'scope and peered. The glint of metal ahead sprang closer, and now he could see that the vague metal bulks were the buildings of a small city. There were domes, streets, walls. But there was not a single light there, and he could see that long ago the forest had come into this city's streets, and its ways were choked with foliage. Without doubt, this would have been a center of that tragically doomed colony of many centuries ago.

  But there were a few hooded lights beyond the city. He touched the 'scope adjustment. He could see little, but it appeared that the old spaceport of the dead city had lain beyond it, a dark flat surface that the forest had not yet been able to overwhelm.

  Gordon could just descry the glint and shape of a few ships parked there. They were small Class Five starships, not much bigger than the phantom scout. But there was one ship that had something queer about its outlines.

  He turned to say so to Hull Burrel, and as his eye left the 'scope, he saw that their craft was still gliding straight forward and had not begun to descend.

  Gordon exclaimed, "What are you doing? Do you figure to land at their front door?"

  The Antarian did not answer. Gordon took hold of his arm. Hull Burrel yanked it free and knocked Gordon sprawling.

  But in that moment, Gordon had seen Hull's face. It was stony, immobile, the eyes vacant of all emotion or perception. In a flash, Gordon knew.

  He bunched himself and launched in a desperate spring at the Antarian. He knocked Hull away from the controls, but not before the Antarian had managed to give them a hard yank in his desperate attempt to cling to them. The phantom scout stood suddenly on its head and then dived straight down through the foliage.

  Gordon felt the metal wall slap him across the temple, and then there was only darkness in which he fell and fell.

  11

  In the darkness Gordon heard the voice of a dead man speaking.

  "So that's what he looks like," said the voice. "Well!"

  Whose voice was it? Gordon's pain-racked brain could not remember. Then how did he know that it was the voice of a dead man? He did not know how he knew, but he was sure that the man who spoke had died.

  He must open his eyes and see who it was that spoke after death. He made an effort. And with the effort, the pain and blackness rolled back across his mind more strongly than before and he did not know anything.

  When he finally awoke, he felt that it was much later. He also felt that he had one of the biggest headaches in galactic history.

  He did get his eyes open this time. He was in a small metal room with a solid metal door. There was a very tiny window with bars, and orange sunlight slanting through them.

  Across the room from him, Hull Burrel sprawled like one dead.

  Gordon got to his feet. for a while he stood perfectly still, hoping that he was not going to fall. Then he moved painfully to the Antarian and knelt beside him.

  Hull had a bruise on his chin, but no other perceptible injuries. Yet he lay like a man in deathly coma, his coppery face no longer like the side of a rough rock but gone all slack and sagging. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open and spittle dribbled from it.

  Gordon took him by the shoulders and said, "Hull," and all of a sudden the living log turned into a maddened wildcat. Hull scrambled up, thrusting Gordon away, glaring at him as if he were an attacking enemy.

  Gradually Hull's eyes cleared. His muscles relaxed. He stared stupidly at Gordon and said. "What's the devil's the matter with me?"

  "You were slugged," said Gordon. "Not with a club, but with mental force. You were taken under control when we were nearing this place."

  "This place?" Hull Burrel looked around, at the small, dusty metal room. "I don't remember," he muttered. "This looks like a prison."

  Gordon nodded. "We're in the dead town of the old colonists. And you can't have a town without a jail."

  His head ached. And more than his head was hurt. His pride was severely bruised. He said, "Hull, I was a sort of hero back in that other time, when I lived in Zarth Arn's body... wasn't I?"

  Hull stared. "You were. But what..."

  "I was going to be a hero all over again," said Gordon bitterly. "To show that I could be good as John Gordon, too. I've done fine haven't I? Throon, Lianna... they'll be proud of me."

  "You weren't leading this mission, I was," growled Hull Burrel. "It was I who fell on my face." He went to the little window and looked at the street choked with golden foliage. He turned around, his brows knitted. "Mental force, you said. Then there must be one of those damned Magellanians here."

  Gordon shrugged. "Who else could do a thing like that? We've been taken like children. They were sitting here waiting for us."

  Hull suddenly shouted loudly. "Varren! Kano... Rann. . . are you here?"

  There was no answer from the crewmen whose names he had shouted.

  "Wherever they are, they're not within earshot," muttered Hull, plainly worried. "What next?"

  "Next, we wait," said Gordon.

  They waited for more than an hour. Then the door opened without warning. Outside it stood a supercilious young man whose black uniform bore in silver the design of the Mace.

  "The Count Cyn Cryver will see you now," said the young man. "You can walk, or be dragged."

  "All right, we'll walk," said Gordon. "I've enough headache already."

  They walked out into the hot sunlight, and along a street that had once been wide. But time and weather had cracked its pavement and seeds had lodged to grow into the feathery trees, so that now it was more like following a path in a forest.

  The corroded metal fronts of buildings showed through the foliage, silent and dead. And Gordon glimpsed a statue, the figure of a
man in space dress, looking proudly down from the middle of the street. It would be, he thought, the star-captain who had led the ill-fated colonists here, in the long-ago centuries.

  Look and be proud, star-captain. All that you wrought died long ago, and the last descendants of your people are the furtive little hunted things in the forest. Be proud, star-captain, be happy, for your eyes are blind and cannot see...

  They were taken into a building that looked like a municipal center. In a shadowy big hall, Count Cyn Cryver lounged in a chair at a table, drinking a tawny-colored liquor from a tall goblet. He wore black, with his insignia arrogant on his breast, and he looked at Gordon with amused eyes.

  "You kicked up quite a stir at Teyn, but it seems we have you safe now," he said. He drank and put the goblet down. "A word of advice... never trust a coward. Like Jon Ollen, for instance."

  A light burst upon Gordon. "Of course. That's why you were waiting for us. Jon Ollen is one of you."

  Nothing else could explain it. The cadaverous baron was a traitor, and it was a safe assumption that the super-telepath who had come to Throon had been hidden in Jon Ollen's ship.

  Hull Burrel demanded harshly, "Where are my men?"

  Cyn Cryver smiled. "We had no need of your men or your ship, so they have been destroyed. As you will be destroyed when we no longer have any use for you."

  Hull's fist clenched. He looked as though he was about to spring at Cyn Cryver, but the men with the stunners stepped forward.

  "You will be examined later," Cyn Cryver said. "You are here now only because an old friend of yours wishes to see you. Tell their old friend that they are here, Bard."

  One of the men went through a door at the rear of the hall. Gordon felt his skin crawl as he heard steps returning a moment later. He thought he knew what was coming.

  He was wrong. It was not the cowled shape he feared that came into the hall. It was a man, broad-shouldered and tall, black-haired, tough-faced and keen-eyed, who stopped and look at them, smiling.

  "By God," said Hull Burrel. "Shorr Kan!"

  "Oh, no," said Gordon. "Can't you see, it's an impersonation they've got up... Lord knows why. We saw Shorr Kan die, killed by his own men."

  The man who looked like Shorr Kan laughed. "You thought you saw that. But you were deceived, Gordon. And if I do say so myself, it was a neat piece of deception, considering how little time we had in which to dream it up."

  And it was the voice of Shorr Kan. It was also the voice of a dead man speaking in the darkness and saying, "So that's what he looks like!"

  He came closer and spoke earnestly, as one explaining something to a friend. "I was in the devil of a spot, thanks to you. Your damned Disruptor had shattered our fleet, and you were coming on toward the Dark Worlds, and my faithful subjects had got wind of it and were rioting in the streets. It was my neck, if I didn't think of something pretty quick."

  He grinned. "It took you all in, didn't it? I still had a few faithful officers, and when they sent out that stereo-vision message of surrender, they could show you poor old Shorr Kan, with a big fake wound in his side, putting on a death scene I'm really proud of."

  He burst into laughter. Stupefied, because he did not want to believe this and was beginning to do so, Gordon exclaimed, "Shorr Kan's body was found in the ruins of his palace!"

  The other shrugged. "A body was found. The body of a dead rioter, who was my size and wore my uniform and decorations. Of course there wasn't too much left to identify because we fired the palace before we got the devil out of there... which little incendiary feat was blamed on my rioting subjects."

  Gordon could no longer disbelieve. He stared at Shorr Kan at this man who had made himself master of the Dark Worlds and then, with their power, had almost shattered the star-kingdoms.

  "And you've been hiding here in the Marches ever since?" he cried.

  "Let me say instead that I've been making an extended visit to certain of my old friends here, among whom I number first the Count Cyn Cryver," said Shorr Kan. "When I heard you were among us, the Gordon whom I had never physically seen but whom I had known only too well... well, I had to give you a greeting for old time's sake."

  The insolent brass of the man, his complete, mocking, light-hearted cynicism, had not changed.

  Gordon said, between his teeth, "Why, I'm glad you saved your neck... even though it's a comedown from master of the League of the Dark Worlds, to hang onto the coattails of a Cyn Cryver. Still, it's better than dying."

  Shorr Kan laughed, in honest enjoyment. "Did you hear that, Cyn? Do you wonder I admired this chap? Here he is at the end of his rope, and he tries to slap my face in a way that'll make bad blood between you and me!"

  "Look at him, Hull," said Gordon mockingly. "Isn't he the one to put a brave face on? Lord of the Cloud, master of the Dark Worlds, almost the conqueror of the Empire itself... and now that he's reduced to skulking in the Marches and mixing up in filthy plots with ragtag one-world counts, he still stays cheerful."

  Shorr Kan grinned, but Cyn Cryver got up and came over, looking at Gordon with livid hatred.

  "I've heard enough of this," he said. "You've seen your old enemy, Shorr, and that's that. Bard, shackle them to those pillars. The Lord Susurr will come this evening and examine their minds for what they may contain of value, and after that they can be tossed on a dunghill."

  "The Lord Susurr," repeated Gordon. "That would be one of your creepy little allies from Magellan, would it? Like the one we so sadly disappointed when we foxed you at Teyn?"

  The rage left Cyn Cryver's face and he smiled in a deadly fashion as Gordon and Hull Burrel were shackled each to one of the slender ornamental metal pillars that ran in two rows down the hall.

  "Even for you," said Cyn Cryver, "I had still a spark of pity, considering what will happen to you soon. But now it is gone." He turned his back on Gordon and told the young captain, "Guard them until the Lord Susurr comes. It will be some hours, for the lord likes not the sunlight."

  Shorr Kan said brightly, "Well, lads, I fear it's goodbye now. I can see you're going to meet your end like men of courage. I've always said, 'Die like a man... if you can't find any way of avoiding it.' And I don't think you can avoid it."

  Hull Burrel continued to swear, using profanity from a dozen different worlds. "That devil-born fox! All these years the whole galaxy has thought him dead, and now he bounces up here to laugh at us!"

  "It's all history now," said Gordon. "Of more concern is what happens tonight, when the Lord Susurr who does not like the sunlight comes to visit us."

  Hull stopped swearing and looked at him. "What's the creature going to do to us?"

  "I imagine you could call it mental vivisection. I think it will take our minds and turn them inside out for every scrap of information we possess, and that it'll be only two mindless wrecks who are killed later."

  Hull shivered. After a little silence he said, with an age-old hatred edging his voice, "Small wonder that Brenn Bir blasted the Magellanian invaders out of the universe, that other time."

  No more was said, for there was nothing to say. Gordon stood against the pillar, with the shackles cutting his wrists behind him, and looked out through the open doorway as the long hours of afternoon crept away. The orange rays of sunlight that cut down through the interstices of the branches slanted and shifted. The breeze ruffled the leaves like autumn aspens on faraway, long-ago Earth. Beyond the trees the metal star-captain stood stiff and valiant, staring forever across his ruined city.

  The guards lounged and shuffled in the doorway, glancing in now and then at the two captives. But Gordon could hear no sound of any activity from the dead city around them. What was going on here at Aar? That it was a focus for the intrigue that had hatched between the counts and Narath Teyn and the aliens from outside, he had no doubt. But it could not be a vital center of their plot, or the treacherous Jon Ollen would not have named the place and baited them to it.

  Had Jon Ollen been setting a trap, not j
ust for Hull Burrel and himself and their little ship, but for the main squadrons of the Empire? Jhal Arn had said that those squadrons would come here, if they did not return with information. If that was so, he and Hull had really messed it up. Lianna would be proud of him when she heard of it.

  He thought of Lianna, and how they had parted at Fomalhaut. He did not want to think of her, and he made his mind go blank, and in a kind of stupor watched the rippling golden leaves outside. The time slipped slowly by.

  The gold dulled. Gordon woke from his stupor to see that twilight had replaced the sunlight. And the guards in the doorway were now looking nervously along the street. As the dusk deepened they stepped farther away from the doorway, out into the street, as though they were doing everything possible to keep from being too near this room when the Lord Susurr came to do what he would do to the captives.

  The hall was darkening, faster than the outside street. Gordon suddenly stiffened against his shackles. He heard a sound approaching.

  Something was in the shadowy hall with them, something that came softly toward them from behind.

  12

  The skin between Gordon's shoulders crawled. He heard the sound shift position as whoever had stealthily entered moved softly around in front of them.

  Then, close in front of him and silhouetted against the last twilight of the open doorway, he saw the profile of Shorr Kan.

  "Listen, and keep your mouths shut," whispered Shorr Kan. "You'll be dead, and worse than dead, before morning comes unless I get you out of here. There's a chance I can do it."

  "And why would you do a thing like that?" asked Gordon, keeping his voice well down.

  "He loves us, that's why," muttered Hull Burrel. "He's so full of loving kindness that he just can't bear to see us hurt."

  "Oh, God," whispered Shorr Kan, "give me a smart enemy rather than a stupid friend. Look, I may have only minutes before the cursed H'Harn comes."

  "H'Harn?"

  "What you call the Magellanians. The H'Harn is the name they call themselves. The Lord Susurr is one of them and when he comes here, you're through."