The Star Kings cotsk-1

by Edmond Hamilton

  Would she too think him a traitor? That possibility stung Gordon to despair.

  He was for a time in a fever of self-torment, but finally a despairing apathy succeeded it. After hours, he slept.

  Gordon estimated it was evening of the next day when he awoke. The door opening had aroused him. He stood up, and then stared incredulously at the two figures entering.

  One was Corbulo's stocky form. But the other, the slimmer figure in dark jacket and slacks-

  "Lianna!" Gordon exclaimed. "What are you doing down here?"

  She came toward him, her face pale but her gray eyes alight as she put her small hands on his shoulders. Her words came in a rush.

  "Zarth, they told me all about your father's accusation. Arn Abbas must be mad!"

  His eyes hungrily searched her face. "You don't believe I'm a traitor, Lianna?"

  "I know you are not!" she exclaimed. "I told Arn Abbas so, but he was too angry to listen to me."

  Gordon felt a wave of sharp emotion. "Lianna, I think it was what you might believe that tortured me most!"

  Corbulo came forward, his grizzled face grave. "You must talk quickly, princess! We must be out of here with Zarth Arn in twenty minutes, to keep my schedule."

  "Out of here with me!" Gordon repeated. "You mean you're going to let me leave here?"

  Corbulo nodded curtly. "Yes, Zarth, I made up my mind and told the princess this evening. I'm going to help you escape from Throon."

  Gordon warmed to this hard-faced Commander. "Corbulo, I appreciate your faith in me. But it would look like running away."

  "Zarth, you have to go!" Corbulo told him earnestly. "I thought I could bring your father around. But unfortunately, in your apartments were discovered other incriminating messages to you from Shorr Kan!"

  Gordon was stupefied. "Then they're fakes, planted there on purpose to incriminate me!"

  "I believe that, but they've deepened your father's raging belief in your guilt," Corbulo declared. "I fear that in his present anger, he may order you executed as a traitor!"

  The Commander added, "I'm not going to let him do that and then regret it later when you're proved innocent. So you must get away from Throon until I can prove your innocence!"

  Lianna added eagerly, "We have it all planned, Zarth. Corbulo has a light naval cruiser with trusted officers waiting at the spaceport. That ship will take us up to my Fomalhaut Kingdom. Well be safe there until Corbulo and your brother can prove you're not guilty."

  Gordon was more deeply astonished. "You say-we? Lianna, you'd go with me, a fugitive? Why?"

  For answer, firm, warm arms went around his neck and soft lips pressed his in quivering, sweet contact.

  Her voice was a husky whisper. "That is why, Zarth."

  Gordon's mind whirled. "You mean that you love me? Lianna, is it true?"

  "I have, since the night of the Feast of Moons when you kissed me," she whispered. "Until then, I had liked you but that was all. But since then, you've been somehow different."

  Gordon's arms tightened around her, "Then it's the different Zarth Arn, the new Zarth Arn, you love?"

  She looked up at him steadily. "I have just told you so."

  There deep in the secret prison beneath the great palace of Throon, Gordon felt a wild, soaring joy that blotted from his mind all consciousness of the deadly web of peril and intrigue in which he was caught.

  It was he himself, even though in a stranger's physical body, who had won Lianna's love! Though she might never know it, it was not Zarth Arn she loved but John Gordon!

  10: Flight Into the Void

  The secret of his identity trembled on Gordon's lips. He wanted with all his soul to tell Lianna that he was Zarth Arn only in physical body, that he was really John Gordon of the past.

  He couldn't do it, he had to keep his pledge to Zarth Arn. And after all, what good would it do to tell her when he had to leave her eventually and go back to his own time?

  Could any self-devised torment be more damnable? To be forced to separate himself by half a universe and two thousand centuries of time from the only girl he had ever really loved?

  Gordon spoke huskily. "Lianna, you must not go with me. It's too dangerous."

  She looked up quickly with brilliant eyes. "Does a daughter of star-kings fear danger? No, Zarth, we go together!"

  She added, "Don't you see, your father won't be able to send after you by force when you're with me in my little Fomalhaut Kingdom. The Empire needs allies too much to estrange my people thus."

  Gordon's mind raced. Here might be his chance to get to Earth! Once away from Throon, he might by some pretext get Corbulo's men to take them first to Earth and the laboratory there.

  There, he could manage to re-effect the mind-exchange with the real Zarth Arn without letting Lianna know what he was doing. And the real Zarth, on returning, could surely prove his innocence.

  Corbulo interrupted by coming up to them. His hard face was deeply worried.

  "We cannot wait longer here! The corridors will be clear now, and it is our only chance to go."

  Disregarding Gordon's protests against her accompanying him, Lianna seized his wrist and tugged him forward.

  Corbulo had opened the massive sliding door. The corridors outside were softly lighted, silent, deserted.

  "We go to a little-used branch of the tubeway," Corbulo told them hastily. "One of my most trusted officers is waiting there."

  They hurried along the corridors, deep beneath the mighty palace of Throon. Not a sound came from the mammoth structure over their heads. These secret passages were soundproofed.

  Nor did they meet anyone. But as they emerged into a wider corridor, Corbulo led the way with caution. Finally they stepped into a small room that was a vestibule to one of the tubeways. A car was waiting in the tube, and a man in naval uniform waited beside it.

  "This is Them Eldred, captain of the cruiser that will take you to Fomalhaut Kingdom," Corbulo said quickly. "You can trust him absolutely."

  Them Eldred was a tall Sirian, the faintly greenish hue of his face gave evidence. He looked a hard-bitten, rangy veteran of space, but his curt face lighted as he bowed deeply to Gordon and Lianna.

  "Prince Zarth, Princess-I am honored by this trust! The Commander has explained everything to me. You can rely on me and my men to get you to any part of the galaxy!"

  Gordon hesitated, troubled. "It still seems like running away."

  Corbulo swore a spaceman's oath. "Zarth, it's your only chance! With you gone, I'll have time to dig out evidence of your innocence and bring your father around. Stay here, and he's likely to have you shot as a traitor."

  Gordon might have stayed despite that danger had it not been for the potent factor which was wholly unknown to these others-the fact that this was his only chance to get to Earth and make contact with the real Zarth Arn.

  He gripped Corbulo's hand. And Lianna softly told the bluff Commander, "You're risking much for us. I shall never forget."

  They stepped into the car. Them Eldred hastily followed them in and touched a lever. The car started racing headlong through the darkness.

  Thern Eldred glanced tensely at his watch. "Everything has been scheduled to the minute, highness," he told Gordon. "My cruiser, the Markab, is waiting in a secluded dock at the spaceport. Ostensibly we take off to join the Sagittarius patrol."

  "You're risking your neck for us too, captain," Gordon said earnestly.

  The Sirian smiled. "Commander Corbulo has been like a father to me. I could not refuse the trust when he asked me and my men."

  The car slowed and halted beside another little vestibule in which two naval officers armed with atom-pistols were waiting. They saluted sharply as Gordon and Lianna stepped out. Thern Eldred quickly followed and led the way up a gliding ramp.

  "Now muffle your cloaks about your faces until we get aboard the Markab," he told them. "After that, you need fear nothing."

  They emerged onto a corner of the spaceport. It was night, two g
olden moons strung across the blazing starry sky, casting down a warm light in which the massive ships, cranes and machines glinted dully.

  Towering from the docks, dwarfing all else, loomed the black bulks of the mighty first-line battleships. As they followed Thern Eldred along the side of one, Gordon glimpsed the portentous muzzles of its heavy atom-gun batteries silhouetted against the stars.

  The Sirian made a signal and held them suddenly back, as a troop of noisy sailors swaggered past. Standing there in the dark, Gordon felt the pressure of Lianna's fingers on his hand. Her face, in the dim light, smiled at him undauntedly.

  Then Thern Eldred motioned them on. "We must hurry!" he sweated. "We're behind schedule-"

  The black, fishlike mass of the Markab rose before them in the golden moonlight. Lights glittered from small portholes, and there was a steady throbbing of power from the stern of the light cruiser.

  They followed the Sirian and his two officers up a narrow gangway toward a waiting open door in the side of the ship. But suddenly, the silence was violently broken.

  Annunciators about the spaceport screamed a loud siren alarm. Then a man's hoarse, excited voice shouted from the speakers.

  "General alarm to all naval personnel!" yelled that wild voice. "Arn Abbas has just been assassinated!"

  Gordon froze, wildly clutching Lianna's hand as they stopped there on the gangway.

  The voice was shouting on. "Apprehend Prince Zarth Arn wherever he is encountered! He is to be arrested immediately!"

  "Good God!" cried Gordon. "Arn Abbas murdered-and they think I escaped and did it!"

  The whole great spaceport was waking to the alarm, the voice shouting its wild message over and over from a hundred annunciators. Bells were ringing, men yelling and running.

  Far southward, over the distant towers of the city Throon, gleaming fliers were rushing up in the night sky and racing wildly across the heavens in half a dozen different directions.

  Them Eldred tried to urge the frozen Gordon and Lianna up the gangway. "You must hurry, highness!" cried the Sirian. "Your only chance is to get away at once!"

  "Run away and let them think I murdered Arn Abbas?" cried Gordon. "No! We're going back to the palace at once!"

  Lianna, her face pale, swiftly supported him. "You must return. Arn Abbas' murder will shake the whole Empire!"

  Gordon had turned with her to start back down the gangway. But Them Eldred, his green face wearing a hard, taut expression, suddenly whipped out and extended a little glass weapon.

  It was a short glass rod on whose end was mounted a glass crescent that had two metal tips. He darted it toward Gordon's face.

  "Zarth, it's a paralyzer. Look out!" cried Lianna, who recognized the menace of the weapon where Gordon did not.[6]

  The tips of the glass crescent touched Gordon's chin. Lightning seemed to crash through his brain with a paralyzing shock.

  He felt himself falling, every muscle frozen, consciousness leaving him. He had a dim sensation of Lianna's voice, of her staggering against him.

  There was only darkness in Gordon's mind then. In that darkness he seemed to float for ages before finally light began to dawn.

  He became aware that his body was tingling painfully with returning life. He was lying on a hard, flat surface. There was a steady, loud droning sound in his ears.

  Gordon painfully opened his eyes. He lay on a bunk in a little metal cabin, a tiny lighted room with little furniture.

  Lianna, her face colorless and her eyes closed, lay in another bunk. There was a little porthole window from which he saw a sky of blazing stars. Then Gordon recognized the droning sound as the throb of a star-ship's powerful atomic turbines and drive-generators.

  "Good God, we're in space!" he thought. "Them Eldred stunned us and brought us-"

  They were in the Markab, and from the high drone of its drive the light cruiser was hurtling through the galactic void at its utmost speed.

  Lianna was stirring. Gordon stumbled to his feet and went to her side. He chafed her wrists and face till her eyes opened.

  The girl instantly became aware of their situation, with her first glance. Remembrance came back to her.

  "Your father murdered!" she cried to Gordon. "And they think you did it, back at Throon!"

  Gordon nodded sickly. "We've got to go back. We've got to make Them Eldred take us back."

  Gordon stumbled to the door of the cabin. It would not slide open when he tried it. They were locked in.

  Lianna's voice turned him around. The girl was at the porthole, looking out. She turned a very pale face.

  "Zarth, come here!"

  He went to her side. Their cabin was near the bows of the cruiser, and the curve of the wall allowed them to look almost straight forward into the vault of stars into which the Markab was racing.

  "They're not taking us toward Fomalhaut Kingdom!" Lianna exclaimed. "Them Eldred has betrayed us!"

  Gordon stared into the blazing jungle of stars that spread across the sky ahead.

  "What's the meaning of this? Where is Them Eldred taking us?" Gordon asked.

  "Look to the west of Orion Nebula, in the distance ahead of us!" Lianna exclaimed.

  Gordon looked as she pointed through the round window.[7] He saw, far away in the starry wilderness ahead of their racing ship, a black little blot in the heavens. A dark, brooding blotch that seemed to have devoured a section of the starry firmament.

  He knew instantly what it was. The Cloud! The distant, mysterious realm of semi-darkness within which lay the stars and planets of that League of the Dark Worlds of which Shorr Kan was master, and that was hatching war and conquest for the rest of the galaxy.

  "They're taking us to the Cloud!" Lianna cried. "Zarth, this is Shorr Kan's plot!"

  11: Galactic Plot

  The truth flashed over Gordon's mind. All that had happened to him since he had taken up the impersonation of Zarth Arn had been instigated by the cunning scheming of that master plotter who ruled the Cloud.

  Shorr Kan's plots had reached out to involve him in gathering conflict between the giant galactic confederations, through many secret agents. And one of those agents of the powerful master of the Dark Worlds must be Them Eldred!

  "By Heaven, I see it now!" Gordon exclaimed, to the stunned girl. "Them Eldred is working for the Cloud, and has betrayed Commander Corbulo!"

  "But why should they do this, Zarth? Why implicate you in the murder of your own father?"

  "To compromise me hopelessly so that I can't return to Throon!" gritted Gordon.

  Lianna had paled slightly. She looked up at him steadily, though.

  "What is going to happen to us in the Cloud, Zarth?" she asked.

  Gordon felt an agony of apprehension for her. It was his fault that she was in this deadly danger. She had been trying to help him, and had incurred this peril.

  "Lianna, I knew you shouldn't have come with me! If anything happens to you-"

  He stopped and swung around, as the door slid open. Them Eldred stood there.

  At sight of the tall Sirian standing and regarding them with a cynical smile on his pale green face, Gordon started forward in an access of hot rage.

  Them Eldred quickly drew one of the little glass weapons from his jacket.

  "Please note this paralyzer in my hand," he advised dryly. "Unless you want to spend more time unconscious, you'll restrain yourself."

  "You traitor!" raged Gordon. "You've betrayed your uniform, your Empire!"

  Them Eldred nodded calmly. "I've been one of Shorr Kan's most trusted agents for years. I expect to receive his warmest commendations when we reach Thallarna."

  "Thallarna? The mysterious capital of the League?" said Lianna. "Then we are going to the Cloud?"

  The Sirian nodded again. "We'll reach it in four days. Luckily, knowing the patrol-schedules of the Empire fleet as I do, I am able to follow a course that will prevent unpleasant encounters."

  "Then Arn Abbas was murdered by you League spies!" Gordon
accused harshly. "You knew it was going to happen! That's why you were in such a hurry to get us away!"

  The Sirian smiled coolly. "Of course. I was working on a schedule of split-seconds. It had to look as though you had murdered your father and then fled. We just pulled it off."

  Gordon raged. "By heaven, you're not to the Cloud yet! Corbulo knows I didn't commit that murder! He'll put two and two together and be out to track you down!"

  Them Eldred stared at him, then threw back his head in a roar of laughter. He laughed until he had to wipe his eyes.

  "Your pardon, Prince Zarth, but that's the funniest thing you've said yet!" he chuckled. "Corbulo after me? Why, haven't you guessed yet that Corbulo himself planned this whole thing?"

  "You're mad!" Gordon exclaimed. "Corbulo is the most trusted official in the Empire!"

  Them Eldred nodded. "Yes, but only an official, only Commander of the fleet. And he has ambitions beyond that post, has had them a long time. For the last few years, he and a score of others of us officers have been working secretly for Shorr Kan."

  The Sirian's eyes gleamed. "Shorr Kan has promised that when the Empire is shattered, we shall each of us have a star-kingdom of our own to rule. And Corbulo is to have the biggest."

  Gordon's angry incredulity somehow faded a little, before the ring of truth in the Sirian's voice.

  Horrified, Gordon realized that it might be true! Chan Corbulo, Commander of the Empire's great navy, might be a secret traitor for all he knew.

  Evidence pointing that way rose swiftly in Gordon's mind. Why else had Corbulo broken his duty and helped him to escape? Why, at the very moment when Arn Abbas' assassination was imminent?

  Them Eldred read something of what passed in Gordon's mind, from his face. And the Sirian laughed again.

  "You begin to realize now what a dupe you've been. Why, it was Corbulo himself who shot down Arn Abbas last night! And Corbulo will swear that he saw it done by you, Zarth Arn!"

  Lianna was pale, incredulous. "But why? Why implicate Zarth?"