Return to the Stars cotsk-2

by Edmond Hamilton

  "I feel sure he will have."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  Heavily, Gordon explained, "The H'Harn know that I once operated the Disruptor... that time when my mind was in Zarth Arn's body. They think I could tell them all about it. I can't, of course. I only operated the thing by mechanically following Jhal Arn's instructions. But they think I can, so they want me."

  He felt Lianna shiver, and he knew that she was remembering the stunning mental assault of the H'Harn who had nearly destroyed them at Teyn.

  Gordon said somberly, "A great deal of everything that has happened in the galaxy seems to stem back to that one freakish fact-that I happened to exchange minds with Zarth Arn, one of the three men who knew the secret of the Disruptor. That was why the League of the Dark Worlds kidnapped me, and when that failed, got me... and you, too... to Thallarna."

  He went on, looking out into the clamorous city. "That one fatal thing was what led the League to attack the Empire... they knew by then that I wasn't really Zarth Arn, and thought I couldn't use the Disruptor. And now the deadliest enemies of all-the H'Harn-they think I can tell them what they want to know about the only weapon that bars them from the galaxy. They won't stop at anything to get their hands on me."

  He shook his head. "Through that one fatal coincidence, I've been a curse to this whole future time... as Shorr Kan said, the grain of the sand in the machine."

  "No," said Lianna. She took his hands. "And even if that were so, the fault is not yours, but Zarth Arn's." She was silent a moment. Then she said softly, "I'm glad you came here, John Gordon. Very glad."

  After a while she drew away from him and said, "I must go down and show myself to the defenders of my world. No, don't come with me. I have to do this alone."

  After she had gone, Gordon sat for a long time looking past the moving lights and the uproar and clamorous confusions of the great city, toward the starry sky. A star-kingdom might fall, Narath might realize his ambition and sit on the throne of Fomalhaut, and he, John Gordon, and Lianna might be sent to their deaths. And that would be a world tragedy as well as a personal one.

  But if the H'Harn succeeded, that would be tragedy for the whole galaxy, a catastrophe of cosmic dimensions. Thousands of years before the H'Harn had come from the outer void, bent on conquest, and only the power of the Disruptor, unloosed by Brenn Bir, had driven them back. Out there in the Magellanic Cloud they had brooded all this time, never giving up their purpose, filtering back gradually in secret, plotting with the counts, plotting with Narath Teyn, making ready some tremendous stroke.

  Doomsday had come again, after these thousands of years.

  21

  The starships were fighting, out between the great suns of Austrinus and the Marches of Outer Space. Two fleets of heavy cruisers flashed side by side, and their missile broadsides seemed to light up that whole part of the galaxy with their bursting flares. On the outskirts of this mighty running battle, ghostly jackals on the heels of the tigers, the phantom cruisers hung, emerging from the invisibility of dark-out to loosen their swift volleys and then retreating into invisibility again.

  In the screen which Gordon watched, down in the Defense Room of the royal palace of Fomalhaut, the whole flashing struggle seemed almost incomprehensible, reduced as it was to a swarming of electronic fireflies-fluid, swirling, ever shifting. But after a time it became evident that the heavier column of the counts' fleet was pressing hard against the ships of Fomalhaut, pressing them slowly to the west and away from the star and planet they had tried to cover.

  Abro's face was glistening with sweat and he muttered oaths and entreaties as he watched.

  "Engl's a good man but he just doesn't have enough weight," he groaned. "Three to two... and their ratio is increasing. They're pushing our fleet away from Fomalhaut to make clear passage for those!"

  And his thick finger stabbed toward the upper right-hand corner of the screen, where a new swarm of radar-dots had made its appearance and was crawling steadily down toward Fomalhaut.

  The transports. And somewhere in them would be Narath Teyn, his mad and beautiful face alight with the coming triumph, and with him would be the nonhuman hordes that he had gathered from scores of worlds.

  It gave Gordon a feeling of agonized impotence to be forced to wait here and watch the attack come toward them. But if Lianna felt that too, and had no doubt that she did, she permitted no trace of it to show in her white face.

  "Still no word from the barons?" she asked, and Korkhann answered, "No," and moved his wings with a sighing sound. "No word from them, and no sign of them, Highness. It seems we must meet this attack alone."

  Abro said bitterly, "If Engl had only been able to detach enough heavy cruisers, we might have had a chance to turn them back. But I don't think we can prevent a landing now."

  Gordon thought that Shorr Kan had had the right strategy, and it was a pity that Engl either could not or would not follow it.

  "That is out of our hands now," said Lianna, gesturing toward the tremendous battle on the screen. "We must be ready to defend our world. Come."

  She spoke like a queen and she walked like one as she led the way up through the palace. Along the way, Shorr Kan stepped in beside Gordon. He had not attempted to enter the Defense Room during this crisis, knowing that he would not be allowed. Hull Burrel glared at him and went on, but Gordon paused.

  "It's clear enough in all your faces," said Shorr Kan. "The Fomalhaut fleet is losing out there, isn't it?"

  "It is," said Gordon, "and it's being pushed westward, and presently this place will be absolute hell when Narath's transports land."

  Shorr Kan nodded gloomily. "No doubt of that. Too bad. I've been cracking my brain trying to think of a way to get myself out of this trap..."

  Gordon said in mock amazement. "Why, I thought that since we're all at the end of the string, you would prefer to die nobly, fighting to the last."

  Shorr Kan shrugged and said, "I've about decided I might as well die like a hero. Because to tell you the truth, I can't see a single bloody way out of this one. So what have I got to lose?"

  The hours whirled by, and Gordon felt caught in a web of activities of which he knew nothing. Officials and officers streamed in and out of the palace. Lianna had no time to give him. There was nowhere to go and nothing for him to do. He had become a totally useless supernumerary.

  "But I think," said a familiar voice behind him, "that you are the key person here, John Gordon."

  Gordon turned and saw Korkhann regarding him with a troubled look.

  "Lianna told me what you had said to her. Are you sure there is no information about the Disruptor which the H'Harn could extract from you?"

  "Look," said Gordon, "I thought I made it clear. I know what the Disruptor force-cones look like, and how they're mounted on a ship, and how you balance six needles before you release the force, and that is all I know. Why do you bring this up now?"

  "Because," said Korkhann bleakly, "much as I like you, it might be my duty to destroy you if you were about to be taken by the H'Harn."

  Gordon was silent. Then he said, "I can see that. But there is nothing."

  And he thought, Damn the thing; will it follow me right to my death?

  "Come with me," said Korkhann. "There is nothing for you to do here, and you might as well know how we stand."

  Night had fallen, and the two came out of the palace to see the flying moons race up the sky, casting their shifting glow. The palace grounds, like the city beyond, were a hive of activity. Men and vehicles moved along the great avenue where the ancient kings of Fomalhaut loomed on their pedestals. Missile batteries were evil, hulking shapes in the gracious gardens.

  Shorr Kan came up to them and asked, "Where's Hull?"

  "On the telestereo talking to Throon. You certainly put the fear of God into him with your notion of a H'Harn fleet ready to pounce."

  Gordon said, "The fear of God is in all of us when we think of that."

  "Not in this man
," said Korkhann, who had been looking curiously at Shorr Kan. "Not really. He fears neither God nor man nor devil."

  He added, "Your pardon for probing you just a little."

  Shorr Kan waved that aside. He said to Gordon, "With my considerable military abilities... you'll admit that I did damn near conquer the galaxy... I thought my services would be welcomed in this fight. But Abro wouldn't listen to me, so I'll stick with you. You can rely on me to stand back of you in the pinch."

  "I would much rather," Gordon said carefully, "that you stood anywhere else than in back of me. I'm allergic to knives."

  Shorr Kan grinned. "You will have your little Joke. You're the one I rely on to keep my neck out of a noose, so don't you think..."

  Whrroosh-boom! The rushing booming sound cut sharply across the night, blotting out Shorr Kan's voice. It multiplied itself with incredible swiftness, and things visible only as streaks of light raced skyward from three different points beyond the city.

  "Missiles," said Shorr Kan coolly, as soon as he could make himself heard. "If the invaders are within range, things are going to get warm in a hurry."

  Now the missiles began to go out from other points, in rapid and continuous volleys. The streaks of light criss-crossed all up the heavens. Above the turmoil the moons climbed higher and higher, stately and unconcerned.

  From the whole of the city came a cry. Korkhann pointed with his winged arm. High up but sweeping downward in a long slanting curve, a glowing object came.

  It was, or had been, a starship. Now all its vast bulk was breaking from a red-hot glow into actual flames. It shot down toward Hathyr like a plunging comet.

  With a tremendous crash, the flaming star-wreck hit the planet far beyond the city. There was a shock-wave and a blast of searing wind that knocked them staggering.

  "That was close enough," said Shorr Kan. "I wish the boys would be a little more careful where they drop their birds."

  "There," said Gordon. "How's that?"

  Much more distant, a second comet came flaming down out of the moonlit heavens. The impact was barely noticeable. Shorr Kan nodded.

  "Much better. And hope they keep them that way. A direct hit in the city..."

  He did not finish. There was no need to. Gordon had been thinking the same thing.

  Now all at once there was a new sound, a crying of voices from the city. Gordon said in alarm.

  "What's that?"

  "Listen," said Korkhann. "They are cheering."

  The sound came nearer. Presently they could see a great crowd surging toward them down the Avenue of the Kings, where the proud and time-stained statues seemed almost to have sprung to life, as the stroboscopic flashing of the missiles gave them a semblance of movement. In the midst of the crowd, in an open hover-car, Lianna moved slowly toward the palace. The people ran alongside, cheering her, and she raised her hand and nodded to them as calmly as though this were any ordinary peaceful procession.

  In the past Gordon had resented her royal status and the protocol that surrounded her. Now he saw the other side of that, and his heart swelled with pride as she came up the steps, very erect and graceful, and turned and waved to the shouting crowd. Live or die, she seemed to be saying, you and I will go together, for we are Fomalhaut.

  She left them, motioning to Gordon to follow her inside.

  The missile salvos had now become unceasing, and the whole palace trembled with their vibrations. Gordon and Korkhann followed Lianna down to the Defense Room. This time Shorr Kan trailed coolly at their heels, and Gordon noted that the guards outside the room did not think to challenge him. In this hour when Fomalhaut Kingdom rocked on the brink of disaster, things were slipping a little.

  Abro came through the knot of excited, sweating officers clustered by the screens. He spoke quickly to Lianna.

  "No doubt about it now, Highness. The barons' fleet is headed in this direction at full speed."

  Gordon felt a wave of sudden hope. The mighty Hercules barons were a match for almost any star-kingdom.

  Abro must have seen a similar hope in Lianna's face, for he said grimly, "I regret to add, Highness, that their course is not toward Hathry, but toward Austrinus Shoals, where what is left of Engl's force is still fighting the counts."

  With a sinking heart, Gordon realized that from a detached point of view that was the wise, indeed the only, course. Veterans of many a campaign, the barons were not going to rush to the rescue while a hostile fleet remained in space and able to catch them flat.

  "I also have reports," Abro continued, "of at least twenty-four separate landings of Narath's transports in this quadrant of Hathyr. We destroyed many of the ships but we couldn't handle them all, and now they are coming in increasing numbers, while our missile installations are being put out of action."

  "We will defend the city," Lianna said. "We can hold them until the barons are free to help us."

  Gordon hoped she was right. He thought that if she was not, he had come a long way to die.

  Looking into her eyes, he thought that if it came to that, it was worth it.

  22

  A Walpurgis Night of horror held Hathyr City, as one after another of its lines of defense went down.

  For a night and a day and part of another night, the starship transports had continued to land on Hathyr. A great many of them landed as fusing, flaming wrecks. But as the advance forces spread and knocked out more and more of the missile batteries, increasing numbers came down intact, and out of these poured the seemingly endless hordes.

  From a hundred wild worlds in the Marches of Outer Space they came, the not-men who followed with fanatical devotion the crimson banner of Narath Teyn, The Gerrn from Teyn itself, the giant four-footed cats with their centaurlike, quite human upper bodies, their slit-pupil led eyes aglow, springing with swift joy toward the battle. The Qhallas, a rushing winged ride of alienness, their raucous battle-cries rising in squawking fury. The Torr from far across the Marches, furred, towering, four-armed. The Andaxi, like great dogs trying to be men, teeth and eyes gleaming as they came toward the kill. And others, innumerable and indescribable others-hopping, gliding, vaulting-a phantasmagoria of nightmare shapes.

  They had good modern weapons, supplied by the counts. Atom-pellets exploded like a bursting wave of white fire ahead of them, burning through the streets of Hathyr City. The guns of the men of Fomalhaut answered them. Inhuman shapes were scythed down, cindered, swept away, heaped up in tattered mounds to choke the crossings. But there were always more of them, and they always pressed forward. In the battle-fury many of them threw away their weapons and reverted to the simple, satisfying use of claw and fang. They came from all sides, a ring, a noose closing slowly around the heart of the city. And in the end there were just too many of them.

  Fires burned red in scores of places across the city, as though a funeral pyre for the kingdom of Fomalhaut had been lit here and was majestically, slowly growing. The stately moons looked down upon a city illuminated by the flames of its own progressive destruction, and the pressing hordes became a macabre silhouette against the fire-glow.

  Gordon stood with Lianna and Korkhann and Shorr Kan on the great balcony high in the palace that looked straight down the avenue of the stone kings. The fires and the fury and the clamor of battle were creeping closer to the palace area. Against the fires they could see the hover-cars of the Fomalhaut soldiery swooping down in desperate, continuous attacks.

  "Too many of them," murmured Lianna. "Narath has worked for years to win the loyalty of the nonhumans, and now we see the fruit of his labors."

  "How can a human man like Narath influence them so greatly?" Gordon gestured toward the smoke-filled, tortured streets. "They're dying, God only knows how many thousands of them, but they never even pause. They seemed to be glad to die for Narath. Why?"

  "I can answer that," Korkhann. "Narath is truly human in body only. I have probed the edges of his mind, and I tell you that is an atavism, a mental throw-back to a time before the evolut
ionary paths diverged. Before, in short, there was any difference between human and nonhuman. That is why the beastlings love and understand him . . because he thinks and feels as one of them, as no normal human ever can."

  Gordon stared out at the panorama of destruction. "Atavism," he said. "Then we can blame all this on one infinitesimal gene?"

  "Do me one favor?" said Shorr Kan sourly. "Please. Spare me the philosophical lectures."

  An officer, young and a little wild-eyed, hurried onto the balcony and made a hasty salute to Lianna.

  "Highness, Minister Abro begs you to leave by hover-car before the fighting comes any closer."

  Lianna shook her head. "Thank the minister, and inform him that I will not leave here while men are fighting and dying for me."

  Gordon started to expostulate. Then he saw her face and knew that it would be useless. He held his tongue.

  Shorr Kan had no such inhibitions. "When the fighting ends you may not be able to leave. Best to go now, Highness."

  Lianna said coldly, "That is the advice I would expect from the leader who ran away from Thallarna when the battle went against him."

  Shorr Kan shrugged. "I'm still alive." He added, in a rueful tone, "Though that may not be for long." He had a weapon belted to his waist, as Gordon had, and he glanced down at it distastefully and said, "The closer I get to this business of dying heroically, the more dismal a prospect it seems."

  Lianna ignored him, her brilliant eyes searching across the smoke and flame and uproar of the city. Gordon knew how she must feel, looking down that mighty avenue on which stood the statues of her ancestors, the embodied history of this star-kingdom, and seeing her people struggle against the tide of inhuman invasion.

  She turned abruptly to Korkhann. "Tell Abro to send a message to the Barons. Say that if they do not send warships to our assistance at once, Fomalhaut may be lost."

  The winged one bowed and left quickly. As Lianna turned back toward the city, a big hover-car with the insignia of Fomalhaut swept down through the drifting smoke and landed smoothly on the great balcony. The hatch doors opened.