The Star Kings cotsk-1

by Edmond Hamilton

  "You don't think Shorr Kan was with their fleet?" Gordon asked.

  "He's too foxy for that-he'd be running things from Thallarna, never fear!" Val Marlann declared.

  Gordon agreed, after a moment's thought. He knew Shorr Kan was no coward, but he'd have been directing his vast assault from his headquarters inside the Cloud.

  The League of Dark Worlds' ships disappeared into the shelter of the Cloud long hours later. Soon afterward, the Empire fleet drew up just outside that vast, hazy gloom.

  "If we go in after them, we might run into ambushes," Giron declared. "The place is rotten with navigational perils that we know nothing about."

  Gordon proposed, "We'll demand their surrender, give them an ultimatum."

  "Shorr Kan will not surrender!" Hull Burrel warned.

  But Gordon had them beam a stereo-cast into the Cloud toward Thallarna, and spoke by it.

  "To the Government of the League of Dark Worlds! We offer you a chance to surrender. Give up and disarm under our directions and we promise that no one will suffer except those criminals who led you into this aggression.

  "But refuse, and we'll turn loose the Disruptor upon the whole Cloud! We'll blot this place forever from the galaxy!"

  Val Marlann looked at him, appalled. "You'd do that? But good God-"

  "I wouldn't dare do that!" Gordon answered. "I'll never turn loose the Disruptor again. But they've felt its power and may be bluffed by it."

  There came no answer to their stereo-message. Again, after an hour, he repeated it.

  Again, no answer. Then finally, after another wait, Giron's stern voice came.

  "It seems that we'll have to go in there, Prince Zarth."

  "No, wait," cried Hull Burrel. "A message is coming through from Thallarna!"

  In the stereo had appeared a group of wild-looking Cloud-men, some of them wounded, in a room of Shorr Kan's palace.

  "We agree to your terms, Prince Zarth!" their spokesman said hoarsely. "Our ships will be docked and disarmed immediately. You will be able to enter in a few hours."

  "It could be a trick!" Val Marlann rasped. "It would give Shorr Kan time to lay traps for us."

  The Cloud-man in the stereo shook his head. "Shorr Kan's disastrous tyranny is overthrown. When he refused to surrender, we rose in rebellion against him. I can prove that by letting you see him. He is dying."

  The telestereo switched its scene abruptly to another room of the palace. There before them in image sat Shorr Kan.

  He sat in the chair in his austere little room from which he had directed his mighty attempt to conquer the galaxy. Armed Cloud-men were around him. His face was marble-white and there was a blasted, blackened wound in his side. His dulling eyes looked at them out of the stereo, and then cleared for a moment as they rested on Gordon. And then Shorr Kan grinned weakly.

  "You win," he told Gordon. "I never thought you'd dare loose the Disruptor. Fool's luck, that you didn't destroy yourself with it-"

  He choked, then went on. "Devil of a way for me to end up, isn't it? But I'm not complaining. I had one life and I used it to the limit. You're the same way at bottom, that's why I liked you."

  Shorr Kan's dark head sagged, his voice trailed to a whisper. "Maybe I'm a throwback to your world, Gordon? Born out of my time? Maybe-"

  He was dead with the words, they knew by the way his strong figure slumped forward across the desk.

  "What was he talking about to you, Prince Zarth?" asked Hull Burrel puzzledly. "I couldn't understand it."

  Gordon felt a queer, sharp emotion. Life was unpredictable. There was no reason why he should have liked Shorr Kan. But he knew now that he had.

  Val Marlann and the other officers of the Ethne were exultant.

  "It's victory! We've wiped out the menace of the League forever!"

  The ship was in uproar. And they knew that that wild exultation of relief was spreading through their whole fleet.

  Two hours later, Giron began moving his occupation forces inside the Cloud, on radar beams projected from Thallarna. Half his ships would remain on guard outside, in case of treachery.

  "But there's no doubt now that they've actually surrendered," he told Gordon. "The advance ships I sent in there report that every League warship is already docked and being disarmed."

  He added feelingly, "I'll leave an escort of warships for the Ethne. I know you'll be wanting to return to Throon now."

  Gordon told him, "We don't need any escort. Val Marlann, you can start at once."

  The Ethne set out on the long journey back across the galaxy toward Canopus. But after a half-hour, Gordon gave new orders.

  "Head for Sol, not Canopus. Our destination is Earth." Hull Burrel, amazed, protested. "But Prince Zarth, all Throon will be waiting for you to return! The whole Empire, everyone, will be mad with joy by this time, waiting to welcome you!"

  Gordon shook his head dully. "I am not going to Throon now. Take me to Earth."

  They looked at him puzzledly, wonderingly. But Val Marlann gave the order and the ship changed its course slightly and headed for the far-distant yellow spark of Sol.

  For hours, as the Ethne flew on toward the north, Gordon remained sitting and staring broodingly from the windows, sunk in a strange, tired daze.

  He was going back at last to Earth, to his own time and his own world, to his own body. Only now at last could he keep his pledge to Zarth Arn.

  He looked out at the supernally brilliant stars of the galaxy. Far, far in the west now lay Canopus' glittering beacon. He thought of Throon, of the rejoicing millions there.

  "All that is over for me now," he told himself dully. "Over forever."

  He thought of Lianna, and that blind wave of heartbreak rose again in his mind. That, too, was over for him forever.

  Hull Burrel came and told him. "The whole Empire, the whole galaxy, is ringing with your praises, Prince Zarth! Must you go to Earth now when they are waiting for you?"

  "Yes, I must," Gordon insisted, and the big Antarian perplexedly left him.

  He dozed, and woke, and dozed again. Time seemed scarcely now to have any meaning. How many days was it before the familiar yellow disk of Sol loomed bright ahead of the ship?

  Down toward green old Earth slanted the Ethne, toward the sunlit eastern hemisphere.

  "You'll land at my laboratory in the mountains-Hull knows the place," said Gordon.

  The tower there in the ageless, frosty Himalayas looked the same as when he had left it-how long ago it seemed! The Ethne landed softly on the little plateau.

  Gordon faced his puzzled friends. "I am going into my laboratory for a short time, and I want only Hull Burrel to go with me."

  He hesitated, then added, "Will you shake hands? You're the best friends and comrades a man ever had."

  "Prince Zarth, that sounds like a farewell!" burst Val Marlann worriedly. "What are you going to do in there?"

  "Nothing is going to happen to me, I promise you," Gordon said with a little smile. "I will be coming back out to the ship in a few hours or so."

  They gripped his hand. They stood silently looking after him as he and Hull Burrel stepped out into the frosty, biting air.

  In the tower, Gordon led the way up to the glass-walled laboratory where rested the strange instruments of mental science that had been devised by the real Zarth Arn and old Vel Quen.

  Gordon went over in his mind what the old scientist had told him about the operation of the telepathic amplifier and the mind-transmitter. He checked the instruments as carefully as he could.

  Hull Burrel watched wonderingly, worriedly. Finally, Gordon turned to him.

  "Hull, I'll need your help later. I want you to do as I ask even if you don't understand. Will you?"

  "You know I'll obey any order you give!" said the big Antarian. "But I can't help feeling worried."

  "There's no cause to-in a few hours you'll be on your way to Throon again and I'll be with you," Gordon said. "Now wait."

  He put the headpiece of the
telepathic amplifier on his head. He made sure it was tuned again to Zarth Arn's individual mental frequency as Vel Quen had instructed. Then he turned on the apparatus.

  Gordon thought. He concentrated his mind to hurl a thought-message amplified by the apparatus, back across the abyss of dimensional time to the one mind to which it was tuned. "Zarth Arn! Zarth Arn! Can you hear me?" No answering thought came into his mind. Again and again he repeated the thought-call, but without response.

  Wonder and worry began to grip Gordon. He tried again an hour later, but with no more success. Hull Burrel watched puzzledly.

  Then, after four hours had passed, he desperately made still another attempt.

  "Zarth Arn, can you hear me? It is John Gordon calling!" And this time, faint and far across the unimaginable abyss of time, a thin thought-answer came into his mind.

  "John Gordon! Good God, for days I've been waiting and wondering what was wrong! Why is it that you yourself are calling instead of Vel Quen?"

  "Vel Quen is dead!" Gordon answered in swift thought. "He was killed by League soldiers soon after I came across to this time."

  He explained hurriedly. "There has been galactic war here between the Cloud and the Empire, Zarth. I was swept into it, couldn't get back to Earth to call you for the exchange. I had to assume your identity, to tell no one as I promised. One man did learn of my imposture but he's dead and no one else here knows."

  "Gordon!" Zarth Arn's thought was feverish with excitement. "You've been true to your pledge, then? You could have stayed there in my body and position, but didn't!"

  Gordon told him, "Zarth, I think I can arrange the operation of the mind-transmitter to re-exchange our bodies, from what Vel Quen explained to me. Tell me if this is the way."

  He ran over the details of the mind-transmitter operation in his thoughts. Zarth Arn's thought answered quickly, corroborating most of it, correcting him at places.

  "That will do it-I'm ready for the exchange," Zarth Arn told him finally. "But who will operate the transmitter for you if Vel Quen is dead?"

  "I have a friend here, Hull Burrel," answered Gordon. "He does not know the nature of what we are doing, but I can instruct him how to turn on the transmitter."

  He ceased concentrating, and turned to the worried Antarian who had stood watching him.

  "Hull, it is now that I need your help," Gordon said. He showed the switches of the mind-transmitter. "When I give the signal, you must close these switches in the following order."

  Hull Burrel listened closely, then nodded understandingly. "I can do that. But what's it going to do to you?"

  "I can't tell you that, Hull. But it's not going to harm me. I promise you that."

  He wrung the Antarian's hand in a hard grip. Then he readjusted the headpiece and again sent his thought across the abyss.

  "Ready, Zarth? If you are, I'll give Hull the signal."

  "I'm ready," came Zarth Arn's answer. "And Gordon, before we say farewell-my thanks for all you have done for me, for your loyalty to your pledge!"

  Gordon raised his hand in the signal. He heard Hull closing the switches. The transmitter hummed, and Gordon felt his mind hurled into bellowing blackness...

  28: Star-Rover's Return

  Gordon awoke slowly. His head was aching, and he had an unnerving feeling of strangeness. He stirred, and then opened his eyes.

  He was lying in a familiar room, a familiar bed. This was his little New York apartment, a dark room that now seemed small and crowded.

  Shakily, he snapped on a lamp and stumbled out of bed. He faced the tall mirror across the room.

  He was John Gordon again! John Gordon's strong, stocky figure and tanned face looked back at him instead of the aquiline features and tall form of Zarth Arn.

  He stumbled to the window and looked out on the starlit buildings and blinking lights of New York. How small, cramped, ancient, the city looked now, when his mind was still full of the mighty splendors of Throon.

  Tears blurred his eyes as he looked up at the starry sky. Orion Nebula was but a misty star pendant from that constellation-giant's belt. Ursa Minor reared toward the pole. Low above the roof-tops blinked the white eye of Deneb.

  He could not even see Canopus, down below the horizon. But his thoughts flashed out to it, across the abysses of time and space to the fairy towers of Throon.

  "Lianna! Lianna!" he whispered, tears running down his face.

  Slowly, as the night hours passed, Gordon nerved himself for the ordeal that the rest of his life must be.

  Irrevocable gulfs of time and space separated him forever from the one girl he had ever loved. He could not forget, he would never forget. But he must live his life as it remained to him.

  He went, the next morning, to the big insurance company that employed him. He remembered, as he entered, how he had left it weeks before, afire with the thrill of possible adventure.

  The manager who was Gordon's superior met him with surprise on his face.

  "Gordon, you feel well enough now to come back to work? I'm glad of it!"

  Gordon gathered quickly that Zarth Arn, in his body, had feigned sickness to account for his inability to do Gordon's work.

  "I'm all right now," Gordon said. "And I'd like to get back to work."

  Work was all that kept Gordon from despair, in the next days. He plunged into it as one might into drugs or drink. It kept him, for a little of the time, from remembering.

  But at night, he remembered. He lay sleepless, looking out his window at the bright stars that to his mind's eyes were always mighty suns. And always, Lianna's face drifted before his eyes.

  His superior commended him warmly, after a few days. "Gordon, I was afraid your illness might have slowed you down, but you keep on like this and you'll be an assistant manager some day."

  Gordon could have shouted with bitter laughter, the suggestion seemed so fantastic. He might be an assistant manager?

  He, who as prince of the Empire's royal house had feasted with the star kings at Throon? He, who had captained the hosts of the Kingdoms in the last great fight off Deneb? He, who had unloosed destruction on the Cloud, and had riven space itself?

  But he did not laugh. He said quietly, "That would be a fine position for me, sir."

  And then, on a night weeks later, he heard once more a voice calling in his half-sleeping mind!

  "Gordon! John Gordon!"

  He knew, at once. He knew whose mind called to him. He would have known, even beyond death.

  "Lianna!"

  "Yes, John Gordon, it is I!"

  "But how could you call-how could you even know-"

  "Zarth Arn told me," she interrupted eagerly. "He told me the whole story, when he came back to Throon. Told me how it was you, in his body, whom I really loved!

  "He wept when he told me of it, John Gordon! For he could hardly speak, when he learned all that you had done and had sacrificed for the Empire."

  "Lianna-Lianna-" His mind yearned wildly across the unthinkable depths. "Then at least we can say goodbye."

  "No, wait!" came her silvery mental cry. "It need not be goodbye! Zarth Arn believes that even as minds can be drawn across time, so can physical bodies, if he can perfect his apparatus. He is working on it now. If he succeeds, will you come to me-you yourself, John Gordon?"

  Hope blazed in him, like the kindling of a new flame from ashes. His answer was a throbbing thought.

  "Lianna, I'd come if it were only for an hour of life with you!"

  "Then wait for our call, John Gordon! It cannot be long until Zarth Arn succeeds, and then our call will come!"

  A blaring auto-horn-and Gordon awoke, the eager vibrations of that faraway thought fading from his brain.

  He sat up, trembling. Had it been a dream? Had it?

  "No!" he said hoarsely. "It was real. I know that it was real."

  He went to the window, and looked out across the lights of New York at the great blaze of the galaxy across the sky.

  Worlds of the star
kings, far away across the deeps of infinity and eternity-he would go back to them! Back to them, and to that daughter of star kings whose love had called him from out of space and time.

  THE END

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  [1] Note: Thought-spools were a development of the encephalographic records made as early as 1933 by American psychologists, in which the electric thought-fluctuations of the brain were recorded on moving tape. In this improved model, the encephalographic recording was played back through an electric apparatus and produced pulsations which re-created the recorded thoughts in the listener's brain. Ed.

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  [2] Note: Six arbitrarily assigned directions were used as axes of reference in galactic travel-north, east, south, west, zenith and nadir. Ed.

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  [3] Note: The telestereo operated by sub-spectrum rays many times faster than light, the rays that were the foundation of interstellar travel and civilization. Using the fastest of this famous group of rays, it could communicate almost instantly across the galaxy. Ed.

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  [4] Note: Gordon's study of the history of two hundred thousand years had shown him how the entire structure of galactic civilization was based upon that epochal discovery of sub-spectrum rays.

  The era of space-travel had really dawned in 1945 and '46, with the first release of atomic energy and the discovery that radar could function efficiently in space. By the end of the 20th Century, atomic-powered rockets guided by radar had reached the Moon, Mars and Venus.

  Interplanetary exploration and exploitation had increased rapidly. But the vast distances to other stars remained unconquerable until late in the 22nd Century, when three great inventions made interstellar travel possible.

  The most important of the three was the discovery of sub-spectrum rays. These were hitherto unsuspected octaves of electromagnetic radiation far below even the gamma and cosmic rays in wavelength, and which had velocities vastly greater than the speed of light.