Return to the Stars cotsk-2

by Edmond Hamilton

  Gordon did not doubt that. But all the same he asked dubiously, "If the creature is such a terrific telepath, won't he know that you're here right now?"

  There was contempt in Shorr Kan's answer. "You people all think the H'Harn are omnipotent and omniscient. They're not. In fact, they're a bit on the stupid side in some ways. They do have tremendous parapsychical power, but only when they concentrate it on one object. They can't spread their mental power to encompass everything, and it fades out at a certain distance."

  Gordon knew that from his own experience at Teyn, but he made no comment. Shorr Kan jerked his head around to peer at the guards who waited uneasily out in the dusky street, and then continued in a hurried whisper.

  "I have to be quick. Listen... I've been here in the Marches ever since the defeat of the Dark Worlds. I figure that sooner or later I could manipulate these popinjay counts the way I wanted to... set them against each other, get them to fighting, and when the smoke cleared away, Shorr Kan would be king of the Marches. And I would have done it, but for one thing.

  "The agents of the H'Harn came from outside the galaxy, and made contact with Cyn Cryver and Narath Teyn and certain other counts. The H'Harn took a beating when they tried to invade long ago and it's taken them all that time to recover from it, but they're strong again and they still mean to come into our galaxy, in a different way."

  "What way?" asked Gordon.

  "I don't know," answered Shorr Kan. "I'm not sure that even Cyn Cryver knows. I do know that the H'Harn are preparing something big out there in the Magellanic Clouds, something against which our galaxy will be defenseless. What it is, I haven't the slightest idea."

  He went on. "Those of the H'Harn who have come here so far, like Susurr and others, are agents sent ahead to make alliance with the counts and prepare the way for some kind of assault. The H'Harn have assured Cyn Cryver and the others that they'll be given half the galaxy for their aid. And the bloody fools believe it!"

  "But you don't?"

  "Look, Gordon, did you find me an idiot when we fought each other in the old days? The H'Harn are inhuman, so inhuman that they take good care not to show themselves bodily least they scare off their allies. Of course they'll use the counts, and of course they'll brush them aside when they've succeeded in their plans, and what will their promises be worth?"

  "About as much," muttered Gordon, "as the promises of Shorr Kan."

  Shorr Kan chuckled briefly. "I asked for that. But no matter. I've had to guard my thoughts carefully. The moment that damned alien gets suspicious and probes my mind I'll be through, and I can't keep my guard up forever. I've got to get out of here. But one man can't operate a ship. Three men could. That's why I need you." His whisper was emphatic. "Give me your word that you'll go where I want to go, once we get a ship, and I'll free you right now!"

  "Give our word to Shorr Kan?" said Hull. "That would really be a brilliant thing to do..."

  "Hull, listen!" said Gordon swiftly. "If Shorr Kan double-crosses us the moment we're out of this room, we'd still not be as bad off as when that alien gets through with us. Give him your word. I do."

  The Antarian sullenly muttered. "All right. It's given."

  Shorr Kan produced something from under his coat that glistened dully in the last light from the doorway. It was a heavy semi-circular metal hook whose inner cutting edge was serrated.

  "I've no key to your shackles but this should cut them," he whispered. "Hold your hands wide, Gordon, unless you want one of them sliced off."

  He slipped around behind the pillar and began sawing at the shackle. The sound seemed loud to Gordon's ears but the shadowy figures of the guards out in the street did not move.

  "Almost through," muttered Shorr Kan after a few moments. "If you'll..."

  His whisper suddenly stopped. The sawing stopped and then there was a stealthy sound of rapid withdrawal.

  "What..." Gordon began, and then his heart throbbed painfully as he saw.

  Out in the dusk-wrapped street that was still not as dark as the interior of the hall, the guardsmen were moving away, shrinking back until they met the wall of a building on the opposite side and could go no farther.

  And a cowled, robed figure of shimmering gray, not quite as tall as a man, appeared in the doorway. In complete silence it moved, with that horridly fluid gliding motion that Gordon had seen once before, into the darkness of the hall toward them.

  Gordon's whole body stiffened involuntarily. He heard a sharp indrawing of breath from the Antarian, who had not seen one of the H'Harn until now. There was a moment in which the shadowy figure seemed to hesitate between them, and then the choice was made and it swayed toward Gordon and he waited for the blasting mental force to burst into his brain.

  A shadow skittered in the darkness, a low anguished hissing came from the H'Harn, and its body swayed unsteadily aside. And against the dim oblong of the doorway, Gordon saw Shorr Kan's silhouette as he dug the serrated hook deep, deep into the Gray One's back.

  In an access of revulsion, Gordon strained violently and the almost-severed shackle snapped.

  He could not see clearly the nightmare that was going on now in the dark hall. The H'Harn seemed to be tottering away, mewing and hissing, as Shorr Kan stabbed and stabbed.

  "Help me kill it!" panted Shorr Kan. "Help me...!"

  There was no weapon, but Gordon grabbed up the chair beside the table. He rushed and struck. The mewing thing went down.

  Pain. Pain. It shot the terrible waves though Gordon's brain, coming consciously or unconsciously from the stricken alien. He staggered, fell to his knees.

  A wave of black agony swept over him and receded. He got up, shakily. He glimpsed the dark figures of the two guards in the street, running now toward the doorway of the building. There they hesitated.

  "Lord Susurr?" called one, his voice high-pitched and shrill.

  Shorr Kan's stunner buzzed in the dark and the two men in the doorway dropped.

  "Saw Burrel's shackle, and hurry," said Shorr Kan hoarsely, handing him the hook that was now wet to the hilt.

  As Gordon worked, he saw Shorr Kan stoop and tear open the robe of the huddled heap on the floor, but he could not see what the dead H'Harn looked like. He heard a sharp sound from Shorr Kan.

  The shackle parted. Shorr Kan hurried them toward the rear of the hall.

  "This way. I don't think we have all the time in the world."

  The little spaceport beyond the dead town lay dark and silent under the stars, when they reached it. Shorr Kan led them toward one small ship that lay apart from the others. Its black bulk loomed before them, and to Gordon it seemed oddly strange in outline, with thick vanes sprouting from its sides such as he had seen on no other starship.

  "It's the ship in which the four H'Harn agents came to this galaxy," said Shorr Kan, fumbling with the lock-catch. "The other three went to Teyn and other worlds, but the ship was left here with Susurr. From what I've heard, it's far faster than any ship we know of, so if we get away in it, they'll never catch us."

  When they had got inside and the hooded lights in the control-bridge were on, Hull Burrel uttered a grunt of astonishment.

  "Well, don't stand there," said Shorr Kan impatiently. "You're the professional spaceman here. Get busy and take us the devil out of here."

  "I never saw a control-board like this," Hull objected. "Some of those controls don't seem to mean a thing. They..."

  "Some of the controls are familiar to you, aren't they?"

  "Yes, but..."

  "Then use the ones you know, but take off!"

  Hull Burrel, his professional soul outraged by the sloppiness of such a suggestion, nevertheless took the pilot chair. It was far too small for him and his knees came almost to his chin as he poked and prodded and pulled.

  The little ship went away from Aar very fast, bursting out of the darkness of the night side of the planet into the brilliant sun.

  "What course?" demanded the Antarian.

  Shorr
Kan gave him the bearings. Hull Burrel cautiously set them up, swearing at the unfamiliarity of the calibrations.

  "I'm not setting a course, I'm just making an educated guess," he grumbled. "We'll likely pile up in the drift somewhere."

  Gordon watched the lonely stars ahead, as they rushed, and his shakiness left him.

  "We're heading out toward the Rim of the galaxy?" he asked, and Shorr Kan nodded. "Where will we swing back in, then?"

  "We won't swing back in," answered Shorr Kan calmly. "We're going right on."

  Hull swung around. "What do you mean? There's nothing but intergalactic space beyond... nothing!"

  "You forget," reminded Shorr Kan. "There are the Magellanic Clouds... the worlds of the H'Harn."

  "For God's sake, why would we want to go there?"

  Shorr Kan laughed. "I feared this would be a shock to you. But I have your word, remember. It stands thus: The H'Harn are preparing something out there, with which to strike at our galaxy. So... we go out on a reconnaissance. We find out what it is. And we bring back that knowledge so the star-kings can prepare against the H'Harn. After all... isn't that the mission on which you two came?"

  "But why should you risk your neck to save the star-kingdoms?" Gordon demanded.

  Shorr Kan shrugged. "The reason is simple. I couldn't stay much longer with the counts without betraying my suspicions of their H'Harn allies... and the moment any H'Harn saw that in my mind, I'd be dead. But I couldn't go back to the star-kingdoms... they'd hang me for certain when they found out I was still living."

  Gordon was beginning to see the light.

  "But," Shorr Kan continued, "if I risk all to go to the Magellanic Clouds and come back with a warning of the H'Harn plans, the past will be forgotten. I'll be a hero, and you don't hang heroes. I gamble that I'll be on a throne again in a year."

  Hull Burrel appealed to Gordon. "Do we let him take advantage of the fact that we've given our word to do this?"

  Gordon answered thoughtfully, "We do. Hull. Not just when he reminds us that this is our mission."

  Hull Burrel uttered a loud curse. "You're a fool, John Gordon, but I'll go along with it. I've lived long enough anyway, so I might as well commit suicide going on an impossible mission with a damned fool and the biggest villain in the galaxy!"

  13

  The ship flew at incredible speed through the Marches of Outer Space. Everywhere about it were suns, flaming suns and ashen, dying stars and dark cindery hulks, with their planets and moons and dangerous trailing shoals of drift. A cosmic jungle, far beyond the demesne of the great star-kingdoms; a jungle not to be invaded without due caution.

  Yet the men inside the ship were not worried by their demented progress.

  John Gordon, at the moment, was too shaken to be worried about anything. He stared out through the after view-screen, at the wilderness in which the orange sun of Aar had already vanished, still not believing their escape. He was only faintly aware that the chair he sat in was too small for his muscular, stocky frame, or that the ceiling curve of the control-room was much too close over his head. Or that the metal surfaces around him were of a sickly and unpleasant blue, like the skin of a drowned man.

  After a while he turned from the view-screen to look at Shorr Kan, who looked back at him; the dark, well-remembered face with the lean bones and sardonic eyebrows. Shorr Kan grinned.

  "Yes we did," he said. "We made it. Thanks to me."

  Gordon let out a long breath and passed his hand over his own face, rubbing the angles of it like a sleeper waking. "Yes," he said, "I guess we did. Hull?"

  Hull Burrel looked perfectly placid and content now, even though he was perched in that ridiculously small chair. "Coping," he said. "At least, for now."

  It was only then that Gordon began to get the perspective. The control-room was like the inside of a polished egg, made to hold much smaller birds than these.

  "Well," said Shorr Ran, "the H'Harn are a small race. No reason for them to build for our comfort."

  Hull, who towered even over Shorr Kan, lifted his head, bumped it on some overhanging equipment, and retracted it, swearing. "They didn't have to overdo it," he said. "And I wish they hadn't been quite so damned cryptic about their controls." He continued to poke and prod cautiously at the unintelligible knobs and dials, marked with alien symbols. If Hull Burrel could figure those out, Gordon thought, he was even better than the best spaceman in the galaxy.

  And he had better figure them out, Gordon thought, because all our precious necks depend on it.

  Shorr Kan was watching the forward view-screen now, the sub-electronic mirror that converted mass impulses from the normal space they were tearing through, literally, at FTL+, into images the eye could see. He appeared fascinated by what was pictured there.

  "At a guess," he said, "what would you estimate our speed to be?"

  Gordon looked at the screen. The stars, dead and living, and the banks of drift, all the tumbled splendor of the Marches, seemed to him to be almost stationary.

  "We don't seem to be moving at all," he said. "Or at least, not much."

  But Hull was staring at the screen as well, his copper-colored face rapt. "We're moving all right," he said. "No ship in our galaxy can move as fast as this." He answered Shorr Kan's question. "No, I couldn't guess. I'd have to have another point of reference and..."

  Shorr Kan said, "Is it safe, in this smother?"

  The Antarian turned around, his eyes just a trifle vague. "Safe? Why, I suppose..."

  Gordon felt suddenly very nervous. If Shorr Kan, that tough and seasoned veteran, was worried about their velocity, it was something to worry about.

  "Hull," he said, "why don't you slow down?" And that, he thought, must be an all-time first; back-seat driving in a starship.

  "Mm," said Hull, and scowled down at the child-sized controls. "I can't read these blasted things." His voice went up a notch. "How am I going to set a course out of the galaxy and all the way to the Magellanic Clouds," he demanded, "when I can't read the instruments?"

  "Set a course 'where'?" said Gordon, astonished, "What are you talking about?"

  Hull shook his head. "The Magellanic Clouds. Where the H'Harn come from. Weren't we going there to reconnoiter them?"

  "This little ship reconnoiter a sub-galaxy?" exclaimed Gordon. He rose and went to Hull, looking at him anxiously. "Hull, are you dreaming?"

  Shorr Kan joined them, stooping slightly under the ceiling. "That," he said, "is the most idiotic suggestion I ever heard."

  Hull turned on him furiously, his eyes quite normal now. "Idiotic, is it? You were the one who proposed it! You said we'd go out to the Clouds and learn what the H'Harn are planning against the Empire!"

  Shorr Kan's body suddenly stiffened, as though with shock. "That's ridiculous. But... but I did say that."

  There were times when his dark face could get as hard and cold and keen as a sword blade. This was one of those times.

  "Tell me, Hull," he said swiftly. "Why did you choose this H'Harn ship for our escape?"

  Gordon said, "You chose it, Shorr Kan. You said it was faster."

  "Ah," said Shorr Kan. "I did, didn't I? But how have you been able to fly the thing, Hull?"

  Hull looked puzzled. "Why, I just guessed at the controls..."

  "Guessed?" mocked Shorr Kan. "You took off like an expert, in a ship whose design is completely alien to you."

  His black eyes flashed from Hull to Gordon. He dropped his voice.

  "There's only one answer to the things we've been doing. We've been under alien influence. H'Harn influence."

  A feeling of terrible cold swept though Gordon. "But you said the H'Harn couldn't use their mental power at any great distance!"

  "And that's true," said Shorr Kan. He turned, his gaze going to a closed bulkhead door that was the way to the after part of the ship. "We haven't been back there yet, have we?" I

  The implication hit Gordon squarely in the center of his being. There are different sorts of
fear, and many degrees of fearing, but what he felt for the H'Harn was the ultimate in sheer sickening terror. He found difficulty in pronouncing his words.

  "You think there was a H'Harn in this ship? That there is one in it now?"

  He stared at the door, seeing the creature in his mind's eye... the small, oddly distorted, oddly boneless thing with its limber bobbing gait, a faceless, softly-hissing enigma veiled in gray, hiding a dreadful power...

  "I think so," muttered Shorr Kan. "Lord knows how many of the little monsters are loose in our galaxy, although four was the number I heard. But I heard it from Cyn Cryver, and Cyn Cryver is a liar, because he told me there was only one at Aar."

  Hull Burrel and Gordon looked at each other. It was still fresh in them, the horror they had felt when the H'Harn named Susurr had come toward them. Gordon said flatly, "Good God."

  Then he turned to Shorr Kan to ask what they should do. And he was almost too late.

  "If there's a H'Harn on this ship," Shorr Kan said, "there's only one thing to do. Find it and kill it."

  With a decisive gesture, he drew the stunner from his belt.

  Gordon lunged.

  He brought Shorr Kan to the floor in a crashing tackle and grabbed the hand that held the stunner. He clung to it while Shorr Kan fought him like a tiger, and all the time Shorr Kan's face was blank as something carved from wood and his eyes were fixed and glazed and unseeing.

  Gordon yelled, "Hull, help me!"

  Hull was already leaping forward. "Then he is a traitor? I always knew we couldn't trust him..."

  "Not that," said Gordon, panting for breath. "Look at his face. I've seen that before... he's under H'Harn control. Get that stunner out of his hand!"

  Hull carefully peeled back Shorr Kan's fingers until he let go of the weapon, and as soon as it passed into the Antarian's hands Shorr Kan sagged and went limp. Like someone coming out of a faint he looked up at them and mumbled, "What happened? I felt..."

  But Gordon had forgotten about him. He wrenched the stunner away from the startled Hull and disarmed it feverishly by withdrawing its charge-chamber. Then, just as quickly, he tossed the useless stunner back to Hull.