1

The receptionist opened the inner door. "Will you go right in, Mr. Gordon?"

Gordon said, "Thank you." The door closed softly behind him, and at the same time a man rose from behind a small desk and came toward him. He was a tall man, surprisingly young, with a brisk, friendly, energetic air about him. "Mr. Gordon?" he said, and held out his hand. "I'm Dr. Keogh."

Gordon shook hands and allowed himself to be guided to a chair beside the desk. He sat, looking around the room, looking everywhere but at Keogh, suddenly acutely embarrassed.

Keogh said quietly, "Have you ever consulted a psychiatrist before?"

Gordon shook his head. "I never . . . uh . . . felt the need."

"All of us have problems at some time in our lives," said Keogh. "This is nothing to be ashamed of. The important thing is to realize that a problem does exist. Then, and only then, is it possible to do something about it." He smiled. "You see, you have already taken the vital forward step. From here on it should be much easier. Now then." He studied Gordon's card which he had filled in at what seemed unnecessary length. "You're in the insurance business."

"Yes."

"Judging from your position with the firm, you must be quite successful."

"I've worked hard these last few years," Gordon said, in an odd voice.

"Do you like your work?"

"Not particularly."

Keogh was silent a moment or two, frowning at the card. Gordon fought down an overwhelming impulse to run for the door. He knew that he would only have to come back again. He could not carry this question alone any longer. He had to know.

"I see that you're unmarried," Keogh said. "Like to tell me why?"

"That's part of the reason I came here. There was a girl . . . ." He broke off, then said with sudden fierce determination, "I want to find out whether I've been having delusions."

"What kind of delusions?" asked Keogh gently.

"At the time," said Gordon, "I wasn't in any doubt. It was all real. More real, more alive, than anything that had ever happened to me before. But now . . . now I don't know." He looked at Keogh, his eyes full of pain. "I'll be honest with you. I don't want to lose this dream . . . if it was a dream. It's more precious to me than any reality. But I know that if . . . if I . . . oh, hell!" He got up and moved around the room, aimlessly, his broad stocky shoulders hunched and his hands balled into fists. He looked like a man about to jump off a cliff, and Keogh knew that he was just that. He sat quietly, waiting.

Gordon said, "I thought that I went to the stars. Not now, but in the future. Two hundred thousand years in the future. I'll give it to you all in one lump, Doctor, and then you can call for the strait-jacket. I believed that my mind was drawn across time, into the body of another man, and for a while . . . keeping my own identity, you understand, my own memories as John Gordon of twentieth-century Earth . . . for a while I lived in the body of Zarth Arn, a prince of the Mid-Galactic Empire. I went to the stars . . . ."

His voice trailed away. He stood by the window, looking out at falling rain and the roofs and walls and chimneys of West Sixty-fourth Street. The sky was a drab blankness fouled with soot.

"I heard the sunrise music," Gordon said, "that the crystal peaks make above Throon when Canopus comes to warm them. I feasted with the star-kings in the Hall of Stars. And at the end, I led the fleets of the Empire against our enemies, the men from the League of Dark Worlds. I saw the ships die like swarming fireflies off the shores of the Hercules Cluster . . . ."

He did not turn to see how Keogh was taking all this. He had started and he would not stop, and in his voice there was pride and longing and the anguish of loss.

"I've shot the Orion Nebula. I've been into the Cloud, where the drowned suns burn in a haze of darkness. I've killed men, Doctor. And in that last battle, I-"

He stopped and shook his head, turning abruptly away from the window.

"Never mind that now. But there was more. A lot more. A whole universe, a language, names, people, costumes, places, details. Could I have imagined all that?"

He looked at Keogh. Desperately.

Keogh said, "Were you happy in that universe?"

Gordon thought about that, his square, honest face creased in a careful frown. "Most of the time I was frightened. Things were . . ." He made a gesture vaguely indicating great troubles. "I was in constant danger. But . . . yes, I guess I was happy there."

Keogh nodded. "You mentioned a girl?"

Now Gordon turned again to the window. "Her name was Lianna. She was a princess of Fomalhaut Kingdom. She and Zarth Arn were betrothed . . . a matter of state, you understand, and it wasn't supposed to be anything more. Zarth Arn already had a morganatic wife, but I, Gordon, in Zarth Arn's body-I fell in love with Lianna."

"Did she return your feeling?"

"Yes, it was the end of the world for me when I had to leave her and come back here to my own world, my own time . . . . And here's what makes it so difficult, Doctor. I'd given up hope of ever seeing her again, and then it seemed to me that she spoke to me one night, telepathically, across time, and told me that Zarth Arn believed he could find a way to bring me through physically, in my own body . . . ." His voice trailed off again and his shoulders sagged. "How insane that dream sounds when I tell it. But it made this dreary life worth living for a long while, just the hope, knowing that someday I might go back. And of course nothing ever happened. And now I don't know whether anything ever did happen, really."

He walked back to the chair and sat down, feeling strangely exhausted and empty.

"I've never told this to anyone before. Now that I have, it's like . . . it's as though I'd killed something, or killed part of myself. But I can't go on living between two worlds. If that world of the future was hallucination, and this one is reality, the only reality, then I've got to accept it."

He sat, brooding. Now it was Keogh's turn to rise and move about. He turned to glance at Gordon a time or two, as though he were having difficulty finding a point of attack. Then he made up his mind.

"Well," he said briskly, "let us look at the available evidence." He glanced at some scribbled notes on his desk. "You say that your mind was drawn across time, into the body of another man."

"That's right. Zarth Arn was a scientist as well as a noble. He had perfected the method and the equipment. The exchange was effected from his laboratory."

"Very well. Now what happened to your own body, here in the present day on Earth, while your mind was absent from it?"

Gordon looked at him. "I said exchange. That was the purpose of the whole thing. Zarth Arn wanted to explore the past. He had done this many times before. Only in my case, things got fouled up."

"Then this . . . uh . . . Zarth Arn actually inhabited your body?"

"Yes."

"Went to your place of employment, did your work?"

"Well, no. When I came back, my boss said he was happy to see me recovered from my illness. Apparently Zarth Arn had given that excuse. I don't suppose he wanted to run the risk of making some irreparable blunder. I did not have the same choice."

Keogh said. "I congratulate you on your very logical mind, Mr. Gordon. But there is no proof at all, no physical proof, that this exchange of minds actually took place?"

"No," said Gordon. "Not a bit. How could there be? But what did you mean about my logical mind?"

"You have covered all the loopholes so carefully." Keogh smiled. "It's a gorgeous fantasy, Mr. Gordon. Few men are gifted with that much imagination." He added seriously, "I understand what strength of mind it must have taken to bring you here. I think we are going to have a very good relationship, Mr. Gordon, because I think you already realize subconsciously that your dreams of star-kingdoms and nebulae and beautiful princesses were only the attempt of your mind to escape from a world that you found unbearably humdrum and dull. Dreary, I think was your word. Now, this will take work, and time, and possibly there will be some painful moments, but I don't think you have anything at all to worry about. The fact that you've had no recurrence of the dream for a long period of time is a healthy sign. I shall want to see you twice weekly, if possible."

"I can manage it."

"Good. Miss Finlay will make the appointments for you. Oh, and here is my private number." He handed Gordon a card. "If you should at any time have a recurrence, please call me, no matter how late it is."

He shook Gordon's hand warmly, and a few minutes later Gordon found himself on the street, walking in the rain and feeling nothing but an utter desolation. He knew that Keogh was right, that he must be right. He knew that he had indeed almost resigned himself to that fact and only needed someone to supply the final push. Yet somehow the act of putting it all into words had the cruelty of a surgeon's knife, performing a necessary and humane operation but without anesthesia.

And it had all seemed, and did still seem, so real . . . .

Brutally he thrust out of his mind and heart the sound of Lianna's voice, the beautiful picture of her face, the memory of her lips.

In his office, Keogh was talking rapidly into his dictation machine, getting down all of what Gordon had told him while it was fresh, and shaking his head in wonder. This case was going to be, literally, one for the books.

Twice a week thereafter Gordon visited Keogh, answering his questions, telling more and more of his dream, and under Keogh's skillful guidance learning to look at it objectively. He came to understand the underlying motivations . . . boredom with a job that did not offer him sufficient challenge, desire for fame and aggrandizement, desire for power, desire to punish the world for its frustrations and its failure to appreciate him. On this last point, Keogh had been enormously impressed, not to say startled, by Gordon's description of the Disruptor, a weapon of incredible power which, as Zarth Arn, he had wielded in the great battle against the League.

"You annihilated part of space?" Keogh asked, and shook his head. "You do have powerful desires. How fortunate that you took this one out in dreaming."

Lianna was most easily explained of all. She was the dream-girl, the unattainable, and by transferring his feelings to her as he was relieved of the necessity of seeking out or competing for the actual young women by whom he was surrounded. Keogh pointed out to him that he was afraid of women. Gordon had felt that he was merely bored by them, but he supposed Keogh knew his subconscious better than he did. So he did not dispute him.

And steadily, week by week, the dream faded.

Keogh was personally delighted by the whole case. He liked Gordon, who had proved to be an uniquely cooperative patient. And he had acquired a mass of material that was going to keep him in learned papers and outstanding lectures for a long time to come.

At last, on one soft May afternoon when the sun shone gently down from a cloud-flecked sky, Keogh said to Gordon, "We have made tremendous progress. I'm very pleased. And I'm going to let you try your wings alone for a while. Come back in three weeks and tell me how you're doing."

They had a drink together to celebrate and later on Gordon bought himself a lavish dinner and took in a show, telling himself all the while how happy he was. When he walked home to his apartment late that night the stars were glowing above the city lights. He studiously avoided looking at them.

He went to bed.

At forty-three minutes past two o'clock Keogh's phone rang, rousing him from sleep. He answered it, and was instantly wide awake. "Gordon! What is it?"

Gordon's voice was wild and shaken. "It's come again. Zarth Arn. He spoke to me. He said-he said he was ready now to bring me through. He said Lianna was waiting. Doctor-Doctor! . . ."

The voice broke off. "Gordon!" Keogh shouted, but there was no answer. "Hold on," he said to the humming wire. "Don't panic. I'll be right over."

He was there in fifteen minutes. The door of Gordon's apartment was locked but he roused the manager, who unlocked it grudgingly after examining his credentials. The apartment was empty and quiet. The phone swung from its cord as though it had been dropped in the midst of conversation. Absently Keogh replaced it.

He stood for a little time, thoughtful. He had no doubt of what had happened. Gordon had not been able to stand the loss of his glittering delusion, his dream so Gordon had run away, from his analyst, from reality. He would be back, of course, but then all that work must be done again . . . . Keogh sighed and shook his head, and went out.

2

Consciousness returned to Gordon very slowly. He had at first only a confused memory of fear, terror, gut-wrenching, mind-shattering panic that was somehow combined with the sensation of falling right off the world into a state of not-being. He thought that he could hear himself yelling, and he wondered wildly why Keogh did not hear and come to save him. Then he heard other voices, familiar, unfamiliar, far away. A liquid slid coolly down his throat and exploded into white fire in his stomach. He opened his eyes. There was a blank wash of light out of which images emerged gradually. Large forms, walls and windows and furniture. Small forms, close at hand, bending over him.

Faces.

Two faces. One was just a face, male, intent, anxious. The other was his own face . . . .

No. Now wait a minute. His own face was square and blue-eyed and brown-haired, and this face above him was dark-eyed and aquiline, so it could not possibly be his own. And yet . . .

"Gordon. Gordon!" the face was saying.

The other face said, "One moment, Highness." Gordon felt his head raised. A hand holding a glass appeared out of the mist. Gordon drank automatically. Again there was the explosion of white fire inside him, very pleasant and invigorating. The mist began to clear.

He looked up into the dark handsome face, and after a moment he said, "Zarth Arn."

Strong hands gripped him. "Thank God. I was beginning to be afraid. No, don't try to get up yet. Lie still. You were in shock for a long time, and no wonder, with the atoms of your body driven right through the time-dimension. But it's done now. After all these years of work, finally, success!" Zarth Arn smiled. "Did you think I had forgotten you?"

"I thought . . . ." said Gordon, and closed his eyes. Keogh. Keogh, he thought, I need you. Am I truly mad and dreaming? Or is this real?

Real, as I knew all along, as I never stopped knowing in spite of all your careful logic!

Real.

He struggled to sit up, and they let him. He looked around the laboratory room. It was just the same as the first time he had seen it, except that some new and very elaborate equipment had been installed, a panel of incomprehensible controls at one side and in the center a tall structure like a glass coffin set on end and suspended between two power grids that were like nothing in Gordon's experience. Enormously fat cables snaked out of the room, presumably to a generator somewhere beyond.

The room was octagonal, with tall windows in each side. Through them poured the clear and brilliant sunlight of high altitudes, and through them Gordon could see the mighty peaks of the Himalayas. Old Earth was still here, outside.

He looked down at his hands, at his familiar body. He felt the solidity of the padded table on which he sat, the texture of the sheets, the movement of air across his naked back. He reached out and took hold of Zarth Arn. Bone and muscle, flesh and blood, warm and alive.

Gordon said, "Where is Lianna?"

"Waiting." His nod indicated that she was close by, in another room. "She wanted to be in here with us, but we thought it better not. As soon as you feel strong enough . . ."

Gordon's heart was pounding. Reality or dream, sanity or madness, what did it matter? He was alive again, and Lianna was waiting. He stood up and laughed as Zarth Arn and the other man caught him and shored up his buckling knees. "It was a long time," he said to Zarth Arn. "I got a little confused. But it's all right now. Whatever this is, I'll settle for it. How about another helping of that hellfire, and some clothes?"

Zarth Arn looked at the other man. "What about it, Lex Vel? Gordon, this is Vel Quen's son. He's taken his father's place with me. If it hadn't been for him I couldn't have solved the insoluble problems that have been driving us both mad ever since you returned to your own time."

"Why be modest?" Lex Vel said. "It's true." He shook Gordon's hand, grinning. "And the answer is no, not yet. Rest awhile and then we'll talk about clothes."

Gordon lay down again, reluctantly. Zarth Arn said, "You'll find quite a welcome at Throon when you get there, Gordon. My brother Jhal is one of the few who know the whole story and he understands what you did for us. We can never repay you, really, but don't think that we've forgotten."

Lying there, Gordon remembered the day when Jhal Arn, ruler of the Empire in the place of his murdered father, had been himself struck down by a would-be assassin, leaving the vast burden of Empire diplomacy and defense upon his, Gordon's, totally inadequate shoulders. By the grace of heaven and sheer fool luck he had bulled it through.

He smiled and said, "Thanks," and then unexpectedly he slept for a while.

When he woke the sunlight was dimmer, the shadows of the high peaks longer. He felt fresh and rested. Zarth Arn was not there but Lex Vel ran a check on him, nodded, and pointed to some clothing draped over a chair. Gordon rose and dressed, feeling shaky at first but rapidly recovering his strength. The suit was of the silky fabric he remembered, sleeveless shirt and trousers in a warm shade of copper, with a cloak of the same material. He stood before a mirror to adjust the cloak, and he had never seen his own self before in this attire, which had looked natural and right on Zarth Arn but which made him smile now and feel as though he were dressed for a costume ball.

And then it hit him like a thunderbolt. Lianna had never seen him. She had fallen in love with him as Zarth Arn, a different Zarth Arn to be sure, and she had understood later that the personality she loved belonged to John Gordon of Earth. But would she still love him when confronted with his physical actuality? Or would she be disappointed, would she find him plain and dull-looking, perhaps even repulsive.

Gordon turned to Lex Vel. He said desperate, "I really do need some more of that stimulant . . . ."

Lex Vel glanced at his face and brought him a glass immediately. Gordon drank it down, as Zarth Arn came in and then hurried toward them.

"What is it?"

"I don't know," said Lex Vel. "He seemed all right, and then all at once . . ."

Zarth Arn said gently, "Perhaps I can guess. It's Lianna, isn't it?"

Gordon nodded. "I suddenly realized that she'll be seeing me for the first time . . . a total stranger."

"She's somewhat prepared. Remember, I've been able to describe you to her, and she's asked me to do so at least ten thousand times." He put his hand on Gordon's shoulder. "It may take her awhile to get used to the change, Gordon, but be patient and never doubt how she feels about you. She has spent far too much time here, away from her kingdom. Many times when she should have been at home attending to affairs of state, she was here instead, waiting for the day when we could say we were ready to try." Zarth Arn shook his head, his eyes serious. "She has ignored repeated messages from Fomalhaut, and of course she wouldn't listen to me. Now that you're here and safe, I'm hoping she'll listen to you. Tell her, Gordon. Tell her she must go home."

"Is there trouble?"

"There's always trouble when the head of state isn't attending to business," said Zarth Arn. "How much or how serious it is I don't know because she hasn't told me. But the messages from Fomalhaut were coded URGENT at first. Now they're IMPERATIVE. You will tell her?"

"Of course," said Gordon, rather glad at the moment that he had something besides himself to worry about.

"Good," said Zarth Arn, and took him by the arm. "Take heart, friend. Remember, I've described you. She's not expecting an Apollo."

He looked at Gordon in such a way that Gordon had to grin briefly. "My friend," he said, "thanks a lot."

Zarth Arn laughed and led him out. But Gordon still felt afraid.

She was waiting for him in a small room that faced the sunset. Beyond the window the snow peaks caught the light and flamed a glorious hot gold, and below them the gorges were filled with purple shadow. Zarth Arn left Gordon at the doorway, and the two were alone. It was quiet there. She turned from the window to look at him and he stood where he was, afraid to move, afraid to speak. She was as lovely as he remembered, tall and slim and graceful, with her ash-blonde hair and her clear gray eyes. And now finally Gordon knew once and for all that this was true and no dream, because no man could imagine what he was feeling in his heart "Lianna," he whispered. And again, "Lianna . . ."

"You are John Gordon." She came toward him, her eyes searching his face as though for some tiny scrap of familiarity by which she might know him. He wanted to take her in his arms, to hold her and touch her and kiss her with all the stored-up hunger of the lonely years, but he did not dare. He could only stand rigid and miserable while she came closer, searching, and then she stopped. Her gaze dropped and she turned away a little, her red mouth uncertain.

Gordon said, "Is it so much of a shock?"

"Zarth Arn told very truly how you would look."

"And you find me . . ."

"No," she said quickly, and turned to meet his gaze again. "Please don't think that." She smiled, rather tremulously. "If I were meeting you for the first time . . . I mean, really for the first time, I would think you a most attractive man." She shook her head. "I mean, I do find you attractive. It isn't that at all. It's just that I will have to learn to know you all over again. That is," she added, her eyes very steady on his, "if you still feel toward me as you did."

"I do," he said. "I do," and he put his hands on her shoulders. She did not draw away, but neither did she yield toward him. She only smiled uncertainly and repeated Zarth Arn's words to him. "Be patient with me."

He took his hands away and said, "I will," trying to keep all trace of bitterness out of his voice. He went over to the window. The flaming peaks had darkened and the snowfields were turning to pure blue, as the first stars pricked the sky. He felt as cold and empty and forlorn as the wind that scoured those snows.

"Zarth Arn tells me that you have trouble at home."

She brushed it aside. "Nothing of importance. He wants you to tell me to go home, doesn't he?"

"Yes."

"And I will, tomorrow, on one condition." She was close beside him again, the last of the daylight showing her face pale and clear as a cameo in the dusk. "You must come with me."

He looked at her and touched his arm. "I've hurt you," she said softly. "And I didn't mean to, I didn't want to. Can you forgive me?"

"Of course, Lianna."

"Then come with me. A little time, John Gordon-that's all I need."

"All right," he said. "I'll come." I'll come, he thought fiercely, and if I have to woo and win you all over again, I'll do it so good and damn well that you'll forget there was ever a time when I looked like somebody else.

3

The royal star-cruiser with the White Sun of Fomalhaut glittering on her bows lifted from the star port, beyond which lay the greatest city of latter-day Earth. It was a city of wide space and lifting beauty. Flared and fluted pylons towered at the intersections of the grid of roadways. Down through the yellow sunshine flocked the local Terran flyers, skimming like birds to roost on the pylons' landing pads. It was not like the cities that Gordon remembered.

The starship left all this behind and plunged back into her true element, the glooming tideless seas of space that run so deep between the island suns. The yellow spark of Sol, and the old green planet from which the human race had spread through a universe, dropped back into obscurity. Now once more the ranked stars shone before Gordon, in all their naked splendor. No wonder, he thought, that he had been smothered by the cramped horizons of twentieth-century Earth, after having once seen this magnificence.

Across the broad loom of the galaxy, the nations of the star-kings were marked in many-colored fire, crimson and gold and emerald green, blue and violet and diamond white . . . the kingdoms of Lyra, Cygnus, Cassiopeia, Polaris, and the capital of the great Mid-Galactic Empire at Canopus. The Hercules Cluster blazed with its baronies of swarming suns. To the south, as the cruiser beat westward toward Fomalhaut, the Orion Nebula sprawled its coiling radiance across the firmament. Far northward lay the black blot of the Cloud, where drowned Thallarna lay now in peace.

Once, as the cruiser altered course to skirt a dangerous bank of stellar drift, Gordon caught sight of the Magellanic Clouds, the as yet unknown and unexplored star-clouds lying like offshore islands in the inter-galactic gulf. He remembered that there had once been an invasion of the alien Magellanians into the then-young Empire, an invasion crushed for all time by an ancestor of Zarth Arn's who had for the first time used that terrible secret weapon of the Empire, the thing called the Disrupter.

Gordon thought of Keogh and his detailed psychological explanation of what he had called "the Disrupter fantasy." He smiled, shaking his head. A pity Keogh was not here with him. Keogh could explain the cruiser as a womb symbol, and he could explain Lianna as the unattainable dream-girl, and Gordon's romance with her wish fulfillment. But he wondered just how Keogh would explain Korkhann, Lianna's Minister of Nonhuman Affairs.

His first meeting with Korkhann, which took place the night before take-off, had been a shock to Gordon. He had known that there were nonhuman citizens in the kingdoms of the stars, and he had even seen a few of them, briefly and more or less distantly, but this was the first time he had actually encountered one face to face.

Korkhann was a native of Krens, a star-system on the far borders of Fomalhaut Kingdom. From it, Korkhann said, one might look out across the vast wilderness of the Marches of Outer Space, as though perched precariously on the last thin edge of civilization.

"The counts of the Marches," Zarth Arn had explained to Gordon, "are allied to the Empire, as you remember. But they're a wild lot, and apparently determined to remain that way. They say their oath of fealty did not include opening their borders to Empire ships, and they refuse to do so. My brother often feels that we might be better off to have the counts as enemies rather than friends."

"Their time will come," Korkhann said. "Just now, my immediate problems are closer to home." And he had bent his severe yellow gaze upon Lianna, who reached out and placed her hand affectionately on his sleek gray plumes.

"I have been a trial to you," she said, and turned to Gordon. "Korkhann came here with me and he has been in touch with Fomalhaut almost constantly by stero communicator, doing his best to deal with affairs at long distance."

And Korkhann turned his round unwinking eyes and his beaked nose to Gordon and said in his harsh whistling voice, "I'm glad you have been safely delivered here at last, John Gordon, while Her Highness still has a kingdom to go back to."

Lianna had made light of that, and Gordon had been still distracted by this sudden confrontation with a five-foot-high creature who walked erect, clothed in pride and his own beautiful feathers, who spoke the English-derived language of the Empire, and who gestured gracefully with the long clawed fingers that terminated his flightless wings. But now, on the voyage, Gordon remembered.

They were alone, the three of them, in the cruiser's small but lavishly fitted lounge, and Gordon had been looking forward to the hour when Korkhann would finish his impossibly complicated chess game with Lianna and retire to his own cabin. He sat pretending to scan a tape from the cruiser's library, covertly watching Lianna as she bent her head over the board, thinking how beautiful she was and then glancing at Korkhann and trying to stifle the inner qualm of revulsion he had been fighting ever since that first meeting. And suddenly he said, "Korkhann . . ."

The long slim head turned, making the neck-plumage shift and shine in the lamplight. "Yes?"

"Korkhann, what did you mean when you said you were glad I had come while Lianna still had a kingdom to go back to?"

Lianna said impatiently, "There's no need to go into all that now. Korkhann is a loyal friend and a devoted minister, but he worries too . . ."

"Highness," said Korkhann gently. "We have never had even small falsehoods between us, and this would be a bad time to begin. You worry Just as much as I do about Narath Teyn, but because of another matter you have set aside that worry, and in order to salve your conscience you must deny that there is anything to worry about."

Gordon thought, 'He sounds exactly like Keogh.' And he waited for the explosion.

Lianna's mouth set and her eyes were stormy. She rose, looking imperious in a way that Gordon remembered, but Korkhann continued to sit and bear her angry gaze quietly. Abruptly she turned away.

"You make me furious," she said, "so what you say is probably true. Very well, then. Tell him."

"Who," asked Gordon, "is Narath Teyn?"

"Lianna's cousin," Korkhann said. "He is also the presumptive heir to the crown of Fomalhaut."

"But I thought Lianna . . ."

"Is the legal and undoubted ruler. Yes. But there must always be a next in succession. How much do you know about the kingdom, John Gordon?"

He indicated the tape. "I've been studying, but I haven't had time to learn too much." He frowned at Korkhann. "I could wonder why this would concern the Minister of Nonhuman Affairs."

Korkhann nodded and rose from the forgotten chess game. "I can show you." He dimmed the lights and touched a wall stud. A panel slid back, revealing a three-dimensional map of Fomalhaut Kingdom, a spatter of tiny suns in the simulated blackness of space, dominated by the white star that gives the area its name.

"There are many nonhuman races in the galaxy," Korkhann said. "Some are intelligent and civilized, some are brutish, some are making the change from the one to the other, some probably never will. In the early days there were some unfortunate confrontations, not without reason on both sides. You find me repellent . . . ."

Gordon started, and was aware that Lianna had turned to look at him. He felt his face turn hot, and he said with unnecessary sharpness, "Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Forgive me," Korkhann said. "You have been most studiously polite, and I don't wish to insult you, especially as I understand that yours is a purely instinctive reaction."

"Korkhann is a telepath," said Lianna. She added, "Quite a lot of the nonhumans are, so if what he says is true, John Gordon, you had better conquer that instinct."

"You see," said Korkhann, "well over half the worlds of our kingdom are nonhuman." His quick clawed fingers pointed them out-the tiny solar-systems with their motelike planets. "On the other hand, the uninhabited worlds that were colonized by your people, here and here . . . ." Again the long finger flicked. "These are the planets with the heavy populations, so that humans outnumbered nonhumans by about two-thirds. You know that the princess rules with the aid of a council, which is divided into two chambers, with representation in one based upon planetary units, and in the other on population . . . ."

Gordon was beginning to get part of the picture. "So one chamber of the council would always be dominated by one group."

"Exactly," Korkhann said. "Therefore, the opinion of the ruler is often the deciding one. You can see that because of this, the sympathies of the ruler are of more than ordinary importance in Fomalhaut Kingdom."

"There was never any real difficulty until about two years ago," Lianna said. "Then a campaign began to make the nonhumans believe that the humans were their enemies, that I in particular hated them and was hatching all sorts of plots. Complete nonsense, but among nonhumans as well as among humans there are always those who will listen."

"Gradually," Korkhann said, "a pattern emerged. A certain group among the nonhuman populations aspires to take over the rule of Fomalhaut Kingdom, and as a first step they must replace Lianna with a ruler more to their liking."

"Narath Teyn?"

"Yes," said Korkhann, "and I will answer your unspoken question also, John Gordon. No, Lianna, it is a fair question and I wish to answer it." The bright yellow eyes met Gordon's squarely. "You wonder why I support the human cause against my own kind. The answer is quite simple. It is because in this case the human cause is the just one. The group behind Narath Teyn talk very eloquently of justice, but they think only of power. And somewhere in all this there is something hidden, an evil which I do not understand but which frightens me nevertheless."

He shrugged, rippling the gray shoulder-plumes. "Beyond all that, Narath Teyn is . . ."

He stopped as someone rapped sharply on the door.

Lianna said, "Enter."

A junior officer entered and stood at rigid attention. "Highness," he said, "Captain Harn Horva respectfully requests your presence on the bridge, at once." His eyes flicked to Korkhann. "You too, sir, if you please."

Gordon felt the small shock of alarm in the air.

Only an emergency of considerable importance would bring such a request from the captain. Lianna nodded.

"Of course," she said, and turned to Gordon. "Come with us."

The young officer led the way. They followed him down narrow gleaming corridors and up a steep companionway to the ship's control-center, still archaically called "the bridge."

Aft was a long curving bulkhead filled with the massed panels of the computer banks, the guidance systems, the controls that governed velocity, mass, and the accumulator banks. Here under the steel floorplates the throbbing of the generators was as close and intimate as the pulsing of one's own blood. Forward a series of screens gave visual and radar images of space along a 180-degree perimeter, and at one side was the stereo-communicator. As they entered the bridge Gordon was aware of the complete silence, broken only by the electronic purlings and hummings of the equipment. The technicians all appeared to be holding their breath, their attention fixed half on their instruments and half on the taut little group around the radar screens, the captain, first and second officers, and radar men.

Harn Horva, a tall vigorous gray-haired man with very keen eyes and a strong jaw, turned to greet them. "Highness," he said. "I'm sorry to disturb you, but it is necessary."

To Gordon's untutored eye the screens showed nothing but a meaningless speckle of blips. He turned his attention instead to the visual screens.

The cruiser was approaching an area of cosmic drift. Gordon saw it first as a sort of tenuous dark cloud occluding the stars beyond it. Then as he looked he began to see its individual components, bits and pieces of interstellar wrack gleaming faintly in the light of far-off suns. Rocks as big as worlds, rocks as small as houses, and every size in-between, embedded in a tattered stream of dust that stretched for a parsec or two across the void. It was still a long way off. The cruiser would pass it on her port beam, with distance to spare. Nothing else showed. He could not understand what the excitement was about.

Harn Horva was busy explaining to Lianna.

"Our regular radar is picking up only the normal blips associated with drift. But the hot-spot scanners are getting some high-energy emissions that are not all typical of drift." His face was grim, his voice driving on to a harsh conclusion. "I'm afraid we'll have to assume that there are ships lying up in there, using the drift as a screen."

"Ambush?" asked Lianna, her own voice perfectly steady. And Gordon's heart jumped and began to pound. "I don't see how that could be possible, Captain. I know that you've been following the tactical evasion course required by security regulations, which means that you yourself have been improvising the coordinates at random intervals. How could anyone plan an ambush without knowing our course?"

"I could postulate a traitor," said Harn Horva, "but I think it highly unlikely. I would guess instead that telepaths are being used." His voice became even harsher. "Narath Teyn has the pick of them on his side."

He turned to Korkhann. "Sir, I would appreciate your assistance."

"You wish to know if there are indeed ships there," Korkhann said, and nodded. "As you say, Narath Teyn has the pick, and my race is not among them. Still, I'll do my best."

He moved a little apart and stood quietly, his yellow eyes going strange and unfocused. Everyone was silent, waiting. The generators throbbed and thundered.

Vagrant blips sparked and were gone on the hot-spot screens. Gordon's mouth was dry and his chest felt tight, and the rest of him was sweating.

At last Korkhann said, "There are ships. Narath Teyn's."

"What else?" asked Lianna. "What did you hear?"

"Minds. Human, nonhuman, a babble of minds on the edge of battle." His slim clawed fingers opened in a gesture of frustration. "I could not read them clearly, but I think . . . I think. Highness, they are waiting not to capture, but to kill."

4

Instantly there was an outcry in the bridge room, of anger and shock. Harn Horva quelled it with one sharp order.

"Quiet! We have no time for that." He turned again to the screens and studied them, his body taut as a drawn bow. Gordon looked at Lianna. Whatever she felt inside, she was showing nothing to the men but cool self-possession. Gordon began really to be afraid.

"Can't you message Fomalhaut for help?" he asked.

"Too far away. They couldn't possibly get here in time, and in any case our friends ahead there in the drift would attack instantly if they intercepted such a message. Which of course they would."

Harn Horva straightened, the lines deep at the corners of his mouth. "I believe our only hope is to turn and run for it. With your permission, Highness . . ."

"No," said Lianna, unexpectedly.

Gordon stared at her. So did the captain. She smiled, briefly and without humor.

"There's no need to spare me, Harn Horva, though I thank you for the intent. I know as well as you do that we might outrun their ships, but not their missiles. And the moment we change course, showing that we're aware of the ambush, we'd have a cloud of missiles after us."

Harn Horva began talking fiercely about evasive action and missile-destroyer batteries, but Lianna was already beside the communications technician.

"I will speak to the Royal ComCenter at Fomalhaut. Make it a normal transmission."

"Highness!" said the Captain desperately. "They'll intercept."

"I want them to," said Lianna, and Gordon was struck by the look in her eyes. He started to speak but Korkhann forestalled him, his feathers ruffled with emotion.

"Your plan is a bold one, Highness, and sometimes boldness pays. But I urge you to think very carefully before you commit yourself."

"And all of you as well. I understand that, Korkhann. I have thought. And I can see no other way." Looking at them all, she explained. "I will message Fomalhaut that I am going on to visit my cousin Narath Teyn at Marral, for an important conference. Then I propose to do exactly that."

For a moment there was a stunned silence. Then Gordon said, "What?"

Lianna continued as though she had not heard him. "You see what this will do. If it's known that I'm heading for Marral, and anything happens to me on the way, my cousin would certainly get the blame. At the very least it would rouse enough feeling against him so that his hopes of succeeding me would be pretty well ruined. Which stalemates our friends there in the drift. Narath Teyn won't dare let me be killed under circumstances that would shatter all his plans."

"That's all very fine," said Gordon, "but what happens after you get there? You know the man wants to get rid of you, and you're putting yourself squarely in his hands." He was close to Lianna now, intent only on her and quite aware of the frozen stillness around him. "No. The captain's idea is better. The chance of escaping may be small but it is a chance. This way . . ."

Lianna's eyes were very wide, very cool, very gray. She smiled, a small curving of the mouth. "I thank you for your concern, John Gordon. I have considered all the objections, and this is my decision." She turned to the technician. "Fomalhaut, please."

The technician looked uneasily at Harn Horva, who made a helpless gesture and said, "Do as Her Highness wishes." Neither he nor anyone else appeared to notice the coloring of Gordon's face, which was first red and then white. In fact, it was as though Gordon had suddenly become invisible.

Gordon moved forward a step, without quite realizing it Korkhann's fingers closed tightly on his arm, and then more tightly, the sharp talons digging just a little. Gordon stiffened and then forced himself to relax and stand easily. He watched the screens while Lianna made her transmission to Fomalhaut. Nothing happened. The dark drift ahead remained quiescent, concerned with its own cold and ancient affairs which had nothing to do with humanity. The thought crossed his mind that Korkhann might have invented the lurking ships and the death-wish.

"But see here," whispered Korkhann's voice beside him. The clawed fingers pointed to the hot-spot screens and the vagrant sparks that glittered there. "Each spark is a ship's generator. The drift moves. Nothing is ever still in space. As the drift moves, so must the ships, and there scanners can see where radar is as good as blind."

"Korkhann," said Gordon softly, "my friend, you make me just the least small bit nervous."

"You'll get used to it. And don't forget . . . I am your friend."

Lianna finished her message, spoke briefly to the captain, and left the bridge. Gordon followed with Korkhann. Once below, Lianna said pleasantly, "Will you excuse us, Korkhann?"

Korkhann bowed and strode away down the passage on his long thin legs. Lianna flung open the door of the lounge without waiting for Gordon to do it for her. When they were inside and the door closed again, she turned and faced him.

"You must never," she said, "question my judgment or interfere with my orders in public."

Gordon looked at her. "How about in private? Or are you ruler in the bedroom, too?"

Now it was her turn to redden. "It may be hard for you to understand. You come from a different age, a different culture."

"I do indeed. And I will tell you something. I will not give up my right to say what I think." She opened her mouth, and he raised his voice, not much, but there was a note in it that held her silent. "Furthermore, when I speak as a friend, as a man who loves you and is concerned only for your safety, I will not be publicly slapped in the face for it." His eyes were as steady as hers, and as hot. "I'm beginning to wonder, Lianna. Perhaps you'd do better with someone who isn't such a lout about protocol."

"Please try to understand! I have obligations above and beyond my personal feelings. I have a kingdom I must worry about."

"I do understand," Gordon said. "I once had an empire to worry about, remember? Good night."

He left her standing. Out in the passage, in spite of his anger, he could not help smiling. He wondered how many times she'd been walked out on. Not often enough, he thought.

He went along to his own cabin and lay awake wondering if her harebrained scheme would work, if they would be allowed to pass quietly on their way to Marral, wherever that might be. He half expected every minute to feel the impact of a missile that would blow the cruiser's fragments across half this sector of space. But time went by and nothing happened, and after a while he began to think about Lianna and what might lie ahead.

When he slept at last his dreams were disturbed and sad. In all of them he lost her, sometimes in the midst of a lurid darkness where strange shapes walked, and sometimes in a vast throne room where she walked away from him, and away, and away, gliding backwards with her face toward him and her eyes on his, the cool, remote eyes of a stranger.

The cruiser skirted the edge of the drift, altered course slightly to the southwest and continued on her way unmolested.

The next "day," arbitrarily so-called in the ship's log, Korkhann met Gordon in the captain's mess, where he was toying with a gloomy breakfast all alone, having purposely waited until Harn Horva and the other officers would be finished. Lianna always took her breakfast in her private suite.

"So far," said Korkhann, "the plan seems to be working."

"Sure," said Gordon. "The victim is walking right into a trap; why shoot her on the way?"

"It might be difficult for Narath Teyn to find a way to kill her on his own world without being accused of it."

"Do you think so?"

Korkhann shook his head. "No. Knowing Narath Teyn and his world, and his people, I don't think it will be difficult at all."

They were silent for a time. Then Gordon said, "I think you'd better tell me all you can."

They went into a lounge and Korkhann opened the map panel, where the tiny suns of Fomalhaut Kingdom glittered in the dark.

"Here along the southwestern borders of the kingdom is a sort of badland, of rogue stars and uninhabited, uninhabitable worlds, with here and there a solar system capable of supporting life, like Krens, from whence I come. The peoples of these scattered systems are, like myself, nonhuman." He pointed out a tawny-yellow star that burned like a smoky cairngorm on the dark breast of drift-cloud. "That star is Marral, and its planet Teyn is where Narath keeps his court."

Gordon frowned. "It seems a strange place for an heir to a throne."

"Until recently, he was only sixth in line. He was born at Teyn. Intrigue runs somewhat in the blood, you see. His father was banished for it, some years before Lianna was born."

"And what makes Narath Teyn so much more popular with the nonhumans than Lianna?"

"He has lived his life among them. He thinks like them. He is more of them, indeed, than I am. Nonhumans are of all sorts and kinds, John Gordon, children of many different stars, products of the evolutionary conditions decreed by the environments of our separate worlds. Many are so alien as to be quite unacceptable not only to humans but to other nonhumans as well. Narath loves them all. He is a strange man, and I think not entirely sane."

Korkhann closed the map panel gently and turned away, his plumage ruffling as it did when he was deeply disturbed.

"Lianna would have done well to listen to you," he said, "and protocol be damned. But she's too brave to be sensibly fearful, and too much her father's daughter to stand for threats. She's angry now, and determined to put a stop to her cousin's activities." He shook his head. "I think she may have waited too long."

Lianna gave him no chance to try and alter her decision. In the time that followed, while the tawny star grew from a distant spark to a flaming disc in the screens, she avoided being alone with him. He caught her looking at him with a curiously speculative expression once or twice, but apart from that her manner was correct and outwardly friendly. Only Gordon knew that between them now was a wall ten feet high. He did not try to climb it. Not yet.

The cruiser went into deceleration and landed on the second of five planets that circled Marral. Teyn.

Narath's world.

The dust and the searing heat died away. In the bridge room Lianna stood with Harn Horva and Korkhann beside the visor screens that now scanned the area outside the ship. Gordon stood a little apart, trying to calm his jumping nerves.

"They did receive your message?" Lianna said.

"Yes, Highness. We have the acknowledgement on tape."

"I'm not doubting your word, Captain. It's just that it seems strange . . ."

It did seem strange, even to Gordon. The screens showed an empty land beyond the primitive and obviously little-used port with its shuttered building and cracked pads that could only accommodate a bare handful of ships. Away from the blast area there were open gladelike forests of very thin and graceful trees that were the color of ripe wheat and not unlike it in shape. The light was strange, a heavy gold that darkened to orange in the shadows. A breeze, unheard and unfelt, swayed the tall trees. Apart from that nothing moved.

Lianna's mouth was set but her voice was silken. "If my cousin is unable to come and greet me, then I must go and greet him. I will have the land-car, Captain, and the guard. At once."

The orders were given. Lianna came and stood before Gordon. "This is a state visit. You don't need to come with me."

"I wouldn't miss it," Gordon said, and added, "Highness."

A faint color touched her cheekbones. She nodded and went on and he went with her, down to the airlock to await the unloading of the car. Korkhann, beside him, gave him one bright oblique glance. Nothing more was said, and in a short time the car appeared.

The guard formed ranks around Lianna, and incidentally around Gordon and Korkhann. The airlock opened. The standard-bearer shook out the banner of the White Sun on the strange-scented wind and marched them down the ramp to the car, where he fixed the standard in its socket and stood stiffly at attention as Lianna climbed in.

The car was a longish vehicle, unobtrusively armored and equipped with concealed firing-ports. The guard was armed. All this should have made Gordon feel more at ease. It did not. There was something about the tall swaying trees, and the way the glades led the eye along their open innocence into sudden panic of confusion and honey-colored gloom. There was something about the air, its warmth like an animal's breath, and its smell of wildness. He did not trust this world. Even the sky offended him, closing him in with a shimmering metallic curve that was almost tangible, like the roof of a trap.

The land-car sped away along a rude and unpaved track, gentling the roughness to nothing with its airfoil cushion. The land glided past, the character of it changing swiftly from flat to rolling and then to hilly, with forests thinning on the rocky knolls. The shadows seemed to deepen, as though the planet tilted toward night.

Suddenly someone, the driver or the standard-bearer who sat beside him or one of the guards, gave a yell of alarm and all the weapons in the car clacked to the firing-ports, even before Gordon could see what had caused the outcry. Korkhann pointed to a long hill-slope ahead.

"See over there, among the trees . . ."

There were things standing in the shadowed glades, a sinuous massing of shapes completely unidentifiable to Gordon's eyes. The men in the car had fallen silent. The soft thrumbling hiss of the airfoil jets sounded very loud in the quiet, and then from the slope there came one clear cry from a silvery horn, sweet and strange, running like fox fire along the nerves.

And at that moment the host swept toward them down the hillside.

5

Lianna's voice sounded close to Gordon, sharp and urgent. "Do not fire!"

Gordon was about to protest. Korkhann nudged him and whispered, "Wait."

The creatures poured in a lithe and sinuous flood along the slope, spreading out and around to encircle the car, their strange shapes still made indistinct by the barred shadowings of the trees. The air rang with cries, a hooting and shrilling from inhuman throats that seemed to Gordon to be full of triumph and cruel laughter. He strained his eyes. They were large creatures. They went an four feet, but softly, not like hoofed things, springing instead like great long-legged cats, and they appeared to carry riders . . . .

No. He could see some of them now quite clearly, burnished copper and ring-spotted and smoke-colored and glossy black, and his stomach gave a lurch. Not because they were hideous. They were not, and even in that moment of shock he was struck by their outlandish beauty. But they were so improbably strange. Animal and what he had taken for rider were, centaur-like, one flesh, as though a six-legged form of life had decided to walk at least partly upright, adapting head and torso and forelimbs to a shape almost human except for the angular slenderness. Their eyes were large, slanted and glowing, cat-eyes with keen intelligence behind them. Their mouths laughed, and they moved with the joy of strength and speed, their upper bodies bending like pliant reeds.

"The Gerrn," whispered Korkhann. "The dominant race of this planet."

They were all around the car now, which had slowed almost to a standstill. Gordon caught a glimpse of Lianna's profile, cut from white stone, looking straight ahead. The tension inside the car was rapidly becoming painful, tangible as the build-up of forces just before one small spark sets off the explosion.

He whispered to Korkhann, "Can you get from their minds what their intentions are?"

"No. They're telepaths too, and far more adept at it than I am. They can guard their minds totally. I couldn't even sense that they were there, before we saw them. And I think they're shielding someone else's mind as well . . . ah!"

Gordon saw then that one of the Gerrn did in fact carry a rider.

He was a young man, only a few years older than Lianna, and as light and lithe and spare as the Gerrn themselves. He was clad in a tight-fitting suit of golden russet and his brown hair fell long around his shoulders, wind-roughened and streaked by the sun. The silver horn that had sounded the one sweet cry was slung at his side. He clung to the back of a huge black-furred male, who bore him lightly to the forefront of the host. He lifted his arms and flung them wide, smiling, a handsome young man with eyes like sapphires, and his eyes seemed to Gordon to be more strange and fey than the cat-eyes of the Gerrn.

"Welcome!" he cried. "Welcome to Teyn, cousin Lianna!"

Lianna inclined her head. The tension ebbed. Men began to breathe again, and wipe their sweaty hands and faces. Narath Teyn raised the horn to his lips and sounded it again. The Gerrn host dissolved into fluid motion, sweeping the car along in its midst.

Two hours later, Teyn Hall blazed with light and skirled with music. The hall itself stood high on the slope of a river valley, a great sprawl of native stone and timber with many windows open on the night. Wide lawns ran down to the river bank and the Gerrn village that sheltered there among the trees. Above, the night sky dripped fire from the wild auroras born of proximity to the stellar drift, and in the shaking light strange shapes fled and gamboled across the lawns, or passed in and out through the open doors, or roosted on the broad sills of the windows. Incongruous and ill at ease, six of Lianna's guardsmen stood by the car and watched, and the radioman spoke at intervals into the mike.

Inside, fires burned on huge hearths at each end of the massive hall. Chandeliers poured light from the vaulted ceiling. The air was heavy with the smells of food and wine and smoke and the mingled company. There was only one table, and Gordon sat at it with Lianna and Narath Teyn and Korkhann, who was dignifiedly able to cope with a chair. Most of the guests who filled the hall preferred the rich rugs and cushions on the floor.

In a cleared space in the center of the hall three hunched and hairy shapes made music, with a panpipe of sorts and a flat-voiced drum, while two bright red creatures with more arms and legs than anyone needed swayed around each other with mannered grace, their gestures as stylized as Kabuki dancers, their long faces and many-faceted eyes resembling red-lacquered masks. The drumbeat picked up; the pipes shrilled higher. The scarlet legs and arms moved faster and faster. The dancers swirled and swayed hypnotically, dissolving into a blur before Gordon's eyes. The heat was terrific, the dry fauve smell of the packed nonhuman bodies almost terrifying.

Narath Teyn leaned over and spoke to Lianna. Gordon could not hear what he said, but he heard Lianna's retort.

"I've come here for an understanding, cousin, and I mean to have it. All this is by the way."

Narath Teyn bowed his head, all grace and mockery. He was dressed now in green, his long hair smoothed and held with a golden circlet. His dancers reached an impossible climax, followed by an abrupt and stunning cessation of both movement and music. Narath Teyn rose, holding out flagons of wine. He shouted something in a hissing, clacking sing-song and the scarlet ones answered and came scuttering toward him, to accept their flagons with a bow. A storm of noise burst out as the guests applauded in their several ways.

Underneath the racket Gordon spoke to Korkhann. "Where does he get his ships?" he asked. "And his men?"

"There is a town and a spaceport on the other side of this world. There is much trade between these wild systems and he controls it all. In his own way he is rich and powerful. Also he . . ."

The noise in the hall died away as another sound intruded; the long whistling far-off roar of a space cruiser dropping toward a landing. Gordon saw Lianna stiffen, and his own nerves snapped even tighter.

"Well," said Narath Teyn, glancing skyward with innocent amazement, "it seems that more guests are on their way. Always a flood after a long drought!"

He dropped into a guttural tongue and pounded on the table, laughing, and the big black-furred Gerrn who had carried him sprang into the open space deserted by the dancers. He had been introduced to Gordon as Sserk, chief of the local clan of Gerrn and second under Narath Teyn. He moved around the circle now in a ritual movement, slowly, lifting each lion-clawed foot in turn. His hands were crossed above his head and each one held a knife. The rhythm of his movement was picked up by the voices of the Gerrn, becoming a sort of yowling chant that ended every so often in a deep grunted cough!, only to begin again when Sserk resumed his pacing. Narath Teyn, looking flushed and pleased, spoke again to Lianna.

"Also," whispered Korkhann dryly, "as I was about to say, I suspect that he has allies."

Gordon swore very quietly under his breath. "Can't you read anything in his mind?"

"The Gerrn guard him. All I can read is satisfaction, and that you may see for yourself, in his face. I'm afraid we're in for . . ."

A harsh scream cut across the chanting and a second Gerrn, a young male with spotted flanks and very powerful haunches, leaped into the circle and began a prancing counter movement, holding his two knives high. His eyes were fixed on Sserk, drunken amber, wide and shining.

The chanting took on a deeper note. Elsewhere in the room it grew quiet. Grotesque heads craned forward, strange limbs shifted and were still. The two Gerrn circled, balancing. The servitors, mostly young females of the tribe with the baby fur still fluffy on them, stopped running about and stood watching.

Sserk sprang. The knives flashed, were caught and parried, and instantly Sserk's rump dropped and his forepaws rose, one feinting with quick strokes while the other lashed. The spotted male spun lightly out of reach and reared up himself, his knives darting and clashing as Sserk parried in his turn, then leaped clear of the raking claw. They began to circle again, stamping softly, their haunches quivering.

Only Narath Teyn was not watching the fencers, Gordon saw. He was waiting for something or someone and his strange fey eyes were bright with a secret triumph. Lianna sat as proud and undisturbed as though she were in her own hall at Fomalhaut, and Gordon wondered if underneath that calm she was as frightened as he.

The duel went on, it seemed, interminably. The clever hands, the murderous swift paws, the sinuous bodies darting, bounding high. The eyes alight with the pleasure of battle that was not quite to the death. After a while there was blood, and a while after that there was a lot more of it, so that the spectators close to the circle were spattered with it, and the chanting became more of a simple animal howling. In spite of himself, and ashamed of it, Gordon felt the ancient cruel excitement rise in him, found himself leaning over the table and grunting with the blows. In the end the spotted male flung down his knives and took his torn flanks dripping to the door and out of it as fast as he could go, while Sserk screamed victory and the Gerrn crowded around him with wine and praise and cloths to stop his wounds. Gordon, feeling a little sick now that the excitement was past, was reaching for his own wine-cup when he felt Korkhann touch him.

"Look, in the doorway . . ."

A tall man stood there, clad in black leather with the symbol of a jeweled mace aglitter on his breast, and a cap of black steel with a plume in it, and a cloak of somber purple to sweep to his heels.

There was someone, or something, behind him.

Gordon caught Lianna's sharp intake of breath, and then Narath Teyn sprung up and was pounding for silence, shouting a welcome to the newcome guest.

"Cyn Cryver, Count of the Marches of Outer Space! Welcome!"

The count strode into Teyn Hall and the Gerrn made way for him respectfully. And now Gordon saw that the count's companion was dressed in a cowled robe of shimmering gray that covered him, or it, completely from head to foot. The form beneath the flowing cloth seemed to be oddly stunted, and it moved with a fluid gliding motion that Gordon found distinctly unpleasant.

The count removed his cap and bent over Lianna's hand. "A most fortunate coincidence, Lady! Fortunate for me, at least. I hope you'll forgive me for choosing the same time you chose to visit your cousin."

Lianna said sweetly, "The ways of coincidence are indeed marvelous. Who shall question them?" She withdrew her hand. "Who is your companion?"

The cowled creature bobbed politely and made a thin hissing sound, then glided away to a relatively quiet corner behind the table. Cyn Cryver smiled and looked at Korkhann.

"One of the Empire's more remote allies, Lady, who out of courtesy keeps himself veiled. He occupies with me much the same position as does your minister, Korkhann, with you."

He acknowledged introduction to Gordon and sat down. The feasting went on. Gordon noticed that Korkhann seemed tense and distracted, his fingers opening and closing spasmodically around his wine-cup. The air grew hotter and noisier. In the cleared space two young Gerrn, without knives, began to circle and prance, batting at each other only half playfully. At the far end of the hall a fight broke out between two members of different species and was promptly smothered. The pipers and drummers were at it again, and a ragged-looking creature with leathery wings flapped up on to the carved balustrade of the great stair and began a rhythmic screaming that might have been song. Yet underneath all this Gordon seemed to sense an uneasiness, as though a shadow had crept across the festivities. Sserk and some of the other mature Gerrn appeared to have lost their desire for drink and jollity. One by one they began to withdraw, melting away unobtrusively through the unruly crowd.

Gordon wondered if they, like himself, felt the presence of the cowled stranger as a breath of cold wind along the spine. The corner where the creature squatted was now otherwise deserted, and the area seemed to be widening. Gordon shivered, unable to rid himself of the feeling that the damned thing was staring straight at him from behind its blank gray draperies.

Out in the circle one of the young Gerrn clipped his opponent too enthusiastically, bringing blood, and in a moment the claws and fur were flying in earnest. Lianna rose.

"I will leave you to your pleasures, cousin," she said icily. "Tomorrow we will talk."

Grabbing at the chance to escape, Gordon was at her elbow before she had finished speaking. But Narath Teyn insisted on escorting her, so that Gordon had no choice but to trail them up the great staircase, with Korkhann stalking beside him. The noise from the hall below diminished as they walked down the vaulted corridor.

"I'm sorry if my friends offended you, cousin Lianna. I forget, having lived with them all my life, that others may not. . ."

"Your friends don't offend me at all," said Lianna, "if you mean the nonhumans. You offend me. Cyn Cryver offends me."

"But, cousin. . .!"

"You're a fool, Narath Teyn. And you're playing for stakes far beyond your capacity. You should have stayed content here in your forests with your Gerrn."

Gordon saw Narath Teyn's face tighten. The fey eyes shot lightning. But his composure never wavered. "It is well known that a crown conveys all wisdom to its wearer. I shall not argue."

"Your mockery seems ill-placed, cousin, since you are willing to do murder for that crown."

Narath Teyn stared at her, startled. He did not deny, nor did she give him a chance to. She pointed to the other half of her twelve guardsmen, who were posted outside her door.

"I would advise you to explain to Cyn Cryver, in case he does not understand, that I am well guarded by loyal men who cannot be drugged, bribed, or frightened from their posts. They can be killed, but in that case you must also kill their comrades below, who keep in constant touch with my cruiser. If that contact is broken, Fomalhaut will be instantly notified, and a force will come at once from the cruiser. Cyn Cryver might use his forces to stop it, but neither you nor he could gain anything by that but ultimate destruction-"

Narath Teyn said, in a queer husky voice, "Have no fear, Lady."

"I have none," she said. "I bid you good night." She swept into her apartment and the guard closed the door behind her. Narath Teyn gave Gordon and Korkhann a blank glare and then turned and strode away down the corridor.

Korkhann took Gordon's arm and they walked on toward their own quarters. Gordon started to speak and Korkhann stopped him. He seemed to be listening. His urgency communicated itself to Gordon and he made no protest when Korkhann urged him on past their own doors, on faster and faster toward the far end of the corridor where it was deserted and quiet and almost dark, and there was a back stairway, winding down.

Korkhann pushed him to it with a strange desperation.

"For the moment we're not being watched. I must get down to the car, get word to Harn Horva . . ."

Gordon hesitated, his heart thundering now with alarm. "What . . . ?"

"I understand now," Korkhann said. "They don't plan to kill Lianna." His yellow eyes were full of horror. "They plan something far worse!"

6

Gordon started back. "I'm going to get her out of here."

"No!" Korkhann held him. "She's being watched, Gordon. There are Gerrn hidden in the room next to hers. They'd give the alarm at once. We'd never get out of the building."

"But the guards . . .!"

"Gordon, listen. There is a force here that the guards can't fight. The gray stranger who came with the count . . . I tried to touch its mind and was thrown back by a shock that half stunned me. But the Gerrn are stronger. Some of them got through, a little way at least. I know, because they were so shaken that they dropped their own guard. Did you see how Sserk and the others left? They're afraid, sick-afraid of that creature, and the Gerrn are not a timid folk." He was speaking so rapidly and in such desperation that Gordon had difficulty understanding him. "Sserk looked at Lianna. As I say, his own mind was unguarded, for the moment. He was seeing her as a mindless, blasted doll, and feeling horrified, and wishing she had not come."

Now Gordon felt a cold sickness in himself. "You mean that thing has the power to . . ."

"It's like nothing I've ever felt before. I don't know what that being is or where it comes from, but its mind is more deadly than all our weapons." He started down the stairs. "Their plan still depends on secrecy. If Harn Horva knows, and sends word to Fomalhaut, they wouldn't dare go through with it."

Probably not, Gordon thought. But Harn Horva could do more than send word to Fomalhaut. He could send men and guns, too many for even the gray stranger to handle all at once. There was a 'copter in the cruiser's hold. Help could be here in no more than thirty minutes, perhaps less. He flung himself after Korkhann.

The stairway led them winding down to a stone passage and a small door. They went through it with the sounds of revelry dim in their ears, into the warm night behind Teyn Hall, and then they ran, keeping close in the shadows. When they reached the front corner they stopped and looked cautiously around it.

The front of Teyn Hall still blazed with light, and merrymakers still swarmed in and out of the open door, though they seemed fewer now. The ground-car stood exactly as before, with six guards around it and the driver and radioman visible inside.

Gordon started forward.

Korkhann pulled him back. "It's too late. Their minds . . ."

In the instant Gordon lingered he saw what might have been the flicker of a gray robe gliding past a group of Gerrn and back into the hall. Then inside the car the radioman leaned forward and spoke into the mike.

"Look there," said Gordon, "they're all right, he's keeping the contact." He pulled free and ran toward the car.

He had taken perhaps five full steps when one of the guards saw him, and turned, and raised his weapon, and Gordon saw his face clearly in the window-light. He saw the others turning one by one. He set his heels in the grass and fled, back to the shelter of the corner. The guards lowered their weapons and resumed their posts, watching with glassy and uncaring eyes the shapes that leaped and scurried across the lawns and through the groves of trees.

"Next time," Korkhann said, "listen to me."

"But the radioman . . !"

"Contact will be carried on as before. Do you suppose the Gray One can't manage so simple a thing as that?" They retreated along the dark back wall. Korkhann beat his hands together softly, in anguish. "There's no hope now of getting word through. But we must do something, and quickly."

Gordon looked up at the high windows, where Lianna was. Where perhaps the gray stranger was already bobbling up the great staircase to the corridor, to strike the minds of Lianna's guards into passive jelly. Where the Gerrn lay hidden in dark rooms, watching the prey.

The Gerrn.

Suddenly Gordon turned and ran away across the wide lawns that sloped to the river and the groves of trees and the odd round roofs of the Gerrn village. Korkhann ran beside him and for once Gordon was thankful for telepathy. He did not have to waste time explaining.

They went in among the trees, into alternate shadow and bursts of shaking light from the aurora, amid intimate unfamiliar sounds of a village going about its affairs. And then there was a gathering of half-seen forms around them, the menacing soft tread of great paws. In the fire-shot gloom above him Gordon could see the narrow heads looking down at him, cat-eyes eerily catching the light.

He was fleetingly astonished to realize that he was not in the least afraid. There was no longer any time for that. He said to the Gerrn, "My mind is open to you, whether you understand my words or not. I come to see Sserk."

There was a rustling and stirring among them. A black shape drifted to the fore and a slurred harsh voice said, "Both your minds are open to me. I know what it is you want, but I can't help you. Turn back."

"No," said Gordon. "For the love you bear Narath Teyn, you will help us. Not for us, not for the Princess Lianna, but for his sake. You have touched the mind of the gray stranger . . ."

The Gerrn stirred uneasily, growling. And Korkhann said suddenly, "Cyn Cryver and the Gray One. Who truly leads, and who follows?"

"The Gray One leads," said Sserk grudgingly, "and the count follows, though he does not know it yet."

"And if Narath Teyn is king at Fomalhaut, who will lead then?"

Sserk's eyes glowed briefly in the aurora light. But he shook his head. "I can't help you."

"Sserk," said Gordon. "How long will they let Narath Teyn rule-the Gray One and Cyn Cryver and whoever is behind them? Narath Teyn wants power for the nonhumans, but what do they want?"

"I could not see that far," said Sserk, very softly, "but whatever it is, it is not for us."

"Nor for Narath Teyn. They need him now because he's the legitimate heir, if the princess dies or is rendered unfit. But you know what will happen to him in the end. You know, Sserk."

He could feel now that Sserk was trembling. He said, "If you love him, save him." And he added, "You know that he's not altogether sane."

"But he loves us," said Sserk fiercely, and his great paw rose as though to strike Gordon. "He belongs to us."

"Then keep him here. Otherwise, he is lost."

Sserk was silent. The breeze rustled in the tall trees, and the Gerrn swayed where they stood, uneasy and disturbed. Gordon waited, his mind strangely still, occupied distantly with the last resort. If the Gerrn refused, he would find a weapon and try his best to kill the gray stranger.

"You would not live to press the firing stud," said Sserk. "Very well. For his sake . . . For his sake, we'll help."

Sweat broke out on Gordon. His knees turned weak. "Then hurry," he said, and turned to run. "We must get her out before . . ."

The Gerrn blocked his way. "Not you," Sserk said. "Stay here, where we can guard your minds, as we've done since you came." Gordon started to protest, and Sserk grabbed him roughly, shook him as an impatient father might shake a child. "Our people watch her. We may get her out, you can't. If you go back you'll give us all away and all will be lost."

"He's right," Korkhann said, "Let them go, Gordon."

They went, four of them with Sserk at their head, and Gordon watched them bitterly as they raced away along the slope of the lawn. The other Gerrn closed around them, and Korkhann said, "They'll try to shield our minds. You can help them by thinking of other things."

Other things. What other things were there in the world that mattered? Still, Gordon did his best, and the minutes trickled by with the beads of icy sweat that ran on him, and suddenly there was an outcry, rather faint and confused, from Teyn Hall and then a crackle of shots. Gordon started wildly, felt the same shock run through the Gerrn, and a moment later Sserk came plunging in among the trees. He bore a struggling figure in his arms. Behind him came only three of his companions, and one of them lurched aside and sank to the ground.

"Here," Sserk said, and thrust Lianna into Gordon's arms "She does not understand. Make her, quickly, or we all die."

She fought him. "Are you behind this, John Gordon? They came through a secret door, pulled me out of bed . . ." She strained against his hands, her body warm and angry in a thin nightdress. "How dare you presume to. . ."

He slapped her, not quite dispassionately. "You can have me shot later if you want to, but right now you'll do as I tell you. Your mind depends on it, your sa . . ."

It hit him then, a hammer stroke that stunned his mind and rocked it quivering toward the edge of a dark precipice. Lianna's stricken face faded before his eyes. Someone, Korkhann he thought, let out a strangled cry and there was a deep groaning among the Gerrn. Gordon had a dim sense of forces beyond his understanding locked in terrible struggle, and then the darkness lifted somewhat. He heard Sserk crying, "Come, quickly!"

Gerrn hands pawed and plucked at him, urging. He helped swing Lianna up onto Sserk's back, and was half lifted himself onto the furred lean withers of another big male. The village seemed to have exploded into panic. Females with their young were running wildly about. Sserk sprang away through the trees with eight or ten of the older males following. Gordon hung on with difficulty as his mount fled through belts of forest, lunging and scrambling up and down the steep places. He saw Korkhann borne more lightly on the back of another Gerrn and ahead Lianna's nightdress fluttered in the wind of Sserk's going. Overhead the aurora flamed, scarlet pink and ice green and angelic white, remote and beautiful.

Behind them there was noise and commotion, and there was something else as well. Fear. Gordon's inner being crouched and cringed, awaiting a second blow. He could picture the gray stranger, moving with that queer stunted agility, the cowled robe fluttering . . . .

And it came again. The hammer stroke. It was bearable to Gordon, but he saw Lianna reel and almost fall as the Gerrn closed around her. This time the bolt had been discharged directly at her.

Then, more quickly than before, the force weakened and fell away.

"Thank the gods," said Korkhann hoarsely, "the thing does have its limitations. The power weakens with distance." Sserk said, "But our minds lose strength also, from weariness."

He ran faster, bounding through the glades with the girl clinging tightly to his shoulders. The others quickened their pace to match his, their bodies stretching. Yet it seemed to Gordon that they were crawling through endless miles of golden woodland under the burning sky.

All at once he said, "Listen."

There was a new sound, far away, a soft rushing noise as though a wind blew through the trees.

Korkhann said, "Yes, the ground-car. The Gray One follows."

The Gerrn sped faster, circling farther from the roadway. But they could not lose the rushing whisper that came relentlessly closer. And Gordon knew without need of telepathy that the Gerrn were afraid, already flinching from the next blow before it fell.

A last scrambling of clawed feet up a slope and the edge of the forest was there. The shuttered building of the port, the long slim shapes of the two cruisers, one blazoned with the White Sun, the other with the Mace, stood silent in the shaking glare of the aurora. Both ships had their ports open and lighted. Gordon slid to the ground, catching Lianna as she half fell from Sserk's back.

"The Gray One is close," said the Gerrn, his flanks heaving.

Gordon could no longer hear the air-jets. The car had stopped somewhere short of the cleared space. The hair on his own neck bristled. "We're grateful," he said to the Gerrn. "The princess will not forget."

He tightened his arm around Lianna and turned with her to run. Behind him he heard Sserk's voice, saying, "What we have done, we have done. So be it." And then Korkhann cried out, "Don't leave us now, or you'll have done it for nothing. I can't protect her all alone."

Gordon fled with Lianna across the cracked concrete apron, his whole mind and soul fixed on the light of the open port. He heard Korkhann's lighter footfalls pattering behind him. For a moment he thought that after all the Gray One had given up and that nothing was going to happen. And with a silent thunderclap the darkness came and beat him down floundering to his knees.

Lianna slipped away from him. He groped for her by sheer instinct, hearing her whimper. He fought, blind and squirming, across vast heaving blacknesses toward a far-off spark of light.

There were hands and voices. The spark brightened, growing dizzily. Gordon surfaced through cold ringing dimensions of dread; saw faces, uniforms, men, saw Lianna upheld in Harn Horva's arms, felt himself lifted and carried forward. Far off there was a whistling rush as of a balked and angry wind retreating. And two men carried Korkhann past him, half-conscious.

Harn Horva's voice roared out above all, "Prepare for take-off!"

Gordon was only partly aware of the clanging hatches, the warning hooters and the roaring thrust of the launch. He was in the lounge and Lianna was clinging to him, trembling like a frightened child, her face bloodless and her eyes wide.

Later, after the cruiser had leaped up into the sky and Teyn was dropping fast behind them, Gordon still held and soothed her. By then, Korkhann had come back to consciousness. His eyes were haunted but he said, with a kind of haggard pride, "For a moment . . . for a moment I did it, all alone!"

"Korkhann, who . . . what . . . was it?" said Gordon. "The Gray One."

"I think," whispered Korkhann, "that it was not of this universe. I think an ancient evil has awakened. I . . ."

He bent his head, and for a moment would say no more. Then he said somberly, "If Narath Teyn has allies such as that, he is far more dangerous than we thought, Highness."

"I know that now," said Lianna. "We'll hold council of war when we reach Fomalhaut. And I think that on our decision, my kingdom will stand or fall."

7

Outside, in the light of the flying moons, the old kings of Fomalhaut stood and dreamed in stone. All the way from the far-flung lights of the city up to this massive palace the great avenue of statues ran, eleven dynasties and more than one hundred kings, all towering up much larger than life so that the envoys who came this way would feel a sense of awe. No one came at this hour, all was silent, but in the changing light of the racing moons, the stone faces seemed to change, to smile, to glare, to brood.

In the vast darkness of the throne hall, looking out at that mighty avenue, John Gordon felt small and insignificant. From the shadowed walls other pictured faces looked down at him, the faces of further great ones in the long history of Fomalhaut Kingdom, and it seemed to him that that there was contempt in their glance.

Man of Earth, man of the old twentieth century that is now two hundred thousand years ago . . . what do you here out of your own place and time?

What indeed? And again that question came to plague him . . . reality or dream? With the question came fear, and the overwhelming desire to run for the security of Keogh's office and the calm voice explaining away all his problems. He felt a passionate homesickness for the old drab familiar world in which he had spent most of his life, and a terrifying sense of alienation took him by the throat.

He fought it, as he had had to fight it before. Sweat was on his forehead and his whole body trembled. At the same time he could jeer at himself savagely. All the while you were in that nice familiar world, you did nothing but whine and cry to get back here.

He was not aware that Korkhann had come into the hall, and started violently at the sound of his voice.

"It is strange, Gordon, that you tremble now, when there is no danger . . . at least for the present."

Korkhann was so vague in the shadows that he might have been human. Then his feathers rustled and his beaked face and wise eyes pushed forward into a bar of the shifting moonlight. It was hard to be angry with Korkhann, but Gordon managed it.

"I've asked you before not to read my mind."

"You do not yet understand telepathic powers," Korkhann said mildly. "I have not violated your mental privacy. But I cannot help receiving your emotions." After a moment he added, "I am to bring you to the council. Lianna sent me."

The black mood was still on Gordon, and Lianna's name brought a fresh surge of anger. "What does Lianna need of me?" After that moment of closeness, when she had been a frightened girl he could hold in his arms, she had become again the princess, remote, aloof, beautiful, and very busy with affairs of state. She seemed, in fact, to be deliberately avoiding him, as though she were ashamed of that lapse and did not wish to be reminded of it. And after all, damn it, he was still the stranger, still the primitive lout.

"In some ways," said Korkhann, this time shamelessly reading his thoughts, "you are. Lianna is a woman but she is also a reigning princess, and you must remember that your relationship is as difficult for her as it is for you."

"Oh, hell," said Gordon. "Now I get advice to the lovelorn from a . . . a . . ."

"From an overgrown mynah bird?" said Korkhann. "I assume that is some creature of your own world. Well. The advice is still good."

"I'm sorry," said Gordon, and meant it. He was behaving like a petty child. He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. "It's just that every once in a while . . ."

"You feel lost. This is natural. You have chosen a very strange road, John Gordon. It will never be an easy one. But you knew that. Now . . . will you come?"

"Yes," said Gordon. "I'll come."

They left the vast echoing hall and went along spacious corridors. It was late and there were few people about, but Gordon had a feeling that there was tension in the silence that enwrapped the palace, a brooding sense of danger. He knew that that was in his own mind, the danger was not here, not yet. It was still in the Marches of Outer Space, the far frontier of the galaxy. Yet the fact that the council of Fomalhaut Kingdom was meeting this late at night, only hours after the cruiser had landed on the throne-world, was evidence enough of how gravely that danger was regarded.

In the small paneled room they came to, four faces looked up at Gordon with expressions between irritation and hostility. Korkhann was the only nonhuman member of the council, and Lianna, at the head of the little table, nodded to Gordon and spoke the names of the four men.

"Is this necessary?" asked the youngest of them, a middle-aged man with burly brows. He added bluntly, "We've heard of your attachment to this Earthman, Highness, but I fail to see why . . ."

"I'm afraid," said Gordon pleasantly, "that I also fail to see why. Nevertheless, I was sent for."

Lianna said quickly, "It is necessary, Abro. Sit down, John Gordon."

He sat down at the far end of the table and bristled inwardly until Korkhann whispered, "Must you be so fighting?" That startled Gordon into a brief smile, and he relaxed a little.

The man called Abro spoke, ignoring Gordon in a way that was a studied insult.

"It stands thus. The attempt that Narath Teyn made against you, his daring to use force against the sovereign of Fomalhaut, shows that he's dangerous. I say, hit him. Send a squadron of heavy cruisers to Teyn to teach him and his Gerrns a lesson."

Inwardly, Gordon rather agreed. Anyone who would call in an ally like the Gray One deserved destruction. But Lianna shook her pale-golden head slowly.

"My cousin Narath is not the danger. He has long conspired to replace me, but with only his wild, barbaric nonhumans to call on he could do nothing. But now, he is simply being used as a pawn by others . . . among them, Cyn Cryver, a count of the Marches of Outer Space."

"Hit the Marches, then," said Abro harshly. Gordon began to like this blunt, tough character who had given him such a hostile greeting. But Korkhann spoke, in his hesitant, whistling voice.

"There is something hidden here, some veiled, unknown forces working behind Cyn Cryver and Narath Teyn. One such was at Teyn and would have destroyed us if the Gerrn had not changed sides. Who or what the creature was we could not tell, but it is powerful beyond belief . . . and is the true leader. Cyn Cryver is also a pawn."

"Use force against Cyn Cryver and we'll find out who or what is behind him," said one of the other councilors. "Abro is right."

"I think you are forgetting something," said Lianna. "The counts are allies of the Empire."

"So are we," said Abro, "and better and more dependable allies!"

Lianna nodded. "I agree. But all the same, we can't go into the Marches without first taking the matter up with Throon."

They didn't like it, Gordon saw that. Like most of the citizens of the smaller star-kingdoms they had an inordinate amount of pride, and asking anyone's permission went against their grain. But all the same, the Empire was the Empire, the greatest single power in the galaxy, ruling an inconceivable vastness of suns and worlds and people from the imperial world that circled the mighty sun Canopus. Like it or not, they would ask.

Lianna succeeded in silencing them for the moment. She added, "I'm sending Korkhann to discuss it with them. John Gordon will go with him."

Gordon's heart gave a great beat of excitement. To Throon! He would see it again . . .

An angry protest had already formed on Abro's lips, but it was Hastus Nor, oldest of the councilors, who voiced the objection. He looked down the table at Gordon and then turned to Lianna.

He said, "It is no concern of ours if you have favorites, Highness. But it is our concern if you let them meddle in statecraft. No."

Lianna stood up, her eyes blazing. The old man did not flinch from her anger. But before she could speak, Korkhann interrupted so smoothly and swiftly that it hardly seemed like an interruption at all.

"With your permission, Highness, I would like to answer that," he said. He looked around the hostile quartet of faces. "You all know, I think, that I have certain powers and that I have not often been wrong in stating a fact."

"Get to it, Korkhann," growled the old councilor.

"Very well." Korkhann's wing unfolded and his clawed hand rested on Gordon's shoulder. "I will say this, as a fact. No one . . . I say, no one, in the whole galaxy, would have as much influence in the councils of the Empire than this Earthman, John Gordon."

Gordon looked up at him, astounded. "So you have been mind-reading?" he muttered. "Or did she tell you . . ."

Korkhann ignored him, and looked steadily at the councilors. In their faces, hostility faded into puzzlement.

"But why . . . how?" demanded Abro.

Korkhann did the odd shrugging movement that made his feathers ruffle as in a wind.

"I have given you the fact. I will not explain."

They stared, frowning and curious, at Gordon, until he was sorely tempted to shout at them, "Because for a time I was your emperor!" But he did not, and finally old Hastus Nor rumbled, "If Korkhann says so, it must be true, even though . . ." He stopped, then went on decisively. "Let the man Gordon go."

Gordon said softly, "Thank you. But has anyone asked me whether I want to go?"

He was mad clear through at being treated like a pawn, being argued over and challenged and defended, and he would have gone on to say so, but Lianna spoke very firmly.

"Gentlemen, the council is ended."

They went out with no more said, and when they had gone, Lianna came toward Gordon.

"Why did you say that?" she asked. "You want to go."

"Why should I?"

"Don't lie," she said. "I saw the eagerness in your face when it was suggested that you go to Throon."

She looked at him, and he saw the pain and doubt in her clear eyes.

"For a little while, after death had just passed us by at Teyn, I thought we had come closer," she said. "I thought it would be as it had been before with us . . ."

"So did I."

"But I was wrong. It's not I you care about."

"That," said Gordon angrily, "is a fine thing to say to a man who risked his life to get here to you. All I know is, you treat me like a . . ."

She did not let him finish. "Did you risk your life to reach me, John Gordon? Was it I you remembered and longed for, back in that distant age of yours, or was it the adventure, the starships, all that our age has that yours had not, that you really longed to return to?"

There was just enough truth in the accusation to take the anger out of Gordon, and the moment of half-guilt he felt must have shown on his face, for Lianna, looking up at him, smiled a white and bitter smile.

"I thought so," she said, and turned away. "Go to Throon, then, and be damned."